FEBRUARY 3, 2026
US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard outside the Fulton County elections center in Georgia on January 28, after the FBI executed a search warrant there. – Elijah Nouvelage/Reuters
The Trump administration last week launched an extraordinary new gambit in President Donald Trump’s yearslong effort to sow doubts about the 2020 election: a controversial search of an elections office in Fulton County, Georgia.
But even as it’s undertaken this historic step, it’s struggled mightily to get its story straight.
That’s especially the case with the problematic involvements of both Trump and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard.
Neither of them would seem to have appropriate roles to play in this. And in both cases, the administration downplayed their roles before those claims were later undermined or flatly contradicted.
Gabbard
The director of national intelligence’s role is the most surprising — and confusing.
A DNI’s job is generally to oversee the agencies in the US intelligence community and to coordinate their efforts. It is not a law enforcement role.
But there was Gabbard on Wednesday near Atlanta, pictured on the scene after FBI agents executed a search warrant. There’s a photo of her standing in a truck loaded with boxes.
And ever since then, the administration has given conflicting accounts about how involved she is.
Asked by CNN on Thursday what Gabbard was doing at an election center in Georgia, Trump said, “She’s working very hard on trying to keep the election safe.”
But in the days that followed, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche repeatedly downplayed her involvement.
“She happened to be present in Atlanta,” Blanche said Thursday.
“I don’t know why the director was there; she is not part of the grand jury investigation,” he told CNN’s Dana Bash on Sunday.
“First of all, she wasn’t at the search; she was in the area where the search took place,” Blanche told Fox News on Monday night. “She’s not part of this investigation.”
The deputy attorney general has repeatedly suggested Gabbard’s presence was more incidental — that she’s working on “election integrity” issues but that she isn’t playing a more specific role in this investigation.
But that’s difficult to square with what we learned Monday.
CNN confirmed that Gabbard wasn’t just on the scene, but she actually put Trump on the phone with FBI agents. That’s a highly unorthodox move that exacerbates questions about political influence in an investigation that Trump has made abundantly clear is of great personal interest. (The news of the phone call was first reported by The New York Times.)
Gabbard in a letter released Monday night confirmed she had accompanied top FBI agents at Trump’s request and facilitated the call — while claiming the conversation included no questions or directives from Trump or her.
The letter came in response to an inquiry about the situation from the top Democrats on the House and Senate intelligence committees.
“My presence was requested by the President and executed under my broad statutory authority to coordinate, integrate, and analyze intelligence related to election security, including counterintelligence (CI), foreign and other malign influences and cybersecurity,” Gabbard said in the letter.
Despite Blanche’s insistence earlier in the evening that Gabbard “wasn’t at the search,” the DNI said she “accompanied” top FBI officials “in observing FBI personnel executing that search warrant.”
And despite Blanche’s repeated claims that she’s not “part of” the investigation, it’s pretty clear she’s playing a significant role — by both her own and Trump’s accounts.
Trump
Gabbard’s letter Monday night also adds to the confusing signals about Trump’s even-more-problematic role — which Blanche also downplayed during his interview Sunday with Bash.
After Trump said Thursday, “You’re going to see some interesting things happening” in Fulton County, Blanche encouraged people not to read too much into that.
“Well, just because he said that doesn’t mean that he’s involved,” Blanche told Bash. “I don’t believe he was involved.”
When Bash pressed him on whether Trump had been at least been briefed, Blanche responded: “I don’t know. I’m not around when the president’s briefed or not briefed.”
He called the investigation “tightly held, as it must be under the law.”
“It’s a grand jury investigation, and that’s how we’re proceeding,” Blanche said.
It’s now clear that however tightly the investigation is held, Trump has wormed his way in.
Gabbard has now stated explicitly that Trump directed her to be present at the search, and she’s confirmed that he spoke with FBI agents working on the case.
After it was reported Monday that Gabbard put Trump on the phone with the agents, Blanche suggested on Fox News that it was normal for the president to speak with law enforcement.
“The president talks to law enforcement all week long,” Blanche said. “The fact that he talked with agents working hard doesn’t surprise me, and actually I love it. It’s great.”
(The president might talk to law enforcement frequently. But that takes on a new meaning given these agents are working on a highly politically sensitive case — not to mention Trump’s history of transparently leaning on law enforcement to give him the outcomes he wants.)
So Trump has gone from supposedly not being “involved” to having some pretty dicey actions confirmed, all in the span of a few days — a lot like his director of national intelligence.
Courtesy/Source: CNN
