Gabbard’s views on Russia are partly influenced by Kremlin propaganda, former aides say

Since becoming President-elect Donald Trump’s chosen director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard’s optimistic attitude toward Moscow has prompted some Democratic critics to suggest she may be “compromised,” or may – even be a “Russian asset”, affirms the ex-Hawaii. The representative and army officer forcefully denied this.

But Gabbard’s former advisers suggest that her views on Russia and its polarizing leader, Vladimir Putin, were shaped, as far as they know, not by secret intelligence recruitment, but rather by her little habits. orthodox media consumption.

Three former aides said Gabbard, who left the Democratic Party in 2022, regularly read and shared articles from the Russian news site RT – formerly known as Russia Today – which the US intelligence community labeled in 2017 of “the Kremlin’s main international propaganda outlet”. “.

Although it was unclear to these former staffers if or when she stopped frequenting the site, a former aide said Gabbard continued to carry articles from RT “long after” being informed that the media was not a credible source of information.

Doug London, a retired intelligence officer of 34 years, said Gabbard’s alleged penchant for relying at least in part on media outlets like RT to shape her worldview reflects poorly on her fitness to handle the responsibilities of director of national intelligence.

“That Gabbard’s views reflect themes of Russia’s narrative and disinformation can only suggest naivety, collusion, or politically opportunistic sycophancy to echo whatever she thinks Trump wants to hear ” London said, adding that “none of this bodes well for the president’s top intelligence adviser in charge.” to allow [U.S. intelligence community] to inform decision-making by telling things as they are.

Alexa Henning, a spokesperson for Trump’s transition team, said in a statement to ABC News that “this is false and nothing more than a few disgruntled, conveniently anonymous former staffers.”

“Lt. Col. Gabbard’s views on foreign policy were shaped by her military service and multiple deployments to war zones where she saw the cost of war and who ultimately pays the price,” Henning said.

“The Russian Playbook”

Former congressional and campaign advisers said it was unclear to what extent Gabbard’s views were shaped by what she read in RT — and they pointed out that she would consume information from a wide range of media, including left-wing and right-wing blogs.

But over the past decade, Gabbard’s views on Russian aggression in Europe have evolved particularly dramatically.

In 2014, when Russian troops annexed Crimea, Gabbard — then a first-term Democratic U.S. representative in Hawaii — issued a statement advocating “significant U.S. military assistance to Ukrainian forces” and asking the U.S. to invoke “more rigid and more painful economic measures”. sanctions against Russia. »

“The consequences of standing idly by while Russia continues to degrade Ukraine’s territorial integrity are clear,” she wrote at the time. “We must act in a way that takes seriously the threat of Russian aggression against its peaceful and sovereign neighbor.”

By 2017, however, his tone had changed. In a lengthy memo to campaign staff outlining her foreign policy views, a copy of which was obtained by ABC News, Gabbard blamed the United States and NATO for provoking Russian aggression and lamented ” US hostility towards Putin.

“There is certainly no guarantee to Putin that we will not try to overthrow the Russian government,” she wrote in the May 2017 memo, titled “fodder for fundraising emails and social networks.”

“In fact, I’m pretty sure there are American politicians who would love to do this,” she wrote.

She also condemned sanctions she had previously supported, writing that “historically, the United States has always wanted Russia to be a poor country.”

“It’s a matter of respect,” she wrote. “The Russian people are a proud people and they do not want the United States and our allies to try to control them and their government.”

Gabbard’s sentiment in the 2017 memo is “basically the Russian playbook,” said Ivo Daalder, a former U.S. ambassador to NATO during the Obama administration.

“It’s dangerous,” Daalder said. “This line of thinking is not unique to Tulsi Gabbard, but it is certainly not where one would think a major figure in any administration would like to be, intellectually.”

In 2022, at the start of the latest Russian-Ukrainian conflict, Gabbard suggested on “US and NATO are right on Russia’s border” – a narrative perpetuated by Russian propaganda channels, including RT, have been denounced by the US and NATO as “fake.”

Gabbard’s messaging has at times aligned so closely with Kremlin talking points that at least one Kremlin state media commentator has called her “Russia’s girlfriend.”

A “harmful effort”

The US government first labeled RT as a propaganda mouthpiece for the Kremlin following the 2016 presidential election, three years after Gabbard was elected to Congress.

Last September, the State Department wrote that it had evidence showing that “RT was no longer just a news outlet and was now an entity with cyber capabilities.” The United States also imposed new sanctions against RT executives, including its editor-in-chief, whom it accuses of engaging in a “nefarious effort to secretly recruit, without their knowledge, American influencers to support their malign influence campaign.”

The Ministry of Justice also charged two RT employees in September for their alleged role in what the DOJ called a scheme to pay nearly $10 million to right-wing social media influencers to “spread content deemed favorable to the Russian government.”

In the decade since she arrived in Washington, experts say she has regularly held views consistent with those espoused by RT and other Russian propaganda channels.

In its 2017 assessment, for example, the US intelligence community wrote that RT “has actively collaborated with WikiLeaks” and “regularly provides [WikiLeaks founder Julian] Assange presents a sympathetic cover and provides him with a platform to denounce the United States. »

Gabbard has long been a staunch supporter of Assange, saying during a June 2024 appearance on “Real Time with Bill Maher” that “[Assange’s] The charges against him constitute one of the greatest attacks on press freedom and free speech we have ever seen.”

In Congress, Gabbard also co-sponsored a resolution calling on the federal government to “drop all charges against Edward Snowden,” the former National Security Agency contractor who provided WikiLeaks with secret documents to reveal what he called “horrific” US government surveillance capabilities.

RT frequently reports enthusiastically about Snowdenwho has been living under asylum in Russia for more than a decade.

“Undeniable facts”

But it is Gabbard’s portrayal of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine that has most galvanized her national security critics.

In March 2022, Gabbard posted a video to Twitter – now X – sharing what she called “undeniable facts” about US-funded biolabs in the war-torn country, claiming that “even in under better circumstances,” they “could be easily compromised” – a debunked theory regularly promoted by RT and other Kremlin propaganda channels.

Experts say RT and other state-controlled Russian news agencies have frequently capitalized on Gabbard’s public comments to support the biolab conspiracy theory and other disinformation, circulating clips in which she repeats the propaganda from the Kremlin as evidence supporting the false claims – thus creating an echo. room to amplify their propaganda machine.

Even so, Brian O’Neill, a former intelligence official who helped prepare the president’s daily brief, said he is confident that career intelligence officials can support Gabbard with “a constant barrage of new information” that ‘will help shape one’s understanding of emerging world events.

“New appointees to such positions always bring preconceived notions, but like her predecessors she will be subject to comprehensive briefings based on solid evidence provided by people of great integrity and expertise,” O’Neill said .

“That said,” O’Neill cautioned, “Trump’s well-documented hostility and skepticism toward [intelligence community] will shape the environment it enters. If she adopts a similar posture, there is a risk that she will not prioritize input from the intelligence community or reject inconvenient truths presented to her. »

ABC News’ Shannon Kingston contributed to this report.