LONDON, February 8. /TASS/. Special services of the United States are said to register an unusual telephone call between an individual associated with foreign intelligence and a person close to Donald Trump, The Guardian said, citing a source.
The US National Security Agency (NSA) detected such telephone call as early as last spring, the newspaper said in its article. However, when US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard received such information, she did not distribute it but handed over directly to US President’s chief of staff Susie Wiles, The Guardian noted, citing a whistleblower’s attorney.
Then Gabbard instructed NSA not to publish its report and send all the papers on that case directly to her, the UK news outlet said.
The whistleblower filed a formal complaint against Gabbard’s actions last May, his attorney said. The article at the same time neither contains the name of the person close to the US leader nor any indication about intelligence of the country such individual might represent.
Gabbard said on the X on Saturday that allegations that she had concealed the complaint for eight months in a safe were false and groundless.
"I am not now, nor have I ever been, in possession or control of the Whistleblower’s complaint, so I obviously could not have ‘hidden’ it in a safe," she said. "The first time I saw the whistleblower complaint was 2 weeks ago when I had to review it to provide guidance on how it should be securely shared with Congress," Gabbard stressed.
" Biden-era IC Inspector General Tamara Johnson was in possession of and responsible for securing the complaint for months," she added.