EXCLUSIVE: Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Tulsi Gabbard detailed her ongoing election security assessment in a letter to congressional lawmakers Monday, saying President Donald Trump “specifically directed” her to be present for the execution of a search warrant in Fulton County, Georgia, last week as part of the probe.
Gabbard sent a letter, exclusively obtained by Fox News Digital, addressed to Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chair Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., and House Intelligence Committee Ranking Member Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn. The letter was also sent to House and Senate leadership, as well as GOP leadership on both committees.
The letter is in response to one sent in late January by Warner and Himes, in which they requested Gabbard brief them on why she was present at the FBI search of an election office in Fulton County, Georgia.
Gabbard announced in April 2025 that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) was investigating electronic voting systems in order to protect election integrity.
TRUMP CONFIRMS WHAT TULSI GABBARD WAS DOING AT GEORGIA ELECTION CENTER
In the letter, Gabbard said Trump instructed her to be present at the FBI’s execution of a search warrant at the Office of the Clerk of the Court of Fulton County, Georgia, Wednesday.
“For a brief period of time, I accompanied FBI Deputy Director Bailey and Atlanta Acting Special Agent in Charge Pete Ellis in observing FBI personnel executing that search warrant, issued by the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia pursuant to a probable cause finding,” she wrote.
Gabbard said her “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.”
“The FBI’s Intelligence/Counterintelligence divisions are one of the 18 elements that I oversee,” she said.
DNI Press Secretary Oliva Coleman told Fox News Digital in a statement, “President Trump’s directive to secure our elections was clear, and DNI Gabbard has and will proudly continue to take actions within her authorities, alongside our interagency partners, including the FBI, to support ensuring the integrity of our elections.”
Gabbard said senior FBI officials in twelve field offices nationwide, including Atlanta, are “dual-hatted” as Domestic DNI-Representatives under a program established through a 2011 memorandum of understanding between ODNI and the FBI, adding that she has visited several of those officials as part of her oversight of domestic threats, including risks to critical infrastructure.
“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 said. “He did not ask any questions, nor did he or I issue any directives.”
FBI AGENTS SEARCH ELECTION HUB IN FULTON COUNTY, GEORGIA
Gabbard stressed that the ODNI’s Office of General Counsel “has found my actions to be consistent and well within my statutory authority as the Director of National Intelligence.”
In late January, FBI agents were seen carrying out a search at an election hub in Fulton County, Georgia, a location that became ground zero for concerns and complaints about voter fraud beginning in 2020.
The search warrant authorized the seizure of election records, voting rolls, and other data tied to the 2020 election, according to a copy of the warrant reviewed by Fox News.
Gabbard went on to address specific questions initially posed by Warner and Himes, detailing how election security “is a national security issue.”
“Interference in U.S. elections is a threat to our republic and a national security threat,” she writes. “The President and his Administration are committed to safeguarding the integrity of U.S. elections to ensure that neither foreign nor domestic powers undermine the American people’s right to determine who our elected leaders are.”
Gabbard said Trump “tasked ODNI with taking all appropriate actions” under her statutory authorities toward “ensuring the integrity of our elections” and specifically directed her to observe the execution of the Fulton County search warrant.
She added that ODNI has been “actively reviewing intelligence reporting and assessments on election integrity” since she took office.
“As part of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center’s responsibility to lead, manage, and coordinate counterintelligence matters related to election security, NCSC personnel traveled with me to Fulton County to support this effort,” she wrote, noting that they were not present during the execution of the warrant.
In the letter, Gabbard stressed that the DNI has “broad authority to coordinate, integrate, and analyze intelligence related to election security.”
She also said ODNI is “the lead intelligence agency in the Joint Cyber Planning Office,” which coordinates and oversees the nation’s strategy to secure critical cyber infrastructure, “including cyber infrastructure used for elections.”
The DNI told lawmakers that ODNI “will not irresponsibly share incomplete intelligence assessments concerning foreign or other malign interference in U.S. elections.”
“As I publicly stated on 10 April 2025, there is information and intelligence reporting suggesting that electronic voting systems being used in the United States have long been vulnerable to exploitation that could result in enabling determined actors to manipulate the results of the votes being cast with the intent of changing the outcome of an election,” she wrote.
ODNI and the intelligence community continue to collect and assess intelligence related to the threat, she added, to ensure the security and integrity of U.S. elections.
Gabbard previously raised similar concerns during an April 2025 Cabinet meeting, when she said ODNI had evidence that electronic voting systems have long been vulnerable to exploitation and argued the findings supported a broader push for paper ballots.
Meanwhile, in the letter, Gabbard explained that the process of assessing the intelligence “ensures that the IC’s finished intelligence products are objective, independent of political considerations, and based on all available sources.”
“I will share our intelligence assessments with Congress once they are complete,” she said.
Gabbard said that the National Security Act of 1947 specifically highlights that the law does “not require that the president obtain approval from the congressional intelligence committees before initiating a significant intelligence activity.”
“Moreover, the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia issued the search warrant on the Office of the Clerk of the Court of Fulton County under seal,” she writes, adding that ODNI had no ability, authority, or responsibility to inform the intelligence committees about the warrant ahead of its execution.
Congressional Democrats have been pressing Gabbard to share additional information about the role she played in Fulton County, Georgia.
“Much of the American public are quite reasonably alarmed and asking questions after the Director of National Intelligence was spotted bizarrely and personally lurking in an FBI evidence truck in Fulton County, Georgia yesterday,” Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., said in a statement in late January.
“There are only two explanations for why the Director of National Intelligence would show up at a federal raid tied to Donald Trump’s obsession with losing the 2020 election,” Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., said in response to news of Gabbard’s presence at the FBI search.
“Either Director Gabbard believes there was a legitimate foreign intelligence nexus — in which case she is in clear violation of her obligation under the law to keep the intelligence committees ‘fully and currently informed’ of relevant national security concerns — or she is once again demonstrating her utter lack of fitness for the office that she holds by injecting the nonpartisan intelligence community she is supposed to be leading into a domestic political stunt designed to legitimize conspiracy theories that undermine our democracy,” Warner added.
Fulton County is the most populous county in Georgia and includes the capital city of Atlanta. It most notably emerged as ground zero for voter fraud complaints in the wake of the 2020 election, though the claims did not survive court scrutiny.
News of the search comes years after Fulton County emerged at the center of concerns and complaints about voter fraud in the wake of the 2020 elections, including from Trump, who lost the state to former President Joe Biden by a razor-thin margin.
Despite a machine count and two recounts that confirmed the results, Trump continued to feud for years with Georgia officials and claimed that various instances of fraud had tainted the results, prompting Democrats to raise fresh concerns about why the FBI executed so broad a search warrant and what role Gabbard played in the process.
Most recently, Trump reiterated those complaints earlier in January during a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. He said then that “people will soon be prosecuted for what they did,” though he declined to elaborate.
Trump at the end of January touted Gabbard for her work to protect elections in the U.S.
“She’s working very hard on trying to keep the election safe. And she’s done a very good job,” Trump said. “And they, as you know, they got into the votes, you got a signed judge’s order in Georgia … And you’re going to see some interesting things happening. They’ve been trying to get there for a long time.”
Meanwhile, the Justice Department sued Fulton County in December 2025 seeking access to ballots related to the 2020 lawsuit, though the FBI’s search appears unrelated.
Fulton County, Georgia, is fighting the lawsuit and says the Justice Department has not made a valid argument for accessing the records.
Fulton County officials on Monday said they plan to file a lawsuit against the Trump administration over the FBI’s raid, challenging the legality of the raid and the warrant authorizing the “seizure of sensitive election records” in Fulton County.
The lawsuit also seeks to order the administration to “return the ballots taken,” officials said.
