Speaking during an explosive hearing on Capitol Hill, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) exposed that now-Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard had been spied on and surveilled by federal air marshals when she flew on domestic flights during 2024, with the marshals reporting back on what she did and looked like and what electronics she used.
That revelation came when, on Tuesday, May 20, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Krisi Noem appeared before Congress to testify about her department’s budget request for fiscal year 2026. As she did so, Sen. Paul noted that the air marshals were spying on now-DNI Gabbard and “reporting back information related to her appearance and even how many electronics she was observed using.”
Beginning the revelation by thanking the Trump Administration for ending the DHS-backed censorship and surveillance programs that he alleged characterized the Biden Administration, Paul said, “I commend you and the Trump administration for ending all government-sponsored censorship using DHS personnel.”
Turning from praising Trump’s Administration to revealing what nefarious activities and politicized law enforcement the DHS had been up to during the Biden Era, Sen. Paul noted, “Just last night, I received the first set of records from the department regarding Tulsi Gabbard’s placement on the TSA Quiet Skies watch list.”
Building on that, Sen. Paul noted that the documents he received confirmed prior suspicions that Tulsi and others had been spied on by the feds. He said, “These documents confirm our suspicions. Federal air marshals surveilled the now-director of national intelligence during domestic flights in 2024, reporting back information related to her appearance and even how many electronics she was observed using. Unfortunately, this is not an isolated case.”
Sen. Paul wasn’t done. Continuing, he pressed Noem on if she had, in her role as the head of DHS, “uncovered any internal communications or activities” relating to the Biden Administration or the government apparatus that served it “being involved in censorship.”
Predictably, Noem replied in the affirmative, noting, “We have literally found thousands of documents that have proven that they were involved in censorship and policing speech. So we will be unveiling these to this committee and making sure we’re exposing what CISA was doing with a vast majority of its time of certain employees.”
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Continuing, she noted that the department needs to get back to doing what it is supposed to, as now the wrongdoers have been cut and DHS can get back on track. She said, “And some of the discussion I think we’ll have here today is about getting CISA back on mission and some of the reductions in staff that have been over there. And that’s reflective in the fact that many of them were doing work that they shouldn’t have been doing.”
Watch Noem and Paul here:
Previously, Gabbard told Fox News that she noticed air marshals surveilling her, saying, “As I was traveling, I ended up in 30 to 45 minutes of going through screening every time I would go to the airport to fly. I noticed air marshals, I noticed K-9 teams. There were things that I saw and noticed that were highly unusual.
Continuing, she noted that the surveillance had a deep impact on her psyche, saying, “But the deepest pain and harm and stress that’s been caused by this is that, forever going forward, I will always be looking over my shoulder, wondering if and how my government is surveilling me.”