If you are looking for someone to run the nation’s spy agencies, you want a person with a specific set of skills: attention to detail, respect for the rule of law, and an almost pathological inability to forget where you left the nation’s deepest secrets.
Fortunately, we have Tulsi Gabbard.
The Director of National Intelligence has recently treated the public to a masterclass in bureaucratic jujitsu. She has managed to turn a simple question—“Did you hide a whistleblower complaint in a safe for eight months?”—into a complex philosophical debate about the nature of time, possession, and reality itself.
It all started, as these things do, with a pesky whistleblower. Back in May, someone in the intelligence community filed a complaint alleging that Gabbard had restricted the distribution of a highly classified intelligence report for “political purposes” . The complaint reportedly involved a sensitive phone call intercepted by the NSA, concerning Iran and a person close to Donald Trump . You know, small stuff.
Usually, these complaints find their way to Congress. But this one? It took a detour. It was locked away in a safe, gathering dust like a forgotten fruitcake, for the better part of a year . Lawmakers only got a glimpse of it in February after intense bipartisan pressure .
But fear not! Tulsi Gabbard is here to explain why you are wrong and she is right.
The “I Never Had It” Defense
When confronted with the allegation that she stashed a complaint in a safe, Gabbard deployed a defense so brilliant it deserves its own statue.
“I am not now, nor have I ever been, in possession or control of the Whistleblower’s complaint,” she declared on social media, “so I obviously could not have ‘hidden’ it in a safe” .
See? It’s simple. She didn’t hide the complaint in a safe. The complaint was simply… stored in a safe. By someone else. Probably the ghost of J. Edgar Hoover. Just because she is the Director of National Intelligence, the person ultimately responsible for the entire intelligence community, doesn’t mean she knows where the safes are.
As she clarified, the complaint was actually in the custody of the Biden-era Inspector General . It’s not her fault she forgot to ask for it back. It’s like when your roommate takes your mail—it’s their fault for holding it, not yours for not reading it for eight months.
The “It Wasn’t Credible Anyway” Defense
Of course, the timeline is a bit murky. It took a letter from the current Inspector General to remind Gabbard in December that, hey, maybe we should tell Congress about this thing that happened last May .
But even if there was a delay, Gabbard assures us it’s fine because the complaint was totally bogus. In fact, successive Inspectors General have found it “not credible” . The problem is, that determination doesn’t actually matter. The law requires the DNI to transmit such complaints to Congress regardless of their credibility .
But why follow the law when you can follow your gut? Gabbard’s team doubled down, arguing that because the complaint contained “highly classified and compartmented intelligence,” it had to be secured in a safe . Apparently, the concept of “securely transmitting” documents to Congress—a thing that happens literally every day—is an impossible riddle that the intelligence community has only been trying to solve since 1947.
The Real Genius: Blaming the Guy You Work For
Perhaps the most daring twist in this saga is the latest update: the National Security Agency is now blocking access to the complaint details, citing “executive privilege” .
This is where Gabbard’s master plan comes into focus. By slow-walking the complaint for months, she created a situation where the clock ran out on transparency. Now, the White House has stepped in to claim privilege over a report that allegedly involves a conversation about the President’s son-in-law .
It’s a perfect trap. The whistleblower wanted to talk about potential wrongdoing, but now they can’t because discussing it might reveal state secrets. Gabbard has effectively used the intelligence community’s classification system to bury a complaint about the intelligence community. It’s like a cop arresting someone for filing a complaint at the police station.
In the meantime, Gabbard has been busy with other priorities. While a whistleblower complaint moldered in a safe, she was apparently hard at work investigating the 2020 election and personally accompanying FBI agents on searches of election centers in Georgia . She also found time to release a report accusing the Obama administration of a “treasonous conspiracy,” a report so flimsy it was described by actual analysts as “ludicrous” and a “nothingburger” .
So, the next time you worry about America’s national security, rest easy. Our intelligence community is in the hands of someone who doesn’t know where the documents are, doesn’t think the rules apply to her, and blames the previous administration for her own office’s safekeeping habits.
If you have a secret to tell Tulsi Gabbard, don’t call her. Just write it down, lock it in a box, and hope she stumbles upon it sometime before the next presidential election. And maybe leave a Post-It note on the outside. It’s the only way she’ll see it.