Tulsi Gabbard didn’t just drop documents on Monday—she dropped a whole storyline. In a statement, the Director of National Intelligence claimed the material revealed a “deep state” conspiracy behind President Donald Trump’s first impeachment, and warned it points to a pattern of behavior Democrats say is about distorting facts to serve the president’s grievances.
The paperwork, though, is where the argument gets messy fast. According to the documents themselves and Misryoum newsroom reporting, the contents fall short of proving the kind of coordination Gabbard suggests. Their substance does not describe specific new examples of coordination of the whistleblower working “hand in glove” with Democrats.
What the documents do contain is the kind of detail that can be used in political crossfire. Republicans say the material describes information they argue was not shared with Trump’s impeachment defense lawyers, which they claim undermined the whistleblower’s credibility. The documents also describe the whistleblower as a CIA officer expert on Ukraine issues—someone who worked closely with President Joe Biden on Ukraine, faced death threats from Trump supporters, and is a registered Democrat.
And then there’s the other side of the same page: the documents include notably positive descriptions of the whistleblower. A colleague described them as a “star performer” who was “very detail oriented,” credible and trustworthy—“deliberate, methodical and very squared away.” There’s also mention of a supervisor’s frustration that the whistleblower hadn’t given more notice before filing a complaint, but that supervisor still described the whistleblower as an “excellent employee,” and a “credible person” with “credibility across the intelligence community.” It’s almost like the document can’t decide what mood it wants to set—serious, maybe, but also… inconvenient.
Gabbard’s framing was sweeping anyway. “Deep state actors within the Intelligence Community concocted a false narrative that was used by Congress to usurp the will of the American people and impeach the duly-elected President of the United States,” she said in a statement, tying the release to accusations that the process was weaponized.
She specifically accused the intelligence community’s inspector general at the time, Michael Atkinson—a former career Justice Department lawyer—of incorrectly determining that the complaint regarding Trump’s 2019 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was of “urgent concern” and “appears credible,” and therefore had to be reported to Congress. “Inspector General Atkinson failed to uphold his responsibility to the American people, putting political motivations over the truth,” Gabbard wrote. “And this, along with the politicization of the whistleblower process by a former CIA employee who was working hand in glove with Democrats in Congress, are egregious examples of the deep state playbook on how to weaponize the Intelligence Community.”
Atkinson, for his part, responded in a way that undercuts the most dramatic parts of the narrative. Misryoum newsroom reported that Atkinson noted his preliminary review “identified some indicia of an arguable political bias on the part of the Complainant in favor of a rival political candidate,” but that it did not change his determination that the complaint relating to the urgent concern “appears credible,” especially given other information the ICIG obtained during its preliminary review. Atkinson did not respond to a request for comment. Meanwhile, Democrats dismissed Gabbard’s claims as false, with warnings that she may be laying groundwork to cast doubt on Democratic victories in the November midterm elections.
Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, called the latest claims less about accountability and more about rewriting history. “Director Gabbard’s latest claims aren’t about accountability — they’re about rewriting history to serve Donald Trump,” Warner said. “She has shown a willingness to say or do whatever it takes to stay in his good graces.” Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, said Atkinson was
right to find the whistleblower credible and share the complaint with Congress. “Everyone can read the transcript of the president’s attempt to extort President Zelenskyy,” Himes said, referring to a call in which Trump pressured the Ukrainian leader to investigate his then-political rival, Joe Biden. “That was an impeachable offense, and no amount of dust-kicking and sycophancy can obscure it.” And, if you were in a congressional hearing room earlier—someone always tapping papers too loud,
the faint smell of coffee—that’s the vibe here: documents, yes, but also a fight over what people are supposed to believe when the lights are on.
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