Intel chief Tulsi Gabbard says Democrats’ 2019 impeachment of Trump based on ‘concocted’ evidence

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard fired a broadside at congressional Democrats on Monday by saying their 2019 impeachment of President Trump over his dealings with Ukraine was based on biased evidence and slipshod work from within the intelligence community.

The CIA whistleblower whose complaint became the basis of the impeachment was an anti-Trump registered Democrat who misled investigators about collaborating with Democrats, Ms. Gabbard said.

The intelligence community’s inspector general, whose work provided the heft for Democrats’ impeachment push, conducted a slanted investigation by interviewing only four witnesses, relying on secondhand information and ignoring alternative explanations that would have cast a more favorable light on Mr. Trump’s behavior, the director said.

“Deep-state actors within the Intelligence Community concocted a false narrative that was used by Congress to usurp the will of the American people and impeach the duly-elected president of the United States,” Ms. Gabbard said.

Mr. Trump was impeached by the Democratic-led House in 2019. Ms. Gabbard, a member of Congress at the time, was one of the few Democrats who didn’t support the effort. She voted “present.”

The Republican-led Senate acquitted Mr. Trump.

The case against the once-and-future president boiled down to a phone call he made in the summer of 2019 to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Mr. Trump asked the Ukrainians to investigate former Vice President Joseph R. Biden.

After the Trump administration delayed hundreds of millions of dollars in security assistance to Ukraine, Mr. Trump faced accusations of a quid pro quo — using taxpayer money for his own political benefit.

Mr. Zelenskyy denied any such pressure, but Democrats pursued the case. They cited the whistleblower and the work of Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson.

Ms. Gabbard said Mr. Atkinson’s office interviewed only four people in his 2019 investigation.

One was the whistleblower, and another was a friend of the whistleblower. Ms. Gabbard said the friend was a “close colleague” of former FBI Agent Peter Strzok, who wrote a now-discredited 2017 intelligence community assessment wrongly suggesting that Mr. Trump colluded with Russia in the 2016 election. The other two interviews were “character references.”

“Despite a lack of any firsthand evidence, IC IG Atkinson proceeded to take actions to weaponize the Whistleblower process and exceed his statutory jurisdiction by ignoring Department of Justice guidance and relying on only second-hand testimony to ensure the whistleblower complaint was released to Congress, referred to the FBI and leaked to the propaganda media,” the DNI’s office said.

The revelations have emerged as Democrats ponder another attempt at impeaching Mr. Trump should they win control of the House in the November elections.

They impeached Mr. Trump twice during his first term — the first time over Ukraine and the second time over his words and actions before the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.

Ms. Gabbard based her comments Monday on newly declassified material that she said undercuts Mr. Atkinson’s work.

Mr. Atkinson concluded that the whistleblower “appears credible” and sped the investigation to Congress despite the whistleblower’s supervisor saying the actions were being rushed, Ms. Gabbard said. One of the witnesses with whom Mr. Atkinson spoke disagreed with the whistleblower’s conclusions about the phone call.

Mr. Atkinson made a criminal referral to the Department of Justice in the first Trump administration. The department declined to bring a case.

The department told Mr. Atkinson that the matter didn’t rise to the level of “urgent concern” that would require elevating it to Congress after an abbreviated investigation. Ms. Gabbard said Mr. Atkinson “ignored” that guidance and sped the matter to House Democrats.

She said Mr. Atkinson tried to rope other inspectors general into his investigation in case he “was stopped” in his efforts.

A transcript of Mr. Trump’s phone call with Mr. Zelenskyy was eventually publicly released.

Ms. Gabbard said Mr. Atkinson acted without obtaining that transcript, largely based on the whistleblower’s allegations.

Mr. Trump has called his behavior on the call “perfect.”

In a social media post Monday, Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign praised Ms. Gabbard for “cleaning house” in the intelligence community.

“The real scandal was never Trump’s phone call. It was the corrupt cabal that tried to overthrow him with fake evidence,” the campaign said.

Adam B. Schiff, the California Democrat who served as chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, claimed not to have had direct contact with the whistleblower before the official complaint was filed with the inspector general.

Ms. Gabbard’s files, though, reveal that the whistleblower did admit to contacting Congress first.

Mr. Schiff is now a senator.

The whistleblower — Alex Vindman, at the time an Army lieutenant colonel and member of the National Security Council — became the public face of the effort to impeach Mr. Trump. Mr. Vindman is now a Democratic candidate for Florida’s U.S. Senate seat.

His twin brother, Eugene Vindman, also a retired army officer, is now a member of Congress from Virginia.