Donald Trump on Thursday offered a new and shifting account of why Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, was present last week at an FBI raid of an election center in Georgia, saying she went at the urging of the attorney general Pam Bondi.
“She took a lot of heat two days ago because she went in at Pam’s insistence,” the US president said at the National Prayer Breakfast, a high-profile event of political and religious leaders. “She went in and she looked at votes that wanted to be checked out from Georgia.”
The remarks contradicted Trump’s assertion just a day earlier that he did not know why Gabbard had appeared at the FBI raid, and diverged from her account to lawmakers that she had traveled to Fulton county at Trump’s express direction.
The shifting explanations have intensified scrutiny of the unusual role Gabbard played in the operation. As director of national intelligence, she has no domestic law enforcement authority, making her presence at an FBI raid out of the ordinary.
Trump’s account at the prayer breakfast marked a departure from remarks in an interview with NBC News on Wednesday. “I don’t know,” Trump said when asked why Gabbard was present, before suggesting, without offering evidence, that China had interfered in the 2020 election.
Asked about the apparent discrepancy at a White House briefing on Thursday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt claimed Trump’s remarks in the NBC interview had been taken out of context.
“He just said exactly what I told you, which is that election security is essential to national security. We need to ensure that our elections are free and are fair and are free of foreign interference,” Leavitt said.
“So you’re taking the first three words he said to one question and not looking at his entire response.”
Her explanation, however, blurred a key distinction: while Gabbard has authority to oversee intelligence assessments related to election security, she has no formal role in domestic law enforcement operations.
The statement also conflicted with a letter Gabbard sent on Wednesday to senior lawmakers in the House and Senate, in which she said she had attended the raid at Trump’s instructions and had been present only briefly.
“My presence was requested by the president and executed under my broad statutory authority to coordinate, integrate, and analyze intelligence related to election security,” Gabbard wrote.
The Guardian has previously reported Gabbard is conducting her own review of the 2020 election through her office with Trump’s approval – working separately from the justice department investigation – and that she was sent to observe the raid as part of that effort.
That review comes as Trump has renewed his focus on the 2020 election nearly six years after his loss to Joe Biden. Two administration officials familiar with the matter said Gabbard, for months, has been briefing Trump and top advisers every few weeks.
The two investigations – by Gabbard and the justice department – into the 2020 election underscore its importance to Trump, and Gabbard being sent to the raid showed the interest on voting machine manipulation claims that Trump has cited as evidence the election was stolen.
