Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on a committee overseeing national intelligence, on Tuesday called on Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard to appear before a congressional committee to testify about her attendance at the FBI’s search last week of a Georgia election center.
Gabbard said in a letter posted to social media Monday that the president had requested she be present and that she had accompanied FBI Deputy Director Andrew Bailey and FBI Atlanta acting Special Agent in Charge Peter Ellis in observing the execution of a search warrant.
FBI agents removed about 700 boxes of materials related to the 2020 election, Fulton County officials said.
In a post accompanying the letter sent to Warner and Rep. James Himes, D-Conn., Gabbard said that her office “has and will continue to take action under my statutory authorities to secure our nation and ensure the integrity of our elections.”
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt emphasized that effort while speaking with reporters Tuesday and said that Gabbard, as well as FBI Director Kash Patel, have been tasked by President Donald Trump to “oversee the sanctity and the security of our American elections.”
In his news conference Tuesday afternoon, Warner raised concerns about Gabbard’s presence at the search, as well as a call that Gabbard said she had arranged for the president to “thank the agents personally for their work.”
The Virginia senator said that Gabbard “needs to explain why she believed it was appropriate to involve herself in a domestic criminal investigation, why she facilitated direct contact between the president and FBI agents on the ground, and what protections, if any, were put in places to protect against direct political interference.”
Responding to a request by Spectrum News, a DNI spokesperson referred to Gabbard's social media post and letter, in which she also contended that election systems are at risk of foreign interference.
Separately, three congressional Democrats from Georgia –– Sen. Rafael Warnock and Reps. Nikema Williams and Lucy McBath –– asked Attorney General Pam Bondi on Tuesday for an “immediate briefing” about the search and seizure of ballots by the FBI.
“We are deeply concerned that President Trump’s consistent spreading of misinformation and dangerous conspiracy theories about the 2020 election fundamentally undermines the electoral process, endangers election workers, and erodes public trust in our democracy,” the elected officials wrote to the top Justice Department official. “This unprecedented seizure only heightens those concerns.”
A request sent to the Justice Department about the Georgia officials’ letter was not immediately returned.
Trump has consistently repeated debunked claims that he won the 2020 presidential election and recently has ratcheted up the rhetoric by alluding to prosecutions on the horizon.
“It was a rigged election,” the president told world leaders in Davos, Switzerland, last month. “Everybody now knows that. They found out. People will soon be prosecuted for what they did.”
Election officials and top Republicans have said that Trump’s claim is wrong and that former President Joe Biden won the election with 306 Electoral College votes.
On Tuesday, Warner also sounded the alarm about comments Trump made in which the president called on his party to “nationalize” elections in more than a dozen states.
“The Republicans should say, we want to take over, we should take over the voting, the voting in at least many, 15 places. The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting,” Trump said in a podcast interview with Dan Bongino, who had served as FBI deputy director until January.
“When you put all of this together, it is clear that what happened in Fulton County is not about revisiting the past,” Warner said. “It is about shaping the outcome of future elections, and quite honestly, dismantling the very guardrails that were put in place to keep them free and fair.”
In his remarks, Trump did not explicitly identify which states he thought the GOP should seek to “take over.”
When asked for more information about the president’s comments Monday, White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said in a statement that Trump “cares deeply about the safety and security of our elections” and cited efforts to pass the SAVE Act and other legislative proposals to require photo ID for voting, prohibit mail-in voting and end the practice of “ballot harvesting.”
A White House official also told Spectrum News that the president wants states to better maintain voter rolls and share election records with the federal government.
On Bongino’s podcast, which was released Monday, the president also turned his remarks toward Georgia and the presidential election five years ago.
“Now you’re going to see something in Georgia where they were able to get — with a court order –– the ballots,” he told Bongino. “You’re going to see some interesting things come out. But, you know, like the 2020 election, I won that election by so much.”