Democratic hoax: Gabbard rips lawmakers targeting her handling of whistleblower complaint

ANALYSIS:

U.S. intelligence chief Tulsi Gabbard has issued a point-by-point denunciation of what she says is the news media/Democratic Party’s latest bum steer.

She accuses Sen. Mark R. Warner, Virginia Democrat and vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, of lying about how she handled a classified whistleblower complaint.

“Senator Warner’s decision to spread lies and baseless accusations over the months for political gain undermines our national security and is a disservice to the American people and the Intelligence Community,” she said Saturday.

The latest anti-Trump uproar among Democrats involves three main actors: the intelligence employee whistleblower, the person’s Democratic-aligned attorney and Mr. Warner, whose politics increasingly align with Virginia’s deep dive to the left.

The murky story involves an accusation that Ms. Gabbard, the Trump administration’s director of national intelligence, temporarily hid from Congress a whistleblower complaint about a purportedly intercepted phone call between two foreign intelligence officials who discussed someone who knows President Trump.

As a backdrop, in recent years, Democrats have elevated an occasional hoax into a regular part of their anti-Trump political operation.

The 2016 Christopher Steele dossier, which Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the FBI used to try to destroy Mr. Trump, turned out to be fiction.

The ongoing dump of Jeffrey Epstein files spawned new hoaxes, such as Mr. Trump having Thanksgiving dinner with the sex offender. Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, New York Democrat, posted and celebrated a fake letter Epstein supposedly sent from prison to sex offender Larry Nassar.

Driving this new story is Andrew Bakaj, a former CIA inspector general investigator who is chief legal counsel for Whistleblower Aid.

Some background on Mr. Bakaj: He interned for Mrs. Clinton when she was a U.S. senator and for Mr. Schumer.

He represented the Vindman brothers, impeachment impresario Alexander and twin brother Eugene, in their campaigns against Mr. Trump.

Eugene Vindman is now a Democratic member of the House from Virginia. His brother is running for a U.S. Senate seat in Florida as a Democrat.

The current whistleblower story, first reported by The Wall Street Journal, picked up steam Saturday when Mr. Bakaj became a source for The Guardian, the leftist British newspaper that for years championed the Steele dossier.

In fall 2017, The Guardian cited the dossier for stories such as “How Trump walked into Putin’s web,” “The Trump-Russia dossier: Why its findings grow more significant by the day” and “Christopher Steele believes his dossier on Trump-Russia is 70-90% accurate.” (Note: The FBI spent three years desperately trying to confirm any dossier allegation and failed.)

The Guardian’s current-day whistleblower story begins, “Last spring, the National Security Agency flagged an unusual phone call between two members of foreign intelligence.”

The story claims it obtained new details from Mr. Bakaj.

Here is the whistleblower’s problem: According to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, two inspectors general investigated the complaint and found it not credible.

Ms. Gabbard said in her statement that she became aware in June of the complaint filed with Biden-era Inspector General Tamara Johnson. Ms. Johnson was succeeded by Inspector General Christopher Fox, appointed by Mr. Trump.

“Neither Biden-era IC Inspector General Tamara Johnson nor current IC Inspector General Christoper Fox found the complaint to be credible,” Ms. Gabbard stated.

With that finding, there was no legal requirement to rush the report to Congress. Because the complainant included highly classified information, it had to be kept in a safe.

Ms. Gabbard then learned that the whistleblower had notified Congress. That required her to establish guidance for sending it to the “Gang of Eight,” the congressional Republican and Democratic leaders privy to top-secret information.

“Senator Mark Warner and his friends in the Propaganda Media have repeatedly lied to the American people that I or the ODNI ‘hid’ a whistleblower complaint in a safe for eight months. This is a blatant lie,” Ms. Gabbard said.

“Either Senator Warner knows these facts and is intentionally lying to the American people, or he doesn’t have a clue how these things work and is therefore not qualified to be in the U.S. Senate — and certainly not the Vice Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee.”

Rachel Cohen, Mr. Warner’s communications director, told NBC News in an emailed statement that Ms. Gabbard’s post is “an inaccurate attack that’s entirely on brand for someone who has already and repeatedly proven she’s unqualified to serve as DNI.”

In a letter to Mr. Bakaj, DNI General Counsel Jack Dever warned him against briefing the report to Congress. He might be breaking the law.

“At no time did either [inspector general] determine that your client’s allegations were credible,” Mr. Dever wrote.

He blamed Mr. Bakaj’s client for stacking the complaint with top-secret disclosures, which called for meticulous handling.

“You have implied that the ODNI ‘buried’ this complaint through classification, but the classification of the complaint is the direct result of your client taking the unprecedented step of putting highly classified intelligence in the whistleblower intake form,” Mr. Dever said.

On the day Ms. Gabbard responded and Mr. Dever sent his letter, Tom Cotton, Arkansas Republican and chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, backed the director.

“I’m one of the members of Congress briefed on this matter last week,” he said. “I agree with not one but two inspectors general — one of whom served under Biden — who concluded that the complaint isn’t credible. It seemed like an effort by the president’s critics to undermine him. And now that they’ve leaked twice more since their first leak didn’t work, I believe that more than ever.”

Also Saturday, The Guardian had to make a major correction, which it inserted into the story and in a note at the end.

It said, “The Guardian reported earlier on Saturday that the phone conversation was between a person associated with foreign intelligence and a person close to Trump, based on Bakaj’s recollection of the complaint, which he confirmed over multiple calls.

“However, after publication, Bakaj said he misspoke. He clarified his understanding of the complaint in a statement: ‘The NSA picked up a phone call between two members of foreign intelligence involving someone close to the Trump White House,’ he said. ‘The NSA does not monitor individuals without a reason.’”

So, supposedly, two people talked on the phone about someone we are supposed to believe was close to Mr. Trump.