Tulsi Gabbard’s Senate Confirmation Hearing: What Went Down

Tulsi Gabbard, U.S. President Donald Trump’s nominee to be Director of National Intelligence, arrives to testify during her confirmation hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee in the Dirksen Senate Office Building on January 30, 2025 in Washington, DC. Gabbard, a former Congresswoman from Hawaii who previously ran for president as a Democrat before joining the Republican Party and supporting President Trump, is facing criticism from Senators over her lack of intelligence experience and her opinions on domestic surveillance powers.

During her highly-anticipated confirmation hearing, deciding whether she will be the next director of national intelligence, lawmakers on the Senate Intelligence Committee questioned Tulsi Gabbard on a plethora of topics — ranging from her past statements on Edward Snowden to Syria’s use of chemical weapons.

On Thursday, in front of a packed room, Gabbard answered questions for three hours from Senators on both sides of the aisle.

Gabbard’s confirmation is believed to be the most difficult path to confirmation out of all of President Donald Trump’s White House cabinet picks, as she has no formal intelligence experience and has never run a government agency or department.

Her past views on the Edward Snowden file leaks was a contentious and highly discussed topic during her hearing.

“Is Edward Snowden a traitor to the United States of America?” Senator Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) said. “That is not a hard question to answer.”

While Gabbard tried to distance herself from Snowden during the hearing, she was not open to bashing and calling the former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor a “traitor” to the United States.

Gabbard has a history of condemning illicit government misconduct and secrecy where the American people are made to be pawns, or when Americans are being taken advantage of in any way unbeknownst to them.

“Edward Snowden broke the law,” she replied. “I do not agree with or support with all of the information and intelligence that he released, nor the way in which he did it. There would’ve been opportunities for him to come to you on this committee or seek out the IG to release that information. The fact is also, even as he broke the law, released information that exposed egregious, illegal and unconstitutional programs that are happening within our government.”

Snowden, who leaked classified documents in 2013, exposing global surveillance programs by the U.S. government and its allies, took to X to encourage Gabbard to denounce her past support for him.

BREAKING: Tulsi Gabbard: “Edward Snowden broke the law… But he also released information that exposed egregious, illegal, and unconstitutional programs that are happening within our government that led to serious reforms that Congress undertook.” pic.twitter.com/0NXZ3FERig

— Jobob (@JobobTaeleifi) January 30, 2025

Tulsi Gabbard will be required to disown all prior support for whistleblowers as a condition of confirmation today. I encourage her to do so. Tell them I harmed national security and the sweet, soft feelings of staff. In D.C., that's what passes for the pledge of allegiance. pic.twitter.com/Z1OmOHgvdU

— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) January 30, 2025

Another hot topic during the confirmation hearing was who Gabbard, a lieutenant colonel in the National Guard who was twice deployed to the Middle East, placed the blame on for starting the Russia-Ukraine war.

In past comments from 2022, Gabbard stated that U.S. and NATO forces were mostly responsible for provoking Russia into the war. However, when asked by Senator Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) who was responsible for Russia’s aggression, she gave a fresh answer.

“[Russian President Vladimir] Putin started the war in Ukraine.”

Additionally, Gabbard faced scrutiny from the panel over her 2017 visit to Syria where she met with then-President Bashar al-Assad, even though Democrat former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi also met with President Bashar al-Assad back in 2007. She was accused by lawmakers on both sides of the aisle at that time of legitimizing a dictator.

Gabbard was later questioned on “Section 702, ” a sponsored bill that she did not support — which would would have repealed a key surveillance program that allows authorities to collect the communications of “suspected terrorists” overseas. At the time, she worried that the program could be violating the rights of all Americans whose communications had been swept up inadvertently.

Now, she said that she supports the program and believes that new safeguards have been put in place to protect Americans’ privacy.

Gabbard promised that just like she did during her military service, she will first be loyal to God, her own conscience, and to the Constitution of the United States.

She refuted outlandish accusations regarding being “Trump’s puppet,” “Putin’s puppet,” and “Assad’s puppet.” Gabbard has also previously suggested that the Democrat playbook is typically creating a “boogeyman” in order to discreetly utilize fear tactics to scare the public — as people are easier to trick and control when they are fearful.

In order to make it to the Senate vote, she will need “YEAs” from almost all Republican Senators.

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