Warner calls Gabbard to testify over GA election raid, Trump FBI call

Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., on Tuesday called on Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard to testify in person before the Senate Intelligence Committee about her appearance at an FBI raid on a Georgia election office last week.

Warner, the vice chairman of the intelligence panel, said he was especially concerned that Gabbard facilitated a phone call between those FBI agents and President Donald Trump after the search warrant was executed.

“Let’s be clear: It is inappropriate for a sitting president to personally involve himself in a criminal investigation tied to an election he lost,” Warner told reporters on Capitol Hill.

The senator also sounded alarms about Trump’s recent suggestion that Republicans should “take over” and “nationalize” elections.

“That statement alone makes clear that this threat to our election security, the basic premise of our democracy, is forward looking to 2026 into 2028,” he said.

Warner’s comments turn up the volume on Democrats’ growing fears that Trump — who vehemently refused to accept his 2020 election loss, and continues to falsely claim that he won that race — may try to meddle in the upcoming midterms.

Even as the minority party, Democrats in the Senate have the power to compel people to testify.

Warner accused Gabbard’s office of systematically “dismantling” various guardrails designed to protect elections.

“When you put all of this together, it is clear that what happened in Fulton County is not about revisiting the past, it is about shaping the outcome of future elections,” he said.

In a letter to Warner and other lawmakers on Monday, Gabbard said her presence at the Fulton County election office was “requested” by Trump and that she only observed the execution of an FBI search warrant there “for a brief period of time.”

Spokespeople for the county have confirmed that the federal agents were seeking records related to 2020 elections. Fulton County Superior Court Clerk Che Alexander told local outlet WSB-TV last week, “They took 24 pallets, which encompassed 656 boxes of 2020 election documents.”

Gabbard said in the letter that, as DNI, she has “broad statutory authority to coordinate, integrate, and analyze intelligence related to election security, including counterintelligence (CI), foreign and other malign influence and cybersecurity.”

Asked for comment on the senator’s remarks, ODNI spokeswoman Olivia Coleman told CNBC in an email that Gabbard’s letter “addresses, in detail, much of what Warner said today.” Coleman did not address Warner’s call for Gabbard to testify.

Gabbard also appeared to broadly confirm The New York Times’ report that, during a meeting with FBI agents after the raid, she called up Trump and put him on speakerphone to praise them for their work.

“While visiting the FBI Field Office in Atlanta, I thanked the FBI agents for their professionalism and great work, and facilitated a brief phone call for the President to thank the agents personally for their work,” Gabbard wrote in the letter.

The Times, citing three people with knowledge of the meeting, reported that Trump asked the agents questions, which were mostly fielded by the squad supervisor who developed evidence for the search of the election office.

Gabbard’s letter said Trump “did not ask any questions, nor did he or I issue any directives” on the call.

She added that her office’s general counsel “has found my actions to be consistent and well within my statutory authorities.”

Warner rejected that defense.

“The broad authority to analyze intelligence is not a license to participate in a sham investigation,” he said. “And it certainly does not justify facilitating direct contact between the frontline FBI agents doing this investigation, directly to the president of the United States.”

Meanwhile, Trump, in a podcast interview with former deputy FBI director Dan Bongino that was released Monday, called on members of the Republican Party to “take over the voting.”

He made that suggestion after echoing the conspiracy theory that noncitizens are being “brought” into the U.S. to vote illegally. Trump tied the claim — which has been repeatedly debunked — with his administration’s aggressive efforts to carry out mass deportations of undocumented immigrants.

“If we don’t get them out, Republicans will never win another election,” Trump told Bongino.

It’s “amazing that the Republicans aren’t tougher on it. The Republicans should say, ‘We want to take over. We should take over the voting, the voting in at least many — 15 places,'” Trump said.

“The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting,” he went on. “We have states that are so crooked, and they’re counting votes. We have states that I won that show I didn’t win.”

States are primarily responsible for governing their own election systems.

“You’re going to see something in Georgia, where they were able to get, with the court order and the ballots,” Trump added in the interview. “You’re going to see some interesting things come out.”

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, asked Tuesday why Gabbard is involved in the Georgia operation, said Trump has tapped her to “oversee the sanctity and the security of our American elections.”

“This is a coordinated, whole-of-government effort to ensure that our elections, again, are fair and transparent moving forward,” Leavitt said.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., on Tuesday both defended Trump’s comments about nationalizing elections.

“What you’re hearing from the president is his frustration about the lack of some of the blue states, frankly, of enforcing these things and making sure that they are free and fair elections,” Johnson said.

Thune said, “I think the president has clarified what he meant by that, and that is that he supports the SAVE Act,” referring to legislation that would require proof of U.S. citizenship to register to vote.