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Floor Speech

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Mr. PETERS. Mr. President, I rise in opposition to the nomination of former Representative Tulsi Gabbard to serve as our Nation's Director of National Intelligence.

Intelligence is absolutely fundamental to our national security. Our intelligence community, spread out all across the Federal Government, has built the world's greatest network of information gathering and analysis. This information keeps us and our community safe by providing the people who make policy decisions with a full picture to understand the current as well as potential threats to our national security, from terrorism risks to our homeland to emerging conflicts across the globe.

Spearheaded by the Director of National Intelligence, the U.S. intelligence community is responsible for monitoring terrorist activities, tracking foreign military capabilities, and even intercepting nefarious cyber attacks.

The courageous men and women in this community, stationed both here as well as abroad, put their lives on the line to identify and neutralize espionage efforts against Americans by our foreign adversaries.

Their work is absolutely critical, particularly in today's modern digital era where information is power. But the foundation of intelligence is trust.

We must trust that our intelligence experts are providing completely unbiased, fact-driven analysis of the intelligence that our Agencies are collecting. Our experts must trust their ability to pursue intelligence that keeps Americans safe, wherever it may lead, without fear that discovery of the wrong issue might result in the end of their career. Our intelligence Agencies must trust that government officials will protect their sources and their methods to ensure that critical missions and safety of Americans all across the globe are not placed into jeopardy.

Unfortunately, I do not believe that Tulsi Gabbard has the qualifications--nor has she earned our trust--to serve as Director of National Intelligence. She has spread conspiracy theories peddled by our adversaries. She claimed that those who were investigating domestic terrorism and the deadly January 6 insurrection were ``domestic enemies''--more dangerous than the individuals who violently stormed the U.S. Capitol, attacked law enforcement officers, and tried to overturn a free and fair election.

She cannot differentiate between our adversaries and our allies, between those who seek to harm our country and those who seek to defend it. Time and time again, Ms. Gabbard has proven that she does not hold the judgment to serve as the leader of our intelligence community.

Let's start with Russia. Start with Russia. As we know, Russia engaged in a widespread disinformation campaign before its deadly invasion of Ukraine in an attempt to justify its actions and manipulate public opinion. Russia actually claimed that the United States was to blame for the war for failing to recognize Russia's ``legitimate'' security concerns about Ukraine's accession to NATO. Tulsi Gabbard agrees with Putin and Russia. She said that the United States was entirely to blame for the war in Ukraine. Russian propaganda efforts also push lies that the United States was supporting bioweapons labs in Ukraine--a claim, by the way, that has been debunked by Ukraine's Government, the U.S. Government, news organizations, and independent researchers around the world. But Ms. Gabbard posted on her social media, in 2022, supporting this conspiracy and accusing the Biden- Harris administration of a coverup.

Former Republican U.S. Senator Mitt Romney called Ms. Gabbard's post treasonous, saying she was ``parroting fake Russian propaganda.''

So now let's talk about Syria.

Tulsi Gabbard has a long history defending former Syrian ruler Bashar al-Assad. In 2015, she even introduced a bill to end U.S. support to the opposition to the Assad regime. She didn't think the opposition to Assad, who is responsible for crimes against humanity and the deaths of hundreds of thousands of his own people, should be supported.

Not only did she oppose the support, Gabbard then traveled to Syria and met with Assad in 2017. Gabbard tried to justify her meeting, going as far as to say that Assad is not the enemy of the United States.

And despite U.S. intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard continued to turn a blind eye to Assad's horrific use of chemical weapons on civilians, claiming there was no real evidence linking this regime to those attacks, even though the intelligence community under the first Trump administration attributed these chemical attacks to the Assad regime.

Ms. Gabbard has promised to ``end the politicization of the intelligence community,'' but what we have seen in just the last few weeks from the administration--in the name of freeing our government from politicization and weaponization--should certainly give us pause.

This administration has fired dozens of prosecutors in a matter of days for doing their duty to provide justice on criminal cases stemming from the January 6 attack on our Nation's Capitol. The administration has also fired most of the senior leaders of the FBI and is trying to go after every single FBI agent who was involved investigating January 6, even if they were just doing their job as ordered by their superiors.

Let's be clear. January 6 was an attack on our Nation, our Constitution, and our democracy.

But to be a part of the Trump administration, you have to show absolute loyalty to him over anything else. Don't worry about facts; just show loyalty. And don't worry about the law; just show loyalty.

So this pattern certainly begs the question: With Ms. Gabbard at the helm, will the intelligence analysts and operatives who worked on investigations into January 6 or any other domestic terrorism plot--are they now going to be fired as well? Will Ms. Gabbard follow the lead of Trump's newly confirmed Attorney General and shut down U.S. efforts to collect intelligence on malicious foreign influences from our adversaries, like China and Russia? Will she penalize anyone who has been responsible for tracking our adversaries' misinformation and disinformation campaigns that target our elections? Will she stand up to President Trump if he seeks to use the powers of the U.S. intelligence community against the American people? Will individuals in the intelligence community who disagree with her views on Russia, Syria, or the threats of chemical and biological weapons be in danger of censorship or, worse, even retribution?

We have no reason--no reason--to trust that Ms. Gabbard will not simply follow the lead of others in this administration and oust those who do their jobs to serve all the American people and not just Donald Trump.

But in addition to this questionable lack of judgment on who our Nation's enemies are, Tulsi Gabbard is simply, simply, unqualified. Tulsi Gabbard does not have the extensive experience needed to oversee this highly complex network of intelligence operatives and analysts-- experience that Directors of National Intelligence, until this point, have all possessed because it is understood how essential this position is and why these qualifications are critical.

There is broad, bipartisan consensus that we are facing one of the most dangerous times in American history. Threats from our adversaries, like the Chinese and Russian Governments, continue to grow and evolve with every passing minute. We need the person leading our intelligence community to be the most qualified candidate available. This is the person briefing our senior leaders, all the way up to the Commander in Chief, on the real threats that face our Nation each and every day. This is the person tasked with protecting our vast network of sources and highly classified methods of collecting information.

We need someone we can trust to safeguard the tools that our intelligence Agencies need to access the darkest corners of the world, but also someone with the knowledge and understanding of this community to protect the brave Americans who are risking their lives gathering this information and intelligence firsthand, on the frontlines.

We need someone who our allies will trust to share their own intelligence, to help protect our people and our interest, because without America's utmost confidence in Ms. Gabbard's ability to do this job, where will that leave us as a country? It will leave us in the dark, vulnerable against our adversaries. It will make our allies question whether or not they should share their intelligence with us because they do not know whether the head of our intelligence community will actually share that information with our adversaries instead of our allies. It will leave us with an intelligence community that is afraid to speak truth to power, or even just do their jobs for fear of offending the Trump administration and then getting fired.

We are in unprecedented times with an administration that has shown that it is willing to break the law in order to break our government. We are in uncharted times, with an administration that would rather target our institutions than protect our people.

We are in perilous times, with foreign adversaries waiting to pounce, as the administration strips away the tools that we have used to protect ourselves.

Our national security is on the line. We cannot destroy our intelligence community and the progress that generations of Americans have built to keep our country safe by confirming someone whom we cannot trust to act in the United States' best interest or who simply lacks the necessary experience to lead this critical organization. That is why I am voting no on Ms. Gabbard's nomination, and I urge my colleagues to do the same.

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