Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard installed one of her top advisers to a position within the office of the inspector general of the intelligence community, according to two U.S. officials familiar with the matter. The move potentially compromises the integrity of the independent watchdog office while it is investigating the use of the Signal messaging app by top government officials to discuss classified details of a pending U.S. military strike against the Houthis in March.
Gabbard placed top adviser inside the ODNI’s watchdog office, officials say
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard installed one of her top advisers within the office of the inspector general of the intelligence community, compromising the watchdog office’s integrity, officials and lawmakers say.
Updated
June 5, 2025
The adviser, Dennis Kirk, was placed within the watchdog office on May 9, but reports to the DNI, according to one of the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the matter’s sensitivity.
Rep. Stephen F. Lynch (D-Massachusetts), the leading Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, sent a letter to acting intelligence community inspector general Tamara A. Johnson on Thursday, demanding information about the appointment of Kirk, who was an adviser in the Office of Personnel Management during President Donald Trump’s first term and co-author of a Project 2025 chapter on the federal workforce.
Lynch said the Oversight Committee was informed of the appointment by the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency (CIGIE), a group made up of government watchdogs.
“The appointment of a highly partisan advocate for prioritizing personal loyalty to President Trump above independence and professionalism in the federal government — and one who apparently answers to DNI Gabbard rather than to you — in a senior role within [the intelligence community inspector general’s office] raises troubling questions about the independence of the IC IG and whether there exists a need for Congress to strengthen protections for the IC IG’s independence,” Lynch wrote to Johnson.
Gabbard’s office in turn accused the intelligence community inspector general of politicization.
In a statement to The Washington Post, Gabbard’s press secretary, Olivia Coleman, accused the intelligence community inspector general of failing to fulfill “the responsibility to be an independent organization unbeholden to partisan interests.”
Coleman said that Kirk was assigned to the watchdog office as part of the transition team and found “evidence of overwhelming and intentional politicization by the current IC IG team.”
The office’s leadership, she said, has “bucked President Trump’s directives” regarding diversity, equity and inclusion, “slow-walked responses to Congressional Republicans while prioritizing responding to Democrats, abused taxpayer dollars for personal purposes, and created a workplace environment filled with politically motivated action,” she said. “This is unacceptable on all fronts, and the DNI is taking action to ensure the IG office is focused on fulfilling its mission.”
Johnson did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
The latest apparent political installation in the intelligence community inspector general’s office comes amid broader concerns about the independence of government watchdogs. Trump purged most inspectors general at Cabinet-level agencies in January, and in recent weeks has nominated six new inspectors general, including three with clearly partisan backgrounds.
“Having a senior official placed in any inspector general’s office who reports to the agency head, in this case DNI, would undermine the entire construct of independence that is integral to the IG’s oversight mission,” said Mark Greenblatt, a former Trump-appointed Interior Department inspector general and former chairman of CIGIE.
Lynch, who is the acting leading Democrat on the committee after Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Virginia) died last month, raised urgent concern about the independence of the office’s ongoing investigation into the Signal chat between Trump’s top national security officials planning an air attack on Yemen, and which accidentally included a prominent journalist. Connolly had requested that Johnson launch an investigation into the use of the commercial messaging app in military operations in April.
“The purported appointment of the IC IG ‘senior adviser’ heightens existing concerns about politicization and improper conduct at ODNI, including the subordination of competence and accountability at the agency to political fealty to President Trump,” Lynch wrote.
Lynch referred to Gabbard recently removing veteran senior intelligence analysts for apparently political reasons. Last month, Gabbard fired the two top officials at the National Intelligence Council after the release of a declassified memo contradicted Trump’s national security justification for deporting alleged Venezuelan gang members without due process. It later emerged that a top Gabbard aide, Joe Kent, had asked for the intelligence analysis to be rewritten because it undercut the White House assertion that the Venezuelan government was directing the gang, Tren de Aragua.
The intelligence community inspector general was set up by statute in 2010 to provide independent oversight over the now 18 agencies in the intelligence community.
The position rose to prominence during Trump’s first term when, in September 2019, intelligence community Inspector General Michael Atkinson alerted Congress to a whistleblower complaint about Trump. The complaint, lodged by an intelligence community official, arose from a call in which Trump pressed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate his presumptive rival for the 2020 presidency, Joe Biden, and his son Hunter Biden.
News of the whistleblower complaint leaked, and ultimately led the White House to publicly release the complaint and the transcript of what Trump described as a “perfect” call.
The resulting firestorm over the phone call led to Trump’s first impeachment in December 2019. Trump was acquitted by the Senate in January 2020.
In April 2020, Trump notified Congress that he had dismissed Atkinson, saying he had done a “terrible job.”
Alice Crites contributed to this report.