Tulsi Gabbard, the Trump administration’s pick to head the U.S. intelligence community, faced scrutiny from Democratic and Republican lawmakers on Thursday about her unorthodox foreign-policy views and her meeting with former Syrian dictator Bashar Assad.
Members of the the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence quizzed the former four-term Democratic congresswoman from Hawaii about her week-long, 2017 trip to Syria and Lebanon, as she seeks to become U.S. director of national intelligence.
Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) asked Gabbard why she met with Syrian Grand Mufti Ahmad Badreddin Hassoun, who threatened the United States and Europe with suicide bombers in 2011 if they attacked Syria or Lebanon.
“I made it a point to meet with different religious leaders, both Muslim leaders as well as various Christian and Catholic leaders who were there in the region,” Gabbard testified. “I did that both in Syria and in Lebanon to hear from them about what their concerns or thoughts were with regard to the war that was being raged at the time.”
Gabbard said she was unaware of the grand mufti’s threat until Heinrich asked her about it on Thursday.
Asked by Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) if she had ever knowingly met with members of Hezbollah, Gabbard said “no” and called that idea an “absurd accusation.”
Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) was skeptical that Gabbard could have avoided meeting Hezbollah-affiliated officials during her Lebanon visit.
“You said you met with Shia religious figures and you didn’t know who they were,” he said. “I can’t imagine Shia religious figures in the Bekaa Valley that didn’t have ties to Hezbollah.”
Gabbard’s nomination is expected to be one of the more difficult of a Trump pick to get through Senate confirmation, with several Republicans on the committee pressing her on her views of Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor who leaked a trove of U.S. classified documents before fleeing to Russia, where he became a citizen in 2022.
“When we find that Americans—whether private citizens or contractors or uniformed personnel—have shared sensitive designs about military technology or plans to a foreign government, however well-intentioned, we rightfully throw the book at them. Snowden did just that,” Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.) told Gabbard. “Yet you have argued many times that he should be pardoned.”
Gabbard declined to call Snowden a “traitor” under repeated questioning from senators. She said that she believed he broke the law but had exposed illegal surveillance programs that prompted congressional reform.
