{"id":462399,"date":"2026-05-22T21:57:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-22T21:57:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/462399\/"},"modified":"2026-05-22T21:57:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-22T21:57:10","slug":"tulsi-gabbard-resigns-as-director-of-national-intelligence-in-us-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/462399\/","title":{"rendered":"Tulsi Gabbard resigns as director of national intelligence in US \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tulsi Gabbard has resigned as US <\/a>president Donald Trump\u2019s<\/a> director of national intelligence, saying she needed to step away as her husband battles cancer.<\/p>\n

She is the fourth cabinet official to depart during Trump\u2019s second term.<\/p>\n

\u201cUnfortunately, I must submit my resignation, effective June 30, 2026,\u201d Gabbard wrote in her resignation letter, which she posted on X. \u201cMy husband, Abraham, has recently been diagnosed with an extremely rare form of bone cancer.\u201d<\/p>\n

There had been rumblings that Gabbard would split with Trump after the president\u2019s decision to strike Iran, which caused some division within his administration.<\/p>\n

Joe Kent, the director of the National Counterterrorism Centre, announced his resignation in March, saying he \u201ccannot in good conscience\u201d back the war.<\/p>\n

\"TulsiTulsi Gabbard is the fourth cabinet official to depart during Donald Trump\u2019s second term (Alex Brandon\/AP) <\/p>\n

Gabbard, a veteran and former Democratic <\/a>congresswoman from Hawaii, built her political name on her opposition to foreign wars. This put her in an awkward position when the US joined Israel <\/a>in launching attacks on Iran <\/a>on February 28th.<\/p>\n

During a congressional hearing in March, her measured comments were notable for their careful non-endorsement of Trump\u2019s decision to strike Iran. She repeatedly dodged questions about whether the White House had been warned of potential fallout from the conflict, including Iran\u2019s effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz.<\/p>\n

Gabbard said in written remarks to the Senate Intelligence Committee that there had been no effort by Iran <\/a>to rebuild its nuclear capability after US attacks last year \u201cobliterated\u201d its nuclear programme.<\/p>\n

That statement contradicted Trump, who has repeatedly asserted that the war was necessary to head off an imminent threat from the Islamic Republic.<\/p>\n

This created several awkward exchanges with politicians who asked Gabbard for her opinion on the threat posed by Iran as the nation\u2019s top intelligence official. She repeatedly said it was Trump\u2019s decision to strike, not hers.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is not the intelligence community\u2019s responsibility to determine what is and is not an imminent threat,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Gabbard\u2019s departure follows Trump having ousted homeland security secretary Kristi Noem in late March, in the midst of mounting criticism over her leadership of the department \u2013 including the handling of the administration\u2019s immigration crackdown and disaster response.<\/p>\n

The second cabinet member to leave was attorney general Pam Bondi, in response to growing frustration over the US justice department\u2019s handling of files related to Jeffrey Epstein. And labour secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer resigned in April, after being the target of various misconduct investigations.<\/p>\n

A veteran but without any intelligence experience, Ms Gabbard was a surprising choice to head the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), which oversees the nation\u2019s 18 intelligence agencies. She ran for president in 2020 on a progressive platform and her opposition to US involvement in foreign military conflicts.<\/p>\n

\"(PA(PA Graphics) <\/p>\n

Citing her military experience, she argued that US wars in the Middle East had destabilised the region, made the US less safe and cost thousands of American lives. Gabbard later dropped out of the race and endorsed the ultimate winner, Joe Biden.<\/p>\n

Two years later she left the Democratic Party to become an independent, saying her old party was dominated by an \u201celitist cabal of warmongers\u201d and \u201cwoke\u201d ideologues. She subsequently campaigned for several high-profile Republicans and became a contributor to Fox News.<\/p>\n

She later endorsed Trump, who also was a strong critic of past US wars in the Middle East and campaigned on a pledge to avoid unnecessary wars and nation-building overseas.<\/p>\n

But friction with the president started soon after he began his second term and tapped Gabbard to lead the ODNI, which was set up after the September 11 attacks to improve co-ordination between the nation\u2019s intelligence agencies.<\/p>\n

Shortly after taking on the job, Gabbard gave evidence before politicians that there was no intelligence suggesting Iran was seeking to develop nuclear weapons. After Trump launched attacks on Iranian nuclear sites in June he said Ms Gabbard was wrong and that he did not care what she said.<\/p>\n

She appeared to be back in Trump\u2019s good graces when she took a lead role in his effort to relitigate his 2020 election loss to Biden, whom Gabbard had endorsed. She appeared at an FBI search of election offices in Fulton County, Georgia, even though her office was created to focus on foreign espionage, not state elections.<\/p>\n

Earlier this week, however, she testified to politicians during an annual threats hearing that last year\u2019s strikes on Iran\u2019s nuclear sites had \u201cobliterated\u201d their nuclear programme and that there had been no subsequent effort to rebuild.<\/p>\n

The statement seemed to complicate Trump\u2019s repeated assertions that Iran posed an imminent threat and created several awkward exchanges with politicians who asked Gabbard for her opinion on Iran\u2019s threat as the nation\u2019s top intelligence official. She repeatedly said that it was Trump\u2019s decision to strike, not hers. \u2013 AP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tulsi Gabbard has resigned as US president Donald Trump\u2019s director of national intelligence, saying she needed to step…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":462400,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[969,42,43,40,38,41,39,90],"class_list":["post-462399","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-donald-trump","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-us"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462399","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=462399"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462399\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/462400"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=462399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=462399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=462399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}