Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz said Friday that Tulsi Gabbard, Donald Trump’s controversial pick for director of national intelligence, “is likely a Russian asset.”
Asked in an MSNBC appearance about Gabbard’s prospective nomination to a position that would come with extensive access to classified information, the Florida Democrat did not mince words.
“Tulsi Gabbard is someone who has met with war criminals, violated the Department of State’s guidance and secretly, clandestinely went to Syria and met with [Syrian President Bashar al-]Assad, who gassed and attacked his own people with chemical weapons,” she said. “She’s considered to be, essentially, by most assessments, a Russian asset.”
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Pressed on her own view of Gabbard, Wasserman Schultz doubled down. “I consider her someone who is likely a Russian asset,” the congresswoman said.
She railed against the “irresponsibility” of Trump’s recent slew of administration appointments, some of which—like Matt Gaetz for attorney general and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as head of Health and Human Services—have dropped jaws on both sides of the political aisle.
Gabbard’s announcement was also a shocker, largely for the reasons Wasserman Schultz touched on.
Once a Democrat representing Hawaii in the House, Gabbard left the party after a failed run at its presidential nomination in 2020. She would later re-emerge as a Trump backer and eventually become one of his most ardent allies.
As Wasserman Schultz alluded to, she secretly met with al-Assad, the Russian-backed Syrian leader who is responsible for the deaths of thousands of its civilians, during an eyebrow-raising visit to the country in 2017.
The concern about whether Gabbard is a “Russian asset” comes from allegations that she has the support of the Kremlin, and from controversial statements she has made in defense of the country.
In February 2022, after Russia invaded Ukraine, Gabbard drew criticism for an X post that endorsed a Kremlin-backed conspiracy theory that the U.S. was funding biological warfare labs in Ukraine.
It prompted Sen. Mitt Romney to fire back.
“Tulsi Gabbard is parroting false Russian propaganda,” he wrote on X. “Her treasonous lies may well cost lives.”
Gabbard and Wasserman Schultz have a history. The two feuded in 2015 when Gabbard said she and other officials were left out of decision-making around the Democratic National Convention, which Wasserman Schultz, then the DNC’s chair, said was a lie.
