Trump whisperer Laura Loomer slams White House as in ‘crisis’ after Tulsi Gabbard ‘guru’ report
Laura Loomer, an informal adviser to President Donald Trump, has blasted his administration for a “lack of vetting” following a damning report alleging that Tulsi Gabbard was being advised for years by the reclusive guru of a spiritual movement while in Congress.
Gabbard served her final day as Trump’s Director of National Intelligence on Thursday, two days before The Washington Post expose was published, to spend more time with her husband, who has been diagnosed with a rare form of bone cancer.
The report alleges that Chris Butler, the leader of the Science of Identity Foundation group in which Gabbard was raised in Hawaii, was behind hundreds of memos containing policy advice and talking points on everything from Syria to the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.
Although the memos cited in the report spanned 2011-2017 and predate Gabbard’s tenure overseeing America’s intelligence agencies, they have led critics — including Trump allies — to question how she was later appointed to the top job.
“The lack of vetting inside the Trump administration is truly a crisis,” Loomer reacted to the report Monday in a post on X.
“I have been warning for over a year that not enough vetting was done on some of the terrible nominees who were forced onto President Trump by people who lie to him daily and hide opposition research from him,” she wrote.
Loomer claimed that Gabbard was “forced” on Trump by former supporter-turned-critic Tucker Carlson and one of the president’s confidantes, Roger Stone. Stone characterized The Post’s report as “bulls***.”
The newspaper could not substantiate whether Gabbard continued to receive advice after she left Congress, where she had served as a Democrat, before defecting to Trump.
The Independent has contacted Gabbard, the White House, and the Science of Identity Foundation for comment.
Whistleblower Rebecca Saltzburg, who worked on Gabbard’s congressional campaigns, shared more than 25,000 pages of emails with The Post, which contained memos from Butler, she claimed. “Everyone who received the memos knew that the voice behind them was Butler’s,” the newspaper reports, citing Saltzburg, also a former member of Science of Identity. She decided to come forward now because she believes that Gabbard, SIF and its insiders are “dangerous,” she wrote.
Some critics have questioned how the Science of Identity —a fringe breakaway of the Hare Krishna movement— members show absolute loyalty to the group’s leader, 78-year-old Butler, who founded the group in 1977,
A former member told The Independent in 2022 that she recalled Gabbard was a rising star within the group, and that it was “inconceivable” that anyone involved was not being directed by Butler. “I feel like when you vote for somebody who is heavily tied into [Science of Identity], you’re not voting for that person, you’re voting for Chris Butler, as a servant of the servant of God,” the former member said.
The memos, which The Independent has not independently verified, reportedly contained guidance and advice on policy and talking points ahead of TV interviews, according to The Post, which she often complied with, per the newspaper’s analysis comparing the memos to her publicized comments.
Syria was reportedly the subject of “many” of the memos, and one consisted of tactical advice that later became one of Gabbard’s signature policies—urging the U.S. not to oust former Syrian President Bashar Assad, who she met in 2017. One memo quoted an unnamed adviser, calling on Gabbard to “reiterate her opposition to U.S. intervention in Syria’s civil war.”
