Former Trump advisor-turned-foe John Bolton called on the FBI to conduct an investigation into former House members Tulsi Gabbard and Matt Gaetz before their Senate confirmation hearings for their nominated Cabinet positions.
President-elect Donald Trump nominated Gabbard for Director of National Intelligence and Gaetz for attorney general. Both nominees will already be subjected to FBI background checks, a Senate hearing, and must fill out financial disclosure forms and a questionnaire. However, Bolton asserted during an interview with NewsNation that a full-scale FBI investigation must occur in order to warn off foreign adversaries.
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Bolton said that since Gabbard had espoused Russian propaganda in the past, she is a “serious threat to our national security.”
“I don’t think either she or Matt Gaetz ought to have a confirmation hearing until they have both had full-field FBI investigations,” Bolton told anchor Blake Burman. “And then I think the Chinese would say, ‘Maybe they are serious.’”
Bolton claimed that Trump’s appointment of Gabbard as the Director of National Intelligence shows that “we have lost our mind when it comes to collecting intelligence.”
The former Democratic congresswoman previously faced criticism for meeting with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad whose regime is backed by Russia and Syria.
“It’s not an indication that the administration is serious about one of the most important aspects of dealing with a threat like China, which is intelligence,” Bolton said.
Bolton also criticized Gabbard for a January 2020 interview she did in which she shared her concerns over the Trump-directed assassination of Qassem Soleimani, the former head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Quds Force. Gabbard claimed that it was an “illegal and unconstitutional act of war that had been carried out under President Trump’s orders.”
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“So that’s the kind of person that we’re going to put in charge of our overall intelligence community?” Bolton said.
Bolton also said that Gaetz, who resigned from the chamber on Wednesday after being chosen for attorney general, is leading the score as the worst Cabinet appointment in recent history.