AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard was reportedly in the dark about the Trump administration’s plan to invade Venezuela and depose President Nicolas Maduro.
Bloomberg reported on Thursday that the White House excluded the nation’s top intelligence from discussions about the planned ouster, which was carried out on Saturday. People familiar with the situation said that Gabbard had previously opposed U.S. intervention in the South American country.
“The United States needs to stay out of Venezuela,” Gabbard, then a Democratic member of Congress, tweeted in 2019. “Let the Venezuelan people determine their future. We don’t want other countries to choose our leaders–so we have to stop trying to choose theirs.”
Since that time, Gabbard became a Republican and endorsed President Donald Trump in 2024.
“The move to cut Gabbard out of the meetings was so well-known that some White House aides joked that the acronym of her title, DNI, stood for ‘Do Not Invite,’ according to three of the people,” Bloomberg reported. “They asked not to be identified discussing private conversations. A White House official denied there was any such joke.”
The Wall Street Journal also reported on the freezeout, stating that as Trump officials were finalizing plans for the invasion, Gabbard was on a beach in her native Hawai’i.
“As President Trump’s national-security team huddled last week to make final preparations for the operation to snatch Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, Gabbard was posting social-media photos of herself on a beach in Hawaii, where she grew up, ignorant of the operation’s details,” the paper said. The Journal added that Secretary of State Marco Rubio was among those who wanted to keep Gabbard out of the loop.
When asked about the reporting during a White House press briefing on Thursday, Vice President JD Vance rejected it.
“That’s completely false,” he said. “We kept it very tight to the senior cabinet-level officials and related officials in our government.”
Gabbard irked Trump last year after the president ordered the bombing of nuclear facilities in Iran. Months prior, Gabbard testified before Congress that Iran was not building a nuclear weapon.
“I don’t care what she said,” Trump said of Gabbard’s assessment. “I think they were very close to having one.”
