Axios reported this afternoon that “sources” say the Democrats, led by Sen. Mark Warner, vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, do not intend to let the Committee hearings on President Donald Trump’s nominee for Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, begin next week. Instead, they hope to put them off. Warner, who met with Gabbard this afternoon, denied the report, but told reporters that he still has “questions” about her qualifications for this “extraordinarily important job,” The Hill reported. Warner echoed the British intelligence line that what’s at stake is protecting, not the country, but “the independence of the intelligence community and making sure we continue to have the ability to share classified information with our allies.”
Meanwhile, American “Victims of Syrian Terror Groups Throw Support Behind Tulsi Gabbard for DNI,” the Daily Wire reported yesterday. Theo Padnos, held for two years by Al Qaeda terrorists in Syria; his parents; and the parents of Kayla Mueller, believed to have been executed by ISIS after two years in captivity there, have issued a joint letter backing Gabbard for DNI. “American hostage families know that Tulsi Gabbard” was the one who stepped in to help get “information and connections in a country in which the American foreign policy apparatus has been unable to provide even the most basic forms of help,” they wrote. “The sooner the Senate confirms Tulsi Gabbard, the better.”
A hard-nosed call for the Senate to confirm Gabbard as DNI also appeared in at least seven city newspapers in Southern California this week, such as the Orange County Register. Author John Seiler takes on the lies used by the “nearly 100” former senior U.S. diplomats, and intelligence and national security officials in opposing Gabbard, and calling for closed-door hearings on her nomination in a Dec. 4 open letter to the Senate Majority and Minority leaders.
