Tulsi Gabbard Oversteps Her Authority by Directing the FBI to Seize Georgia's Ballots to Help Trump Prove His Stolen Election Lie

There is a long-established norm that the president of the United States is never directly involved in the activities of the FBI and the Department of Justice. This is to keep these agencies from being abused as the agents of a partisan agenda and political retribution. But Trump killed those norms early on, and he has now taken his political interference to new levels.

The New York Times reports:

Behind closed doors, Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, met with some of the same FBI agents, members of the bureau’s field office in Atlanta, which is conducting the election inquiry, three people with knowledge of the meeting said. They could not say why Ms. Gabbard, who also appeared on site at the search, was there, but her continued presence has raised eyebrows given that her role overseeing the nation’s intelligence agencies does not include on-site involvement in criminal investigative work.

What occurred during the meeting was even further outside the bounds of normal law enforcement procedure. Ms. Gabbard used her cellphone to call Mr. Trump, who did not initially pick up but called back shortly after, the people said.

The president addressed the agents on speakerphone, asking them questions as well as praising and thanking them for their work on the inquiry, the three people said. …

Even for a president who has radically transformed the Justice Department and the FBI by trampling over their political independence and using them as tools for personal retribution, Mr. Trump appears to be taking that kind of involvement to a new level. Rather than going to senior department or FBI officials, Mr. Trump spoke directly to the frontline agents doing the granular work of a politically sensitive investigation in which he has a large personal stake.

The shoe waiting to drop in this story is the involvement of Tulsi Gabbard, whose area of authority is foreign intelligence, not domestic law enforcement. But Gabbard is a longtime election conspiracy theorist, confirming that this is Trump’s attempt to lend legitimacy to false claims about previous elections—and future ones.

The Executive Watch is a project of the Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism, and its flagship publication The UnPopulist, to track in an ongoing way the abuses of the power of the American presidency. It sorts these abuses into five categories: Personal Grift, Political Corruption, Presidential Retribution, Power Consolidation, and Policy Illegality. Click the category of interest to get an overview of all the abuses under it.

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