More Emerges on Complaint Against Gabbard

A complaint made about Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard months ago relates to an allegation that she withheld access to classified information for political reasons, according to a memo sent to lawmakers by the inspector general's office and obtained by the AP. That allegation in the complaint filed in May appeared to not be credible, according to the former watchdog for the intelligence community that initially reviewed it. It has become a flashpoint for Gabbard's critics, who accuse her of withholding information from members of Congress tasked with providing oversight of the intelligence services.

Copies of the top-secret complaint are being hand-delivered this week to the "Gang of Eight" lawmakers—a group comprised of House and Senate leaders from both parties, as well as the top Democrats and Republicans on the House and Senate intelligence committees. Gabbard's office has denied the allegations and disputed that it withheld the complaint, saying the monthslong delay in getting it to lawmakers was due to an extensive legal review necessitated by the complaint's many classified details, as well as last year's government shutdown.

"It took the Gang of Eight six months of negotiation with [Gabbard] to share that whistleblower complaint," Dem Sen. Mark Warner said. "This is in direct contradiction to what Gabbard testified during her confirmation hearings—that she would protect whistleblowers and share the information [in a] timely matter." The author of the complaint, in a second allegation, accused Gabbard's office of general counsel of failing to report a potential crime to the DOJ. The intel community's inspector general memo, which contains redactions, doesn't offer further details of either allegation.

"Former intelligence officials say that it is highly unusual for a government agency to take several months to transmit a whistleblower complaint to Congress and that spy agencies usually are able to resolve security concerns in days or weeks," notes NBC News. The AP notes that in June, then-IG Tamara Johnson found that the claim that Gabbard had distributed classified information along political lines didn't appear to be credible, per the current watchdog, Christopher Fox, in the memo to lawmakers. Johnson was "unable to assess the apparent credibility" of the accusation about the general counsel's office, Fox wrote. An attorney for the person who made the complaint said on Monday that while he can't discuss the details of the report, there's no justification for keeping it from Congress since last spring. More here.