WASHINGTON — National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard rebuked Democratic lawmakers and others who expressed alarm over her participation in an FBI raid of a Georgia county election office, saying that President Donald Trump had asked her to be there.

Criticizing what she called “blatantly false and slanderous accusations” by members of Congress and the media, Gabbard said on social media that her office would “continue to take action under my statutory authorities to secure our nation and ensure the integrity of our elections.”

She attached a four-page letter to Senator Mark Warner of Virginia and Representative Jim Himes of Connecticut, the ranking Democrats on the House and Senate intelligence committees.

In the letter, she told them that her presence at the raid in the Atlanta area last week had been “requested by the president.” She said she was acting under her power to “coordinate, integrate and analyze intelligence related to election security.”

The FBI raided the Fulton County elections center near Atlanta on Jan. 28 to seize voting records and other data from the 2020 election, which Joe Biden won. Trump has been fixated on his defeat in that race, continuing to assert unsubstantiated claims of fraud dismissed by election officials, the courts, and some of his former aides years ago.

Himes and Warner said last week in a letter to Gabbard that “the intelligence community should be focused on foreign threats and, as you yourself have testified, when those intelligence authorities are turned inwards the results can be devastating” for Americans’ privacy and civil liberties.

The DNI’s role was established to coordinate intelligence across the country’s spy agencies and traditionally has been focused on American interests abroad and threats from overseas.

Gabbard added in her letter that she “had not seen the warrant or the evidence of probable cause” that the Justice Department had submitted to a court as part of its inquiry.

Although the Trump administration defended Gabbard’s role in the Georgia operation, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, in an interview with Fox News, appeared to play it down.

“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,” Blanche said.

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With assistance from Josh Wingrove.

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