{"id":211453,"date":"2026-05-23T05:37:47","date_gmt":"2026-05-23T05:37:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/tulsi-gabbard-resigns-as-director-of-national-intelligence-nbc-news\/"},"modified":"2026-05-23T05:37:47","modified_gmt":"2026-05-23T05:37:47","slug":"tulsi-gabbard-resigns-as-director-of-national-intelligence-nbc-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/tulsi-gabbard-resigns-as-director-of-national-intelligence-nbc-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Tulsi Gabbard resigns as director of national intelligence – NBC News"},"content":{"rendered":"

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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\u2019s cancer diagnosis.
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In her letter, which she posted on X<\/a>, Gabbard said that her husband, Abraham Williams, was diagnosed with a serious and rare form of bone cancer.
\u201cAt this time, I must step away from public service to be by his side and fully support him through this battle,\u201d she wrote. She said her last day would be June 30.
Trump said on Truth Social<\/a> that Gabbard has done \u201can incredible job, and we will miss her\u201d and said he had no doubt her husband would \u201csoon be better than ever.\u201d
The former Democratic congresswoman, who broke with her party to endorse Trump for president in 2024, never made it into the president\u2019s inner circle.
Gabbard had clashed with her CIA counterpart, John Ratcliffe<\/a>, 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\u2019t ousted like former Attorney General Pam Bondi<\/a> or former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem<\/a>. She is the fourth Cabinet member \u2014 all women \u2014 to leave Trump\u2019s administration, including former Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer<\/a>, who resigned amid an investigation into potential misconduct.
Fox News was first to report<\/a> Gabbard\u2019s resignation.
\u201cWhile we have made significant progress,\u201d Gabbard wrote to Trump, \u201cI recognize there is still important work to be done.\u201d
Gabbard posted her letter Friday afternoon on X<\/a>, writing that it had been \u201ca profound honor\u201d 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\u2019s decision to go to war with Iran, unlike other Cabinet officials, raised fresh questions about whether Trump would keep her \u2014 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 \u201cimminent threat.\u201d
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\u2019s 2024 campaign, Gabbard described herself as a fierce opponent of what she called America\u2019s misguided military interventions overseas, including the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and U.S. assistance for rebels in Libya and Syria.
During Trump\u2019s 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\u2019s nuclear work in return for an easing of sanctions.
In June, Gabbard appeared at odds with the president\u2019s statements in the run-up to U.S. airstrikes on Iran\u2019s nuclear sites. Trump dismissed her testimony in March that intelligence showed Iran had not revived a nuclear weapons program, saying: \u201cI don\u2019t care what she said. I think they were very close to having one.\u201d
In August, Gabbard blindsided CIA officials<\/a> 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\u2019s 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\u2019s spokesperson denied she had failed to consult the CIA in both cases.
Gabbard\u2019s 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\u2019s nomination.
Gabbard\u2019s 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\u2019s authoritarian leader. The trip sparked bipartisan criticism<\/a>.
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.
Dan De Luce\u00a0is a reporter for the NBC News Investigative Unit.\u00a0
Garrett Haake is NBC News' senior White House correspondent.
Chief Justice and National Affairs Correspondent
© 2026 NBCUniversal Media, LLC<\/p>\n

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