‘Bizarrely and personally lurking’: Gabbard’s appearance at FBI election raid alarms Dems

Democrats, election experts and even some members of the Trump administration expressed alarm and bewilderment about why Tulsi Gabbard was on the scene as the FBI raided a Georgia election office that has been at the center of Donald Trump’s debunked claims that the 2020 election was stolen.

Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, was photographed late Wednesday outside the Fulton County elections office near Atlanta, Georgia, as the FBI executed a search warrant to seize ballots and other records related to the 2020 election.

As DNI, Gabbard has no domestic law enforcement authority and is not typically involved in criminal investigations, a reality that alarmed many Democrats on Capitol Hill — and even puzzled some Trump officials.

“My constituents in Georgia and I think much of the American public are quite reasonably alarmed in asking questions after the director of national intelligence was spotted bizarrely and personally lurking in an FBI evidence truck in Fulton County, Georgia, yesterday,” Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) said during an unrelated Senate hearing Thursday morning.

The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that Gabbard was investigating the 2020 election, and has regularly briefed Trump and other administration officials about her search. “President Trump and his entire team are committed to ensuring a U.S. election can never, ever be rigged again. Director Gabbard is playing a key lead role in this important effort,” Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, told The Journal.

Olivia Coleman, a spokesperson for Gabbard, confirmed the DNI was on the scene in Atlanta. She did not immediately respond to follow-up inquiries about her reported probe of the 2020 vote.

Despite concerns raised by Democrats, Gabbard appears to be taking on a more expansive public role in American elections. On Thursday, White House aide Jared Borg told a group of election officials that Gabbard — alongside Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem and Attorney General Pam Bondi — is set to address the winter meeting of the National Association of Secretaries of State on Friday.

Trump has long fixated on unsubstantiated allegations of voter fraud in Georgia in the aftermath of the 2020 election, which he lost to former President Joe Biden. He has continued to falsely suggest that the election was stolen since returning to the White House, including in a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos last week.

White House spokesperson Davis Ingle defended Gabbard in an emailed statement. “Director Gabbard has a pivotal role in election security and protecting the integrity of our elections against interference, including operations targeting voting systems, databases and election infrastructure,” he wrote. “She has and will continue to take action on President Trump’s directive to secure our elections and work with our interagency partners to do so.”

Trump spent much of the morning amplifying claims that the Georgia vote was rigged on Truth Social, and even called attention to Gabbard’s role in Wednesday’s raid.

Gabbard’s role remains confusing to some in the administration. Two current Justice Department officials and one Trump administration official said they were also puzzled by Gabbard’s presence in Fulton County. “It remains a mystery to me why she would need to be there,” said the administration official, who, like others interviewed, was granted anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly on the matter.

Sen. Mark Warner, (D-Va.), the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, argued on X Wednesday that there “are only two explanations” for Gabbard’s presence in the raid.

“Either Director Gabbard believes there was a legitimate foreign intelligence nexus — in which case she is in clear violation of her obligation under the law to keep the intelligence committees ‘fully and currently informed’ of relevant national security concerns — or she is once again demonstrating her utter lack of fitness for the office that she holds by injecting the nonpartisan intelligence community she is supposed to be leading into a domestic political stunt designed to legitimize conspiracy theories that undermine our democracy,” he wrote.

Warner and House Intelligence Committee Ranking Member Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.) wrote to Gabbard Thursday to request briefings for both panels about the legal basis, scope, and justification of her participation in the raid.

Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), who before entering Congress was California’s chief election official, told a panel at NASS on Thursday that Gabbard’s presence at the raid should be a reminder about “the urgency of the situation.”

“I guess they’re still searching for 11,000 more votes,” he quipped, referencing a call Trump had with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger after losing the 2020 election. “But it should be a reminder — or a wake up — that this can happen at any point once again between now and this coming November.”

Gabbard’s appearance at the raid led some Democrats to believe she wanted to be there to claim credit for it publicly.

“When the head of a department participates in something, it's about PR, not about process and the law,” Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) told POLITICO. “If they have evidence, they want evidence and they have a valid warrant, and you let the professionals go in and do that.”

While Gabbard has veered in and out of the good graces of Trump during her tenure as DNI, she appeared to hit a high point last summer when she alleged that senior U.S. intelligence officials under then-President Barack Obama were guilty of treason because they had fabricated intelligence about Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

Trump said last week that individuals who played a role in that year’s vote will soon be prosecuted.

David Becker, the executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, told reporters on Thursday that Gabbard’s Georgia appearance only sparks more concerns that the raid “is an attempt to fuel false claims and disinformation.”

“There is no reason for the director of national intelligence to be in any kind of voting site,” he said. “She has neither the authority nor the competence to assess anything in that voting site. And so it’s incredibly troubling to see something like that.”

Mo Ivory, a Fulton County commissioner, said Thursday that federal officials took 700 boxes of ballots and “ancillary” materials from the 2020 election. The county’s attorney, she said, is “working with a group of local and national lawyers" to formulate a legal response.

The first DOJ official said the ballots are now being stored at an FBI facility in Winchester, Virginia.

Spokespeople for Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger did not respond to requests for comment. In 2020, Raffensperger famously rebuffed Trump’s pressure campaign to “find” enough votes to flip the state’s election for him.

The two DOJ officials said the FBI received a heads up that Gabbard would be on site for the raid. They said her participation did not bother FBI Director Kash Patel or other bureau officials.

Democrats, however, worry more broadly that the raid could have a chilling effect on future elections.

“The facts are clear, Trump lost, and he has to accept that and move on with his life,” Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson said in an interview. “And everyone in his administration should do the same, instead of terrorizing election officials and interfering with our work to simply just prepare for the midterm elections.”

Erin Doherty and Andrew Howard contributed to this report.