Gabbard fires back at Warner over whistleblower complaint, says both inspectors general found it not credible

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard broke her silence Saturday on a whistleblower complaint that has consumed Washington for days, calling Sen. Mark Warner's accusations that she buried it "a blatant lie" — and revealing that neither the Biden-era nor the current inspector general of her office ever deemed the complaint credible.

The complaint, filed in May 2025, accuses Gabbard of wrongdoing and alleges she withheld classified information "for political purposes." It remained largely unknown until this week due to its highly sensitive nature. Warner, the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, has led the charge against Gabbard, accusing her of stonewalling Congress for months.

Gabbard's response was direct. And it landed with a detail that should reshape this entire conversation.

Two inspectors general, zero credibility findings

The most consequential point in Gabbard's defense is one that Warner's narrative requires you to ignore: two separate inspectors general — one appointed during the Biden administration, one currently serving — have reviewed this complaint. Neither found it credible.

Tamara Johnson, the Biden-era inspector general who held the role when the complaint was filed, did not deem it credible. Christopher Fox, the current inspector general, reached the same conclusion. These aren't Trump loyalists running interference. Johnson served under Biden. The system worked as designed — and it produced an answer Warner doesn't like.

Gabbard posted her rebuttal on X Saturday, addressing the accusation head-on:

"Senator Mark Warner and his friends in the Propaganda Media have repeatedly lied to the American people that I or the ODNI 'hid' a whistleblower complaint in a safe for eight months. This is a blatant lie."

She stated she had never been "in possession" of the complaint and first saw it just two weeks ago, when she reviewed it "to provide guidance on how it should be securely shared with Congress." The complaint was hand-delivered to the Gang of Eight earlier this week for a "read and return" review.

Why the safe?

Warner's framing — a complaint "hidden" in a safe — is designed to conjure images of a cover-up. Gabbard's explanation is more mundane and more damning for the accusation. The complaint sat in a safe because it had to.

"The complainant chose to include highly sensitive information within the complaint itself rather than referencing the sensitive reporting and leaving the complaint at a lower level of classification."

In other words, the person who filed the complaint embedded classified intelligence directly into the document, which forced the inspector general to store it at the highest security level. Gabbard followed up with the procedural reality:

"Security standards for complaints that include such sensitive intelligence required the Inspector General to keep the complaint and the intelligence referenced secured in a safe from the time the complaint was made, until now."

That's not a cover-up. That's a classification protocol. The complaint was in a safe because the complainant put sensitive material inside it — and the inspector general had no choice but to secure it accordingly. Warner knows this. He's a senior member of the Intelligence Committee. Classification procedures are not new to him.

The 21-day question

Warner has pressed Gabbard on a 21-day requirement to transmit whistleblower complaints to Congress. It's the legal backbone of his "stonewalling" accusation — the suggestion that Gabbard sat on a complaint for eight months that she was legally obligated to deliver within three weeks.

Gabbard's response cuts through it. She stated the 21-day requirement applies only when a complaint is deemed "urgent" and credible.

"That was NOT the case here."

Two inspectors general — spanning two administrations — agreed. The complaint did not meet the threshold. The 21-day clock never started.

This is the part of the story that keeps getting buried beneath Warner's press hits. The legal mechanism he's invoking has a trigger, and the trigger was never pulled — not by Gabbard, not by her predecessor's inspector general, and not by the current one.

Warner's play

Warner told NBC News on Thursday that the handling of the complaint amounted to something deliberate:

"This was, again, a complete avoidance of and I think it was an effort to try to bury this whistleblower complaint."

Gabbard accused Warner of pursuing "political gain" and said his stonewalling claim "undermines our national security and is a disservice to the American people and the Intelligence Community."

The pattern here is familiar. Warner has spent years positioning himself as the Senate's foremost guardian of intelligence community integrity. That role gives him a platform to level accusations that carry inherent gravity — anything involving classified information sounds serious by default, even before the details emerge. And when the details do emerge, the accusation has already done its work in the news cycle.

Recent reporting revealed the complaint was partly about an intelligence intercept of a call between two foreign nationals discussing someone close to President Trump — a discussion about Iran. The identity of the person close to Trump has not been disclosed. The complainant has not been identified. The details remain thin.

What is not thin: the credibility assessments from two inspectors general who reviewed the material and declined to validate it.

Cotton backs Gabbard's handling

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, defended Gabbard's office, stating it "took the necessary steps to ensure the material has handled and transmitted appropriately in accordance with law." Cotton also deemed the complaint not credible, speculating that it "seemed like an effort by the president's critics to undermine him."

Cotton's position matters because he has access to the same classified material Warner does. Both sit on the Intelligence Committee. Both received the complaint in this week's "read and return" review. They saw the same document and reached opposite conclusions — which tells you this dispute is not really about the complaint at all.

The deeper game

Strip away the procedural jargon and the classification drama, and the structure of this story is straightforward. A complaint was filed in May 2025. Two inspectors general found it not credible. It was stored according to classification requirements dictated by its own contents. When it was ready to be shared securely, it was hand-delivered to the Gang of Eight.

Warner wants that sequence to look like a cover-up. But every checkpoint in the process — the credibility review, the classification handling, the eventual congressional notification — points to a system functioning under its own rules, not a director suppressing inconvenient truths.

The question Warner hasn't answered is the obvious one: if a Biden-appointed inspector general reviewed this complaint and found it not credible, what exactly is the scandal? That Gabbard agreed with the assessment? That she followed the classification protocols that the complainant's own choices required?

Washington runs on the assumption that an accusation is a story and a denial is a cover-up. Gabbard denied it. She also provided the procedural receipts. Whether the press covers the receipts as thoroughly as they covered the accusation will tell you everything about what this fight is actually about.