Key takeaways from Tulsi Gabbard’s US Senate confirmation hearing

Tulsi Gabbard, President Donald Trump’s nominee for director of national intelligence, has faced tough questions from United States lawmakers over her past positions, including her support for whistleblower Edward Snowden.

At a confirmation hearing on Thursday, senators also grilled Gabbard over a 2017 visit to Syria, where she met with then-President Bashar al-Assad.

A former Democratic congresswoman from Hawaii, Gabbard has been outspoken against interventionist foreign policy.

She unsuccessfully ran for president in 2020, and two years later, she quit the Democratic Party, decrying it as an “elitist cabal of warmongers”.

She subsequently started campaigning for Republican candidates, including Trump.

If confirmed, Gabbard would become the chief of the US intelligence community, which is composed of 18 agencies, including the FBI and CIA. She would also brief and advise the president on security matters.

Gabbard is one of many controversial nominees Trump has appointed to key positions.But with a 53-seat majority in the 100-member Senate, Republicans are expected to confirm all of Trump’s picks.

Gabbard faced her first test as a nominee in front of sceptical lawmakers on the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday. Below are some key takeaways from the hearing:

Snowden, Snowden, Snowden

Several Democrats and even some Republicans on the panel invoked Gabbard’s past statements backing Snowden, a former National Security Agency contractor who leaked documents about mass surveillance programmes in the US government.

In 2020, a US court found that the surveillance exposed by Snowden, including collecting phone records, was illegal.