Tulsi Gabbard resigns as top US intelligence official under Trump

WASHINGTON >> Tulsi Gabbard announced today that she is resigning as President Donald Trump’s director of national intelligence, saying her husband was diagnosed with a rare form of bone cancer and she is leaving her post to help him.

Gabbard informed Trump of her intention to resign during an Oval Office meeting today, Fox News Digital reported earlier. The resignation takes effect on June 30, the press release said.

In her resignation letter published on

She cited her husband Abraham Williams’ recent bone cancer diagnosis.

“I cannot, in good conscience, ask him to face this fight alone while I occupy this demanding and time-consuming position,” she said.

Trump said on his Truth Social platform that Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence Aaron Lukas would become acting director. Lukas is a former CIA officer and analyst who served on the National Security Council during Trump’s first term.

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Trump said Gabbard had done “a great job,” but with her husband’s cancer diagnosis, “she rightly wants to be with him, to bring him back to good health as they fight a difficult battle together right now.”

A source familiar with the matter said Gabbard had been forced out by the White House. The White House did not respond to a request for comment, but Davis Ingle, a White House spokesperson, said on X that Gabbard was leaving in light of her husband’s diagnosis.

Trump has hinted in the past at differences with Gabbard over their approach to Iran, saying in March that she was “softer” than him in curbing Tehran’s nuclear ambitions.

In April, several sources told Reuters that Gabbard could lose her role in a broader cabinet reshuffle.

A senior White House official said at the time that Trump had expressed displeasure with Gabbard in recent months. Another source with direct knowledge of the matter said the president had asked his allies for their thoughts on possible replacements for his intelligence chief.

Gabbard had no extensive intelligence experience when Trump tapped the former Democratic congressman from Hawaii to lead the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, an agency created to oversee the 18 U.S. intelligence agencies after the Sept. 11, 2001, al-Qaeda attacks on the United States.

A member of the Hawaii National Guard, she served in Iraq from 2004 to 2005, became an officer, transferred to the U.S. Army Reserve and rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel.

Her departure from Congress led her to embrace conservative views, support Trump for president in 2024, and join the Republican Party.

She faced bipartisan criticism for comments seen as echoing Russia’s statements blaming NATO for its 2022 invasion of Ukraine and for meeting with former Syrian President Bashar Assad during a 2017 trip to Damascus during a brutal civil war in which he received support from Russia and Iran.

Once she took office, Democrats accused Gabbard of using her position to advance Trump’s retaliatory campaign against his perceived enemies and support his efforts to prove debunked claims that fraud foiled his 2020 re-election.

Signs of tension with the White House emerged when Trump suggested in June that she was wrong in believing there was no evidence that Iran was building a nuclear weapon.

She has been absent from deliberations between Trump and his top national security advisers on major foreign policy issues, including the U.S. military operation that removed former Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, the war in Iran and Cuba.

“She was forced out by the White House,” the source close to Gabbard’s departure told Reuters. “The White House has been unhappy with her for some time.”

The person said that among other reasons for their dissatisfaction with Gabbard was the activities of her task force known as the Director’s Initiatives Group. The group worked to declassify documents related to the death of former President John F. Kennedy, investigate the security of election machines and investigate the origins of COVID-19.

Another source of friction, the source said, was Gabbard’s revocation last August of the security clearances of 37 current and former U.S. officials who revealed the name of an intelligence officer serving undercover overseas.

Gabbard led several initiatives she launched to root out politicization of the intelligence community and approved stripping the security clearances of former intelligence officials, including former CIA Director John Brennan.

Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee and one of Gabbard’s leading critics, told reporters after an event today in Manassas, Virginia, that Gabbard’s work itself had become too politicized.

“Now more than ever, this position must be that of an independent and experienced intelligence professional,” Warner said.

The next leader should understand that “the director of national intelligence should focus on foreign intelligence and not get involved in domestic election incidents,” he said.

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