Spy Agency Blocks Congress From Seeing Gabbard Whistleblower Intelligence

[Zorro]

Tulsi Gabbard’s office rejected Democratic efforts to see all the underlying material about a foreign conversation that discussed Jared Kushner

The Trump administration told Congress it won’t share with lawmakers the classified intelligence that led to a whistleblower complaint against U.S. spy chief Tulsi Gabbard, citing presidential claims of executive privilege.

In an email to Democratic congressional staffers sent on Feb. 13 and reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, Gabbard’s office said it was unable to provide the unredacted intelligence that underpinned the complaint “due to the assertion of executive privilege to portions” of the intelligence itself.

In a Tuesday letter to Gabbard, Sen. Mark Warner and Rep. Jim Himes, the top Democrats on the congressional intelligence committees, asked who asserted privilege over the intelligence report and on what basis.

The intelligence at issue was assembled in a report by the National Security Agency early last year and relates to a conversation two foreign nationals had about Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, the Journal has reported.

Senior Trump administration officials have said the claims about Kushner were demonstrably false, but declined to offer more specifics on grounds that doing so could expose a highly sensitive surveillance method.

https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/spy-agency-blocks-congress-from-seeing-gabbard-whistleblower-intelligence-1baea148?st=U83f5M&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink