Tulsi Gabbard Resigns as Director of National Intelligence After Tumultuous 15-Month Tenure

Tulsi Gabbard resigned as President Donald Trump’s director of national intelligence on Friday, citing her husband’s cancer diagnosis, ending a controversial 15-month tenure marked by claims about Obama-era intelligence manipulation, internal divisions over the Iran war, and questions about her loyalties to American intelligence.

“Unfortunately, I must submit my resignation, effective June 30, 2026,” Gabbard wrote in her resignation letter posted on X. “My husband, Abraham, has recently been diagnosed with an extremely rare form of bone cancer.”

Gabbard is the fourth Cabinet official to depart during Trump’s second term.

In her resignation letter to Trump, Gabbard said she is stepping down to support her husband, Abraham Williams, as he battles a rare form of bone cancer.

“He faces major challenges in the coming weeks and months. At this time, I must step away from public service to be by his side and fully support him through this battle,” she wrote.

 The Unofficial Backdrop: Iran War Divisions

However, there had been rumblings that Gabbard would split with Trump after the president’s decision to strike Iran, which caused some division within his administration, according to the Associated Press.

Over the last few weeks, White House officials heard rumors that Gabbard was planning to leave, CNN reported. But as of two weeks ago, she was denying she was leaving the administration, a senior administration official told CNN.

Joe Kent, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center and Gabbard’s top aide and “closest adviser,” announced his resignation in March, saying he “cannot in good conscience” back the war, according to the Associated Press.

Kent posted on social platform X that he was resigning effective immediately while urging President Trump to reverse course in the multiweek military operation, according to The Hill. “I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran. Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby,” Kent wrote.

Kent’s resignation put Gabbard “in an even more precarious position,” according to Trump White House reporter Jake Lahut.

Gabbard’s tenure was “riddled with contradictory and confusing messaging, particularly on the U.S. war with Iran, which at times put her at odds and out of favor with” the administration, CNN reported.

In his resignation letter addressed to Trump, Kent stated that “high-ranking Israeli officials and influential members of the American media” were using misinformation to deceive Trump “into believing that Iran posed an imminent threat to the United States.”

Gabbard took a different approach, focusing on presidential authority rather than the intelligence itself. She wrote that because Trump was “overwhelmingly elected by the American people to be our President and Commander in Chief… he is responsible for determining what is and is not an imminent threat.”

Kent was among the officials in the administration, including Gabbard and Vice President JD Vance, who view themselves as “restraint-minded” Republicans wary of more open-ended wars like those waged in Afghanistan and Iraq, NBC News reported. Kent met with Vance and Gabbard on Monday, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The Political Evolution on Iran

During her 2020 Democratic presidential campaign, Gabbard repeatedly warned against military action against Iran. She produced campaign ads claiming Trump wanted to start a war with Iran and cautioned Fox News viewers that “War with Iran would make Iraq/Afghanistan wars seem like a picnic.”

Her tenure highlighted the challenges of political loyalty versus intelligence integrity in an era of deep partisan divides.

In June 2025, Trump said that she was “wrong” after being asked about members of the intelligence community who said there is no evidence that Iran was building a nuclear weapon, according to Newsweek. At the time, she accused the media of “intentionally taking my testimony out of context and spreading fake news.”

 The Obama-Russia Controversy

Perhaps the most controversial aspect of Gabbard’s tenure was her campaign to rewrite the history of Russian interference in the 2016 election.

On July 23, 2025, Gabbard called for the Obama administration to be “prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” alleging a “conspiracy” by which officials “manufactured” intelligence to claim that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to boost Trump’s presidential campaign, according to Rolling Stone.

Gabbard declassified and released new intelligence documents that she claimed were evidence of a “treasonous conspiracy” by top Obama administration officials to manufacture the notion that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election, CNN reported in July 2025. 

“All come back to and confirm the same report: There was a gross politicization and manipulation of intelligence by the Obama administration intended to delegitimize President Trump even before he was inaugurated, ultimately usurping the will of the American people,” Gabbard said, according to Fox News.

However, the allegations conflated and misrepresented what the intelligence community actually concluded, according to a review of a GOP-led Senate investigation from 2020 and interviews with congressional sources familiar with the probe, CNN reported.

Multiple investigations over the past eight years have found that Russia tried to undermine Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and bolster Trump, by leaking documents from the Democratic National Committee, according to Rolling Stone. The 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment, published during Trump’s first term, found that Russia meddled in the election specifically to boost Trump’s campaign.

The CIA Feud

Axios reported that Gabbard’s ODNI had been locked in a behind-the-scenes feud with the CIA for months that became public last week during a Senate Homeland Security Committee hearing.

A CIA insider who was part of Gabbard’s special Directors Initiative Group testified that his agency had obstructed ODNI’s efforts to uncover more information about the JFK files, Covid’s origins and what are called “Anomalous Health Incidents” commonly referred to as Havana Syndrome, according to Axios.

A CIA spokesperson disputed the testimony and said the agency has not impeded ODNI in any way, Axios reported.

Confirmation Battle

Gabbard was confirmed as Trump’s director of national intelligence in a 52-48 vote in February 2025, following a contentious hearing during which the former Democrat was scrutinized for her lack of experience and her conciliatory approach towards Bashar al-Assad, the former Syrian dictator, and Vladimir Putin, according to Yahoo News.

Gabbard pointed blame towards the West hours after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and cast doubt over Syrian chemical weapons use after meeting Assad in person, according to Yahoo News.

She is also regarded with suspicion in intelligence circles for backing Edward Snowden, the whistleblower who leaked highly classified information on U.S. mass surveillance, Yahoo News reported. During her three-hour Senate hearing, she repeatedly refused to brand Snowden a “traitor” and said she was “offended” by the suggestion that she might harbor loyalty towards Moscow.

The only Republican who voted against Gabbard’s confirmation was Mitch McConnell, the Kentucky senator and former majority leader. McConnell said he voted against Gabbard because she had “a history of alarming lapses in judgment,” according to Yahoo News.

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

Chuck Schumer, the leading Senate Democrat, said ahead of the vote that Gabbard spent the night Russia invaded Ukraine “blaming Nato and the U.S. for what Putin did,” according to Yahoo News. “That alone should be disqualifying for anyone seeking” the position.

From Democrat to Trump Ally

Gabbard is an Army National Guard veteran and former Democratic congresswoman who represented Hawaii’s 2nd Congressional District, making history as the first American Samoan and practicing Hindu in Congress.

As the first Hindu member of the House, Gabbard was sworn into office with her hand on the Bhagavad Gita, the Hindu devotional work. She was also the first American Samoan elected to Congress. During her four House terms she became known for speaking out against her party’s leadership.

Her early support for Sen. Bernie Sanders’ 2016 Democratic presidential primary run made her a popular figure in progressive politics nationally, according to the Associated Press.

She ran for president as a Democrat in 2020, touting herself as an Iraq War veteran with an anti-interventionist foreign policy, before leaving the party two years later. She went on to endorse Trump in 2024, campaigning with him and helping him prepare for his debate with then-Vice President Kamala Harris.

Gabbard joined the GOP before the election and served on Trump’s transition team.

Whether Gabbard’s resignation was truly driven solely by her husband’s health crisis or whether the mounting political pressures and internal divisions made her position untenable remains a subject of speculation. What is clear is that her tenure highlighted the challenges of political loyalty versus intelligence integrity in an era of deep partisan divides.