Tulsi Gabbard is leaving her post as US director of national intelligence following a tumultuous stint in which she was largely sidelined as Donald Trump launched attacks on Venezuela and Iran.
In a letter to the US president, she said she would resign and leave her post on 30 June. “While we have made significant progress ... I recognize there is still important work to be done,” she wrote.
The White House forced Gabbard to resign, the Reuters news agency reported, citing a source familiar with the issue. Fox News was first to report Gabbard’s exit, citing her husband’s cancer diagnosis.
Trump was asking cabinet members last month whether he should replace Gabbard, according to two people briefed on the discussions.
“Unfortunately, after having done a great job, Tulsi Gabbard will be leaving the Administration on June 30th,” he wrote in a statement on his Truth Social platform on Friday.
Gabbard “has done an incredible job, and we will miss her”, the president said, adding that Aaron Lukas, principal deputy director of national intelligence, would serve as acting director of national intelligence.
Gabbard already seemed marginalized last June, when Trump endorsed Israel’s decision to attack Iran before the US joined the war by ordering the bombing of the Islamic regime’s nuclear facilities.
The decision was a public repudiation of Gabbard’s earlier testimony on Capital Hill that Iran was not building a nuclear weapon. Trump seemed to add insult to injury by declaring he did not care what she said, and dismissing her assessment as “wrong”.
Within weeks, Gabbard made a public effort to get back into the president’s good graces by calling for Barack Obama and several top national security officials in his administration to be prosecuted, alleging that they had conducted a “treasonous conspiracy” to falsely depict Russia as interfering in the 2016 election on Trump’s side.
Obama denied the allegations, which seemed designed to satisfy Trump’s “retribution” agenda against his political opponents.
More details soon …
