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DNI nominee Tulsi Gabbard faces rocky road to confirmation

Republican lawmakers believe concerns about the former Hawaii legislator’s foreign dealings and fitness for the job could delay proceedings

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President-elect Donald Trump's nominee to be Director of National Intelligence, former U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, leaves a meeting with Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) at the Hart Senate Office Building on December 18, 2024 on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC.

Republicans are acknowledging that former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard is facing challenges for her confirmation as director of national intelligence, but maintain she still has a viable path despite concerns about her readiness for the job and amid new revelations about her controversial meetings with former Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad.  

“Let’s put it this way: I do a lot of boating. There’s a lot of barnacles that need to be scraped off that hull because it’s starting to create a drag. It’s not sinking, it’s not taking on water, but it’s definitely slowing down,” one Republican senator told Jewish Insider of the status of Gabbard’s nomination as of Tuesday.

Even if Gabbard wins enough support from Republicans to get confirmed, few GOP senators are offering her a fulsome endorsement. Some senators have said Gabbard’s conversations with senators lately have been better than their impressions following an initial round of meetings. Others have mulled backing her despite serious reservations, concluding the Office of the Director of National Intelligence is not as significant a position as it once was.

“The DNI is 19 years old and was created because of lapses on Sept. 11, but a number of us think the department isn’t even necessary anymore. There are some people here of the view that this job is not that important,” one Republican senator who is leaning toward backing Gabbard despite having reservations told JI.

The Republican senator, who also plans to support former acting DNI John Ratcliffe’s nomination to be CIA director, said that they and their colleagues were more focused on who would run the Central Intelligence Agency. “Ratcliffe is going to be the long pole in the tent anyway. He’s the one who will matter,” the senator said.

But other senators are more reluctant to support Gabbard.

“A lot of us believe any of these jobs are important, and that is carrying weight,” a Republican senator who is unsure of whether they’ll support Gabbard said.

Multiple GOP senators, including some who have serious misgivings about Gabbard’s nomination and others who are supporting her, confirmed to JI that her performance in initial meetings with a number of them was viewed as poor. Two senators said she was “unprepared” to answer basic questions about the responsibilities of the ODNI, including during her first meetings with two Republicans on the Senate Intelligence Committee, which oversees her confirmation.

Since then, however, several say Gabbard has “done her homework” and returned to follow-up meetings having read up on questions with which she had previously struggled. Concerns still remain though, making a protracted confirmation process all but certain. 

A GOP senator who had misgivings about Gabbard’s attitude and lack of preparation for her early meetings but now plans to vote for her said she was working to address issues raised by members. 

“Intel members have been working with her [Gabbard],” the senator said. “I think they’re spun up on the little details and things but I think she’s doing better, that’s my sense. She was pretty bad in the beginning, but she’s doing much better now. Her most recent meetings were a marked improvement from her first ones.” 

Republicans said that Gabbard’s recent about-face on Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, an authority she has long opposed but came out in support of as her DNI nomination began to face hurdles, has also created distrust with their already uneasy colleagues. 

Section 702, which allows the federal government to collect the communications of foreign intelligence assets who use U.S. electronic communications, has raised privacy concerns among conservative Republicans over the collection of communications between Americans and noncitizens suspected of threatening national security. 

“I think the area where she’ll really have to knock the cover off the ball is on 702,” a concerned GOP senator said. 

Some Republican senators also feel Gabbard hasn’t adequately explained her 2017 visit to Syria as a member of Congress and subsequent support for then-Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, an issue she’s been pressed on publicly since the fall of the Assad regime in Syria last month.

While the concerns remain, Republicans say they struggle to imagine tanking Gabbard’s nomination. “Some of us are struggling with our own issues with her, and that’s legitimate, but I think they’ll come around,” one senator said. 

Gabbard’s confirmation hearing — unlike those of other top-level national security nominees — hasn’t been scheduled yet, even though GOP leaders have urged swift confirmation of President Donald Trump’s national security Cabinet nominees after a New Year’s terror attack in New Orleans. 

Newly minted Secretary of State Marco Rubio secured confirmation unanimously with 99 Senate votes while Ratcliffe received overwhelming bipartisan support in the Senate Intelligence Committee after his hearing.

According to the Intelligence Committee’s bylaws, the panel cannot move forward with scheduling Gabbard’s hearing without her FBI background check. A source familiar tells JI the committee hasn’t received the background check yet. The source added that Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), the committee’s chairman, plans to schedule the hearing as soon as he receives the backgrounder. 

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