Tulsi Gabbard's views on Russia shaped in part by Kremlin propaganda outlet, ex-aides say

Since becoming President-elect Donald Trump's choice for director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard's rosy posture toward Moscow has prompted some Democratic critics to suggest that she could be "compromised," or perhaps even a "Russian asset" -- claims the ex-Hawaii representative and Army officer has forcefully denied.

But former advisers to Gabbard suggest that her views on Russia and its polarizing leader, Vladimir Putin, have been shaped not by some covert intelligence recruitment as far as they know -- but instead by her unorthodox media consumption habits.

Three former aides said Gabbard, who left the Democratic Party in 2022, regularly read and shared articles from the Russian news site RT -- formerly known as Russia Today -- which the U.S. intelligence community characterized in 2017 as "the Kremlin's principal international propaganda outlet."

While it was not clear to those former staffers whether or when she stopped frequenting the site, one former aide said Gabbard continued to circulate articles from RT "long after" she was advised that the outlet was not a credible source of information.

Doug London, a retired 34-year veteran intelligence officer, said Gabbard's alleged penchant to rely at least in part on outlets like RT to shape her view of the world reflects poorly on her suitability to fulfill the responsibilities of a director of national intelligence.

"That Gabbard's views mirror Russia's narrative and disinformation themes can but suggest naïveté, collusion, or politically opportunistic sycophancy to echo whatever she believes Trump wants to hear," London said, adding, "none of which bodes well for the president's principal intelligence adviser responsible for enabling the [U.S. intelligence community] to inform decision-making by telling it like it is."

Alexa Henning, a spokesperson for the Trump transition team, said in a statement to ABC News that "this is false and nothing but a few former, conveniently anonymous, disgruntled staffers."

"Lt. Col. Gabbard's views on foreign policy have been shaped by her military service and multiple deployments to war zones where she's seen the cost of war and who ultimately pays the price," Henning said.

'The Russian playbook'

Former congressional and campaign advisers said it was unclear to what extent Gabbard's views were shaped by what she read in RT -- and they emphasized that she would consume news from a wide range of outlets, including left-wing and right-wing blogs.

But over the past decade, Gabbard's views on Russian aggression in Europe have evolved in a particularly dramatic fashion.

In 2014, when Russian troops annexed Crimea, Gabbard -- then a first-term Democratic U.S. representative from Hawaii -- released a statement advocating for "meaningful American military assistance for Ukrainian forces" and for the U.S. to invoke "stiffer, more painful economic sanctions for Russia."

"The consequences of standing idly by while Russia continues to degrade the territorial integrity of Ukraine are clear," she wrote at the time. "We have to act in a way that takes seriously the threat of Russian aggression against its peaceful, sovereign neighbor."

By 2017, however, her tune had changed. In a lengthy memo to campaign staff laying out her views on foreign policy, a copy of which was obtained by ABC News, Gabbard blamed the U.S. and NATO for provoking Russian aggression and bemoaned the United States' "hostility toward Putin."

"There certainly isn't any guarantee to Putin that we won't try to overthrow Russia's government," she wrote in the memo from May 2017, titled "fodder for fundraising emails / social media."

"In fact, I'm pretty sure there are American politicians who would love to do that," she wrote.

She also condemned the very sanctions she had previously supported, writing that, "historically, the U.S. has always wanted Russia to be a poor country."

"It's a matter of respect," she wrote. "The Russian people are a proud people and they don't want the U.S. and our allies trying to control them and their government."

Gabbard's sentiment in the 2017 memo is "basically the Russian playbook," said Ivo Daalder, a former U.S. ambassador to NATO during the Obama administration.

"It's dangerous," said Daalder. "That strain of thinking is not unique to Tulsi Gabbard, but it is certainly not where you would think a major figure in any administration would like to be, intellectually."

By 2022, at the outset of the latest Russia-Ukraine conflict, Gabbard suggested on X that Russia's invasion was justified by Ukraine's potential bid to join NATO, "which would mean US/NATO forces right on Russia's border" -- a narrative perpetuated by Russian propaganda channels, including RT, and denounced by the U.S. and NATO as "false."

Gabbard's messaging has at times aligned so closely with Kremlin talking points that at least one commentator on Kremlin state media has referred to her as "Russia's girlfriend."

A 'nefarious effort'

The U.S. government first called out RT as a propaganda mouthpiece for the Kremlin in the wake of the 2016 presidential election, three years after Gabbard was elected to Congress.

This past September, the State Department wrote that it had evidence that "RT moved beyond being simply a media outlet and has been an entity with cyber capabilities." The U.S. also issued fresh sanctions against executives at RT, including its editor-in-chief, who the U.S. accused of engaging in a "nefarious effort to covertly recruit unwitting American influencers in support of their malign influence campaign."

The Justice Department also indicted two RT employees in September for their alleged role in what the DOJ called a scheme to pay right-wing social media influencers nearly $10 million to “disseminate content deemed favorable to the Russian government."

In the decade since Gabbard arrived in Washington, experts say she has regularly promoted views consistent with those espoused in RT and other Russian propaganda channels.

In its 2017 assessment, for example, the U.S. intelligence community wrote that RT "has actively collaborated with WikiLeaks" and "routinely gives [WikiLeaks founder Julian] Assange sympathetic coverage and provides him a platform to denounce the United States."

Gabbard has long been an outspoken supporter of Assange, arguing in a June 2024 appearance on "Real Time with Bill Maher" that "[Assange's] prosecution, the charges against him, are one of the biggest attacks on freedom of the press, that we've seen, and freedom of speech."

In Congress, Gabbard also co-sponsored a resolution calling on the federal government to "drop all charges against Edward Snowden," the former contractor for the National Security Agency who supplied WikiLeaks with secret documents in order to expose what he called "horrifying" U.S. government surveillance capabilities.

RT frequently reports glowingly on Snowden, who has for more than a decade lived under asylum in Russia.

'Undeniable facts'

But it is Gabbard's framing of the Russian invasion of Ukraine that has most galvanized her critics in the national security sphere.

In March 2022, Gabbard posted a video to Twitter -- now X -- sharing what she said were "undeniable facts" about U.S.-funded biolabs in the war-torn country, claiming that "even in the best of circumstances" they "could easily be compromised" -- a debunked theory regularly promoted by RT and other Kremlin propaganda channels.

Experts say RT and other Russian state-controlled news agencies have frequently capitalized on Gabbard's public comments to support the biolab conspiracy theory and other disinformation, recirculating clips in which she repeats the Kremlin propaganda as evidence backing the false claims -- effectively engineering an echo-chamber to magnify their propaganda machine.

Even so, Brian O'Neill, a former senior intelligence official with experience in senior policymaker briefing, expressed confidence that career intelligence officials can support Gabbard with "a constant barrage of new information" that will help shape her understanding of emerging world events.

"New appointees in such roles always bring preconceptions, but like her predecessors, she will be subject to comprehensive briefings grounded in solid evidence provided by individuals of high integrity and expertise," O'Neill said.

"That said," O'Neill cautioned, "Trump's well-documented hostility and skepticism toward the [intelligence community] will shape the environment she steps into. If she adopts a similar posture, there's a risk she might deprioritize intelligence community input or dismiss inconvenient truths presented to her."

ABC News' Shannon Kingston contributed to this report.