A whistleblower complaint against Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard is based on a sensitive phone conversation the U.S. intercepted in which individuals linked to a foreign government discussed a person close to President Trump, according to people familiar with the matter.
The discussion, at least in part, concerned issues related to Iran, some of the people said.
The full substance of the call, which was intercepted by the National Security Agency, couldn't be determined.
The intercepted conversation was a key catalyst for the highly classified whistleblower complaint filed by a U.S. intelligence official last May that accused Gabbard of limiting the sharing of the conversation within the U.S. intelligence community for political purposes, the people said.
The existence of the complaint was first revealed by The Wall Street Journal this week.
A spokeswoman for Gabbard didn't address questions about the substance of the complaint. "Every single action taken by DNI Gabbard was fully within her legal and statutory authority," the spokeswoman said. The representative has dismissed the allegations against Gabbard as "baseless and politically motivated," and said that the claims pertaining to Gabbard were deemed by the former acting inspector general to be not credible.
The conversation in question was difficult to assess, in part because it wasn't clear whether what was being discussed about the person close to Trump was true, some people familiar with the matter said. Foreign spies and diplomats are known at times to have conversations about others that are deliberately misleading if they believe an adversarial spy agency may be listening in.
Shortly after the intelligence was collected, Gabbard met with White House chief of staff Susie Wiles to discuss the matter, people familiar with the meeting said. The whistleblower complaint alleges that following that meeting, Gabbard worked to limit the sharing of the intelligence concerning the call, those people said.
The White House didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. The New York Times earlier Saturday reported on contours of the foreign-intelligence conversation that sparked the whistleblower complaint.
The developments come as tensions between the U.S. and Iran continue to climb. On Tuesday the U.S. shot down an Iranian drone aimed at the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, and a U.S.-flagged ship outran an attempt by armed Iranian gunboats to force it to stop. Senior U.S. and Iranian officials met Friday to discuss Tehran's nuclear ambitions, and both sides signaled a willingness to keep working toward a diplomatic solution that could head off an American strike.
The Journal reported on Monday that the complaint against Gabbard was filed with the intelligence community's inspector general, but had stalled for eight months within Gabbard's office. Her office hadn't shared it with Congress until this week, after the Journal's report.
In a memo sent to lawmakers and posted online by Gabbard's office this week, the intelligence community inspector general, Chris Fox, wrote that the whistleblower had alleged that Gabbard had restricted the sharing of a specific, highly classified intelligence report, for political purposes.
A spokeswoman for Gabbard's office has dismissed the allegations against Gabbard as "baseless and politically motivated," and said that the claims pertaining to Gabbard were deemed by the former acting inspector general to be not credible.
Gabbard's handling of the complaint has fanned criticism from Democrats on Capitol Hill, who have accused Gabbard of using her job to focus on Trump's personal priorities rather than national security threats. In a post on X Saturday, Gabbard said that Democrats and the media were working to use the whistleblower complaint to "spread lies and baseless accusations" about her for political gain.