Tulsi Gabbard — a former Democratic congresswoman who joined the Republican Party to support Donald Trump — is the president-elect’s pick for director of national intelligence.

The broad role would mean that she oversees US intelligence agencies such as the CIA, the FBI and the National Security Agency (NSA), which focuses on intelligence gathering.

The nomination has raised questions about Gabbard’s lack of intelligence experience, as well as accusations that she has amplified Russian propaganda in the past.

She needs Senate confirmation to take on the role.

If confirmed for the role, Gabbard would manage a budget of € more than $70 billion (£55 billion) and supervision 18 intelligence services.

But the nomination has sparked criticism in some quarters.

Reacting to the nomination on

“Not only is she ill-prepared and unqualified, but she also traffics in conspiracy theories and associates with dictators like Bashar-al-Assad and Vladimir Putin,” she said.

Gabbard, a military veteran who served in a medical unit in Iraq, has set a number of political precedents in her career.

She was first elected to the Hawaii State Legislature in 2002 at the age of 21, the youngest person ever elected to the state. She left after one term when her National Guard unit deployed to Iraq.

Gabbard represented Hawaii in Congress from 2013 to 2021, becoming the first Hindu to serve in the House of Representatives.

She previously supported liberal causes such as government-run health care, free college tuition and gun control. These issues were part of her 2020 run for the Democratic presidential nomination — which she ultimately dropped out of and endorsed Joe Biden.

In 2022, she left the Democratic Party and initially registered as an independent, accusing her former party of being an “elitist cabal of warmongers” driven by “cowardly wokeness.”

She contributed to Fox News, spoke out on issues such as gender and freedom of speech and became an outspoken supporter of Donald Trump before joining the Republican Party less than a month ago.

In 2019, during Gabbard’s bid to secure the Democratic presidential nomination, she faced criticism from rivals after receiving apparently favorable coverage in Russian state media.

The same year, she also faced criticism for her alleged support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, seen as a key Russian ally.

She said Assad “is not the enemy of the United States because Syria does not pose a direct threat to the United States” – and defended meeting with him in 2017, during Trump’s first term.

She resigned that same year an interview with CNN that she was “skeptical” that the Syrian regime was behind a chemical weapons attack that killed dozens of people.

Trump said there can be “no dispute that Syria has used banned chemical weapons” after the United States launched a missile strike on the Syrian air base in response.

In 2019, Gabbard also described Assad as a “brutal dictator”.

Gabbard has also made a series of controversial statements about Russia and its large-scale invasion of Ukraine.

On the day Russia invaded, she wrote on social media that the war could have been avoided if the US and its Western allies had recognized Russia’s “legitimate security concerns” about Ukraine’s attempt to join NATO.

The following month, she said it was an “undeniable fact” that there were US-funded biolabs in Ukraine that could “release and spread deadly pathogens” as she called for a ceasefire.

In response, Republican Senator Mitt Romney said Gabbard had embraced “real Russian propaganda.”

On Russian television, her appointment as head of the intelligence services is being portrayed as a threat to Washington’s relations with Ukraine.

Rossiya 1 correspondent Dmitry Melnikov said her appointment “does not bode well for Kiev”, noting that in the past she “openly accused the Biden administration of provoking Russia”.

The channel’s host also pointed out that Gabbard had “strongly criticized Zelensky and called for dialogue with Russia.”

Additional reporting Karine Mirumyan from BBC Monitoring