Could a confirmation hearing finally matter?
The answers provided by Tulsi Gabbard, Donald Trump’s pick for director of national intelligence, before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday may make it the most consequential hearing for an executive branch nomination in years. Republicans are publicly and privately speculating that her performance will either solidify support for her or scuttle her chances of overseeing the nation’s intelligence community.
“I’m going to see how the hearing goes,” Sen. Lindsey Graham said Sunday on NBC News’ Meet the Press. “I’m inclined to be ‘yes’ on everybody, but there’s some questions she will be asked that I want to hear the answers to.”
Graham won’t be the only member listening closely to her explanations, if my conversations with Republican aides on Capitol Hill are any indication. And while she will hardly be the only controversial nominee testifying in front of senators this week—there’s also Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services and Kash Patel for FBI director—Gabbard’s hearing is likely to contain some probing questions from members on both sides of the aisle.
Gabbard, who represented Hawaii’s second congressional district from 2013 to 2021, will almost certainly be asked about her 2017 meeting with Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, after which her congressional staff, the Washington Post recently reported, scrambled to “account for her time in Syria and limit the political fallout of the trip.”
She’ll also face scrutiny over her support for Edward Snowden, the National Security Agency contractor who in 2013 leaked highly classified information about the government’s global surveillance apparatus. Snowden was indicted for espionage and fled to Russia, where he was granted asylum and has lived since. In 2020, Gabbard co-sponsored a resolution in the House of Representatives urging for the charges against Snowden to be dropped. It died in committee.
Gabbard’s reversal of her criticism on the surveillance programs under the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act will also be under the microscope. While in the House, Gabbard voted against reauthorizing the FISA Section 702 program—which authorizes targeted surveillance of foreign individuals without a warrant—and even sponsored a bill to repeal it. But earlier this month, Punchbowl News reported that Gabbard now says the 702 program is “crucial” and that she would “uphold Americans’ Fourth Amendment rights while maintaining vital national security tools like Section 702 to ensure the safety and freedom of the American people.”
The issue has come up in Gabbard’s private meetings with senators. One Republican member of the Intelligence Committee, Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, has already expressed her skepticism that her change of heart is sincere.
“There are several questions I want to follow up on in the hearing,” Collins told The Hill. “But there are a lot of obvious issues … Her answers to the written questions were very hedged on it. I know there’s been a lot of reporting that she’s changed her position. That’s not how I read her answers. I read them as, ‘I’ll take a look at the reforms and see if they meet my concerns.’”
Beyond those specifics, senators are likely to press Gabbard on her philosophy and approach to leading the country’s intelligence community—including, one Republican Capitol Hill source said, her general perspective on threats to national security and intelligence agencies’ role in assessing the threat environment.
“I am waiting for the hearing to ask questions I have. I wouldn’t characterize any of them as concerns at this point, but there are things I need to learn. There are answers I intend to elicit,” said Sen. Todd Young of Indiana, another Republican member of the committee.
The confirmation hearing for a presidential nominee has largely devolved into a pro forma process, allowing senators of the president’s own party to bolster the nominee and those from the opposition party to air their grievances and disagreements with the White House. That’s especially been the case since Senate Democrats changed the filibuster rules in 2013, which had the effect of making a simple majority enough to confirm presidential picks.
Trump’s Cabinet nominees have had a fairly easy path to confirmation so far. All 99 sitting senators voted to confirm one of their own, Marco Rubio, as secretary of state. Former congressman John Ratcliffe had only 25 Democratic “nay” votes on his confirmation as CIA director, while Kristi Noem, the new secretary of Homeland Security, had 34 Democratic votes against her.
Even the closest one to date, Friday night’s vote to confirm Pete Hegseth as defense secretary, demonstrated how a very Republican Washington is making things go so smoothly for Trump. Yes, three GOP senators—including the former leader, Sen. Mitch McConnell—voted against Hegseth, but it was a remarkable comeback for the former Fox News host, who just six weeks ago had multiple Republicans expressing skepticism about his chances given a slew of reports about his personal conduct and a record of public statements. But the power of the pressure from pro-Trump forces on those skeptics (plus a tie-breaking vote from the vice president) got Hegseth over the line at last.
Gabbard may not be so fortunate, thanks in part to the nearly even partisan divide on the Intelligence Committee, which is chaired by Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton and comprises nine Republicans and eight Democrats. (The committee’s votes are generally private, though reportedly some Republicans are trying to change that.) If Gabbard loses the support of at least two Republicans on the committee, the path for her confirmation to head to the Senate floor for a vote becomes complicated. What remains to be seen is if Trump would unleash his MAGA mercenaries, up to now preoccupied with helping Hegseth across the finish line, to pressure any potential holdout senators.
But if Gabbard’s confirmation founders in the committee, it would require procedural hoops for Sen. John Thune, the Republican majority leader, to get it to the floor. What may be more likely in that scenario is that Thune and other Republican leaders would have to deliver the message to Trump that his nominee—a Democrat-turned-Republican who helped broaden his winning coalition—doesn’t have the votes to pass.
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