Trump's deputy AG unable to explain why Tulsi Gabbard was present at politically-charged search [View all]
Source: The Independent
Sunday 01 February 2026 12:15 EST
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche found himself on Sunday struggling to back up the administration’s rationalization for an attempt to re-litigate the 2020 election with a raid on Fulton County, Georgia’s election offices. And he admitted that he had no idea why Tulsi Gabbard, the president’s director of national intelligence (DNI), was present for that FBI raid carried out last Wednesday.
The questions surrounding the operation continue to mount as the administration has not explained why it is suddenly investigating the long-debunked claims about the 2020 election spread by Donald Trump and his campaign team in the wake of his defeat to Joe Biden, despite repeated assertions from federal and state experts that no evidence of widespread fraud or illegal activity was detected.
Blanche appeared on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday as well as ABC’s This Week. In both conversations, he was unable to offer anything more than Trump’s own beliefs and whims for the new focus of the FBI, which under Joe Biden spent years prosecuting hundreds of participants in the violent January 6 attack on the Capitol, only to see them pardoned by Trump. He added that a federal magistrate judge had granted FBI agents a warrant to seize voting records from the 2020 election in Fulton County as part of a “criminal grand jury investigation.”
“I don't know why the director was there. But she is for sure a key part of our efforts at election integrity and making sure we have free and fair elections. She's an expert in that space,” said Blanche of Gabbard’s involvement. He added that she “can go where she needs to go”, but could not answer what purpose the DNI was serving overseeing an FBI raid — which falls under jurisdiction of the DOJ. The presence of a DNI in the field on an operation is highly unusual.
Read more: https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-politics/todd-blanche-tulsi-gabbard-georgia-b2911773.html
Full headline: Trump’s deputy AG unable to explain why Tulsi Gabbard was present at politically-charged search of Georgia election office
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