Tulsi Gabbard Resigns as DNI to Support Husband During Cancer Treatment
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard is resigning from her role in the Trump administration next month to support her husband, who was recently diagnosed with “an extremely rare form of bone cancer.”
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Gabbard, whose last day as DNI will be June 30, handed in her resignation on Friday.
Gabbard tells President Trump in her resignation letter, first obtained by Fox News, that she is “deeply grateful for the trust you placed in me and for the opportunity to lead the Office of the Director of National Intelligence for the last year and a half.”
She shared her husband Abraham’s diagnosis and says he “faces major challenges in the coming weeks and months.”
“At this time, I must step away from public service to be by his side and fully support him through this battle,” she said, adding that her husband “has been my rock throughout our eleven years of marriage — standing steadfast through my deployment to East Africa on a Joint Special Operations mission, multiple political campaigns and now my service in this role.”
“His strength and love have sustained me through every challenge,” she added. “I cannot in good conscience ask him to face this fight alone while I continue in this demanding and time-consuming position.”
She went on to point to “significant progress” made in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence under her leadership, including “advancing unprecedented transparency and restoring integrity to the intelligence community,” but said there is “still important work to be done” and vowed to be “fully committed to ensuring a smooth and thorough transition over the coming weeks so that you and your team experience no disruption in leadership or momentum.”
Gabbard is the fourth Trump Cabinet member to exit the administration in recent months, following the firings of both Attorney General Pam Bondi and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, and the resignation of Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer.
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Gabbard’s exit comes amid speculation that she had been sidelined within the administration after she found herself at odds with the president over the war in Iran.
The outgoing DNI, a Democrat-turned-Republican who has a more anti-war stance, publicly contradicted Trump and his more hawkish administration on several claims about the war in Iran. She testified before Congress that Iran had made no efforts to rebuild its nuclear enrichment capabilities after earlier strikes from the U.S. and Israel. But Trump had rationalized his attack on Iran by saying that the regime, and its nuclear capabilities, posed an imminent threat.
Gabbard said, however, that only the president was at liberty to legally determine what poses an “imminent threat” in regards to military actions.
She further assessed that the Iranian regime was degraded but intact after the more recent attacks from the U.S. and Israel, whereas other Trump officials said the regime had been completely obliterated.
Still, during her tenure, she was lauded by Trump’s base for working to declassify more than half a million pages of government records related to a number of hot button issues, including the Trump-Russia investigation and the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy.
Trump said Friday that Gabbard’s deputy, Aaron Lukas, would soon step in as acting director of national intelligence.
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“Tulsi has done an incredible job, and we will miss her,” the president wrote.
