A whistleblower complaint targeting Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has been quietly sitting in bureaucratic limbo for months, and its unresolved status is now triggering fresh questions inside Washington about transparency, oversight and executive privilege.
The existence of the complaint was first reported Monday by The Wall Street Journal, which described an unusually sensitive disclosure that officials have struggled to process and transmit, even as internal disputes mounted over how — or whether — it should reach Congress.
Little is publicly known about the substance of the complaint. But in a November letter cited by the Journal, the whistleblower’s attorney, Andrew Bakaj, accused Gabbard of blocking lawmakers from receiving it, despite a legal obligation to provide guidance on transmitting classified material.
“There was absolutely NO wrongdoing by DNI Gabbard,” countered Olivia Coleman, a spokesperson for Gabbard’s office, in a statement posted to X. Coleman said the Intelligence Community Inspector General had already reviewed the matter and concluded that allegations against Gabbard “did not appear credible.”
A spokesperson for the Office of the Intelligence Community Inspector General (ICIG) confirmed to the Journal that while some claims in the complaint were deemed not credible, other allegations could not be conclusively verified. The Journal reported that the complaint, filed in May, also touches a second federal agency beyond the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
Bakaj said the prolonged delay is extraordinary.
“From my experience,” he told the Journal, “it is confounding for [Gabbard’s office] to take weeks — let alone eight months — to transmit a disclosure to Congress.”
An ODNI official disputed that characterization, telling reporters that Gabbard was not informed for months that she needed to issue specific security guidance related to the complaint and acted shortly after learning of the requirement. That clarification, the official said, came after Christopher Fox became ICIG in October.
The same official added that Gabbard had no legal obligation to expedite the complaint’s transmission because it had not been found credible. Coleman echoed that position Monday, saying the complaint “is with the Congressional Intelligence Committees for review” and emphasizing that Gabbard supports whistleblowers’ rights “even if they are completely baseless like this one.”
Whether either intelligence panel has reviewed the full complaint remains unclear. Spokespeople for both committees declined to comment. According to the Journal, a copy of the complaint has been locked in a secure safe due to “exceptionally sensitive materials necessitating special handling and storage requirements.”
For now, the complaint remains sealed, its contents known only to a small circle of officials.
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3 Responses
This article provides zero information. What is the allegation? What is the supposed wrongdoing?
@Nowayose, the existence or non-existence of the undisclosed allegation that “officials are struggling to process and transmit,” may remain under internal review by an anonymous Congressional intelligence panel, which are assessing whether the whistleblower claims warrants a determination that remains classified and unresolved but would, if deemed credible, be verified through the same sensitive processes that currently preclude such verification and that Tulsi Gabbard’s office are not legally required to expedite pursuant the disclosure of the complaint itself, nor to ever release the key of the “secure safe” that the complaint, assuming its existence, is currently and securely lodged. What more do you need to know?
@Nowayose, if my explanation was not clear, I asked ChatGPT to clarify my remarks for you.
The possible existence—or corresponding non-existence—of an as-yet undisclosed matter described as encountering procedural difficulty may continue to reside within an indeterminate review posture involving an unspecified intelligence oversight forum, wherein consideration is being given to whether certain representations warrant a determination whose status remains classified, unresolved, and contingent upon evaluative criteria that have not been externally articulated. Any prospective validation, should such a concept become applicable, would occur only through the same sensitive internal mechanisms that presently inhibit confirmation, while the associated offices, including those nominally connected to the matter, maintain no affirmative obligation to accelerate, disclose, clarify, or otherwise operationalize the process, nor to facilitate access to any secured containment in which the materials—assuming they exist in a form capable of being contained—are said to reside. What, at this stage, could meaningfully be added?