WATCH: Tulsi Gabbard faces 'fraught' moment in hotly anticipated testimony
National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard is scheduled to testify Wednesday morning before the Senate Intelligence Committee and is expected to face an onslaught of questions about the Trump administration’s war against Iran, a moment Politico described as “one of the most fraught moments of her tenure.”
Long a purported anti-interventionist, Gabbard has drawn criticism from many of President Donald Trump’s most loyal supporters for what they see as a reversal in regards to the U.S. military siege on Iran. In 2020, Gabbard had even sold T-shirts with the text “NO WAR WITH IRAN.”
Gabbard is expected to face questions about what the U.S. Intelligence Community knew leading up to Trump’s authorization of strikes on Iran. Trump has justified the strikes by insisting evidence existed that Iran was “getting ready to attack Israel,” which Secretary of State Marco Rubio suggested would have been followed by Iranian strikes on U.S. service members.
Gabbard’s testimony also follows the resignation of a top U.S. Intelligence official, former Director of U.S. National Counterterrorism Center Joe Kent, who resigned in protest to the war against Iran and claimed that no evidence existed that an Iranian attack was imminent.