Trump Tells Tom Llamas He Doesn’t Know Why Tulsi Gabbard Was in Georgia for FBI Raid — She Claims He Sent Her

President Donald Trump said he didn’t know why his spy chief Tulsi Gabbard was present during an FBI raid on an election office in Georgia, a contradiction of Gabbard’s own claim that she was sent there by the president himself.

Speaking to NBC Nightly News anchor Tom Llamas, in a clip dropping ahead of the full interview that will air on Super Bowl Sunday, Trump was asked about his rigged 2020 election claims and wild conspiracy theories.

When the discussion turned to Georgia, Llamas asked Trump point-blank, “Why is Tulsi Gabbard there?”

“I don’t know,” Trump replied. “But a lot of the cheating comes from, it’s international cheating.”

If true, Trump’s answer deviates from Gabbard’s own statement about her presence during the raid.

“My presence was requested by the President and executed under my broad statutory authority to coordinate, integrate, and analyze intelligence related to election security, including counter-intelligence, foreign and other malign influence and cybersecurity,” Gabbard wrote in a letter to Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) and Rep. Jim Himes (D-CT) that was obtained by Axios.

It’s part of a flurry of contradictory statements — including from Trump himself — related to the January 28 FBI operation at the Fulton County Election Hub and Operation Center just outside of Atlanta.

During a screening of Melania at the Kennedy Center on the day after the raid, Trump said Gabbard was “working very hard” to dig up election fraud related to the 2020 election.

He added: “You’re gonna see some interesting things happening. They’ve been trying to get there for a long time.”

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche has said that Gabbard is not involved in the investigation.

“Well, first of all, she wasn’t at the search,” Blanche told Laura Ingraham on Monday night. “She was in the area where the search took place. She’s not part of this investigation. She hasn’t said that. But on the other hand, she’s an expert in this space. And the president trusts her and expects her to be part of the team investigating election integrity.”

He did not elaborate on what makes Gabbard an “expert” on election integrity.

Finally, speaking at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington on Thursday, Trump claimed it was Attorney General Pam Bondi who sent Gabbard to Georgia.

“[Gabbard] took a lot of heat two days ago because she went in at Pam’s insistence,” Trump said. “She went in and looked at votes that want to be checked out from Georgia.”

Gabbard, now under intense scrutiny amid a whistleblower complaint about her conduct as DNI director, has been accused of stonewalling efforts to get the report to Congress.

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