{"id":118852,"date":"2025-02-02T17:00:10","date_gmt":"2025-02-02T15:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=118852"},"modified":"2025-02-01T13:42:24","modified_gmt":"2025-02-01T11:42:24","slug":"02-09-99","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=118852","title":{"rendered":"In contentious Senate hearing, Gabbard denies meeting with Hezbollah"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>In contentious Senate hearing, Gabbard denies meeting with Hezbollah<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/h5>\n

Andrew Bernard<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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\u201cYou said you met with Shia religious figures and you didn\u2019t know who they were,\u201d said Sen. Mark Warner. \u201cI can\u2019t imagine Shia religious figures in the Bekaa valley that didn\u2019t have ties to Hezbollah.\u201d<\/strong><\/h4>\n<\/div>\n

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\nFormer U.S. congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard arrives to testify at a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on her nomination to be U.S. director of national intelligence on Capitol Hill in Washington, Jan. 30, 2025. Photo by Demetrius Freeman\/”The Washington Post” via Getty Images<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Tulsi Gabbard, the Trump administration\u2019s pick to head the U.S. intelligence community, faced scrutiny from Democratic and Republican lawmakers on Thursday about her unorthodox foreign-policy views and her meeting with former Syrian dictator Bashar Assad.<\/span><\/p>\n

Members of the the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence quizzed the former four-term Democratic congresswoman from Hawaii about her week-long, 2017 trip to Syria and Lebanon, as she seeks to become U.S. director of national intelligence.<\/span><\/p>\n

Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) asked Gabbard why she met with Syrian Grand Mufti Ahmad Badreddin Hassoun, who threatened the United States and Europe with suicide bombers in 2011 if they attacked Syria or Lebanon.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI made it a point to meet with different religious leaders, both Muslim leaders as well as various Christian and Catholic leaders who were there in the region,\u201d Gabbard testified. \u201cI did that both in Syria and in Lebanon to hear from them about what their concerns or thoughts were with regard to the war that was being raged at the time.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Gabbard said she was unaware of the grand mufti\u2019s threat until Heinrich asked her about it on Thursday.<\/span><\/p>\n

Asked by Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) if she had ever knowingly met with members of Hezbollah, Gabbard said \u201cno\u201d and called that idea an \u201cabsurd accusation.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) was skeptical that Gabbard could have avoided meeting Hezbollah-affiliated officials during her Lebanon visit.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYou said you met with Shia religious figures and you didn\u2019t know who they were,\u201d he said. \u201cI can\u2019t imagine Shia religious figures in the Bekaa Valley that didn\u2019t have ties to Hezbollah.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Gabbard\u2019s nomination is expected to be one of the more difficult of a Trump pick to get through Senate confirmation, with several Republicans on the committee pressing her on her views of Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor who leaked a trove of U.S. classified documents before fleeing to Russia, where he became a citizen in 2022.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we find that Americans\u2014whether private citizens or contractors or uniformed personnel\u2014have shared sensitive designs about military technology or plans to a foreign government, however well-intentioned, we rightfully throw the book at them. Snowden did just that,\u201d Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.) told Gabbard. \u201cYet you have argued many times that he should be pardoned.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Gabbard declined to call Snowden a \u201ctraitor\u201d under repeated questioning from senators. She said that she believed he broke the law but had exposed illegal surveillance programs that prompted congressional reform.<\/span><\/p>\n

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In contentious Senate hearing, Gabbard denies meeting with Hezbollah Andrew Bernard \u201cYou said you met with Shia religious figures and you didn\u2019t know who they were,\u201d said Sen. Mark Warner. \u201cI can\u2019t imagine Shia religious figures in the Bekaa valley that didn\u2019t have ties to Hezbollah.\u201d . Former U.S. congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard arrives to testify […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[26,24],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118852"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=118852"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118852\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":118969,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118852\/revisions\/118969"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=118852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=118852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=118852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}