Lawmakers Blocked From Seeing Classified Intel Behind Tulsi Gabbard Whistleblower Complaint

The Trump administration has informed lawmakers that it will not provide them with the classified intelligence report that underlies a whistleblower complaint involving Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, citing an assertion of presidential executive privilege.

The standoff was first revealed in an email sent to Democratic congressional staffers on Feb. 13, which The Wall Street Journal reviewed. According to that correspondence, President Trump’s administration declined to turn over the unredacted intelligence that prompted the whistleblower complaint because portions are covered by executive privilege.

Senator Mark Warner of Virginia and Representative Jim Himes of Connecticut, the ranking Democrats on the Senate and House intelligence committees, respectively, have formally pressed Gabbard’s office to disclose who asserted the privilege and on what legal basis.

According to The Wall Street Journal, an anonymous U.S. intelligence official submitted a complaint to the Office of the Intelligence Community Inspector General in May 2025. Based on interviews with officials familiar with the matter conducted by the Journal, the allegations center on an intercepted National Security Agency phone call between two foreign intelligence operatives that referenced Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law. Kushner, while not holding a formal government position in the current administration, has played an advisory role in foreign-policy matters.

Trump officials have contended the underlying allegations about Kushner are unfounded, but have also declined to offer details on the classified matter, saying disclosure could jeopardize sensitive surveillance methods. The whistleblower claimed that Gabbard chose to limit the routine dissemination of that intelligence and instead routed it to her office and the White House Chief of Staff, allegedly bypassing normal channels. When an intelligence community employee files a complaint under the Intelligence Community Whistleblower Protection Act, regulations generally require the complaint to be referred to Congress within 21 days if it is deemed both urgent and credible.

Gabbard’s office has strongly denied wrongdoing and challenged several assertions about how the case was handled. In a social media post, she called the claim that the complaint was hidden “a blatant lie” and reiterated that she was never in possession or control of the document in the way critics describe. She also contends that the legal deadline to transmit the complaint to Congress only applies when a complaint is determined by an inspector general to be both urgent and credible, which she alleges was not the case.

Former National Security Agency general counsel Glenn Gerstell told The Wall Street Journal that invoking executive privilege to withhold intelligence reports from the “Gang of Eight” is rare. He added that it is particularly difficult to justify when the communication involves third parties outside the White House.