Tulsi Gabbard asked the Justice Department on April 15, 2026, to investigate two former government officials who played central roles in President Donald Trump’s first impeachment inquiry. A spokesperson for Gabbard’s office confirmed that she drafted criminal referrals for a whistleblower and a former intelligence community watchdog, though the office did not say what crimes, if any, were alleged.
The decision now sits with prosecutors, who can decide whether a referral becomes a criminal investigation. That makes Gabbard’s move less a completed legal step than a political and institutional challenge aimed at people whose work helped drive one of the most consequential episodes of Trump’s first term.
Gabbard has spent the week attacking how former Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson handled the 2019 whistleblower complaint and releasing a trove of documents tied to him. On Monday, she wrote on X that “deep state actors” in the intelligence community “concocted a false narrative that Congress used to usurp the will of the American people and impeach duly-elected President @realDonaldTrump in 2019.” She also said Atkinson relied on “second-hand evidence.”
The whistleblower’s complaint said it had received an “urgent concern” about Trump’s request that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy investigate former Vice President Joe Biden. It also raised concerns about how records of a Trump-Zelenskyy phone call were handled and about Rudy Giuliani’s role in the U.S. relationship with Ukraine. In the complaint, the whistleblower wrote, “I have received information from multiple U.S. Government officials that the President of the United States is using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election,” and added, “This interference includes, among other things, pressuring a foreign country to investigate one of the President’s main domestic political rivals.”
Trump was impeached in the House of Representatives in late 2019 and acquitted in a Senate vote mostly along party lines in early 2020. He has long denied any wrongdoing and called his phone call with Zelenskyy “perfect.” Atkinson was fired by Trump in 2020 and later said he had “faithfully discharged” his duties and served “without regard to partisan favor or political fear.”
The new referrals echo Gabbard’s earlier campaign against the intelligence community’s handling of Trump-related investigations. Last year, her office released files about the review of Russian interference in the 2016 election and claimed they showed a “treasonous conspiracy” by Biden-era officials, with Gabbard saying she would forward the material to the Justice Department. It was never clear what criminal conduct was alleged there, and the documents released this week do not provide direct evidence of criminal wrongdoing. Still, the latest move keeps the conflict centered on the same question that shaped the impeachment fight in 2019: whether the machinery of government was used to expose misconduct, or to manufacture a case against Trump.
The referral was first reported by. Separately, federal prosecutors in Florida have subpoenaed several figures from the Russian election interference saga, including former CIA Director John Brennan, but no charges have been filed.
