The CIA took 40 boxes of files from Tulsi Gabbard's office and never gave them back.
She just announced she's leaving office in five weeks.
What she's about to release is why they took them.
Tulsi Gabbard Resigns as DNI and the Deep State Is Already Celebrating
Gabbard announced Friday she is resigning as Director of National Intelligence, effective June 30.
Her husband Abraham was just diagnosed with an extremely rare form of bone cancer.
She is stepping away from public service to be by his side – and that is the right call.
Trump wrote on Truth Social that she "has done an incredible job, and we will miss her," and said he has no doubt Abraham will recover.
Principal Deputy Director Aaron Lukas takes over in an acting capacity on July 1.
The intelligence bureaucrats who spent 15 months watching Gabbard dismantle their institution are breathing easier today.
They shouldn’t be.
Before she walks out the door, Gabbard is releasing findings in weekly installments on the cases the Deep State fought hardest to bury.
Havana Syndrome. COVID origins. The weaponization of the federal government against Trump. The 2020 election.
All of it.
The CIA Took 40 Boxes of JFK Files and Called It Nothing
During the 2025 government shutdown, CIA personnel walked into the National Reconnaissance Office in the middle of the night and removed roughly 40 boxes of files that Gabbard's team was actively reviewing for declassification.
Those files included JFK assassination records and documents from MKUltra – the CIA's Cold War mind-control program that ran for two decades and included drug experiments on unwitting Americans, at least one of whom died.
CIA whistleblower James Erdman III, a senior operations officer, told the Senate Homeland Security Committee about the removal under oath on May 13.
Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, Chair of the House Oversight Task Force on Declassification, gave the CIA 24 hours to return the documents or face a congressional subpoena.
The CIA's response was to accuse the committee of acting in "bad faith" for holding the hearing at all.
Sen. Mike Lee called it potential treason.
Rep. Tim Burchett put it plainly: "The CIA lied about MKUltra."
Havana Syndrome, COVID Origins and the Declassified Files Still Coming
Erdman's testimony covered more than the missing boxes.
He told the committee that CIA management worked with outside virologists and federal health officials – including Anthony Fauci – to steer the agency's assessment away from a lab-leak conclusion, despite internal analysts favoring it by a five-to-one margin.
Not a single Senate Democrat showed up to hear him say it.
The weekly releases Gabbard has scheduled before June 30 go well beyond COVID.
On Havana Syndrome, her office has been pushing to declassify evidence pointing to Russia as the source of the attacks – a conclusion U.S. agencies privately reached years ago but never made public while 1,500 American diplomats and spies reported brain injuries abroad.
On the weaponization of government, Gabbard already stood up the first-ever Weaponization Working Group and referred Barack Obama for prosecution after declassified Crossfire Hurricane files showed Obama officials manufactured the Russia collusion narrative to undermine Trump's 2016 victory.
And there are 2,000 classified documents on COVID origins that Congress legally mandated for release in 2023 – a law Biden's intelligence chief ignored, handing over five pages of summary instead.
Gabbard's team has been working to get all of it out.
What Innocent Agencies Don't Do
No objection. No letter. Just CIA personnel walking into a government building in the middle of a shutdown, in the middle of the night, and hauling out 40 boxes of files a presidential appointee was preparing to release to the American people.
They said nothing about it until a whistleblower put it under oath before the United States Senate.
Innocent agencies don't do that.
Agencies protecting themselves do.
The same institution that spent years publicly clearing itself on Havana Syndrome while its own people suffered traumatic brain injuries is the one that took those boxes.
The same people who worked with Fauci to bury the lab-leak conclusion called Erdman's testimony bad faith.
And the Biden domestic surveillance plan Gabbard declassified – the "Strategic Implementation Plan for Countering Domestic Terrorism" – was not aimed at jihadists or cartels.
It was aimed at conservatives.
Gabbard found it, declassified it, and put it on record.
Now she has five weeks to finish the job – and an intelligence community that already showed its hand by grabbing those boxes in the dark.
They know what's in those files.
That's exactly why they took them.
Sources:
- Mary Margaret Olohan, "Here's What Tulsi Gabbard Plans To Reveal Before Leaving Office," The Daily Wire, May 22, 2026.
- "Tulsi Gabbard Resigns as DNI Over Husband's Rare Bone Cancer Diagnosis," Fox News, May 22, 2026.
- "CIA Whistleblower Alleges COVID Lab-Leak Findings Were Suppressed by Agency," USRTK, May 2026.
- "CIA Accused of Seizing JFK Assassination and MKUltra Files Slated for Declassification by Gabbard's Office," American Tribune, May 13, 2026.
- "ODNI Denies Claims CIA Raided Gabbard's Office Over JFK and MKUltra Files," Washington Examiner, May 13, 2026.
- "Top 4 Explosive Moments From CIA Whistleblower's Testimony on Alleged COVID-19 Lab Leak Cover-Up," Fox News, May 13, 2026.
