WASHINGTON — Tulsi Gabbard is resigning as President Donald Trump’s director of national intelligence, according to a resignation letter she posted on X.
In the letter, Gabbard thanked Trump for the opportunity to lead the Office of the Director of National Intelligence during the past year and a half. She said her husband’s recent diagnosis with a rare form of bone cancer prompted her decision to step down.
Trump confirmed the resignation in a post on Truth Social, saying Gabbard would leave the administration on June 30. He announced that Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence Aaron Lukas would serve in the role on an acting basis.
The resignation comes one week after a dispute involving claims by U.S. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida that the CIA had raided Gabbard’s office and seized files related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and Project MKUltra.
Luna posted on X that her office was issuing a preservation notice seeking the return of documents connected to the assassinations of Kennedy, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., as well as records tied to MKUltra, a Cold War-era CIA mind-control program. Luna also referenced testimony before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee alleging the CIA had retrieved dozens of boxes of files being processed for declassification by Gabbard’s office.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence later denied the claims. Olivia Coleman, press secretary for the ODNI, said reports of a CIA raid on Gabbard’s office were false. Luna subsequently deleted her original post referencing the alleged raid.
President Trump had previously directed the national intelligence director and attorney general to coordinate the release of remaining federal records tied to the assassinations of Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy and King. More than 63,000 pages related to the Kennedy assassination were released earlier this year.
Gabbard, a former Democratic congresswoman from Hawaii, served in the U.S. House from 2013 to 2021 and launched a presidential campaign in 2020. A former member of the Hawaii National Guard, she served in Iraq, shaping her anti-interventionist foreign policy views.
After leaving Congress, Gabbard broke with the Democratic Party and later endorsed Trump, citing his promises to reduce U.S. military involvement abroad. Her foreign policy views at times diverged from administration actions involving Iran and Venezuela.
Her tenure as director of national intelligence also drew scrutiny over personnel changes at the National Intelligence Council and her appearance at an FBI raid on an election center in Georgia. Gabbard frequently said she sought to end what she described as the politicization of the intelligence community.
