ATLANTA — As questions remain about why Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard was involved in the raid on the Fulton County Election Hub, President Donald Trump says she was there after being asked by U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi.
Trump made the revelation as he spoke Thursday morning at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, DC.
“She took a lot of heat two days ago because she went in at Pam’s insistence, she went in and she looked at votes that want to be checked out from Georgia. They say, why is she doing it, right, Pam? Why is she doing it? Because Pam wanted her to do it,” Trump said.
The comments came just hours after Trump was asked in a sit-down interview by NBC News about why Gabbard was there, and he said he wasn’t sure.
“I don’t know,” Trump said, even though Gabbard’s office told ABC News that Trump ordered her to be there.
Gabbard, who attended the prayer breakfast along with Bondi, has given Congress a different account.
In a letter obtained by ABC News and sent Monday to Sen. Mark Warner and Rep. Jim Himes, the top Democrats on the Senate and House Intelligence Committees, respectively, Gabbard framed her involvement as part of what she described as her job to ensure U.S. election security.
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“My presence was requested by the President and executed under my broad statutory authority to coordinate, integrate, and analyze intelligence related to election security, including counterintelligence (CI), foreign and other malign influence and cybersecurity,” she wrote.
Channel 2 Action News was there on Jan. 28, as FBI agents raided the election hub and took hundreds of boxes of election records, which included voter rolls, ballots, and more.
On Thursday, Channel 2 Action News obtained body cam video from the Fulton County Police Department as officers were called to the hub as FBI agents served their search warrant.
The video, obtained through an open records request, documents the confusion that occurred when agents realized their initial search warrant did not include the correct location for 2020 election records.
While the operation was professional, the video showed significant confusion among local leaders and election workers who received no official notice before the agents arrived at the facility.
The footage revealed that the initial search warrant was incorrect and required a judge’s signature for an additional location because it did not include where the 2020 ballots were actually stored.
Fulton County Elections Supervisor Nadine Williams was present during the operation and expressed surprise at the arrival of federal agents.
“So basically, they just showed up? They just showed up and they said they had a warrant,” Williams said at the time.
Williams later stated that her staff cooperated with the agents once the situation was clarified.
“The staff was concerned,” Williams said. “We had nothing to hide. Nothing had been destroyed. We just wanted to make sure that the people that were representing the FBI were legitimate and they were doing a legitimate process.”
Investigators are going ballot by ballot, searching for any irregularities, sources told ABC News. Fulton County officials have demanded that those materials be returned.
Trump has repeatedly made baseless claims that there was voter fraud in the 2020 election, specifically in Georgia, that contributed to his election loss to Biden. He also has repeated claims, without evidence, that China and other foreign adversaries were involved in the alleged fraud.
The probe and Gabbard’s involvement have come under heavy scrutiny on Capitol Hill by Democrats who have questioned DNI’s authority over the matter.
Federal law describes the DNI as a person to “designate and oversee a National Counterintelligence Officer within the National Counterintelligence and Security Center to lead, manage, and coordinate counterintelligence matters related to election security,” including any risks by foreign entities.
ABC News contributed to this article.
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