FORT LAUDERDALE, Florida: Republican senators pushed back on Sunday against criticism from Democrats that Tulsi Gabbard, Donald Trump\u2019s pick to lead US intelligence services, is \u201ccompromised\u201d by her comments supportive of Russia and secret meetings, as a congresswoman, with Syria\u2019s president, a close ally of the Kremlin and Iran.
\nSen. Tammy Duckworth, an Illinois Democrat and veteran of combat missions in Iraq, said she had concerns about Tulsi Gabbard, Trump\u2019s choice to be director of national intelligence.
\n\u201cI think she\u2019s compromised,\u201d Duckworth said on CNN\u2019s \u201cState of the Union,\u201d citing Gabbard\u2019s 2017 trip to Syria, where she held talks with Syrian President Bashar Assad. Gabbard was a Democratic House member from Hawaii at the time.
\n\u201cThe US intelligence community has identified her as having troubling relationships with America\u2019s foes. And so my worry is that she couldn\u2019t pass a background check,\u201d Duckworth said.
\nGabbard, who said last month she is joining the Republican Party, has served in the Army National Guard for more than two decades. She was deployed to Iraq and Kuwait and, according to the Hawaii National Guard, received a Combat Medical Badge in 2005 for \u201cparticipation in combat operations under enemy hostile fire in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom III.\u201d
\nDuckworth\u2019s comments drew immediate backlash from Republicans.
\n\u201cFor her to say ridiculous and outright dangerous words like that is wrong,\u201d Sen. Markwayne Mullin, a Republican from Oklahoma, said on CNN, challenging Duckworth to retract her words. \u201cThat\u2019s the most dangerous thing she could say \u2014 is that a United States lieutenant colonel in the United States Army is compromised and is an asset of Russia.\u201d
\nIn recent days, other Democrats have accused Gabbard without evidence of being a \u201cRussian asset.\u201d Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, has claimed, without offering details, that Gabbard is in Russian President Vladimir \u201cPutin\u2019s pocket.\u201d
\nMullin and others say the criticism from Democrats is rooted in the fact that Gabbard left their party and has become a Trump ally. Democrats say they worry that Gabbard\u2019s selection as national intelligence chief endangers ties with allies and gives Russia a win.
\nRep. Adam Schiff, a California Democrat just elected to the Senate, said he would not describe Gabbard as a Russian asset, but said she had \u201cvery questionable judgment.\u201d
\n\u201cThe problem is if our foreign allies don\u2019t trust the head of our intelligence agencies, they\u2019ll stop sharing information with us,\u201d Schiff said on NBC\u2019s \u201cMeet the Press.\u201d
\nGabbard in 2022 endorsed one of Russia\u2019s justifications for invading Ukraine: the existence of dozens of US-funded biolabs working on some of the world\u2019s nastiest pathogens. The labs are part of an international effort to control outbreaks and stop bioweapons, but Moscow claimed Ukraine was using them to create deadly bioweapons. Gabbard said she just voiced concerns about protecting the labs.
\nGabbard also has suggested that Russia had legitimate security concerns in deciding to invade Ukraine, given its desire to join NATO.
\nRepublican Sen. Eric Schmitt of Missouri said he thought it was \u201ctotally ridiculous\u201d that Gabbard was being cast as a Russian asset for having different political views.
\n\u201cIt\u2019s insulting. It\u2019s a slur, quite frankly. There\u2019s no evidence that she\u2019s a asset of another country,\u201d he said on NBC.
\nSen. James Lankford, another Oklahoma Republican, acknowledged having \u201clots of questions\u201d for Gabbard as the Senate considers her nomination to lead the intelligence services. Lankford said on NBC that he wants to ask Gabbard about her meeting with Assad and some of her past comments about Russia.
\n\u201cWe want to know what the purpose was and what the direction for that was. As a member of Congress, we want to get a chance to talk about past comments that she\u2019s made and get them into full context,\u201d Lankford said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
FORT LAUDERDALE, Florida: Republican senators pushed back on Sunday against criticism from Democrats that Tulsi Gabbard, Donald Trump\u2019s pick to lead US intelligence services, is \u201ccompromised\u201d by her comments supportive of Russia and secret meetings, as a congresswoman, with Syria\u2019s president, a close ally of the Kremlin and Iran. Sen. Tammy Duckworth, an Illinois Democrat …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":73311,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-73297","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73297","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73297"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73297\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":73313,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73297\/revisions\/73313"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/73311"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}