Key Trump Cabinet pick previously placed on government 'watch list': report

Donald Trump’s choice of Tulsi Gabbard to be his next administration’s director of national intelligence is igniting new scrutiny after reports surfaced Friday that the former Hawaiian congresswoman was briefly placed on a government watch list.

According to CNN, Gabbard’s overseas travel patterns and foreign connections landed her on a Transportation Security Administration list, which triggers additional security screening before flights. She was quickly removed, however, after she took to social media to claim she was added to a “secret terror watchlist.”

“Gabbard has claimed she was put on the list because she had criticized then-presidential candidate Kamala Harris in an interview with Fox News — something two of the sources flatly denied had anything to do with it,” CNN reported.

“The TSA placed me on the Quiet Skies domestic terror watchlist in what I can only describe as the ultimate betrayal,” Gabbard told her followers on X in September. “The Harris-Biden regime has now labeled me a domestic terror threat. Why? They see me as a threat to their power.”

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CNN legal analyst Carrie Cordero raised doubts about those claims Friday evening, saying the TSA program that led to Gabbard being flagged uses highly technical and anonymous data to identify passengers for enhanced security measures.

“I think senators would want to know where are the places that she was, why was she traveling there, what types of activities was she engaged in with respect to maybe foreign leaders that she was talking to and what she was doing,” Cordero said during an appearance on CNN. “But the actual placement on the list, as long as she was removed promptly once it was realized who she actually was, this doesn’t strike me as anything that was intentional or politically motivated in other ways.”

Senate Republicans have expressed concerns about Gabbard's confirmation prospects, with some calling for her full FBI file.

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