Gabbard’s nomination on shaky ground

Tulsi Gabbard’s bid to become Donald Trump’s director of national intelligence is on shaky ground, with Republican lawmakers raising private concerns and the president urging her to get aggressive.

Republicans are particularly hesitant about her past statements that some have read as too warm toward Vladimir Putin and former Syrian regime leader Bashar al-Assad, whom Gabbard met with in 2017. She’s also questioned some intelligence-gathering tools, though she recently endorsed a provision of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that allows warrantless surveillance of foreign targets and has the power to sweep up domestic US communications.

“There are very serious concerns by enough members to put her nomination in jeopardy,” one GOP senator told Semafor. A second Republican senator said she still “has a lot of questions to answer.”

No one is conveying to Trump’s team yet that the former Democratic congresswoman has no path to confirmation. But Gabbard has not had the turnaround in fortunes seen by other presidential nominees once seen as too divisive to get through the Senate, such as FBI director pick Kash Patel or defense secretary pick Pete Hegseth, who’s expected to get confirmed this week despite a run of negative headlines and senatorial scrutiny of his personal behavior.

Two people close to the White House said top Trump advisers are still behind Gabbard, a military officer in the Army Reserve. Still, despite the lack of any internal push to spike Gabbard’s nomination inside Trump’s network, senior aides and allies are concerned.

“This is not people trying to put a knife in Tulsi … but there’s a problem, and nobody can figure it out,” one of the people close to the White House told Semafor.

Trump himself remains fully supportive of Gabbard, according to both White House sources. But the president has been less vocal about that support in recent days and has told people this is her time to step up: “She’s got to prove herself,” the first White House source said.

Alexa Henning, a spokesperson for Gabbard, noted there’s no GOP public opposition to her nomination and said Intelligence panel members of both parties “have shown positive support for her nomination and qualifications.

“She’s met with almost every GOP Senator in the U.S. Senate and Democrats who’ve accepted her invitation to meet. She is continuing the advice and consent process in the Senate and looks forward to her hearing,” Henning said.

Gabbard does not have the public commitments to be confirmed by the Senate and has yet to undergo a confirmation hearing on the Intelligence Committee, though she has not yet drawn public GOP opponents, either. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, said she met with Gabbard recently; so did Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, a member of the Intelligence panel.

“I have a lot of questions I want to ask her,” Collins said on Tuesday. “I’ve done some further research and I look forward to that hearing.”

The Intelligence Committee, led by Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., is expected to schedule a confirmation hearing the moment her paperwork is complete. The Senate is still waiting on her FBI background check, the only item that’s still outstanding before it can move forward.