On November 14, 2024, I wrote that Tulsi Gabbard was the most dangerous of Donald Trump’s nominees to serve in his second term in the presidency. Here is an excerpt from that post:

Trump has nominated Gabbard to the top job in the American Intelligence Community. It’s a position that gives her access to the identity of every employee, including those serving overseas with either official or non-official cover. She’ll have insight into exactly who in the Russian government is feeding information to America, and it has been clear for a while that America has some well-placed agents working in high positions in the Kremlin. This is one of the reasons the U.S. was so confident Russia would launch a full-bore invasion of Ukraine even as our European allies (and even Ukraine) remained skeptical.

I don’t think there is any way Gabbard could pass a normal background check to authorize her to see highly classified information, but Trump doesn’t care. Maybe he’s just stupid, or reckless, or it could be that he too is a Russian asset, as has long been speculated. It doesn’t really matter because there’s simply no way that we can risk having Gabbard in a position to compromise all our intelligence officers and their foreign agents.

It was my opinion then and it remains my opinion now that Gabbard is a likely Russian asset. If you want more on why I feel that way, you can go back to my 2023 piece, If It Walks Like A Russian Stooge….”

Either way, when Trump nominated her to head the Intelligence Community, I warned that she could use the position to help Putin identify spies and to weaken our ability to understand and counter Russia. I specifically said it was a problem that she would know the identity of officers operating abroad with or without official cover.

What Gabbard did this week was blow the cover of “one of the CIA’s senior-most Russia experts.” She did this by including her name in a Tweet listing 37 senior U.S. intelligence officials whose clearances she was revoking for alleged “politicization or weaponization of intelligence to advance personal, partisan, or non-objective agendas.” In truth, these people have done nothing wrong. Many of them were part of the assessment that Putin intervened in the 2016 election to help Trump defeat Hillary Clinton. It’s an assessment that top Russians close to Putin don’t even deny, and it has been upheld by multiple investigations including a bipartisan finding from the Senate Intelligence Committee.

This particular officer was a 29-year veteran of the agency who had just been appointed by the CIA director to top spot in an important European capital. She had also just helped Trump prepare for the Alaska “summit” with Putin. Her career is over now, and all in the service of a lie.

In the larger picture, Gabbard is doing actually what you would expect Putin to ask of her:

Gabbard has portrayed the assessment as part of a treasonous conspiracy by outgoing Obama administration officials to undermine Trump in his first term. She has threatened legal action against former president Barack Obama and top national security aides, and she stripped security clearances from multiple former officials involved in analyzing intelligence on Russia…

…The forced ousters have cut across priority issues on the U.S. national security agenda, removing one of the government’s foremost experts on artificial intelligence; leaders at the National Security Agency, whose vast electronic eavesdropping haul makes up some of the most vital intelligence sent to the White House; the head of U.S. Cyber Command; as well as the director of the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency.

Here’s the thing. You can believe or disbelieve that Gabbard is a treasonous mole who serves Russia. What the facts show, however, is that her actions are indistinguishable from a treasonous mole who serves Russia. And the same is true of her boss in the Oval Office.