Tulsi Gabbard Sends Cease and Desist Letters to Keith Olbermann, Mitt Romney
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Former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) sent cease and desist letters on Wednesday to former MSNBC anchor Keith Olbermann and Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT), both of whom have criticized Gabbard for shilling for Russia during its invasion of Ukraine.
The letter to Olbermann surrounded a March 14 tweet he posted in response to a video showing The View calling for the Department of Justice to investigate Gabbard and Fox News host Tucker Carlson for “shilling for [Russian President Vladimir] Putin.”
They are Russian Assets and there is a war. There’s a case for detaining them militarily. Trials are a sign of good faith and patience on the part of democracy.
— Keith Olbermann (@KeithOlbermann) March 14, 2022
The letter called Olbermann’s tweet “false and defamatory” and defended Gabbard’s service in the U.S. Army.
“After serving in elected office at the state and local levels, Representative Gabbard was elected to the United States Congress at the age of thirty-one. Representative Gabbard served on the Armed Services, Homeland Security, and Foreign Affairs Committees,” stated the letter by conservative lawyer Harmeet Dhillon. “Representative Gabbard continues to serve the United States in uniform as a lieutenant colonel in the 351st Civil Affairs Command, a unit of the United States Army Reserve. Thus, she has skin in the game when it comes to matters of foreign policy and war.”
The letter also said:
Representative Gabbard hereby demands that you immediately cease and desist from making false statements of the type discussed above, including, but not limited to, that Representative Gabbard engaged in treasonous conduct of any kind, to any third parties, and by any means, including verbally, in writing, on social media or otherwise on the Internet.
We further demand that you retract/takedown all such statements you have made about Representative Gabbard and destroy all copies of those statements.
Romney tweeted on March 13, “Tulsi Gabbard is parroting false Russian propaganda. Her treasonous lies may well cost lives.”
Tulsi Gabbard is parroting false Russian propaganda. Her treasonous lies may well cost lives.
— Mitt Romney (@MittRomney) March 13, 2022
The letter to Romney, also written by Dhillon, also called his tweet “false and defamatory” and that “it had no surrounding context and was not part of a broader conversation.”
“You knew your claims of treason were false, or, at a minimum, you made your claims of treason with reckless disregard for the truth,” added the letter.
