WASHINGTON, Jan 29 (Reuters) - Top Democrats on the Senate and House intelligence committees called on Thursday on Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard to brief their panels on why she was present for an FBI raid on an election facility in Georgia.
Senator Mark Warner and Representative Jim Himes told Gabbard in a letter that they were deeply concerned that she was at the scene of Wednesday's FBI operation, saying that the U.S. intelligence community "should be focused on foreign threats."
"When those authorities are turned inwards, the results can be devastating" for privacy and civil liberties, the pair wrote to the top U.S. spy.
Gabbard's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
It is highly unusual for America’s top intelligence official to be included in a domestic law enforcement operation, given that the remit of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) is overseas spying and protecting the national security interests of the U.S.
Gabbard, a former Democratic congresswoman from Hawaii, was at the scene when the FBI raided the election office in Fulton County, Georgia in pursuit evidence to back up Republican President Donald Trump's false claims that widespread fraud lost him the 2020 election to Democrat Joe Biden.
The FBI said in a brief statement that its agents executed a warrant at the Fulton County Election Hub and Operation Center in Union City, a large, warehouse-like facility opened in 2023, calling it a "court-authorized law enforcement activity."
The warrant "sought a number of records related to 2020 elections," the Fulton County government said in a brief statement about the raid, the latest in a string of actions by Trump's administration to use the Justice Department against his perceived enemies or to intervene in cases where he believes he was treated unfairly.
Warner and Himes told Gabbard that any federal efforts to combat "foreign election threats" required that the public and the congressional intelligence committees be informed.
Gabbard, they noted, has questioned a 2017 intelligence community assessment that Russia tried to influence the 2016 presidential vote in Trump's favor, a finding upheld by a bipartisan Senate intelligence committee report and Special Counsel Robert Mueller.
Gabbard, they said, also has dismantled an intelligence unit created by Congress to expose malign foreign influence operations.
"Your recent actions raise foundational questions about the current mission of your office, and it is critical that you brief the committees immediately as part of your obligation to keep Congress fully and currently informed," the pair wrote.
(Reporting by Jonathan Landay, Erin Banco and Jana Winter; Editing by Don Durfee and David Gregorio)
