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WASHINGTON (AP) — The Republican leaders of the House and Senate intelligence committees have rejected a top-secret complaint from an anonymous government insider alleging that Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard withheld classified information for political reasons.
The responses this week from Sen. Tom Cotton and Rep. Rick Crawford mean the complaint is unlikely to proceed further, though Democratic lawmakers who also have seen the document said they continue to question why it took Gabbard’s office eight months to refer the complaint to Congress as required by law.
Gabbard’s office has rejected any allegations of wrongdoing as well as criticism of the timeframe for the referral, saying the complaint included so many classified details that it necessitated an extensive legal and security review. Select lawmakers were able to view the complaint this week.
Cotton wrote Thursday on X that he agreed with an earlier inspector general’s conclusion that the complaint did not appear to be credible. He said he believes the complaint was prompted by political opposition to Gabbard and the Trump administration.
“To be frank, it seems like just another effort by the president’s critics in and out of government to undermine policies that they don’t like,” wrote the Arkansas Republican, who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee.
When asked about the complaint, Cotton’s office referred to his social media post.
Crawford, the House Intelligence Committee chairman, also of Arkansas, said he believes the complaint was an attempt to smear Gabbard’s reputation.
Democrats are pushing for explanations about why it took Gabbard’s office months to refer the complaint to the required members of Congress. Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the senior Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said the law requires such a report to be sent within 21 days.
“The law is clear,” Warner said Thursday at the Capitol. “I think it was an effort to try to bury this whistleblower complaint.”
Warner said he also still has questions about the details of the complaint, noting that it was heavily redacted.
The top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut, said in a written statement that he will keep looking into the matter.
In a memo sent to lawmakers this week, the intelligence community’s inspector general said the complaint also accused Gabbard’s office of general counsel of failing to report a potential crime to the Department of Justice. The memo, which contains redactions, does not offer further details of either allegation.
Last June, then-inspector general Tamara Johnson found that the claim Gabbard distributed classified information along political lines did not appear to be credible, according to the current watchdog, Christopher Fox. Johnson was “unable to assess the apparent credibility” of the accusation about the general counsel’s office, Fox wrote in the memo.
Fox said he would have deemed the complaint non-urgent, unlike the previous inspector general, but respected the decision of his predecessor and therefore sent it to lawmakers.
Copies of the top-secret complaint were hand-delivered this week to the “Gang of Eight” — a group comprised of the House and Senate leaders from both parties as well as the four top lawmakers on the House and Senate intelligence committees.
Andrew Bakaj, the attorney for the person who made the complaint, has said that while he cannot discuss the details of the report or the identity of its author, there is no justification for keeping it from Congress since last spring.
A former CIA officer and now the chief legal counsel at Whistleblower Aid, Bakaj said he has heard significant redactions were made to the complaint before it was given to members of Congress.
“Given the extensive redactions we understand exist, even in the version provided to the Gang of Eight, it seems unlikely anyone could reasonably and in a non-partisan manner reach the conclusions issued by Sen. Cotton,” Bakaj wrote in a statement to The Associated Press.
Gabbard coordinates the work of the nation’s 18 intelligence agencies. She has recently drawn attention for another matter — appearing on site last week when the FBI served a search warrant on election offices in Georgia that are central to Trump’s disproven claims about fraud in the 2020 election.
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