Democrats ask top US spy to explain presence at FBI raid on election facility

By Jonathan Landay, Jana Winter and Erin Banco

WASHINGTON, Jan 29 (Reuters) – Top Democrats on the Senate and House intelligence committees called on Thursday for U.S. President Donald Trump’s chief spy to brief their panels on why she was present at an FBI raid on an election facility in Georgia.

Senator Mark Warner and Representative Jim Himes told Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard in a letter that they were deeply concerned with her presence at 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, they wrote.

Olivia Coleman, Gabbard’s press secretary, said in a statement that Gabbard “has a vital role in identifying vulnerabilities in our critical infrastructure and protecting against exploitation. We know through intelligence and public reporting that electronic voting systems have been and are vulnerable to exploitation.”

It is highly unusual for America’s top intelligence official to be included in a domestic law enforcement operation as the remit of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) is overseas spying and protecting U.S. national security.

A senior ODNI official, speaking on condition of anonymity, defended Gabbard’s involvement, saying that federal law “clearly assigns the DNI and her office with the statutory responsibility to lead counterintelligence matters related to election security.”

But experts said the law does not extend to domestic law enforcement operations. 

“The DNI has authorities set out by statute and they don’t include investigating past elections for potential fraud,” said Robert Litt, who served as the top ODNI lawyer from 2009 to 2017. “There’s absolutely no reason at all for taxpayer money to be used for her to go down to Georgia.”

A former Democratic congresswoman from Hawaii, Gabbard was present when the FBI raided the election office in Fulton County, Georgia, in pursuit of evidence to back up Republican Trump’s false claims that widespread fraud lost him the 2020 election to Democrat Joe Biden.

The FBI said in a 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 statement.

ACTIONS AGAINST TRUMP’S PERCEIVED FOES

The raid was 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.

Gabbard last year created an Inter-Agency Weaponization Working Group of dozens of federal officials to help steer Trump’s drive to root out those he says misused government power against him.

A law enforcement official with knowledge of the FBI raid told Reuters on condition of anonymity that they did not know why Gabbard was present or what role – if any – she played.

“There is literally nothing for her to do except watch the trucks get loaded,” the official said, characterizing the trip as an expensive “photo op.”

The trucks carrying file boxes and ballots seized in Georgia arrived late Wednesday night at an FBI facility in Winchester, Virginia, to which Gabbard does not have access, the official said.

Gabbard has previously spoken about how her office, created to oversee the 18 U.S. intelligence agencies, was investigating the integrity of U.S. elections, including the 2020 vote.

At an August 26 Cabinet meeting, Trump asked her about finding “burn bags” filled with information on the “corrupt” 2020 election.

“I will be the first to brief you once we have that information collected,” she replied. “But you are right, we are finding documents literally tucked away in the backs of safes in random offices in these bags and other areas.”

There is no publicly available evidence indicating that the FBI conducted the raid because of a foreign intelligence threat, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Trump, however, on Wednesday reposted on his Truth Social platform conspiracy theories alleging foreign manipulation of the 2020 vote.

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, Special Counsel Robert Mueller and a CIA review.

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, David Gregorio and Diane Craft)