Tulsi Gabbard has 18 days left as Director of National Intelligence. On June 12, she used one of them to release a video claiming the US government had been secretly funding more than 120 biological laboratories in over 30 countries — and that the information had been “knowingly withheld” from the American public for years.
Within 24 hours, journalists tracking the underlying documents found that the core piece of evidence was a Pentagon fact sheet describing a biosafety cooperation program that has existed publicly since 2005.
What Gabbard Actually Said
In a video statement posted to ODNI’s official channels, Gabbard said: “After months of searching through intelligence community holdings and files, today I’m releasing new evidence of longstanding US government funding of more than 120 biolabs in over 30 countries.” She specifically named Ukraine, saying labs there “could be at risk of compromise due to the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war” and that the intelligence community had “previously warned that a US-funded biolab in Ukraine likely housed dangerous pathogens and remained vulnerable to long-standing threats of Russian attack, seizure, or damage.”
She framed the release as connected to an executive order Trump signed on May 25, 2025, ending federal funding for gain-of-function research — research that intentionally makes pathogens more transmissible or dangerous in order to study them. Gabbard said ODNI had since issued “new guidance to the intelligence community directing increased collection on these laboratories and facilities overseas,” and that this had already surfaced new details about clinical trials at some facilities.
She also said that “politicians and so-called health professionals like Dr. Fauci, as well as entities within the Biden administration’s national security team, lied repeatedly to the American people about the existence of US funded and supported biolabs,” and that anyone who tried to expose this had been threatened and labeled “foreign assets and traitors to America.”
ODNI’s official press release framed the disclosure in nearly identical language, describing the funding as having been “intentionally covered up by very powerful people who falsely claimed that these biolabs didn’t exist.”
What Journalists Found When They Checked the Underlying Documents
European Pravda examined the accompanying materials and found that the map released alongside Gabbard’s statement mislabeled multiple locations — marking the location of Kyiv or Kyiv Oblast incorrectly and labeling one site “Cherniv.” More significantly, the central piece of cited evidence was a Pentagon fact sheet describing US support for Ukrainian laboratories, medical and veterinary institutions, and diagnostic facilities as part of a biosafety program — one that has been publicly documented since 2005. The fact sheet describes the program’s purpose as supporting “the safe detection and diagnosis of biological threats and reduce the risks related to pathogens,” not biweapons development.
NOTUS reported that the specific framing of US-funded labs in Ukraine as secret bioweapons facilities is a claim Gabbard has made before — at the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022 — and that the underlying narrative has circulated in Russian state propaganda used to justify the invasion, as well as among followers of the QAnon movement.
This is not the first time Gabbard’s conduct as DNI has drawn criticism from her own former party. In July 2025, Congressional Black Caucus Whip Sydney Kamlager-Dove led members of the CBC in calling for Gabbard’s resignation after she released documents accusing the Obama administration of “manufacturing and politicizing” evidence related to Russian interference in the 2016 election — interference that multiple intelligence assessments have confirmed occurred. The CBC’s letter at the time argued that “as Director of National Intelligence, your job is to safeguard truth, not spread propaganda.”
The Resignation Context
Gabbard’s departure has nothing to do with the biolab controversy on its face. She is leaving to be with her husband, Abraham, who has been diagnosed with what she described as “an extremely rare form of bone cancer.” Her resignation letter, effective June 30, 2026, thanked Trump for “the trust you placed in me and for the opportunity to lead the Office of the Director of National Intelligence for the last year and a half.” Trump responded on Truth Social that Gabbard had done “a great job.”
Trump has nominated Jay Clayton — former chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission and former head of the law firm Sullivan & Cromwell — as her replacement. Clayton will need to go through Senate confirmation.
Why the Timing Matters
A declassification this significant landing in the final 18 days of an outgoing DNI’s tenure has a specific effect: it becomes part of the public record under government letterhead before anyone in the incoming team has the opportunity to review, contextualize, or walk it back. Whether or not that was the intent, it’s the mechanical result.
The substance of the claim — that 120-plus labs received US funding across 30 countries — is, on its own, not necessarily explosive. The US has funded international biosafety and disease surveillance programs for two decades, and that funding has been a matter of public record through Pentagon fact sheets and program disclosures. What turns a funding disclosure into a “bombshell” is the framing layered on top of it: that this was secret, that it was a cover-up, and that the labs in question were producing bioweapons rather than conducting the disease surveillance work the underlying documents describe.
Those are two different stories. ODNI told one of them on June 12. The documents underneath appear to tell the other.
Sources
- European Pravda: Fact-Check on ODNI Biolab Map & Ukraine Locations
- NOTUS Journalism: Analysis of Outgoing DNI Declassification & Previous 2022 Biolab Statements
- Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA): Pentagon Biosafety & Cooperative Threat Reduction Program Fact Sheets
About the Author
Your 41-year-old uncle who reads primary source documents for fun, has strong opinions about Pentagon fact sheets from 2005, and will absolutely bring this up at the next family dinner whether anyone asks or not.
