A whistleblower’s lawyer accused Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard of burying their client’s complaint about her, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday.
In a letter sent to Gabbard’s office in November, attorney Andrew Bakaj accused the director of preventing a complaint detailing her wrongdoing from reaching lawmakers. The complaint, which was originally filed with the intelligence community’s inspector general in May, is so highly classified that Bakaj himself has not been able to review it.
Typically, an employee is able to share a complaint alleging wrongdoing directly with lawmakers, as long as the director of national intelligence instructs them on how to securely transmit it. But months after the complaint was originally filed, it reportedly remains locked away in a safe, a person familiar with the matter told the Journal.
“From my experience, it is confounding for [Gabbard’s office] to take weeks—let alone eight months—to transmit a disclosure to Congress,” said Bakaj in a statement.
In addition to accusing Gabbard of wrongdoing, the complaint reportedly implicates “an office within a different federal agency” and raises potential claims of executive privilege, officials told the Journal. One official warned that disclosure of the complaint could cause “grave damage to national security.”
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