Trump administration defends spy chief Tulsi Gabbard's role in Georgia ballot box raid

Natalia Drozdiak, Myles Miller and Jamie Tarabay, Bloomberg News on Jan 29, 2026

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WASHINGTON — The Trump administration defended Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s participation in an FBI raid of a Georgia county election office to investigate the 2020 election, while senior Democrats raised concerns about her involvement.

An administration official confirmed that Gabbard was on-site during the Wednesday raid, adding that the DNI chief has a pivotal role in protecting the security and integrity of U.S. elections against interference — including operations targeting voting systems, databases and infrastructure.

Gabbard will continue to work with inter-agency partners as part of that effort, the official added.

The DNI’s role was established to coordinate intelligence across the country’s spy agencies and typically is focused on U.S. interests abroad and threats from overseas. A spokeswoman for the ODNI didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on whether Gabbard was examining any potential foreign element in the 2020 elections.

The FBI on Wednesday executed a search warrant at a Fulton County election office in Georgia to probe the results of the 2020 vote that saw Trump’s predecessor Joe Biden win the state.

Spy Chief

Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, was quick to express concern on the involvement in Wednesday’s raid by Gabbard, who oversees the U.S.’s 18 spy agencies.

In a statement, Warner said there could only be two reasons why Gabbard would take part in the raid. The first would be if there were a foreign intelligence element, which she would be obligated to report to the intelligence committees in Congress.

“Or she is once again demonstrating her utter lack of fitness for office that she holds by injecting the nonpartisan intelligence community she is supposed to be leading into a domestic political stunt designed to legitimize conspiracy theories that undermine our democracy,” Warner said.

Robb Pitts, chair of the Fulton County Board of Commissioners, said the FBI arrived at the county’s election center around midday on Wednesday and initially presented a warrant that had to be amended by a judge before agents resumed the search. Pitts said the county had been cooperating with ongoing litigation over the 2020 records and was already preparing to transfer the materials through the courts.

“I encourage all of us on a bipartisan basis to pursue the facts as quickly as possible to understand whether the Office of the Director of National Intelligence is straying far outside of its lane,” Georgia Senator Jon Ossoff, a Democrat, said Thursday during a confirmation hearing for the director of the National Security Agency.

Trump earlier this month asked to be paid $6.2 million for legal costs by the district attorney’s office in Georgia for charging him with trying to overturn the results of that election.