'She lied to us': Ex-Gabbard staffers speak out about 'insane' meeting with Syrian dictator

21 January

New details are emerging about former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) — who President Donald Trump has nominated to be the next director of national intelligence — and her controversial 2017 trip to Syria, where she met with now-deposed dictator Bashar al-Assad.

The Washington Post obtained records form the trip and spoke with several of Gabbard's former staffers, who say they were caught off-guard about not only the impromptu meeting itself, but how long it was. The congresswoman's itinerary described the trip as a "fact-finding mission" in which she intended to speak with "religious leaders, refugees and other civilians" in both Lebanon and Syria. However, Gabbard surprised aides when she met with Assad not once, but twice — including the morning after she landed. One former staffer said the meeting was “somewhere around 3 hours. I remember thinking, ‘That’s insane.’ What do you talk about for three hours in a supposed unplanned meeting?”

“Looking back, I will go to the grave believing that she lied to us," the former staffer told the Post. "Her claim is that it just sort of happened. How did you just happen to meet with the leader of [a police state] not once, but twice?”

Gabbard was first invited on the all-expenses-paid Syria shortly before the 2016 election by Cleveland-based activist Bassam Khawam, who the Post said was "affiliated with pro-Assad groups." The invitation itself said Gabbard would be meeting with the Syrian foreign minister along with "other prominent political dignitaries" without mentioning Assad's name. Gabbard paid back roughly $9,000, and argued that because she reimbursed the cost of the trip she was no longer required to disclose "the travel paid by the Syrian and Lebanese governments."

Internal communications from the trip show that staffers were scrambling to come up with an explanation to include in mandatory ethics filings. A former press secretary wrote in one email: "From an outside perspective [it] will look like you were greeted by President Assad upon arrival and that it was pre-planned. This contradicts what we have said before that the meeting was not planned."

“We absolutely need a solid answer to that question,” an unnamed campaign consultant wrote in response. “Including a specific answer to whether or not yall left Lebanon earlier than expected to get to the meeting with Assad that wasn’t originally planned (im hoping that’s a yes).”

Assad was deposed by rebel forces in early December of 2024, and he was granted asylum by Russian President Vladimir Putin after rebels reached Damascus (Syria's capital city). The former Syrian dictator is presumed to have killed hundreds of thousands of civilians, and was notorious for his heavy-handed response to "Arab Spring" protests and for jailing political dissidents in horrific conditions.

Click here to read the Post's report in full (subscription required).

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