Gabbard & Trump Lies on Venezuela Gang Exposed by Top Intelligence Report

A declassified National Intelligence Council memo shows the DNI falsely linked ties between the Venezuelan government and Tren de Aragua in her Megyn Kelly interview

A newly declassified U.S. intelligence memo directly contradicts public comments by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard about supposed links between the Venezuelan government and the Tren de Aragua criminal gang while undercutting  positions the Trump administration has repeatedly taken in the courts to justify its mass deportation of gang members.  

The memo is a crucial six page report by the National Intelligence Council that reflects the views of all 18 U.S. intelligence agencies. Released on Monday with minimal redactions in response to a Freedom of Information Act request, the memo  forcefully refutes claims by President Trump and now Gabbard that the Venezuelan government of Nicolas Maduro was directing members of the Tren de Aragua gang to migrate to the United States. Evidence to the contrary is “not credible,” the report states. 

The release of the actual NIC memo, a rare occurrence, is especially striking in light of comments last week by the DNI in which she appeared to falsely describe the report, leaving out its major conclusions and wrongly attributing a position to the FBI that it never actually took. “Pretty appalling,” Rep. James Himes, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, told SpyTalk about Gabbard’s remarks. The new release proves  “the administration is lying about what its own intelligence community believes,” he added.  

Gabbard’s interview last week on the Megyn Kelly podcast got brief attention because she used it as an opportunity to lash out at leakers in her own agency. She confirmed that she has referred three leak cases to the Justice Department and is still investigating eleven others. “That’s the goal,” she replied when asked by Kelly if she wanted the leakers criminally prosecuted, adding they were “undermining” American democracy by trying to sabotage President Trump’s policies on a range of issues. 

But the leaks that Gabbard appeared most focused on  involved reports—most prominently by the New York Times and the Washington Post— that U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that the Venezuelan government was not directing or controlling the Tren de Aragua gang as part of a policy to flood the country with its members. The issue is central to the Trump administration’s argument that the country has been subjected to a Venezuelan government-backed “invasion” or “predatory incursion,” thereby  justifying its use of wartime powers under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to mass deport alleged members of the Tren De Aragua (or TDA) gang without offering them due process hearings to determine whether they actually belong to the gang.  

 “One of the most often tactics that these leakers use is, they will take, let’s say, its a six page top secret classified document—and they will pull a line from page one and a line from page two and a line from page three— that when they put it together supports the narrative they are trying to push but is not at all reflective of the kind of conclusive analysis in that report,” Gabbard said. 

She then asserted that the media stories left out “the most important” finding of an April 6 National Intelligence Council memo that she claimed showed that the FBI had concluded that “Yes, the Maduro Venezuelan government is supporting Tren De Aragua and their criminal activities here enabled by President Biden’s four years of open borders where they very freely came in and out of the country.”

The FBI’s more supportive position of the administration was left out, Gabbard said, because reporters were “picking and choosing” selective details that were leaked from the NIC memo and were “very clearly leaving out the thing that actually supports what the president is doing.”

White House Line

It was no surprise, of course, that Gabbard would make such comments. She was clearly trying to align the positions of the intelligence agencies she oversees with the executive order signed by President Trump in March declaring that Tren de Aragua was “undertaking hostile actions” and “conducting irregular warfare” against the U.S. “both directly and at the direction, clandestine or otherwise, of the Maduro regime in Venezuela.” 

But this week, a declassified version of the NIC “sense of the community memorandum”—entitled “Venezuela: Examining Regime Ties to Tren de Aragua”—was released, in response to a Freedom of Information Act request, allowing members of the public to read it for themselves. And it turns out it was Gabbard— and not the journalists — who were selectively leaking details of the report to advance a one sided, and highly misleading,  narrative. 

“Pretty appalling,” Rep. James Himes, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, told SpyTalk. “the administration is lying about what its own intelligence community believes.”

“Maduro Regime Probably Not Directing TDA [Tren de Aragua] Activities,” reads the headline of one of the memos’s principal conclusions on its second page.

“While Venezuela’s permissive environment enables TDA to operate, the Maduro regime probably does not have a policy of cooperating with TDA and is not directing TDA movement to and operations in the United States,” the report reads. It adds that intelligence to the contrary— suggesting that Venezuelan regime leaders are “directing or enabling” TDA migration to the United States—“is not credible.” 

The memo then states— in stark opposition to Gabbard’s claims — that “FBI analysts agree with the above assessment.” 

The bureau’s analysts do believe, based on bureau and homeland security reports from last year,  that “some Venezuelan government officials facilitate TDA members’ migration from Venezuela to the United States and use members as proxies” in Latin America and the U.S. “to advance what they see as the Maduro regime’s goal of destabilizing governments and undermining public safety,” the memo says. 

But the NIC memo then includes other details that question the strength of that reporting. It states that the “limited” information suggesting a link between TDA and the Maduro regime comes from sources who could “be motivated to fabricate information.” It further notes that Venezuela intelligence, military and police services “view TDA as a security threat … and operate against it” and that Venezuelan security forces have even engaged “in armed confrontations with TDA, resulting in the killing of some TDA members.” 

The memo’s bottom line: “The IC has not observed the regime directing TDA, including to push migrants to the United States.” 

Asked about the discrepancy between Gabbard’s comments to Kelly and the actual contents of the report, Olivia Coleman, the DNI’s press secretary, dodged the issue. 

“Illegal immigrant criminals have raped, tortured and murdered Americans, and still the propaganda media continues to operate as apologists for them,” she said. “It is outrageous that as President Trump and his administration work hard every day to make America safe by deporting these violent criminals, some in the media remain intent on twisting and manipulating intelligence assessments to undermine the President’s agenda to keep the American people safe.” 

“This has nothing to do with leaks or a dishonest media,” countered Himes, the top House Democrat on intelligence issues. It’s about Gabbard “articulating something that is at odds with the institution she purports to lead.” 

Himes told SpyTalk that he first read a classified version of the NIC memo four weeks ago and he “went into a panic.” 

“I thought, holy shit, the administration is basically misleading” the public about the findings of U.S. intelligence agencies that are central to its mass deportation campaign,” Himes said. He began urging his fellow members to go into a SCIF (Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility) to read the memo. 

Now that it’s been publicly released, however, anyone can see how it pretty much undercuts positions Trump administration lawyers have repeatedly taken in court—that the country is facing a foreign government-backed invasion or incursion that permits it to invoke wartime powers under the rarely used 18th century law. Those claims are widely expected to end up in the Supreme Court shortly. 

“It was already a very weak case,” said Himes about the administration’s claims before the courts. “This obviously ends whatever credibility they had.”

But Lauren Harper of the Freedom of the Press Foundation did give Gabbard’s ODNI office credit for releasing the document in response to her group’s Freedom of Information Act request. 

“This lets the public debate the contents of the memo and makes clear that the initial reporting on the memo was accurate,” she said in an email. “It also lets the public scrutinize the government’s rationale that the leak of the memo—which is now public without any harm to national security—was so dire that it necessitated opening criminal investigations and creating new, stricter rules around leaks to the media.”