The allegation was both intriguing and alarming.
A whistleblower claimed that the nation’s spy chief had committed wrongdoing so serious that its disclosure would endanger national security. Further, the whistleblower said, the allegation had been kept secret from Congress, in violation of the law.
But now the inspector general’s office for the U.S. intelligence community says the allegation against Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national security, was not credible and that withholding it from Congress for eight months was justified.
“To be frank, it seems like just another effort by the president’s critics in and out of government to undermine policies they don’t like,” Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Tom Cotton, R-Ark., wrote on X. “It’s definitely not credible allegations of waste, fraud, or abuse.”
Exactly what Gabbard was accused of is still secret. But she has denied wrongdoing.
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“The whistleblower complaint was already deemed not credible by the Intelligence Community Inspector General,” Olivia Coleman, a spokesperson for Gabbard’s office, told Straight Arrow News.
Democrat still has ‘huge concerns’
The whistleblower has not been publicly identified. However, WhistleblowerAid.org, a nonprofit that is representing the person, issued a statement accusing Gabbard of illegally hiding high-level security documents from Congress.
“In May of last year, a whistleblower represented by WhistleblowerAid.org first alerted the Intelligence Community Inspector General about the concern,” the organization said. “In June 2025, the whistleblower, consistent with the Intelligence Community Whistleblower Protection Act, requested that their disclosure be transmitted to Congress. Since then, Director Gabbard has repeatedly stonewalled and thwarted its release because she is the subject of that complaint.”
The whistleblower law mandates that the director of national intelligence must share credible complaints with key members of Congress, known as the “Gang of Eight.” This group includes the House speaker, the House minority leader, the Senate majority leader, the Senate minority leader, as well as the chairpersons and ranking minority members of both the House and Senate intelligence committees.
WhistleblowerAid.org later said on X that its client is willing to speak “with appropriate protections —to the Gang of Eight and their cleared staff to provide additional details about the complaint, address questions about credibility and concerns over politicization, and answer questions that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and DNI Tulsi Gabbard have refused to address.”
Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., told CNN he has “huge concerns” about how the complaint was handled.
“Somebody’s not telling the truth about what they knew or who knew the law or didn’t know the law,” Warner said.
The information in the complaint against Gabbard was kept in a safe for months, the whistleblower’s attorney, Andrew Bakaj, told CNN.
Bakaj said he is suspicious of how the classified complaint will be managed moving forward.
“The question that I have is, what information is really being sent to those members?” he said. “Because the fact of the matter is, the underlying intelligence is of grave concern to our national security. There are a lot of unknowns here that need to be investigated.”
WhistleblowersAid.org is also asking Congress to open an investigation.
But Gabbard’s office says the matter is settled.
”The Intelligence Community Inspector General sent a letter to Congress that was released yesterday confirming our above statements and providing further details about how any perceived ‘delay’ of the complaint to Congress landed squarely on the former IC IG’s inaction,” Coleman, Gabbard’s spokesperson, told SAN.
