Former Democratic presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard said on Tuesday that she was quitting the party after labelling it an “elitist cabal.”
Gabbard criticised the group in a one-minute video that she posted on Twitter along with a series of tweets. Gabbard did not formally announce that she would join the Republican Party or any other party.
“I can no longer remain in today’s Democratic Party that is now under the complete control of an elitist cabal of warmongers driven by cowardly wokeness, who divide us by racializing every issue & stoke anti-white racism,” Gabbard wrote in one of the tweets.
In September, Gabbard, a Hawaii Democrat, urged FBI agents in a tweet to defy superiors who abuse their power.
“It’s time for all good FBI agents to stand against any superior who’s abusing their power to target political opponents,” she tweeted.
The FBI Special Agent Steve Friend, who filed a whistleblower complaint earlier that month, claimed that the agency had inaccurate statements about domestic terrorism and employed the investigation of the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021, to target republicans, according to a New York Post column Gabbard shared.
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According to the New York Post column, Friend allegedly declined to take part in raids associated with inquiries about January 6. In Florida, he was fired from the organisation on Monday.
Gabbard suggested that FBI agents look into Friend’s situation on Twitter.
“Follow Friend’s example who put aside self-interest for our democracy. Every FBI/law enforcement officer’s loyalty must be to the Constitution/American ppl,” Gabbard wrote.
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Some conservatives have criticised federal law enforcement officers after the FBI raided former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence in August as part of a probe into whether he improperly handled sensitive data.
“When are the great Agents, and others, in the FBI going to say ‘we aren’t going to take it anymore,’ much as they did when James Comey read off a list of all of Crooked Hillary Clinton’s crimes, only to say that no reasonable prosecutor would prosecute,” Trump wrote in an August 27 Truth Social post.
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“The wonderful people of the FBI went absolutely ‘nuts,’ so Comey had to backtrack and do a FAKE INVESTIGATION in order to keep them at bay. The end result, we won in 2016 (and did MUCH better in 2020!). But now the “Left” has lost their minds!!!” he added.
After the Mar-a-Lago raid, other Republicans defended the FBI. Republican lawmaker from Illinois Adam Kinzinger said in August that the spike in violent threats against the FBI following the law enforcement action was the result of Trump supporters.
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“It’s ridiculous obviously for what the former president has done, in terms of saying, ‘This is an attack on my home, I did nothing wrong,’ and of course, from the little bit we know, it seems like there’s certainly good reasons for the FBI to have done what they did,” Kinzinger said in a CNN interview.
Republican governor of Arkansas Asa Hutchinson claimed in August that if “the GOP is going to be the party of supporting law enforcement, law enforcement includes the FBI.”
