Gabbard spotlights Fauci, COVID-origin questions in final act as intelligence chief amid succession fight
Just before leaving office amid a contentious battle over who will succeed her, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard used one of her final acts atop the U.S. intelligence community to spotlight Dr. Anthony Fauci's role in discussions surrounding the government's COVID-19 origins review.
While much of the material is familiar, Gabbard's release underscores her effort to make questions surrounding Fauci, COVID origins and federal support for virus research part of her closing legacy atop the intelligence community.
As Gabbard fired her final broadside, Bill Pulte, who has received bipartisan criticism over his lack of intelligence experience, is set to take the reins at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence while Trump’s permanent nominee remains stalled.
Jay Clayton, an attorney and former SEC chairman whom Trump nominated to permanently lead ODNI, has seen his confirmation process delayed after the president said he was holding up the nomination to pressure Congress to pass a voter identification measure.
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Pulte is a construction businessman and housing official who served as director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency. His tenure at the housing agency has drawn controversy over allegations that he used FHFA authority to target Trump’s political opponents, an allegation amplifying concerns among key senators that he may attempt to weaponize the intelligence community at the behest of the president during his interim tenure.
"We don’t need a weaponized DNI, we need professionals there," Senate Majority Leader Sen. John Thune said of Pulte. Other powerful congressional Republicans, such as Sens. Cornyn, Cassidy, Murkowski, Collins and Tillis, have also voiced opposition to or concern over Pulte taking over ODNI.
Senate Democrats share many of the same concerns as their GOP colleagues.
Sens. Elizabeth Warren, Dick Durbin, Sheldon Whitehouse, Richard Blumenthal, Gary Peters, Adam Schiff, Mark Warner and Ron Wyden have all expressed concerns that Pulte would weaponize America’s intelligence apparatus against Trump’s enemies. Similar to many Republicans, they’ve criticized him for a lack of intelligence experience as well.
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Political observers believe that Clayton would face far less opposition from the Senate over his confirmation. However, the upper chamber has so far proven unwilling to move on the president’s voter identification legislation, complicating his advancement and setting the stage for a showdown between the White House and Congress.
While lawmakers and the president go back and forth over the fate of ODNI, Gabbard has sought to spotlight the Fauci documents on her way out.
The documents she released Thursday night include some information that was already known to the public as well as others that do not appear to have been publicly reported.
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Gabbard’s release contains newly declassified documents that show intelligence officials considered but ultimately rejected Fauci as an outside reviewer of their COVID-19 origins assessment, warning he would be seen as having a conflict of interest.
In a different exchange, intelligence officials tasked with analyzing the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic debated whether to take Fauci’s recommendations on who to interview for their study.
"For those who don’t know me, I’m the [REDACTED] and, as such, leading the [intelligence community’s] 90-day POTUS COVID origin study," one official wrote in an email. "Per below, Dr Fauci recommended that the IC reach out to the below individuals who were coauthors of the attached paper as part of the study."
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Another official questioned whether it was prudent for the intelligence community to take the advice of a "policymaker" like Fauci when conducting internal affairs, "particularly given the various strong views on the subject and statements regarding their own conclusions."
An intelligence official responded by arguing that Fauci should not be considered a policymaker in this context, but rather an important subject-matter expert.
"In this particular case, given Dr Fauci’s background we absolutely would like to follow-up on his outreach suggestions," they wrote. "In this case he’s not a policymaker….he’s a SME with a wealth of knowledge about current and historical research who probably knows better than most who the real Coronavirus experts are."
A CIA whistleblower previously claimed that Fauci exerted undue influence over the intelligence community’s assessment of COVID-19’s origins, claims that Gabbard now seeks to amplify with her release.
During the COVID-19 era, conservatives alleged that Fauci and other public health officials downplayed or helped steer scrutiny away from the lab-leak theory despite American financial links to coronavirus research in Wuhan, where the disease originated. Gabbard has framed her trove of documents as a look into how the intelligence community incorporated information from people like Fauci while investigating the virus' origins.
"Fauci worked with politicized career leadership in the Intelligence Community (IC) to suppress the truth about his actions, the virus’ lab-leak origins, and his role in directing U.S. funding for this dangerous research that caused immeasurable harm and countless lost lives," ODNI’s press release accompanying the documents asserts. "These documents expose Fauci’s direct role in influencing and manipulating IC assessments on COVID-19, and how Fauci lied to Congress in 2024, when under oath he denied knowledge of or participation in discussions with intelligence officials about viral research."
Gabbard left her role at ODNI to care for her husband, who has a rare form of cancer, Fox News Digital first reported.