Tulsi Gabbard, the US director of national intelligence, is running her own review into the 2020 election with Donald Trump’s approval, separate from a justice department criminal investigation. Her presence at an FBI raid of an election centre in Fulton County, Georgia, last week has drawn criticism from Democrats and former intelligence officials, who questioned why the country’s top intelligence officer with no domestic law enforcement powers would appear at the scene.
According to three administration officials, Gabbard – whose role ordinarily focuses on overseeing intelligence agencies – has played only a minimal role in the criminal investigation. 'She’s doing her own thing,' one official said. The parallel investigations underscore the extent to which the 2020 election has again become a priority for the president.
The review led by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) has been authorised on the basis that it is assessing election integrity, focusing on potential vulnerabilities in voting machines and the possibility of foreign interference. As part of that effort, Gabbard has been briefing Trump and senior White House advisers every few weeks, and Trump directed her to travel to Georgia to observe the FBI executing a search warrant.
The FBI raid was overseen by Deputy FBI Director Andrew Bailey, also sent by Trump. A copy of the search warrant cited possible violations of federal laws governing the preservation of election records and the procurement of false ballots or voter registrations. It authorised agents to seize sweeping amounts of voter data from Fulton County, including all physical ballots from the 2020 election, voting machine tabulator tapes, images produced during the ballot count, and voter rolls. The target of the criminal investigation was not immediately clear.
The ODNI review was initially overseen by the Director’s Initiatives Group (Dig), a taskforce that Gabbard established within her agency, which focused on vulnerabilities with voting machines used in the 2020 election. However, Dig was dissolved late last year after it misidentified the person who placed pipe bombs outside Democratic and Republican party headquarters before the 6 January Capitol riot. In December, the justice department charged a different individual. Gabbard has continued the review even as the justice department proceeds with its criminal investigation.
Officials said the ODNI review remains within Gabbard’s statutory authority, citing executive orders extended by President Joe Biden in 2022 and Trump in 2025, which task the DNI with assessing foreign interference in federal elections. Olivia Coleman, a spokesperson for the DNI, said the office 'knows through intelligence and public reporting that electronic voting systems have been and are vulnerable to exploitation' and that Gabbard will continue to take actions within her authorities to support election integrity. Even so, the ODNI is not expected to get direct access to evidence in the criminal investigation.
