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Deep State Knives Out For Tulsi Gabbard: What We Know

Tyler Durden's Photo
by Tyler Durden
Thursday, Feb 12, 2026 - 07:11 PM

Director of National Security Tulsi Gabbard is currently facing intense scrutiny from Congress over two recent controversies, which have lately driven headlines but have remained murky and ambiguous.

Starting earlier this month, allegations surfaced that she had mishandled a whistleblower complaint about a National Security Agency (NSA) intercept of communication between two foreign citizens discussing a person allegedly close to the president - but no details of this have been made public. However, at least one of these whistleblower reports has  been posted on a non-profit beltway site.

Democrats smell blood in the water, and have been going after her - and without doubt there are some among Republican deep state ranks on board, as they never wanted to see non-interventionist Gabbard commanding such a powerful, high profile role as the DNI.

DNI Tulsi Gabbard, Getty Images

After all, she's been long on record pre-Trump administration as blasting US policy everywhere from Syria, to Iraq, to aggressively criticizing prior US regime change rhetoric targeting Venezuela.

On the Venezuela issue, reports suggest she was completely sidelined from the operations which ousted Nicolás Maduro. The Wall Street Journal observed soon on the heels of US military action in Caracas:

White House officials excluded the top U.S. intelligence officer, Tulsi Gabbard, from Venezuela planning since last summer, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

As President Trump’s national-security team huddled last week to make final preparations for the operation to snatch Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, Gabbard was posting social-media photos of herself on a beach in Hawaii, where she grew up, ignorant of the operation’s details.

The Army officer reservist who served in Iraq has long been a thorn in the side of NeoCons in high places.

"What in the heck is Tulsi Gabbard doing?" Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, the intelligence committee's top Democrat, declared in a press briefing last month. "If there’s any evidence of foreign interference, she’s clearly broken her obligations as director of DNI to tell the intelligence community, because we’ve heard none of this."

And this week, the plot thickens:

US spy chief Tulsi Gabbard told Reuters that she has wound down a task force she launched last year. The task force had the declared goal of rooting out politicization from intelligence agencies, but critics accused it of being a tool for partisan attacks by the Trump administration.

Gabbard said in a statement she had reassigned members of the Director's Initiatives Group elsewhere in her agency. Her comments to Reuters came after two sources said the decision to wrap up the DIG, as it was commonly known, was taken after alleged missteps.

But again, these 'alleged missteps' have been shrouded in mystery, vague but forceful accusations, and innuendo of intrigue and political sabotage. This might seem familiar to longtime watchers of the failed years-runing 'Russiagate' saga.

Vague inuendo involving alphabet soup agencies abound...

For an example of one key 'whistleblower report' made public...

WASHINGTON, DC, Feb. 11, 2026—Lawyers for the whistleblower accusing Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Tulsi Gabbard of withholding a sensitive disclosure from Congress for nearly eight months responded today to the DNI’s General Counsel.

The whistleblower’s attorneys accused the Trump Administration of deliberately stonewalling efforts to allow their client to brief congressional leaders on the matter and vowed to file a lawsuit unless the Administration shares the required security guidance by the end of the week.

“It is difficult to reach any other conclusion but that the DNI is deliberately obstructing our client’s ability to directly communicate with the congressional intelligence committees and provide a briefing of the contents of their whistleblower complaint,” Whistleblower Aid Chief Legal Counsel Andrew P. Bakaj and founder Mark S. Zaid wrote in a letter sent today to Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) General Counsel Jack Dever.

The anonymous whistleblower called out DNI Director Gabbard for inappropriately limiting access to their complaint, which was first lodged in May 2025, blocking wider distribution. Gabbard is a subject of the complaint. 

DNI Gabbard issued a rare public response, calling the allegations of Sen. Mark Warner and others that she allegedly "hid" a whistleblower’s complaint a "blatant lie".

"Senator Mark Warner and his friends in the Propaganda Media have repeatedly lied to the American people that I or the ODNI 'hid' a whistleblower complaint in a safe for eight months," Gabbard said in a Feb.7 post on X. "This is a blatant lie."

The issue is so hot that when journalists, ourselves included, have sought to approach administration or national security officials and sources seeking clarify to the Gabbard situation, the response is stonewalling and silence.

Are the deep state knives out for Tulsi?

...with enemies like these:

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