Tulsi Gabbard told Newsmax on Wednesday she is moving aggressively to downsize the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in what she calls a “first step” toward restoring integrity to America’s intelligence system and returning to its “core mission.”
Gabbard joined “Rob Schmitt Tonight” hours after announcing her plan to slash staff by 40% and cut her office’s budget by $700 million annually.
“The Office of the Director of National Intelligence was created almost 20 years ago in the wake of the horrific intelligence failures that surrounded the Islamist terrorist attack on 9/11,” Gabbard told host Rob Schmitt.
She explained that office’s original purpose was straightforward: to integrate intelligence across agencies and ensure the president and Congress received timely, relevant, and apolitical information.
“Twenty years later, here we sit now, where ODNI has more than doubled in size; bloated with bureaucracy, inefficiencies, and redundancies; wasting taxpayer dollars — but actually getting in the way of the mission that it was charged to do,” Gabbard said.
The former Democrat congresswoman from Hawaii pointed to what she described as a pattern of “politicization and weaponization of intelligence” under past directors and administrations.
“It’s become rife with politicization and weaponization of intelligence, some of which we’ve revealed and released over the last few weeks that has occurred under previous directors and previous administrations,” she said.
Gabbard said she is “rooting out those deep state actors who are violating the oath that every intelligence professional swears,” adding that they are “ultimately undermining this core national security mission that those at ODNI are charged with.”
Gabbard said her staff and budget cuts are aimed at focusing the office back on its original mission: objective intelligence.
“Today’s announcement is the first step to aggressively get after our core national security mission, root out those deep state actors, and really focus on delivering what the American people deserve,” she said.
Gabbard pointed to the Obama administration as a moment when the politicization of intelligence became clear.
“We saw that deep hand of politicization within this organization, ODNI, but also in CIA and the FBI, across the NSA [National Security Agency], across the intelligence community, which tells us very clearly what I think most of us already knew, which was politicization of intelligence existed long before,” she said.
GET TODAY :
is the fastest-growing cable news channel in America with more than 30 million people watching!
Reuters Institute reports is one of the top news brands in the U.S.
You need to watch today.
Get it with great shows from Rob Schmitt, Greta Van Susteren, Greg Kelly, Carl Higbie, Rob Finnerty – and many more!
Find the channel on your cable system –
Sign up for and get , our streaming channel and our military channel World at War.
Find hundreds of shows, movies and specials. Even get Jon Voight’s special series and President Trump’s comedy programs and much more!
Watch on your smartphone or home TV app. Watch anytime, anywhere!
Start your now:
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.
