Tulsi Gabbard has resigned from her role as Director of National Intelligence in President Donald Trump’s administration, citing her husband’s diagnosis with an “extremely rare form of bone cancer,” according to a resignation letter obtained by Fox News Digital.
Gabbard informed President Trump of her decision during a meeting in the Oval Office on Friday. Her final day leading the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) is expected to be June 30.
“My husband, Abraham, has recently been diagnosed with an extremely rare form of bone cancer,” Gabbard wrote in her resignation letter. “At this time, I must step away from public service to be by his side and fully support him through this battle.”
However, a person familiar with the matter told news agency Reuters that the White House forced Gabbard to resign.
Gabbard described her husband as “my rock” throughout their 11 years of marriage and said his “strength and love” had sustained her through military deployment, political campaigns and her tenure as DNI. She said she could not “in good conscience” ask him to face the illness alone while she continued in the demanding position.
According to Fox News, in her resignation letter, Gabbard thanked Trump for entrusting her with the intelligence post and said she was “deeply grateful” for the opportunity to lead the ODNI for the last year and a half. She also pledged to ensure a “smooth and thorough transition” before leaving office.
Her resignation brings to an end a consequential and often turbulent tenure during which she pushed major changes across the US intelligence community. According to the report, Gabbard led efforts to reduce the agency’s size, cut costs by more than $700 million annually, dismantle diversity, equity and inclusion programmes, and declassify more than half a million pages of government records.
The declassified records included files related to the Trump-Russia investigation, the assassinations of John F Kennedy and Robert F Kennedy, and documents linked to the origins of the “Crossfire Hurricane” probe into Russia’s alleged interference in the 2016 US election.
Source: India Today
