Tulsi Gabbard put Trump on the phone with FBI agents who searched Fulton County elections office, sources say

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard put President Donald Trump on the phone with some of the FBI agents who conducted a controversial search of an elections office in Fulton County, Georgia, last week, two sources familiar with the call told CNN.

The unusual call — first reported by The New York Times — underscores Trump’s involvement and interest in the probe of alleged voter fraud in the 2020 election. One source said Trump directed Gabbard to go to Atlanta for the search, and Gabbard herself confirmed that in a letter to top Democrats on the House and Senate Intelligence committees Monday.

“My presence was requested by the President and executed under my broad statutory authority to coordinate, integrate, and analyze intelligence related to election security, including counterintelligence (CI), foreign and other malign influence and cybersecurity,” Gabbard wrote. “The FBI’s Intelligence/Counterintelligence divisions are one of the 18 elements that I oversee.”

Gabbard met with the agents the day after the search, sources said, and during the meeting, she called Trump to check in and asked whether he wanted to talk to the agents. The president agreed and gave the agents a brief “pep talk,” one of the sources said, insisting the conversation did not go beyond that.

In her letter, to Sen. Mark Warner and Rep. Jim Himes, Gabbard said that while visiting the FBI’s Atlanta field office, she “facilitated a brief phone call for the President to thank the agents personally for their work.”

“He did not ask any questions, nor did he or I issue any directives,” Gabbard wrote. She said her office’s general counsel found her actions to be within her lawful authority, and that Trump “tasked ODNI with taking all appropriate actions under my statutory authorities towards ensuring the integrity of our elections and specifically directed my observance of the execution of the Fulton County search warrant.”

Trump has made no secret of his belief that he won Georgia in 2020 — though he did not — and of his desire for his government to adjust election procedures to police what he sees as rampant fraud. In an interview that aired Monday with Dan Bongino, the former deputy director of the FBI, Trump called on Republicans to “nationalize the voting” as he again falsely claimed errors in past election results. Democratic election officials have been bracing for potential federal government intrusion in the midterms.

“The Republicans should say, we want to take over, we should take over the voting, the voting in at least many, 15 places. The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting,” the president said.

“We have states that are so crooked and they’re counting votes. We have states that I won, that show I didn’t win. Now you’re going to see something in Georgia where they were able to get with a court order, the ballots, you’re going to see some interesting things come out,” he added.

The FBI declined to comment on the call and Gabbard’s role in Fulton County. In response to CNN’s request for comment, Gabbard’s office provided her letter to Congress. CNN has reached out to the White House for comment.

Former senior FBI officials told CNN they could think of no precedent for the top US intelligence official interacting directly with FBI agents on a politically charged case like this.

“There is unanimous disgust across current and former” FBI officials about Gabbard’s actions in Fulton County, said one former senior FBI official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to avoid retaliation.

“There is no precedent, no excuse. It’s performative and undermines the rule of law,” the former official said.

At least one current Trump administration official had previously sought to downplay Trump’s involvement and claimed he did not know why Gabbard was at the search. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche told CNN’s Dana Bash this weekend that to his knowledge, Trump did not play a role in the Fulton County search.

“I don’t believe he was involved,” Blanche said. “This is a criminal grand jury investigation, and I can’t comment on it beyond what you just said.”

Asked later about comments from Trump suggesting he had knowledge of the case, Blanche responded: “I’m not around when the president’s briefed or not briefed. What I said is that this is a criminal investigation, so it’s a tightly held, as it must be under the law. It’s a grand jury investigation.”

But on Fox News on Monday night, Blanche signaled he had no problem with Trump talking to the FBI agents who were involved.

“The president talks to law enforcement all week long. The fact that he talked with agents working hard doesn’t surprise me and actually I love it. It’s great,” Blanche said.

Gabbard had been spotted on the scene Wednesday after FBI agents executed a search warrant for the Fulton County elections office, near Atlanta, taking 700 boxes of election materials. The search was related to an effort by the Justice Department to seize voting data and search for alleged fraud in the county, a source familiar with the matter told CNN at the time. An official in Fulton County has since announced the county will challenge the legality of the FBI’s search and seizure of 2020 election records.

Blanche told CNN he did not know why Gabbard was present.

“I don’t know why the director was there,” Blanche said Sunday. “She is not part of the grand jury investigation, but she is for sure a key part of our efforts at election integrity and making sure that we have free and fair elections. She’s an expert in that space, and it’s a big part of what she and her team look at every day.”

Gabbard has carved out a lane for herself pursuing Trump’s election integrity priorities in recent months, boosting her standing within the administration and with the president after a rocky start.

It is well known within the administration that Gabbard and John Ratcliffe, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, have had a fraught relationship

“That’s been smoothed over, and they work together fine now, but it’s also why Tulsi has focused her efforts on (election integrity),” a senior White House official told CNN. The official added that it helps give each of the top officials a different lane of focus.

After her Fulton County trip, Gabbard was slated to address a conference of election officials Friday in Washington, DC. Election officials from both parties had hoped someone from the Trump administration would explain what the administration was doing in Fulton County. But Gabbard ultimately did not attend due to what a conference spokesperson said were “scheduling conflicts.”