President-elect Donald Trump as director of national intelligence, former Democratic lawmaker Tulsi Gabbard, has been accused of amplifying Russian propaganda and is said to be coming to the job because he has never worked in intelligence or served on a Congressional intelligence committee .

Gabbard, who served in the Hawaii Army National Guard and deployed to Iraq with a medical unit, has long criticized U.S. foreign policy as imperial and heavy-handed. She has also sharply criticized Trump in the past for his approach to the Middle East during his first presidential term, portraying him as dangerous.

As director of national intelligence, a position created in the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Gabbard would oversee 18 intelligence agencies with a budget of approximately $70 billion and serve as the chief adviser to the president on intelligence matters. She would first have to be confirmed by the Senate, where Republicans will have a majority starting in January.

In her public statements, Gabbard has often contradicted the assessments of the US intelligence community. If confirmed, her term will likely be marked by clashes with government analysts who see Russian President Vladimir Putin’s government as the main purveyor of disinformation aimed at sowing division in the US.

Outraged lawmakers two years ago accused Gabbard of repeating Russian propaganda after Gabbard posted a video on social media claiming “the undeniable fact” of so-called US-funded biolabs across Ukraine. She did not specify, as Russian disinformation had done, that they were biological weapons laboratories.

The Ukrainian government, the US government, news organizations and independent researchers have all said there is no evidence to support the claim, which originated in Moscow.

Then-Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., said Gabbard had embraced “real Russian propaganda,” calling it “treasonous.” Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, said Gabbard was “parroting fake Russian propaganda.”

Gabbard, who sent a smear letter to Romney over his comments, denied repeating Russian propaganda and tried to clarify her social media post, saying in a separate message that “’Biolabs’, ‘bioweapons labs’ and ‘bioweapons’ are 3 very different things. But because these sentences are so similar, there is sometimes miscommunication and misunderstanding when discussing them. I recently experienced this myself.”

She also argued that her critics were trying to “censor” her doubts about the Washington establishment.

“When powerful, influential people make baseless accusations of treason, a crime punishable by death, to intimidate, silence and censor those who speak the truth, it has a chilling effect on our democracy,” she said.

The US has supported civilian Ukrainian biological research laboratories to protect public health, not weapons laboratories. Russia has repeatedly spread the lie that Washington has funded biological weapons laboratories in Ukraine.

Gabbard also criticized the Biden administration for requiring US service members to get vaccinated against Covid.

During her 2020 presidential bid, Russian state propaganda often portrayed Gabbard favorably while denigrating other Democratic candidates, including Joe Biden, according to research by the Foreign Policy Research Institute, a Philadelphia-based think tank.

Less than a month into her presidential campaign, at least 20 Gabbard stories appeared on three major English-language websites in Moscow linked to or supportive of the Russian government — all of which celebrated her candidacy.

When Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Gabbard said the war could have been avoided if the US and the West had recognized Moscow’s concerns about Ukraine’s possible entry into the NATO alliance.

But a potential colleague in the second Trump administration, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., whom Trump picked as secretary of state, disagreed with Gabbard at the time.

“A promise that #Ukraine would never join NATO was not Putin’s only demand,” Rubio said on and twelve others.”

Conspiracy theories about a chemical attack

In 2017, Gabbard said she was “skeptical” that Syria was behind a chemical weapons attack that killed dozens of people in Syria.

But US intelligence agencies, the United Nations and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons all concluded that the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was behind the attack.

Shortly after the attack, Russia launched a disinformation campaign to try to deny Syria’s responsibility and promote fabricated stories, U.S. officials say.

Gabbard faced criticism from members of her own party in 2015 when she called on the Obama administration to stop supporting the Syrian opposition movement against Assad’s authoritarian rule.

“I don’t think Assad should be deposed,” she said at the time, saying Islamist extremist groups would take over if he was overthrown.

She made an unannounced trip to Syria in 2017 to meet Assad, even though the US had severed diplomatic ties with Damascus and after human rights groups accused him of committing atrocities to stay in power. The trip sparked outrage from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.

She defended the trip. “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 any possibility that we can achieve peace,” Gabbard told CNN.

On Wednesday, Rep. Abigail Spanberger, D-Va., a former CIA officer, said she was “shocked” by Trump’s choice of Gabbard.

“Not only is she ill-prepared and unqualified, but she also traffics in conspiracy theories and rubs shoulders with dictators like Bashar-al-Assad and Vladimir Putin,” Spanberger wrote on X. “As a member of the House Intelligence Committee, I am deeply are concerned about what this nomination means for our national security. My Republican colleagues with a backbone must speak out.”

During her career in the House of Representatives from 2013 to 2021 and as a 2020 Democratic presidential nominee, Gabbard often took progressive, dovish positions, questioning U.S. military interventions and foreign policy in the Middle East. In 2016, she endorsed Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., in the Democratic presidential contest and retired from her position on the Democratic National Committee.

Clemency for Assange and Snowden

In a 2020 Democratic presidential primary debate, Gabbard called for “an end to this persistent foreign policy doctrine of Bush, Clinton and Trump, of wars to change the regime, to overthrow dictators in other countries and to destroy my brothers and sisters in unnecessarily endangering one’s uniform to fight. in wars that have effectively undermined our national security and cost us thousands of American lives.”

In 2022, Gabbard announced she was leaving the Democratic Party, and last month she said she would join the Republican Party.

She has called for leniency toward Julian Assange and Edward Snowden, both of whom are accused of leaking large amounts of classified U.S. information that intelligence officials described at the time as potentially causing serious damage to U.S. national security and U.S. allies.

Trump’s actions as president during his first term drew harsh criticism from Gabbard, who decried his plan for a wall on the southern border, his policy toward Iran and his support for Saudi Arabia in its war with the Houthi rebels.

In 2018, she referred to Trump as “Saudi Arabia’s b—-” in a social media post after Trump said the US stood strongly behind Saudi Arabia and alleged Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s role in Washington’s assassination Post-columnist Jamal Khashoggi may never be famous. Trump’s statement defied the conclusions of the CIA, which ruled that the crown prince had authorized Khashoggi’s killing.

Despite her criticism of Trump, Gabbard voted “present” on both articles of impeachment against him in 2019 over allegations that he pressured Ukraine to dig up damaging information about Biden, his political rival.

In 2020, Gabbard condemned Trump for his decision to order a US drone strike on Iran’s top general Qassem Soleimani, calling it a dangerous escalation and unconstitutional because Congress had not authorized the action.

“It is the significance of the action that Trump took last night: violating the Constitution, taking military action, taking out a top military commander of another country without any kind of congressional authorization or declaration of war,” Gabbard said at the time .

She also criticized Trump for his decision to withdraw the US from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, which imposed restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for an easing of US economic sanctions.

Born in Hawaii, Gabbard began her political career at a young age. She won election to the House of Representatives at the age of 21, becoming the youngest person elected in the state’s history.