President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to head the US intelligence community is likely to face tough questions during confirmation hearings, including over her meeting with Syria’s leader, Republican Senator James Lankford said.

Tulsi Gabbard, the nominee for director of national intelligence, is a Trump loyalist and former Democratic representative from Hawaii who switched parties. She’s expected to face scrutiny for comments sympathetic to Russia and a 2017 visit to Syria where she met President Bashar al-Assad. 

“We’ll have lots of questions,” Lankford said Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union. “She met with Bashar Assad. We’ll want to know what the purpose was and what the direction for that was as a member of Congress.”

Gabbard contradicted US intelligence assessments by questioning whether Assad used chemical weapons on his citizens after a visit to the country in 2017. 

In 2022, she suggested Russia’s invasion of Ukraine could have been avoided if President Joe Biden’s administration and the NATO alliance had heeded Moscow’s “legitimate security concerns.”

“We’ll want to get a chance to talk about past comments that she’s made and get them into full context,” Lankford said. 

Several of president-elect Donald Trump’s cabinet nominees have faced scrutiny – notably now-former Representative Matt Gaetz, who dropped out as nominee for attorney general after bipartisan concern over sexual misconduct allegations reached a fever pitch. 

Attention has turned to Gabbard and defense secretary nominee Pete Hegseth, who has faced sexual assault allegations he denies. The Fox News host and Army National Guard officer also has said women shouldn’t serve in combat. 

Senator Eric Schmitt, a Republican from Missouri, said he’ll vote to confirm Hegseth and Gabbard. Allegations that Gabbard is a Russian sympathizer – leveled by Democrats as well as some Republican critics of Trump’s choice – are insulting, he said.

“It’s a slur, quite frankly,” Schmitt said on NBC’s Meet the Press. “You know, there’s no evidence that she’s a asset of another country.”

Republican senators have also sought to rally behind Hegseth since a newly released police report last week revealed graphic details about a 2017 sexual encounter that Hegseth said was consensual.

Markwayne Mullin, who like Schmitt is on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said Hegseth has the qualifications to be defense secretary and signaled on Sunday he’ll support Trump’s Pentagon nominee for confirmation.

“It is clear there was nothing there” and “that there was no crime committed,” Mullin said on CNN. “And so that doesn’t prevent Pete from moving forward in this.”

US policy toward Ukraine is expected to shift under Trump, who has at times promised to end the war sparked by Russia’s full-scale invasion before he takes office in January.

US Adversaries

Representative Mike Waltz of Florida, who’s in line to be Trump’s national security adviser at the White House, said the president-elect is “incredibly concerned about the carnage” and the escalation in the war. 

“We need to bring this to a responsible end. We need to restore deterrence, restore peace and get ahead of this escalation ladder, rather than responding to it,” Waltz said on Fox News Sunday. 

He also warned US foes against thinking they could exploit the presidential transition, saying he met with Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security adviser.

“For our adversaries out there that think this is a time of opportunity, that they can play one administration off the other – they’re wrong,” Waltz said. “We are hand in glove.” 

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)