Tulsi Gabbard announced her resignation as director of national intelligence effective June 30 to care for her husband, Abraham Williams, who has been diagnosed with a rare bone cancer. The decision follows a period of intense scrutiny over her leadership and actions within the U.S. intelligence community.
Longtime Trump adviser Roger Stone characterized Gabbard’s departure as more than a personal exit, framing it as the culmination of a 16-month confrontation with “entrenched interests” in Washington. Stone described Gabbard as “a threat to many of the entrenched interests in Washington, D.C.” and noted her “extraordinarily cautious” approach.
In an interview hours before Gabbard’s announcement, Stone highlighted several actions he said made her a singular irritant. He cited Gabbard’s July 2025 release of declassified files related to the 2016 Russia investigation, which she described as evidence of a fabricated narrative against President Trump and referred to the Justice Department for possible prosecution. In April, she also sent criminal referrals tied to the 2019 Ukraine impeachment targeting former intelligence community Inspector General Michael Atkinson.
Stone further noted that Gabbard spearheaded election fraud reviews in Fulton County, Georgia, where she appeared during an FBI search warrant execution in January, and investigated the origins of COVID-19. These efforts ran through her Director’s Initiatives Group, established in April 2025 to declassify files on topics including the pandemic, JFK, MKUltra, and the Russia probe.
The group was dissolved in January after former CIA officer James Erdman III reported that the CIA had illegally monitored its personnel and obstructed its work. Stone stated that Gabbard is not done, predicting her “greatest days of public service lie ahead.”
President Trump confirmed Gabbard’s resignation on Truth Social and appointed Principal Deputy Director Aaron Lukas as acting director of national intelligence.
