An intelligence community watchdog has handed over a highly classified whistleblower complaint that includes an allegation of wrongdoing by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard to top congressional leaders, following months of delay tied to classification disputes, a government shutdown, and leadership turnover at Gabbard’s office, CBS News has learned.
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In a Feb. 2 letter to the leaders of the House and Senate intelligence committees, intelligence community Inspector General Christopher Fox said he received final approval on Jan. 30 from Gabbard to share the material with a tight circle of lawmakers. The complaint had originally been filed eight months earlier, on May 21, 2025.
According to Fox’s letter, which was labeled as approved for public release on Feb. 3 and obtained by CBS News, the complaint was “administratively closed” by the intelligence community Inspector General’s office in June 2025, under prior leadership, and no further investigative steps were taken – a fact Fox said undercut notions that the matter was an “urgent concern” requiring prompt congressional notification.
“[I]f the same or similar matter came before me today, I would likely determine that the allegations do not meet the statutory definition of ‘urgent concern,'” Fox wrote.
Fox hand-carried the highly classified complaint to Congress on Monday evening, according to a spokesperson for his office. During that engagement, several members and staff of the Gang of Eight — the small group of congressional leaders who oversee the intelligence community — reviewed the complaint on a “read-and-return” basis. They also received copies of former Acting intelligence community Inspector General Tamara Johnson’s original and supplemental determination memos, the spokesperson said.
The whistleblower complaint, filed last May by an intelligence community employee, alleged that a highly classified report was deliberately limited in distribution for political reasons. It also alleged that an intelligence agency’s legal office failed to refer a potential crime to the Justice Department, again for political reasons, according to Fox’s letter.
The handover of the complaint comes one day after public news reports revealed its existence, first detailed by The Wall Street Journal. News of the holdup sparked immediate questions about whether political considerations delayed action and sidestepped oversight of a legally protected whistleblower complaint involving the nation’s top intelligence official.
In a statement, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rick Crawford, an Arkansas Republican, said he and Ranking Member Jim Himes had, along with staff, reviewed the complaint.
“After doing so, I concur with the conclusion that the Biden-era IC IG, Tamara Johnson, reached regarding the non-credible nature of the complaint and the re-review that the current IC IG, Chris Fox, conducted, reaching the same conclusion,” Crawford said. “The ensuing media firestorm—fed by speculation and little fact—was an attempt to smear Director Gabbard and the Trump Administration.”
Speaking earlier in the day to the press, Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chairman Mark Warner said he would view the complaint “imminently” and criticized Gabbard for the months-long delay.
Rachel Cohen, a spokesperson for Warner’s office, added, “This timeline makes unmistakably clear that Director Gabbard does not understand the basic obligations of her role – the predictable result of placing someone out of her depth in one of the nation’s most sensitive positions.”
“During her confirmation hearing, Director Gabbard pledged under oath to protect whistleblowers and respect Congress’s oversight role, commitments that come with this office whether she understands them or not,” she said.
Spokespeople for Himes and Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Tom Cotton declined to comment.
Fox, who was nominated by President Trump and previously served as an aide to Gabbard, was narrowly confirmed by the Republican-controlled Senate to his role in a 51-47 vote split along party lines in late October. His predecessor, Tamara Johnson, was a career official who had served as the intelligence community acting inspector general in an interim role during the Biden administration. She is still employed by the inspector general’s office.
At the time the complaint was submitted, Johnson determined that the complaint met the legal definition of an “urgent concern” if the allegations were true, but said she could not determine whether they were credible.
That determination gave the whistleblower the right under federal law to take the complaint directly to Congress.
Three days later, after receiving additional information, Johnson issued a follow-up memo concluding that the first allegation was not credible and that she still could not assess the second. (The later finding did not change the whistleblower’s legal right to notify Congress.)
According to the timeline Fox set forth in the letter, the complaint sat for months while his office sought clearance for legal officials within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to view the highly classified material. Other reasons for the delay, he wrote, included what he called “complexity in the classification,” a 43-day government shutdown that began Oct 1, 2025, and leadership changes at ODNI, including the confirmation of a new general counsel.
After gaining access to the complaint in late October, Fox said he was held up by clearance issues from discussing it with ODNI’s top lawyer, Jack Dever, who was unable to view the complaint until Dec. 1.
On Dec. 4, Fox and Dever raised the issue directly with Gabbard. According to the letter, Gabbard said at the time that she had not previously been told that clearance to share the complaint with Congress was pending, but would provide it as soon as possible. Later that day, Dever indicated the guidance was forthcoming, “pending a review by the White House Counsel for a potential assertion of executive privilege.”
Almost two months later, on Jan. 30, the DNI’s security guidance came through, according to Fox’s letter.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Fox stressed that the intelligence underlying the complaint was exceptionally sensitive. He said only one previous whistleblower case, in 2020, required such tightly controlled delivery to Congress, and that the information at issue would normally be shared only through oral briefings to senior congressional leaders.
On Tuesday, before news emerged that the complaint had been handed over, the whistleblower’s attorney, Andrew Bakaj, told CBS News ODNI had been withholding it from Congress without explanation.
“If this was challenging initially to get to members of congress, all that had to be done was somebody picking up the phone, alerting the Hill that, ‘Hey, we got something that’s coming your way. We’re trying to figure out how to get it to you because of, you know, some complexities.'”
“But the process can move. It does move. It does not take eight months to get something like this to the Hill,” he said.
Read the full letter here:
