Who is Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s new national intelligence director?

Tulsi Gabbard – a former Democrat congresswoman who joined the Republican Party to again Donald Trump – is the president-elect’s choose for director of nationwide intelligence.

The wide-ranging function would imply she oversees US intelligence companies just like the CIA, FBI and the National Security Agency (NSA), which focuses on intelligence gathering.

The nomination has raised questions over Gabbard’s lack of expertise in intelligence in addition to accusations that she has prior to now amplified Russia propaganda.

She would require Senate affirmation to take up the function.

If she is confirmed to the function Gabbard would handle a funds of more than $70bn (£55bn) and oversee 18 intelligence agencies.

But the nomination has sparked criticism in some quarters.

Reacting to the appointment on X, Democrat Virginia congresswoman member of the House Intelligence Committee Abigail Spanberger mentioned she was “appalled at the nomination of Tulsi Gabbard”.

“Not only is she ill-prepared and unqualified, but she traffics in conspiracy theories and cozies up to dictators like Bashar-al Assad and Vladimir Putin,” she mentioned.

A army veteran who served with a medical unit in Iraq, Gabbard has set plenty of political precedents in her profession.

She was first elected to the Hawaii State Legislature aged 21 in 2002, the youngest individual ever elected within the state. She left after one time period when her National Guard unit was deployed to Iraq.

Gabbard went on to signify Hawaii in Congress from 2013 till 2021 – turning into the primary Hindu to serve within the House.

She beforehand championed liberal causes like government-run healthcare, free faculty tuition and gun management. These these points have been a part of her 2020 run for the Democratic presidential nomination – which she finally dropped out of, endorsing Joe Biden.

In 2022 she left the Democrat Party and initially registered as an unbiased – accusing her former get together of being an “elitist cabal of warmongers” pushed by “cowardly wokeness”.

Becoming a contributor to Fox News, she was vocal on matters reminiscent of gender and freedom of speech and have become an outspoken supporter of Donald Trump earlier than becoming a member of the Republican Party lower than a month in the past.

In 2019, throughout Gabbard’s bid to safe the Democratic presidential nomination she was criticised by rivals after receiving apparently beneficial protection on Russian state media.

In the identical 12 months, she additionally confronted criticism for her perceived help of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, seen as a key Russian ally.

She mentioned Assad “is not the enemy of the United States because Syria does not pose a direct threat to the United States” – and defended assembly him in 2017, throughout Trump’s first time period.

In that very same 12 months, she mentioned in an interview with CNN that she was “sceptical” that the Syrian regime was behind a chemical weapons assault which killed dozens of individuals.

Trump mentioned there could possibly be “no dispute that Syria used banned chemical weapons”.

In 2019, Gabbard did additionally describe Assad as a “brutal dictator”.

Gabbard has additionally made a powerful of controversial statements regarding Russia and its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Writing on social media on the day Russia invaded, she mentioned the conflict might have been prevented if had the US and its Western allies had recognised Russia’s “legitimate security concerns” about Ukraine’s bid to affix Nato.

The following month, she mentioned it was an “undeniable fact” that there have been US-funded biolabs in Ukraine that might “release and spread deadly pathogens” as she referred to as for a ceasefire.

In response, Republican senator Mitt Romney mentioned Gabbard had embraced “actual Russian propaganda”.

On Russian TV her nomination as intelligence director is being framed as more likely to complicate Washington’s relations with Ukraine.

Rossiya 1 correspondent Dmitry Melnikov mentioned that her nomination “does not bode well for Kyiv”, noting that previously she “openly accused the Biden administration of provoking Russia”.

The channel’s presenter additionally identified that Gabbard had “strongly criticised Zelensky and called for dialogue with Russia”.

Additional reporting BBC Monitoring’s Francis Scarr