Intelligence director says Trump asked her to be present for FBI search of Georgia election center

WASHINGTON (AP) — Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard told lawmakers in a letter Monday that she attended an FBI search of the elections hub in Fulton County, Georgia, last week because President Donald Trump asked her to be there.

She also acknowledged that she “facilitated” what she described as a brief phone call between Trump and FBI agents who carried out the search but insisted that neither she nor the president had issued any directives.

The letter to Democratic leaders of the House and Senate intelligence committees marked Gabbard’s first detailed explanation for her unusual presence at an FBI search during which agents armed with a warrant seized hundreds of boxes containing ballots and other documents related to the 2020 election in Georgia’s most populous county.

Fulton County, which votes overwhelmingly Democratic, has been a frequent target of the president’s ire. He has long insisted without evidence that widespread voter fraud in the county cost him victory in Georgia in his 2020 loss to Democrat Joe Biden.

Gabbard’s arrival in Georgia raised immediate questions among Democratic officials because the FBI search of the election center was a law enforcement, not intelligence, activity and because the position of national intelligence director is typically focused on foreign threats rather than domestic concerns.

In her letter, Gabbard said her presence was specifically requested by Trump and she accompanied senior FBI officials “under my broad statutory authority to coordinate, integrate, and analyze intelligence related to election security.”

Gabbard has been central to Trump administration efforts to cast doubt on intelligence community conclusions of Russian interference on Trump’s behalf during his successful 2016 campaign, and her presence in Georgia has been feared by Democrats as laying the groundwork for the federal government to assert that the 2020 race he lost was somehow tainted by foreign meddling or to cast doubt on the integrity of future elections.

Gabbard in her letter suggested that election systems are at risk of foreign interference, citing what she said was intelligence showing that electronic voting systems “have been vulnerable to exploitation” that could result in the manipulation of votes.

She said that in order to “preserve the integrity of our elections, we must understand whether there has been foreign or other malign interference in our elections, and whether vulnerabilities exist in our election infrastructure that could be exploited in future elections.” She did not explain why Fulton County was singled out for scrutiny, saying she had not seen the warrant that investigators submitted to a judge for approval.

Audits, state officials, courts and Trump’s own former attorney general have rejected the idea that there was widespread fraud in the 2020 election that could have altered the outcome. The 2024 election that Trump won was also seen as relatively trouble-free at the polls.

Gabbard also appeared to confirm a report earlier Monday from The New York Times that she had helped arrange a call between Trump and FBI agents, saying the purpose was for the president to personally thank the investigators. It is rare for a president to communicate directly with rank-and-file FBI personnel about specific investigations.

“While visiting the FBI Field Office in Atlanta, I thanked the FBI agents for their professionalism and great work, and facilitated a brief phone call for the President to thank the agents personally for their work. He did not ask any questions, nor did he or I issue any directives,” she wrote.