Tulsi Gabbard-gate Now a Full-Blown Scandal

By Cliff Kincaid

December 2, 2024

President Trump called former intelligence analyst Edward Snowden a “traitor” and a “spy” who should be executed. Lt. General Michael T. Flynn, his former national security adviser, had declared in congressional testimony that Snowden’s disclosures did “grave damage to the Department of Defense and go far beyond the act of a so-called whistle blower.” He added, “I have no doubt that he has placed the men and women of our armed services at risk and that his disclosures will cost lives on our future battlefields.” Senator Marco Rubio, Trump’s nominee for Secretary of State, said about Snowden, “I think he’s a traitor worthy of federal prison.”

Lt. Gen Ion Mihai Pacepa, the highest-ranking Soviet bloc intelligence official ever to defect to the West, called the Snowden affair “a well-prepared Russian intelligence operation” against the United States and said Snowden “is an agent of the Russian foreign intelligence service.”

Yet, Trump is now under pressure from his own nominee for Director of National Intelligence (DNI), Tulsi Gabbard, to pardon the former intelligence analyst.

Jon Levine of the New York Post reports that former left-wing congresswoman Gabbard, a former Bernie Sanders supporter and now Trump’s DNI nominee, regards Snowden as “important to her” and that “she would likely push for” a pardon or clemency to the former CIA and NSA employee in Trump’s second term.

The strange development threatens to expose Gabbard and perhaps other members of Trump’s inner circle as covert sympathizers with Vladimir Putin’s Russia, at a time when Putin is threatening to involve NATO in a nuclear war and the Russian-backed Syrian dictatorship is under siege by opposition forces.

Gabbard staged a friendly visit with Syrian dictator Assad in 2017, when she was a full-fledged peacenik Democrat whose career was nurtured by communists. She is today fully backed by Jackson Hinkle, an executive board member of the “new” American Communist Party, which supports anti-American regimes around the world, including Putin’s Russia.

Hinkle is a former supporter of socialist Bernie Sanders who now associates with one of Russian President Putin’s key advisers, Alexander Dugin, who says there is a “strategic alliance” between Iran and Russia and China.

However, Dugin also has influence on the MAGA movement, as documented in our report, The Big Lie Driving Russian Influence in the Conservative Movement and the Destruction of Ukraine.

If confirmed, Gabbard would be given jurisdiction as DNI over 18 intelligence agencies and would edit intelligence information for President Trump.

But her support for Snowden, now a Russian citizen, puts that confirmation in serious doubt. Indeed, it raises questions about who in Trump’s inner circle pushed her nomination.

The president-elect has made it clear in several statements over the years that Snowden betrayed the United States as he sought refuge in Russia, after disclosing more than one million classified documents. Snowden was charged with espionage, a crime that could get him the death penalty. Trump had recommended that Snowden, if caught and convicted, be executed.

Hence, Trump is in a very difficult situation if he stands by Gabbard, as he apparently wasn’t aware when he made the Gabbard nomination that she had, as a member of Congress, introduced a resolution to grant Snowden a pardon for his crimes. Her position directly contradicted what Trump had been saying about Snowden for several years.

His former aide, Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, then-director of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), had expanded on his own comments about the damage done by Snowden, declaring, that “the greatest cost” associated with Snowden’s betrayal “is unknown today, but we will likely face is the cost in human lives on tomorrow’s battlefield or in some, someplace where we will put our military forces – you know, when we ask them to go in to harm’s way. That’s’ the greatest cost that we face with the disclosures that have been presented so far. And like I said, the strongest word that I can use is this has caused grave damage to our national security.”

Flynn’s comments were made in congressional testimony in 2014, after Snowden had turned the documents over to a left-wing journalist, Glenn Greenwald, in Chinese Hong Kong, on his way to Russia, where he was given Russian citizenship.

My group, America’s Survival, called Greenwald’s “journalism” a form of espionage and objected to Pulitzer Prizes for “journalists” who facilitated Snowden’s disclosures. My book, Blood on His Hands: The True Story of Edward Snowden, documents how his disclosures didn’t hurt the “Deep State” but rather benefitted Russia, China, and Islamic terrorists like those in ISIS.

The Gabbard nomination was apparently urged on the president by advisers who didn’t know or didn’t care that Trump had taken a position in favor of capital punishment for the former NSA and CIA analyst.

What the evidence suggests, contends anti-communist author Trevor Loudon, is that Trump has several advisers who are in the “Russian camp” and want to reward Putin for giving refuge to the American defector. If this is in fact the case, another Russia-gate scandal is in the making which threatens the second Trump presidency even before it begins. Trump will not be able to blame this scandal on Hillary or Obama, since his own advisers made it all possible.

In an interview on my fast-growing Rumble channel, Trevor Loudon suggested that she try to save face by withdrawing her nomination, citing health concerns or some other pretext. Otherwise, he indicated, the Gabbard nomination will develop into a full-blown scandal that even Republicans will have to investigate, leading to uncomfortable questions about the Trump advisers behind the controversial nomination and their possible ties to Russia.

E-Mail Cliff Kincaid: kincaid@comcast.net