McConnell only Republican to vote against Gabbard

Former Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) on Wednesday voted against confirming former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (Hawaii) to serve as the nation’s top intelligence official, sending a strong message to fellow GOP senators, some of whom privately doubted her qualifications to hold the job.

McConnell was the only Republican senator to vote against Gabbard, who came under heavy scrutiny over her past opposition to expanded surveillance authority under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and her refusal to call former government contractor Edward Snowden a traitor for stealing 1.5 million classified documents.

The Kentucky lawmaker flagged Gabbard’s refusal to label Snowden a “traitor” as a serious concern.

“Edward Snowden’s treasonous betrayal of the United States and its most sensitive lawful intelligence activities endangered sources, methods and lives,” he said in a statement after the vote.

He also denounced Russia’s “unprovoked war of aggression against Ukraine” as something that threatens American interests and is “solely the responsibility for Vladimir Putin.”

“Entrusting the coordination of the intelligence community to someone who struggles to acknowledge these facts is an unnecessary risk,” he said.

McConnell questioned Gabbard’s evolving views on Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which authorizes expanded surveillance that accounts for 60 percent of the intelligence in the president’s daily briefing.

Gabbard introduced legislation to repeal FISA’s Section 702 when she served in the House, but she said ahead of her Senate confirmation hearing it had been fixed and called it a “vital” national security tool.

McConnell said it would be risking to “empowering a [director of national intelligence] who only acknowledged the value of critical intelligence collection authorities when her nomination appeared to be in jeopardy.”

McConnell voted Monday in favor of a procedural motion to advance Gabbard’s nomination to a final up-or-down vote.

The Senate confirmed her by a vote of 52-48. In her new role, she will lead the nation’s 18 intelligence agencies and oversee the President Trump’s daily intelligence briefing.

McConnell last month also cast a surprise "no" vote on Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, forcing Vice President Vance to break a tie to confirm him. He had voted to advance Hegseth to the final vote.

The rest of the Senate GOP conference ignored pleas from Democrats to reject Gabbard on the grounds that she lacked the judgment and qualifications to lead tens of thousands of intelligence officials around the world.

“I feel so strongly I just wanted to make one last plea to my Republican colleagues,” Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) said before the vote.

“We simply cannot in good conscience trust our most classified secrets to someone who echoes Russian propaganda and falls for conspiracy theories,” he said.

Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), the vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, pointed to Gabbard siding in 2017 with deposed Syrian dictator Bashar Assad’s claim that he did not use chemical weapons against his own people when U.S. intelligence overwhelmingly concluded that he did.

Warner and other critics of Gabbard’s nomination also highlighted Gabbard’s social media post during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 criticizing then President Biden for not being more sensitive to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s concerns about Ukraine potentially joining NATO.

“She blamed NATO for Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine,” Warner said on the floor. “Despite a unanimous assessment of [U.S. intelligence] she said that Bashar Al-Assad used chemical weapons against his own people,” he said.

“I don’t know if it was defending those dictators or if she was unaware of the intelligence or how [those] statements would be perceived. In any case, it calls into question her judgment,” he said.

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