By Kanishka Singh
WASHINGTON, Feb 2 (Reuters) – U.S. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said on Monday she was present at last week’s FBI raid on an election facility in Georgia at the request of President Donald Trump and that her attendance was within her authority.
Gabbard wrote in a letter to lawmakers dated Monday that she observed FBI personnel executing a search warrant in Fulton County and was present there for a “brief period of time.”
Top Democrats on the Senate and House of Representatives intelligence committees had called for Gabbard to brief their panels on why she was present at the raid and raised concerns about her presence.
Gabbard also said that while visiting the FBI field office in Atlanta, she “facilitated a brief phone call” for Trump to thank FBI agents for their work on the probe, a departure from law enforcement norms.
She added in the letter that Trump did not ask any questions and that she and Trump did not issue any directives.
The FBI searched Fulton County Election Hub and Operation Center on Wednesday, pursuing Trump’s false claims that his 2020 election defeat was the result of widespread voting fraud.
Claims of voting fraud in the 2020 presidential election have been rejected by courts, state governments and members of Trump’s own former administration.
Gabbard’s letter was addressed to Democratic U.S. Senator Mark Warner and Representative Jim Himes. Warner’s office said Gabbard’s letter “raises more questions than it answers.”
It is unusual for America’s top intelligence official to be included in a domestic law enforcement operation as the remit of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) is overseas spying and protecting national security.
“My presence was requested by the President and executed under my broad statutory authority to coordinate, integrate, and analyze intelligence related to election security, including counter-intelligence, foreign and other malign influence and cybersecurity,” Gabbard wrote.
Experts had raised legal questions over Gabbard’s presence.
“The DNI has authorities set out by statute and they don’t include investigating past elections for potential fraud,” Robert Litt, who served as the top ODNI lawyer from 2009 to 2017, told Reuters last week.
(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)
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