CNN
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President-elect Donald Trump said Wednesday that he has selected former Democratic congresswoman and Trump supporter Tulsi Gabbard as his choice to become director of national intelligence.

Gabbard’s selection will undoubtedly spark a major confirmation battle.

“For more than twenty years, Tulsi has fought for our country and the freedoms of all Americans. A former candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, she has broad support in both parties. She is now a proud Republican!” Trump said in a statement announcing Gabbard’s selection. “I know Tulsi will bring the fearless spirit that defined her illustrious career to our intelligence community, standing up for our constitutional rights and securing peace through strength.”

Gabbard, an Army National Guard veteran, unsuccessfully ran for president in 2020 as a Democrat but said she would leave the Democratic Party in 2022. She campaigned with Trump and was part of his transition team.

She has ties to Trump allies such as Steve Bannon, who said in a statement to CNN: “I brought Colonel Gabbard to meet the new President Trump in November 2016 for a role in the administration. It didn’t work then, but now we have nominated one of America First’s strongest advocates to take charge of an out-of-control and destructive intelligence community.”

Gabbard helped Trump prepare for his debate ahead of his September debate with Vice President Kamala Harris.

“If I can help President Trump in any way, it’s really just sharing the experience I had with her at that 2020 debate, and honestly helping point out some of the ways that Kamala has already let Harris see her trying to get away from her record, get away from her positions,” Gabbard said in an interview with CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union.”

Gabbard and Harris had several notable exchanges during the 2020 Democratic primaries, where Harris criticized Gabbard for her foreign policy positions while Gabbard questioned Harris’ criminal justice record.

When Gabbard ran for president in the 2020 campaign, she touted herself as an Iraq War vet with an anti-interventionist foreign policy.

The former Hawaii congresswoman has taken positions at odds with U.S. foreign policy, including meeting with Syrian President Bashar Assad in Syria in 2017, and said in 2019 that he was “not an enemy of the United States.”

“When the opportunity arose to meet him, I did it because I thought it was important that if we claim to really care about the Syrian people, about their suffering, we should be able to meet everyone we need. whether there is a possibility that we can achieve peace,” she said after her 2017 meeting.

Even as a Democrat, Gabbard shared some of Trump’s isolationist instincts and supported a withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria — even declaring during one of the Democratic primaries that “Donald Trump is not behaving like a patriot.”

During Gabbard’s presidential bid for the 2019 Democratic primaries, Hillary Clinton suggested in an interview that the Russians were “preparing” her to run as a third-party candidate.

CNN’s Sara Murray contributed reporting.

This story is current and will be updated.