Tipsheet

Why Tulsi Gabbard Fired These Top DNI Staffers

Matt Vespa
Matt Vespa  |  May 16, 2025 12:45 AM

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard wasted no time removing the cancers within her department. The intelligence community is rife with anti-Trump agents and officials who cannot be trusted. The liberal media is going to frame it as some political maneuver to control the flow of sensitive information. It’s nothing of the sort, and that’s rich coming from the mouthpiece that willingly published leaks during the first Trump administration to damage the president. That wasn’t going to happen again (via Fox News):

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has fired the top officials leading the National Intelligence Council – whom whistleblowers describe as "radically opposed to Trump" — and has moved the agency to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, or ODNI, to ensure she can block any "politicization of intelligence," Fox News Digital has learned.  

Gabbard fired Mike Collins, who was serving as the acting chair of the National Intelligence Council, and his deputy, Maria Langan-Riekhof, Tuesday, senior intelligence officials told Fox News Digital. 

Fox News Digital reached out Langan-Riekhof for comment and did not immediately hear back, and couldn't immediately find contact information for Collins.  

Collins also has whistleblower complaints against him for political bias and "deliberately undermining the incoming Trump administration," officials said.  

They added that Collins was closely associated with Michael Morrell, the former deputy director of the CIA who worked to write a public letter in 2020 claiming that Hunter Biden's laptop had "all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation," and to get signatures from top ex-intelligence officials. 

As for Langan-Reikhof, officials said she has been a "key advocate" for diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, and is someone who whistleblowers allege is "radically opposed to Trump."

Meanwhile, Gabbard is moving the National Intelligence Council from the CIA to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to "directly hold accountable any improper action and politicization of intelligence," Fox News Digital has learned. 

Many intel community leakers are "career bureaucrats that are entrenched in Washington politics," officials said. 

If you run afoul, you’re gone. Plain and simple. It’s a warning shot to the deep state: FAFO. For these two staffers, not only do they have allegations of bias from the past, but they also leaked classified information to the press regarding some memos that contradicted the claims about Tren de Aragua that provided the reasoning behind President Trump invoking the Alien Enemies Act to expedite deportations. Gabbard’s deputy chief of staff, Alexa Henning, added that they’re Obama holdovers. 

Gabbard is cleaning house, and if former CIA Director John Brennan was mad, it was the right decision. 

It's also not the first time the media has attacked Ms. Gabbard and were later forced to apologize.