National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard, who was previously criticized for acting like a Russian asset, is planning to gut the agency responsible for monitoring influence from foreign governments.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence published a fact-sheet saying it would begin “refocusing functions” within the supposedly “redundant” Foreign Malign Influence Center, alleging that it had been used by the Biden administration to “justify the suppression of free speech and to censor political opposition.”
ODNI cited FMIC coordinating with Twitter, Facebook, and Google on the companies’ responses to the 2020 New York Post story about Hunter Biden’s laptop, which was removed from several platforms over government concerns that it was part of a Russian disinformation operation. Since it was first reported on, the laptop has been proven to be authentic, but many of Republicans’ allegations that it tied the Bidens to corrupt foreign business dealings have not been.
ODNI claimed that FMIC had developed a “hyper-focus” on election-related issues after a2017 Intelligence Community Assessment reported that Russian President Vladimir Putin had “aspired” to see Donald Trump enter the White House. In the last month, Gabbard has launched a campaign to discredit this report, claiming that the Obama administration had sown a false narrative about Putin supporting Trump, even though Putin has openly admitted that he’d preferred Trump over Hillary Clinton.
ODNI’s efforts to “refocus” FMIC are particularly ironic considering that Gabbard has a history of foisting foreign misinformation on the American public herself. Gabbard previously defended Russia’s incursion into Ukraine, claiming that the U.S. had provoked Russian aggression, and that Ukraine housed U.S.-funded bio-labs that were developing secret bio-weapons—a piece of foreign state propaganda that earned her the reputation as a Russian asset.
More recently, she parroted the conclusions of Russian spies during a White House press briefing, claiming that Clinton had experienced “psycho-emotional problems, uncontrolled fits of anger, aggression, and cheerfulness,” a rumor that was based on debunked Russian intelligence.
ODNI’s fact-sheet claimed that “refocusing FMIC’s mission” would save taxpayers at least $7 million per year. The massive restructuring would also refocus the National Counterproliferation and Biosecurity Center, and the Cyber Threat Intelligence Integration Center. Gabbard has announced plans to cut her department’s staff by 50 percent, and reduce its annual budget by $700 million.
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