US intel chief Gabbard calls claim she hid whistleblower complaint a ‘blatant lie’
Trump official says deadline to share complaints with Congress doesn’t apply in case, amid affair said to stem from intercepted phone call about Iran and a person close to Trump
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US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard on Saturday disputed claims by lawmakers that she sought to block Congress from accessing a whistleblower complaint, saying she took “immediate action” once notified of the need to provide security guidance for its release.
A top-secret complaint filed with the intelligence community’s inspector general last May by an anonymous government official alleged that the US spy chief’s office sought to prevent the routine dissemination of certain classified intelligence for political reasons.
Gabbard was appointed to her post by US President Donald Trump last year.
A November letter from Andrew Bakaj, the whistleblower’s lawyer, to Gabbard’s office, which was also shared with the House of Representatives and Senate intelligence committees, alleged that Gabbard had hindered the dissemination of the May complaint to lawmakers by failing to provide necessary security guidance on how to handle it.
Democrats such as Senator Mark Warner, the vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, have said that Gabbard’s agency, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, was required under law to relay the May complaint to Congress within 21 days rather than waiting until February.
In a social media post on Saturday, Gabbard accused Democrats of spreading 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. This is a blatant lie.
The truth:
– I am not now, nor have I ever been, in possession or…
— DNI Tulsi Gabbard (@DNIGabbard) February 7, 2026
Successive inspectors general spanning the presidencies of Trump and his Democratic predecessor Joe Biden did not find the complaint to be credible, Gabbard wrote on X.
The 21-day requirement “only applies when a complaint is determined by the Inspector General to be both urgent AND apparently credible,” Gabbard wrote.
She also wrote that she previously had not been informed by the inspector generals that the whistleblower had “chosen to send the complaint to Congress, which would require me to issue security instructions.”
Gabbard wrote that once made aware of the need to provide security guidance to share the complaint with lawmakers on December 4, she took “immediate action” to do so.
Reuters could not verify the contents of the original complaint.
According to a New York Times report on Saturday, the complaint related to the interception of a call, held last spring, between two foreign nationals in which they discussed someone close to Trump amid a conversation that also involved Iran.
The report said the nationality of the two foreigners on the call was unclear.
According to The Guardian, the call was intercepted by the US National Security Agency, and was immediately brought to Gabbard’s attention.
The British newspaper, echoing the Times’ reporting that the call concerned a person close to Trump, clarified that, according to a person familiar with the matter, the person was not believed to be an administration official or a special government employee.
Additionally, the Guardian reported that rather than allowing the NSA to distribute the intelligence through normal channels, the US intelligence director took it directly to White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles.
Gabbard then told the NSA not to publish the information, the newspaper reported on Sunday.
The Times of Israel Community.