The handling of a whistleblower complaint against Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard alleging wrongdoing spilled out into the open on Monday when The Wall Street Journal reported on the existence of the complaint, and repeated the whistleblower’s lawyer's allegations that Gabbard stonewalled it.  

However, buried in the article is the fact that the agency’s Inspector General assessed that several of the allegations against Gabbard were deemed not credible, while others were not capable of being substantiated. An ODNI official confirmed the inspector general’s findings to Just the News. The determination was also confirmed publicly by the DNI’s deputy chief of staff and spokesperson, who also say the complaint was handled properly.  

WSJ: "Cloak-and-dagger mystery" but short on facts

Yet, the WSJ buried these facts, instead describing the DNI’s handling of the whistleblower complaint as “a cloak-and-dagger mystery reminiscent of a John le Carré novel.” The WSJ also reported the “highly classified” complaint “has sparked months of wrangling over how to share it with Congress” because the disclosure of its contents could cause “grave damage to national security.” The subject of the complaint is not known, other than that it involves Gabbard. 

“This is exactly what we’ve been revealing to the American people. This is what the Deep State does,” Gabbard’s deputy chief Alexa Henning said in a post to X. 

Henning said the whistleblower’s complaint bears the hallmarks of “politically motivated weaponization” designed to gin up “false intrigue" and contrive narrative damaging to Gabbard, comparing it to how senior Obama administration intelligence officials helped gin up the debunked Trump-Russia collusion allegations. 

In some ways, the incident also bears similarity to the 2019 whistleblower complaints targeting then-President Donald Trump and which sparked his first impeachment. The whistleblower in this case is even represented by Andrew Bakaj, the same lawyer who represented the purported 2019 Ukraine whistleblower. 

That case was prompted by a complaint filed with the intelligence community inspector general by an unnamed CIA officer who claimed that Trump used a call with Zelensky to pressure the Ukraine leader to investigate allegations the Biden family had a corrupt relationship with an energy company called Burisma Holdings and that Trump tried to tie U.S. foreign aid to the request, Just the News previously reported. 

The Trump-appointed inspector general deemed the 2019 complaint both credible and of “urgent concern,” which requires the DNI to forward the complaint to Congress within a seven-day window under law. The DNI, however, disputed that legal requirement and refused to turn it over to Congress, fueling the eventual impeachment action.

Under the Intelligence Community Whistleblower Protection Act of 1998, “urgent concerns” are matters that “an IC employee reasonably believes to evidence violations of law, rule or regulation; gross mismanagement; gross waste of funds; an abuse of authority; or a substantial and specific danger to public health or safety.” 

The transcript of the call eventually was released showing Trump did not tie U.S. aid to his request, thus undermining the original complaint. But, the narrative had been set, widely repeated in legacy media, and House Democrats proceeded to impeach Trump before the Senate acquitted him at trial.

The Gabbard whistleblower’s lawyer Bakaj, who also represented the Ukraine whistleblower in 2019, slammed Gabbard for not transmitting the complaint to Congress on time. “From my experience, it is confounding for [Gabbard’s office] to take weeks—let alone eight months—to transmit a disclosure to Congress,” Bakaj told the WSJ. 

Whistleblower Aid, where Bakaj is Chief Legal Counsel, alleges that Gabbard violated the law by withholding the complaint from Congress. “WhistleblowerAid.org is calling on Congress to open an investigation into Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard for hiding high-level intelligence from Congress for nearly eight months and her attempts to bury a whistleblower disclosure about her own actions, the reporting of which is required by law,” the group said in a statement. 

Whistleblower Aid did not respond to a request for comment from Just the News. 

Bakaj's complaint against Gabbard deemed "not credible"

However, unlike the 2019 complaint, the ICIG assessed that the May 2025 complaint by Bakaj’s client “did not appear credible.” This classification carries with it no legal requirements or deadlines for when the information should be sent to Congress, an ODNI official told Just the News. 

The acting inspector general at the time of the complaint was not appointed by President Trump, but was a holdover from the Biden administration. The official was eventually replaced by Christopher Fox in October 2025 after his nomination for the role.  

The ODNI official also said, because the whistleblower complaint contains “highly sensitive” classified information, the required security guidance from the DNI before disclosure to Congress could take more than the "matter of weeks" that experts purportedly told the WSJ. 

DNI did not delay sending House and Senate Committees the complaint

Despite Bakaj's allegations, DNI spokeswoman Olivia Coleman said “there was no delay” in producing that security guidance and confirmed on Monday in a public statement that the whistleblower’s complaint was already with both House and Senate Intelligence Committees for review, undercutting the allegation that Gabbard was blocking the complaint from being sent to Congress.  

“This is a classic case of a politically motivated individual weaponizing their position in the Intelligence Community, submitting a baseless complaint and then burying it in highly classified information to create: 1) false intrigue; 2) a manufactured narrative; and 3) conditions which make it substantially more difficult to produce ‘security guidance’ for transmittal to Congress,” Coleman added. 

She also reaffirmed Gabbard’s commitment to whistleblowers, saying the director “has always and will continue to support whistleblowers and their right, under the law, to submit complaints to Congress, even if they are completely baseless like this one.”

Gabbard's history supports whistleblowers

DNI Gabbard has been at the forefront of the Trump administration’s effort to reform the Intelligence Community to prevent weaponization. She has declassified documents that, among other revelations, showed the intelligence community watchdog previously ignored whistleblower concerns about how the Trump-Russia investigation was handled. 

Last year, the director unveiled plans for a 40% reduction in ODNI’s workforce and called on other agencies within the intelligence community to do the same, Just the News previously reported. 

During her time in Congress, the former representative from Hawaii even introduced legislation that would narrow the guidelines of the 1917 Espionage Act that is used to prosecute leakers of classified information. The revision, which was introduced in the Protect Brave Whistleblowers Act, would have allowed whistleblowers to defend in court their intentions for releasing such information.