Tulsi Gabbard and the Pro-Kremlin Belgian Businessman
Gabbard’s 2024 Vatican visit, arranged by Pierre Louvrier, a Paris-based, pro-Russia financier, triggered a TSA security alert—not her opposition to Biden-Harris
WHEN TULSI GABBARD LEARNED she had been briefly placed on a U.S. Transportation Security Administration watch list after her July 2024 trip to the Vatican, she quickly took to cable news and social media to portray herself as a victim of political retaliation for her criticism of the Joe Biden administration. Gabbard told CNN’s Dana Bash that the retaliation occurred because she had just been “on TV warning the American people” about “the dangers of a Kamala Harris presidency.” The former Democratic member of Congress from Hawaii held no political office at the time and was campaigning forTrump.
Contrary to Gabbard’s claims, evidence continues to mount that her Vatican trip triggered TSA’s heightened surveillance because it was funded and arranged by a foundation whose chairman is a Belgian businessman with multiple Russian ties and sympathies. CNN had reported in 2024 that Gabbard’s “overseas travel patterns and foreign connections triggered a government algorithm earlier this year” that resulted in additional security scrutiny measures when she travelled.
The businessman who arranged her Vatican trip has been identified as Pierre Louvrier, whom the Paris-based Intelligence Online newsletter has described as “a multi-faceted consultant … [a]ctive within Russian business circles.”
In 2014 and 2015, Louvrier reportedly attempted a venture partnership with internationally sanctioned Russian media oligarch Konstantin Malofeev, though the deal fell through after exposure in Bulgarian press, and Louvrier denies any continued interactions with Malofeev. Regardless, Louvrier has also publicly celebrated the Russian invasion of Ukraine on social media, called for expansion of the Kremlin’s 2014 Crimean annexation, and called the infamous Russian terrorist and former FSB colonel known as Igor Strelkov (real name Igor Girkin) a “contemporary hero.”
The issue arises as Gabbard fends off accusations that she illegally withheld from Congress a May 2025 whistleblower’s complaint about “an unusual phone call between two members of foreign intelligence,” intercepted by the NSA, “who discussed a person close to Donald Trump,” as the Guardian put it. On Thursday afternoon, the Wall Street Journal identified the person as Jared Kushner, a senior Trump aide and envoy to both the Middle East and Russia-Ukraine peace talks. Her direct participation in a Trump effort to overturn the results of Georgia’s 2020 election results has also drawn sharp scrutiny.
