Dear Friend,
I voted against Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard’s nomination to be President Trump’s Director of National Intelligence today. Here’s why: Time and again, Ms. Gabbard has elevated conspiracy theories, parroted dictators’ talking points, and repeatedly undermined our country’s national security. Her poor judgment and lack of national security experience make her wholly unqualified to keep New Mexicans safe.
Ms. Gabbard’s responses during her nomination hearing made this clear, refusing to call Edward Snowden a traitor and, in response to my questions, falsely denying knowledge of comments by a Syrian cleric she met with in 2017 who threatened to unleash suicide bombers in the United States. You can read more about my questioning of Ms. Gabbard in the Washington Post article below.
Put plainly, Tulsi Gabbard is a national security risk. She appears to trust information from every other source but the Intelligence Community. Yet as the Director of National Intelligence, she would be entrusted with providing the most sensitive intelligence to the president and determining what intelligence to share with our allies.
As I continue to carry out my constitutional duty, I will remain vigilant to ensure that every nominee is properly vetted and has the qualifications to serve.
Sincerely,
MARTIN HEINRICH
United States Senator
WASHINGTON POST: Records undercut Tulsi Gabbard’s claim of ignorance on cleric’s views
The nominee for director of national intelligence said, under oath, that she did not know “until today” that a prominent cleric she met in Syria threatened to unleash suicide bombers in the United States. Documents and emails from 2017 indicate she was told then about the threats.
January 30, 2025
By Jon Swaine and Ellen Nakashima
In her confirmation hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday, senators repeatedly pressed Tulsi Gabbard on her highly scrutinized trip to Syria in 2017, where she met President Bashar al-Assad and others, including a Syrian cleric who had previously threatened to unleash suicide bombers in the United States if the American military intervened in his country.
When asked by Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-New Mexico) whether she was aware of the threat made by Ahmad Badreddin Hassoun, who was then grand mufti of Syria, Gabbard — President Donald Trump’s nominee for director of national intelligence — answered: “I was not and had not heard that until today.”
But documents reviewed by The Washington Post indicate that Gabbard was aware of Hassoun’s threats soon after she returned from her controversial visit to the country in January 2017.
The documents, which appear within a larger trove from Gabbard’s former congressional office, show that Hassoun’s comments on suicide bombers were flagged as problematic by one of her aides in early 2017 and were identified in an external vetting process as the likeliest source of negative publicity about the trip.
A Google account in Gabbard’s name left comments in an electronic draft of potential answers her office was preparing to counter anticipated media questions about the cleric.
The Post could not independently confirm whether Gabbard herself was using the account, but it was used to send emails to staff signed in her name and advisers sent messages to it that were addressed to Gabbard. A detailed log of the effort to prepare the post-trip paperwork compiled by a senior adviser attributed actions taken with the account to Gabbard herself.
Spokespeople for Gabbard and the White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Hassoun was appointed to the position of grand mufti, Syria’s most senior Sunni Muslim cleric, by the Assad regime in 2005. He was an Assad loyalist and, as the country descended into civil war, publicly warned Washington and other Western nations against taking military action against the government.
“I say to all of Europe, I say to America, we will set up suicide bombers who are now in your countries, if you bomb Syria or Lebanon,” he said in a speech in September 2011, according to an Associated Press report from the time. “From now on, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.”
The records reviewed by The Post show that when Gabbard was first invited to visit Syria by Ohio-based activists in November 2016, Hassoun was one of the dignitaries they said she would have the opportunity to meet. She eventually visited Syria, as well as Lebanon, the following January.
According to her account of the trip, Gabbard had a meeting with Hassoun on the afternoon of Jan. 16, 2017, directly after she met Assad and his wife, Asma. It was not clear what they discussed.
Syria has long been designated as a state sponsor of terrorism, and after the U.S. shut its embassy there in 2012, Washington had no diplomatic relations with the regime. U.S. officials generally did not meet with regime officials and the State Department advised against travel to the country.
After her return, amid controversy over her meeting with the Syrian dictator, Gabbard’s advisers mounted a days-long scramble to account for her time in Syria in official paperwork and limit the political fallout, records reviewed by The Post show. The trip has come under renewed scrutiny since Trump picked Gabbard to oversee all 18 U.S. spy agencies.
When Gabbard shared her full itinerary with her team after returning from Syria, they moved quickly to vet people she had met in case their backgrounds generated further negative publicity. One adviser commissioned someone from outside the office, identified only as “Matt” in the records seen by The Post, to research the officials and other dignitaries.
Matt sent back a six-page report marked “CONFIDENTIAL” and titled “Key Vulnerabilities.” The first bullet point at the top of the first page referenced Hassoun by name and said: “Rep. Gabbard met with an Islamic Cleric that threatened to activate a network of suicide bombers in the U.S. and Europe if Western countries militarily intervened in Syria.”
The adviser sent Gabbard and several other colleagues an email titled “Vet Info” that appeared to include the report as an attachment.
“I haven’t looked through all this yet because I wanted to get it out ASAP,” the adviser wrote. “But let me know if you have any questions for Matt (the vetter).” The version of the email reviewed by The Post had been subsequently forwarded between aides and did not feature an attachment.
As the team prepared a final report on the trip for the House Ethics Committee, one adviser commented on the Hassoun meeting in the margins of a Google Doc where they were compiling Gabbard’s itinerary. “This is going to be one of the biggest issues,” the adviser wrote. “We need to have an agreed upon answer to all staff and external team as well.”
On Feb. 8, Gabbard’s Google account drafted an answer to anticipated questions from the media about the suicide bomber comments, according to the edit logs of a second Google Doc prepared by Gabbard and senior aides. “Why did you meet with a man who has threatened to activate a network of suicide bombers against the United States?” said the anticipated question.
The answer proposed by Gabbard’s account read: “Tulsi is committed to the cause of peace. When Tulsi served in Iraq, she saw firsthand the devastating consequences of repeating the mistakes of our past and why we must end US distructive [sic] policies of regime change war. She understands that in order to achieve peace, we have to engage all parties involved, even if we don’t agree with them. Throughout Tulsi’s trip, she took the opportunity to meet with everyone she could, even those who shared different perspectives, in order to work toward a path to peace for Syria.”
Another anticipated question in the document was: “Did you know you were meeting with people with direct ties to terrorist organizations?”
According to the edit logs, Gabbard’s account added a query prefaced by her initials: “TG: is this question re the Mufti?”