Tulsi Gabbard, director of Nationwide Intelligence, throughout a cupboard assembly on the White Home in Washington, DC, US, on Tuesday, Dec. 2, 2025.
Yuri Gripas | Bloomberg | Getty Photographs
Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., on Tuesday referred to as on Director of Nationwide Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard to testify in particular person earlier than the Senate Intelligence Committee about her look at an FBI raid on a Georgia election workplace final week.
Warner, the vice chairman of the intelligence panel, mentioned he was particularly involved that Gabbard facilitated a cellphone name between these FBI brokers and President Donald Trump after the search warrant was executed.
“Let’s be clear: It’s inappropriate for a sitting president to personally contain himself in a felony investigation tied to an election he misplaced,” Warner informed reporters on Capitol Hill.
The senator additionally sounded alarms about Trump’s current suggestion that Republicans ought to “take over” and “nationalize” elections.
“That assertion alone makes clear that this menace to our election safety, the fundamental premise of our democracy, is ahead seeking to 2026 into 2028,” he mentioned.
Warner’s feedback flip up the quantity on Democrats’ rising fears that Trump — who vehemently refused to simply accept his 2020 election loss, and continues to falsely declare that he received that race — might attempt to meddle within the upcoming midterms.
Even because the minority celebration, Democrats within the Senate have the facility to compel folks to testify.
United States Director of Nationwide Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard speaks on the cellphone whereas standing on the fringe of a truck loading bay after the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) executed a search warrant for the Fulton County Election Hub and Operation Middle in relation to the 2020 election, based on a legislation enforcement official conversant in the matter, in Union Metropolis, Georgia, U.S. January 28, 2026.
Elijah Nouvelage | Reuters
Warner accused Gabbard’s workplace of systematically “dismantling” numerous guardrails designed to guard elections.
“Whenever you put all of this collectively, it’s clear that what occurred in Fulton County just isn’t about revisiting the previous, it’s about shaping the end result of future elections,” he mentioned.
The Workplace of the Director of Nationwide Intelligence didn’t instantly reply to CNBC’s request for touch upon Warner’s remarks.
In a letter to Warner and different lawmakers on Monday, Gabbard mentioned her presence on the Fulton County election workplace was “requested” by Trump and that she solely noticed the execution of an FBI search warrant there “for a short time frame.”
Spokespeople for the county have confirmed that the federal brokers had been in search of data associated to 2020 elections. Fulton County Superior Court docket Clerk Che Alexander informed native outlet WSB-TV final week, “They took 24 pallets, which encompassed 656 packing containers of 2020 election paperwork.”
Gabbard mentioned within the letter that, as DNI, she has “broad statutory authority to coordinate, combine, and analyze intelligence associated to election safety, together with counterintelligence (CI), international and different malign affect and cybersecurity.”
Gabbard additionally appeared to broadly affirm The New York Instances‘ report that, throughout a gathering with FBI brokers after the raid, she referred to as up Trump and put him on speakerphone to reward them for his or her work.
“Whereas visiting the FBI Subject Workplace in Atlanta, I thanked the FBI brokers for his or her professionalism and nice work, and facilitated a short cellphone name for the President to thank the brokers personally for his or her work,” Gabbard wrote within the letter.
The Instances, citing three folks with data of the assembly, reported that Trump requested the brokers questions, which had been principally fielded by the squad supervisor who developed proof for the search of the election workplace.
Gabbard’s letter mentioned Trump “didn’t ask any questions, nor did he or I problem any directives” on the decision.
She added that her workplace’s basic counsel “has discovered my actions to be constant and nicely inside my statutory authorities.”
Warner rejected that protection.
“The broad authority to research intelligence just isn’t a license to take part in a sham investigation,” he mentioned. “And it actually doesn’t justify facilitating direct contact between the frontline FBI brokers doing this investigation, on to the president of the US.”
In the meantime, Trump, in a podcast interview with former deputy FBI director Dan Bongino that was launched Monday, referred to as on members of the Republican Get together to “take over the voting.”
He made that suggestion after echoing the conspiracy idea that noncitizens are being “introduced” into the U.S. to vote illegally. Trump tied the declare — which has been repeatedly debunked — along with his administration’s aggressive efforts to hold out mass deportations of undocumented immigrants.
“If we do not get them out, Republicans won’t ever win one other election,” Trump informed Bongino.
It is “superb that the Republicans aren’t harder on it. The Republicans ought to say, ‘We wish to take over. We must always take over the voting, the voting in not less than many — 15 locations,'” Trump mentioned.
“The Republicans must nationalize the voting,” he went on. “We have now states which are so crooked, they usually’re counting votes. We have now states that I received that present I did not win.”
States are primarily accountable for governing their very own election techniques.
“You are going to see one thing in Georgia, the place they had been in a position to get, with the courtroom order and the ballots,” Trump added within the interview. “You are going to see some attention-grabbing issues come out.”
