Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Tulsi Gabbard’s recent trip to Fulton County, Georgia that focused on election integrity efforts is in line with the DNI’s responsibilities, a spokesperson explained to the Washington Reporter, following Gabbard’s trip.

In one of President Donald Trump’s first cabinet meetings of his second term, Gabbard explained the “long list of things that we’re investigating,” with “election integrity being one of them. We have evidence of how these electronic voting systems have been vulnerable to hackers for a very long time and vulnerable to exploitation, to manipulate the results of the votes being cast.”

Shortly after those remarks, she noted that the DNI is continuing “our extensive investigations around exposing the very serious issues we have related to election integrity, illegal abuses of FISA, Crossfire Hurricane, and others.” 

A former Democratic congresswoman who left her position at the Democratic National Committee (DNC) when Democrats began to favor Hillary Clinton in 2016, Gabbard has long tied her work in Congress and in overseeing America’s intelligence community (IC) to securing America’s faith in elections. 

“President Trump nominated me as Director of National Intelligence, to look for the truth around these issues related to election integrity,” Gabbard said last year. “This is something that I worked on a lot as a member of Congress. This is something of paramount importance, obviously, to President Trump but, but really to the American people to have faith and trust in the integrity of our democratic republic. And so we’ve really spent the last few months since I’ve been on this job, focused on finding the truth very simply, finding the truth to bring about transparency and accountability. I know that our team, again on multiple issues, including on election integrity, we’re going to continue to investigate to find the truth and tell the truth.”

Gabbard’s trip to Georgia was condemned by members of her former political party, but her team seems eager to pick a fight, given the messengers. Alexa Henning, Gabbard’s deputy chief of staff, dismissed criticisms by Sen. Mark Warner (D., Va.), the ranking member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence as being “weird, sweaty selfie car videos.”

Henning likewise noted that Rep. Dan Goldman (D., N.Y.) is the “wors[t] person to do this.”

Goldman, Henning added, is “the guy who literally conspired with Adam Schiff and the Deep State to set up President Trump in 2019…there’s no other reason you do this unless you are terrified of what we’ll find.”

The Washington Reporter first covered the work by Gabbard and her team to declassify “Obamagate,” which demonstrated how then-President Barack Obama’s IC team requested a “new IC assessment” to blame Russia for 2016 election interference.

Gabbard’s focus on election integrity is complemented in her current role by an executive order from Trump’s first term which was extended by President Joe Biden and which remains in effect. Executive Order 13848 places the DNI specifically in charge of assessing foreign interference after every federal election. Gabbard’s efforts also complement more recent Trump executive orders, like one from March 2025, “Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections.”

Gabbard’s team also pointed to statutes, like 50 U.S. Code § 3371d, which require “the Director of National Intelligence [to] designate a national counterintelligence officer within the National Counterintelligence and Security Center to lead, manage, and coordinate counterintelligence matters relating to election security” and 50 U.S.C. § 3059, which notes that “there is within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence a Foreign Malign Influence Center.”

Olivia Coleman, Gabbard’s press secretary, told the Reporter that “Director Gabbard recognizes that election security is essential for the integrity of our republic and our nation’s security. As DNI, she has a vital role in identifying vulnerabilities in our critical infrastructure and protecting against exploitation.”

“We know through intelligence and public reporting that electronic voting systems have been and are vulnerable to exploitation,” Coleman said. “President Trump’s directive to secure our elections was clear, and DNI Gabbard has and will continue to take actions within her authorities, alongside our interagency partners, to support ensuring the integrity of our elections.”