Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said she made two criminal referrals on Wednesday related to alleged leaks in the intelligence community and said a third referral is “on its way.”
In a post on the social platform X, Gabbard said the third criminal referral “includes the recent illegal leak to the Washington Post,” without elaborating on details.
“Politicization of our intelligence and leaking classified information puts our nation’s security at risk and must end,” Gabbard said in her statement. “Those who leak classified information will be found and held accountable to the fullest extent of the law.”
Gabbard said she looks forward to working with federal law enforcement to prosecute the “deep-state criminals” allegedly involved.
“These deep-state criminals leaked classified information for partisan political purposes to undermine POTUS’ agenda. I look forward to working with @TheJusticeDept and @FBI to investigate, terminate and prosecute these criminals,” she wrote.
The statement comes as Trump administration officials have sought to clamp down on leaks to journalists. Last month, Gabbard announced the Trump administration would be “aggressively pursuing” leakers, accusing them of being politically motivated.
“Unfortunately, such leaks have become commonplace with no investigation or accountability. That ends now. We know of and are aggressively pursuing recent leakers from within the Intelligence Community and will hold them accountable,” Gabbard wrote in a post last month.
Alleged leaks have plagued the Department of Defense (DOD) in recent days as well.
The Pentagon on Friday fired senior aides Dan Caldwell, Colin Carroll and Darin Selnick after the DOD opened an investigation into leaks of information to news outlets.
The three political appointees said in a joint statement Saturday that they had not been told what they were probed for and are “incredibly disappointed by the manner in which our service at the Department of Defense ended.”
“Unnamed Pentagon officials have slandered our character with baseless attacks on our way out the door,” they wrote. “All three of us served our country honorably in uniform — for two of us, this included deployments to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. And, based on our collective service, we understand the importance of information security and worked every day to protect it.”
But Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has doubled down in recent days, saying in a Tuesday interview that the former top aides could face charges at the end of the investigation into the alleged leaks.
“We’re going to investigate, and when we investigate, we’ll take it anywhere it leads,” Hegseth said in an interview with Brian Kilmeade on Fox News’s “Fox & Friends,” which Hegseth formerly co-hosted on the weekends.
“When that evidence is gathered sufficiently — and this has all happened very quickly — it will be handed over to DOJ [the Department of Justice], and those people will be prosecuted, if necessary,” the secretary added.
