Senate votes to confirm Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence

Washington
Cnn
–

The Senate voted on Wednesday to confirm the former Democratic rep. Tulsi Gabbard as director of National Intelligence.

The vote was 52-48 mostly along party lines, though Republican Senator Mitch McConnell from Kentucky joined the Democrats to oppose the confirmation.

Gabbard, one of President Donald Trump’s more controversial elections, faced concerns from several Republican senators about her lack of support for Ukraine; Her changing attitude towards the Foreign Monitoring Act on section 702, a key surveillance and safety tool; Her meeting in 2017 with former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad; And her previous support for Edward Snowden.

However, the most important Swing -Republican Senators, including Sens, decided. Susan Collins from Maine, Lisa Murkowski from Alaska and Todd Young from Indiana ultimately support her confirmation.

On Monday night, Murkowski acknowledged in a statement that she still had “concerns about certain positions (Gabbard) have taken in the past,” but added that Gabbard “brings independent thinking and necessary supervision of her new role.”

Senate’s majority leader John Thune defended Gabbard’s nomination in a speech on the Senate floor on Monday afternoon, highlighting her military service and focused on her promise to “right size” office of the director of national intelligence. “I’m glad Ms. Gabbard plans to focus on identifying and eliminating redundancies and inefficiency to restore the office to what it was originally designed to be, ”he said.

He also said he was “glad to hear” Gabbard describes FISA section 702 as important after Gabbard seemed to go back and forth on her attitude towards the question.

Gabbard is Trumps 14^Th Nominated to be confirmed since January 20.

Her confirmation was a dramatic turn for a nomination that has been among Trump’s most divisive from the start. A former Democratic congregation from Hawaii, Gabbard Drew control from the Senate Intelligence Committee’s legislators of her views on surveillance and a number of controversial meetings she held in Lebanon and Syria in 2017, including with then President Assad.

In a disputed consultation, she refused, under the sustained question of Republican and Democratic lawmakers in the Senate Intelligence Committee, to say if she now thought Snowden’s actions were treacherous.

The repeated dodges seemed to have imperil her already tempted nomination in the committee, where she could afford to lose not even a single Republican voting self when she had secured the approval of it Committee Chair, Senator Tom Cotton, a Republican Arkansas. Although no Republicans publicly opposed her, more doubts expressed.

“I’m worried about what I hear from some of my Republican colleagues. I’m worried that her nomination may be in danger, ”said the GOP. Josh Hawley from Missouri to Fox News’ Jesse Watters Primetime “at the time.

Nevertheless, after a series of meetings with closed doors, Gabbard seemed to reassure Leery members and her nomination went out of the committee for a party line voice.

This apparent turn came in the middle of what seemed to be a face of Gabbard at her position on an important government monitoring authority, which she once tried to dismantle. Her view of FISA Section 702 – widely supported by members of the Intelligence Committee – was an important flashpoint in her nomination.

In December 2020, shortly before she left Congress, Gabbard introduced legislation that would cancel the Patriot Act and § 702.

But when it became clear that her attitude towards section 702 could imperilate her nomination, Gabbard repeatedly tried to reassure legislators that she was now supporting the law.

Gabbard said during his confirmation hearing that reforms had been made to the law since her time in Congress, which had led her to support the law; The Committee’s Vice President Mark Warner, a Virginia Democrat, pressed her, “What reforms?”

“There are a number of reforms,” ​​she said. Warner pointed out that after the reforms had already passed in the law, she told podcaster Joe Rogan that the reforms had made the law “worse.”

Republican Senator John Cornyn of Texas at one point seemed to publicly ask her about her basic understanding of section 702; Several sources that are familiar with her closed door meetings with legislators in advance of her confirmation said some senators said she seemed to be in line with she understood one of the government’s most significant surveillance authorities.

But in meetings with closed door after the hearing, she was ultimately able to satisfy GOP members who everyone voted for her. Republican Senator James Lankford from Oklahoma specifically quoted follow -up answers she gave him in her position in section 702 as having won her voice.

Gabbard’s confirmation would make her the most significant anti-monitoring worker to lead the Intelligence Community in time after 9/11. Her former Animus against what she has described as “National Security State and its warmer friends”, hell of using the espionage law and other tools to punish its enemies has raised questions about whether she might seek to reshape the rules on which US intelligence agencies have collected, search and use of intelligence for decades.