Warner: ‘I will definitely be voting against’ Gabbard

By Rebecca Beitsch

In The Hill

Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said late Thursday he would not support Tulsi Gabbard for director of national intelligence after she refused to condemn National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden.

Speaking with MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell, Warner expressed concern that Gabbard during her Thursday hearing repeatedly refused to label Snowden a traitor after he leaked thousands of classified documents and fled to Russia.

“We get about half our intelligence from our allies around the world. There’s no requirement that they share that with us. They share that on trust. If this individual can’t say Edward Snowden, who shared our secrets and other secrets, is a traitor, will these other countries, our Five Eye partners, partners around the world — will Israel’s Mossad share that information with us on an ongoing basis? That will make us weaker if they don’t share that,” Warner said, referencing the Israeli intelligence unit and the intelligence alliance between Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the U.K. and the U.S.

“If you’re not willing to stand up for them, if you’re not willing to send out a signal — this role of director of national intelligence, you’ve got 18 agencies, $100 billion. If you’re not willing to call out Edward Snowden as a traitor, you shouldn’t have that job.”

Warner said he was “happy to tell you and your audience tonight that I will definitely be voting against Ms. Gabbard.”

Her refusal was also viewed as a fumble by those in the GOP, casting doubt on whether her nomination will advance.

Privately, Gabbard had sought to assuage senators about her views on Snowden.

By signing up, I agree to the Terms of Use, have reviewed the Privacy Policy, and to receive personalized offers and communications via email, on-site notifications, and targeted advertising using my email address from The Hill, Nexstar Media Inc., and its affiliates

But a key moment during Gabbard’s hearing came when Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) asked whether she views Snowden as a “traitor,” advising her that members of the Intelligence panel would feel a lot better about her nomination if she would do so.

Instead, Gabbard sidestepped two questions about whether Snowden betrayed the nation, telling lawmakers she is “focused on the future and how we can prevent something like this from happening again,” referring to Snowden’s theft of secret documents.

At another point in the hearing, Gabbard said Snowden “broke the law,” a phrase she repeated throughout Thursday’s hearing, but then quickly pivoted to talk about “my focus on the future.”

Lankford said it should have been an “easy question” to say it’s “universally accepted when you steal a million pages of top-secret documents and you hand it to the Russians, that’s a traitorous act.”