Tulsi Gabbard resigns as director of national intelligence

Tulsi Gabbard, the top-ranking U.S. intelligence official, told President Donald Trump in a letter Friday that she is resigning from her role following her husband’s cancer diagnosis.

In her letter, which she posted on X, Gabbard said that her husband, Abraham Williams, was diagnosed with a serious and rare form of bone cancer.

“At this time, I must step away from public service to be by his side and fully support him through this battle,” she wrote. She said her last day would be June 30.

Trump said on Truth Social that Gabbard has done “an incredible job, and we will miss her” and said he had no doubt her husband would “soon be better than ever.”

The former Democratic congresswoman, who broke with her party to endorse Trump for president in 2024, never made it into the president’s inner circle.

Gabbard had clashed with her CIA counterpart, John Ratcliffe, and other administration officials. During pivotal moments as Trump deliberated over possible military action or watched live video feeds of operations in Iran or Venezuela, Gabbard was often not in the room, underscoring her outsider status.

But in the end, she wasn’t ousted like former Attorney General Pam Bondi or former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. She is the fourth Cabinet member — all women — to leave Trump’s administration, including former Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer, who resigned amid an investigation into potential misconduct.

Fox News was first to report Gabbard’s resignation.

“While we have made significant progress,” Gabbard wrote to Trump, “I recognize there is still important work to be done.”

Gabbard posted her letter Friday afternoon on X, writing that it had been “a profound honor” to serve the American people. Aaron Lukas, the principal deputy director of national intelligence, will serve as acting head of intelligence.

There had been speculation for months that Gabbard might be out of a job.

Her less-than-full-throated endorsement of the president’s decision to go to war with Iran, unlike other Cabinet officials, raised fresh questions about whether Trump would keep her — or whether she might resign in protest.

She looked uncomfortable as she fielded questions at the congressional intelligence hearings after Joe Kent, the head of the National Counterterrorism Center, resigned, citing his strong objections to the decision to go to war against Iran despite the absence of an “imminent threat.”

Kent and Gabbard, both military veterans, had found political common ground over their opposition to foreign military interventions.

Allies who shared her anti-interventionist views appealed to Gabbard to resign both before and after Kent left, but she declined, according to a person familiar with the discussions.

As a congresswoman, Democratic presidential candidate and supporter of Trump’s 2024 campaign, Gabbard described herself as a fierce opponent of what she called America’s misguided military interventions overseas, including the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and U.S. assistance for rebels in Libya and Syria.

During Trump’s first term, Gabbard strongly criticized his handling of Iran and his decision to pull the United States out of a 2015 nuclear agreement that imposed limits on Tehran’s nuclear work in return for an easing of sanctions.

In June, Gabbard appeared at odds with the president’s statements in the run-up to U.S. airstrikes on Iran’s nuclear sites. Trump dismissed her testimony in March that intelligence showed Iran had not revived a nuclear weapons program, saying: “I don’t care what she said. I think they were very close to having one.”

In August, Gabbard blindsided CIA officials when she disclosed the name of an undercover CIA officer on a list of people she stripped of security clearances, NBC News previously reported.

The move alarmed the agency’s workforce and marked the latest example of tensions and crossed signals between Gabbard and Ratcliffe. Gabbard also declassified a lightly redacted document related to Russian election interference, raising alarms at CIA headquarters.

Gabbard’s spokesperson denied she had failed to consult the CIA in both cases.

Gabbard’s nomination to be director of national intelligence drew sharp criticism from Democrats in Congress and former intelligence officials, and some Republican lawmakers grilled her over past statements during her confirmation hearings.

Nearly 100 former diplomats, national security officials and intelligence officials who served under both Republican and Democratic presidents wrote to Senate leaders expressing alarm at Gabbard’s nomination.

Gabbard’s critics accused her of making sympathetic statements about U.S. adversaries, including Russia and the former Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad. In 2017, Gabbard made an unannounced trip to Syria to meet Assad, the country’s authoritarian leader. The trip sparked bipartisan criticism.

But Gabbard defended her statements and her trip to Syria, saying she was being attacked by a war-mongering establishment that could not tolerate her views.

Gabbard was confirmed in a narrow party-line vote, 52-48, with Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the former Republican majority leader, casting the only no vote from the GOP caucus.