分析：艾伦·布莱克
13分钟前
发布时间：2026年2月5日，美国东部时间下午5:33
美国国家情报局局长图尔西·加巴德于1月28日（周三）在佐治亚州尤宁市富尔顿县选举中心及行动中心外下车，此前联邦调查局（FBI）在此执行了与2020年选举相关的搜查令。
Elijah Nouvelage/路透社
特朗普政府对反复无常且自相矛盾的解释早已司空见惯。与其说是左右手互不了解对方动向，不如说他们仿佛根本不在同一栋楼里。
但即便以其惯常标准来看，政府对上周美国国家情报局局长图尔西·加巴德（Tulsi Gabbard）在FBI搜查佐治亚州富尔顿县选举办公室这一争议性事件中的角色，给出的解释仍显怪异。
加巴德的职务通常负责协调美国情报机构及其海外行动，而非国内事务或执法工作，因此她的出现格外引人注目。
距离加巴德出现在搜查现场已过去一周多，针对此事的解释已至少有六种（甚至可能第七种）不同版本，但似乎没人愿意承认是自己安排她前往的。
版本1——特朗普称赞其角色
当CNN记者上周四询问特朗普加巴德为何出现在现场时，他表示自己对情况了如指掌，并称其“间谍头目”（情报主管）发挥了关键作用。
“她正全力保障选举安全，做得非常出色。”特朗普称，“要知道，他们（FBI）正在调查选票，而且佐治亚州有法官签署的搜查令。接下来你会看到一些有趣的事情发生。”
版本2（及2a）——布兰奇试图划清界限
但次日，司法部副部长托德·布兰奇（Todd Blanche）试图与加巴德及其部门的调查划清界限。
在一场关于杰弗里·爱泼斯坦（Jeffrey Epstein）案件文件的新闻发布会上，布兰奇被问及此事时显得有些不耐烦。
“她只是恰好出现在亚特兰大。”布兰奇最初将此事轻描淡写为巧合。
然而，当记者追问时，他补充称“我们作为政府正在合作推进选举完整性相关工作”。
周日，布兰奇对CNN记者达娜·巴什表示：“我不知道局长为什么会在那里。”
周一晚间，他又向福克斯新闻解释：“首先，她并没有参与搜查行动，只是出现在搜查地点的区域。她不属于此次调查的一部分。”
版本3——加巴德称是特朗普派她去的
布兰奇接受福克斯新闻采访后不久，加巴德于周一晚间向国会民主党人发布了一封信，暗示自己深度参与了此事。
包括CNN在内的媒体此前报道称，加巴德甚至安排特朗普与FBI特工通了电话——此举因存在政治干预嫌疑而颇具争议。
加巴德在信中明确表示：“我出现在那里是应总统的要求。”
尽管布兰奇声称她并未直接参与搜查，但加巴德称自己“陪同FBI高级官员观察了搜查令的执行过程”。
白宫新闻秘书卡罗琳·利维特（Karoline Leavitt）随后表态称，特朗普“指派”加巴德“监督美国选举的安全性”，并表示她“正直接与FBI局长合作”。
版本4——特朗普称“不知情”，暗示原因
尽管加巴德声称特朗普派她前往，总统却在周三的采访中给出了截然不同的说法。
“我并未参与此事，”特朗普告诉NBC新闻，“但他们正在检查选票。”
当NBC记者汤姆·拉马斯追问（与六天前相同的问题）为何加巴德会出现在佐治亚州选举办公室搜查现场时，特朗普称：“我不清楚。”
随后，他又暗示加巴德的出现与“国际舞弊”有关。
版本5——特朗普称是邦迪的主意
然而次日（周四），特朗普在全国祈祷早餐会上将加巴德的出现归咎于另一个人——司法部长帕姆·邦迪（Pam Bondi）。
“她承受了很多批评，因为这是应帕姆的要求去的，”特朗普称，“她进去检查了选票，那些需要核实的选票。”
“媒体问‘她为什么要去？’对吧，帕姆？”特朗普重复道，“因为帕姆希望她去，而且你知道为什么吗？因为她很聪明。”
版本6——加巴德办公室称是特朗普和邦迪共同要求的
加巴德办公室于周四晚澄清，两人均参与了派遣她的行动。
“这并不矛盾，”加巴德发言人奥利维亚·科尔曼（Olivia Coleman）对CNN表示，“正如总统所说，是他要求加巴德局长前往；而司法部长邦迪也提出了同样的要求。两者可以同时成立。”
另一位发言人在X平台（原推特）发布了相同声明，但该帖子随后被删除。
当被问及特朗普是否要求加巴德到场时，利维特回避了问题，反而声称特朗普在NBC采访中“已经回答了这个问题”——而实际上特朗普在那次采访中明确表示自己“不知情”。
这一切意味着什么？
并非所有解释都相互排斥，但整体来看，它们确实难以自洽。
至少，这是官方解释在一周内发生的惊人且快速的演变。
以下仅列举部分矛盾之处：
- 特朗普从详细说明加巴德的角色，转变为声称“不清楚她为何在场”。
- 加巴德称特朗普派她前往，但特朗普却多次强调是邦迪的主意。目前加巴德办公室仍更倾向于将功劳归于特朗普，而白宫则不愿承认。
- 尽管特朗普称是邦迪派她去的，邦迪的副手（布兰奇）却连续多日表示“不清楚她为何在场”，并与调查划清界限。
- 布兰奇称加巴德未参与调查，而加巴德称是特朗普派她监督搜查，利维特则称她“正直接与FBI局长合作”。
- 加巴德办公室周四声称特朗普确认“要求她到场”，但特朗普在利维特引用的采访中实际表示“不知情”。
利维特在周四下午淡化了对该事件的追问：
“我看到本房间的很多媒体都在纠结于图尔西·加巴德为何出现的语义问题。”利维特表示，“我现在明确告诉大家，总统也认同这一点：因为选举安全是国家安全的核心要素。”
矛盾背后的推测
我们只能推测这些矛盾背后的原因，但一个合乎逻辑的解释是：让公众知晓加巴德参与此事（以及特朗普的角色）对他们并无益处。
毕竟，这会引发“调查可能存在政治动机”的质疑，甚至可能面临因报复性起诉而被驳回的风险。
此外，似乎没有人愿意为加巴德的行动负责——至少除了加巴德及其团队之外。她的办公室甚至将自己在富尔顿县的照片设为X平台的头像（她或许将参与此事视为重新讨好特朗普的机会，此前她似乎被边缘化）。
除加巴德团队外，特朗普和利维特似乎在将责任推给司法部，而司法部则淡化加巴德的角色。
布兰奇的言论（尤其是他对该事件的不耐烦）明确表明，他更希望加巴德不被视为参与司法部的工作。
因此，我们看到的是，政府官员们在试图解释这一切，同时应对他们那位以反复无常和内部矛盾著称的老板的言论。
Tulsi Gabbard went down to Georgia — and no one in the Trump administration wants to take credit
Analysis by Aaron Blake
13 min ago
PUBLISHED Feb 5, 2026, 5:33 PM ET
United States Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard steps out of a vehicle outside the Fulton County Election Hub and Operation Center after the Federal Bureau of Investigation executed a search warrant there in relation to the 2020 election, in Union City, Georgia, on Wednesday, January 28.
Elijah Nouvelage/Reuters
The Trump administration is no stranger to shifting and inconsistent explanations. It’s not so much that the right hand and the left hand don’t seem to know what each other is doing, but that they often don’t seem to be in the same building.
But even by its standards, the administration’s ever-evolving explanations for Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s controversial presence near an FBI search of a Fulton County, Georgia, elections office last week have been bizarre.
Gabbard’s presence turned heads, given her purview generally involves coordinating US intelligence agencies and their efforts overseas, not domestic matters or law enforcement.
It’s been a little more than a week since Gabbard was pictured at the search. And we’re on at least the sixth – and arguably seventh – different explanation for it, with no one seeming to want to take credit for sending her.
Version 1 – Trump hails her role
When CNN asked Trump last Thursday why Gabbard was there, he suggested he was well-apprised of the situation and that his spy chief was playing a key role.
“She’s working very hard on trying to keep the election safe. And she’s done a very good job,” Trump said. “And they, as you know, they got into the votes, you got a signed judge’s order in Georgia. And you’re going to see some interesting things happening.”
Versions 2 (and 2a) – Blanche seeks some distance
But a day later, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche sought to put more distance between Gabbard and his department’s investigation.
When asked about the situation at a press conference about the Jeffrey Epstein files, Blanche appeared somewhat testy about the subject.
“She happened to be present in Atlanta,” Blanche said, initially making it sound like a coincidence.
But when a reporter pressed Blanche on it, he allowed that “we are working together as an administration on election integrity-type issues.”
Blanche then told CNN’s Dana Bash on Sunday, “I don’t know why the director was there.”
Then he told Fox News on Monday night: “First of all, she wasn’t at the search; she was in the area where the search took place. She’s not part of this investigation.”
Version 3 – Gabbard says Trump sent her
But soon after Blanche’s Fox interview, Gabbard on Monday night posted a letter to congressional Democrats that indicated she was quite involved in the matter.
Outlets including CNN had reported that she had actually put Trump on the phone with FBI agents the day after the search – a controversial move given the possibility of political influence.
Gabbard in her letter said that her “presence was requested by the President.”
While Blanche had said she wasn’t actually at the search itself, Gabbard said she had “accompanied” top FBI officials “in observing FBI personnel executing that search warrant.”
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt later said that Trump had “tapped” Gabbard “to oversee the sanctity and the security of our American elections” and said she is “working directly alongside the FBI director.”
US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard listens as President Donald Trump speaks during a Cabinet Meeting in the Cabinet Room of the White House in Washington DC, on December 2, 2025.
Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP/Getty Images
Version 4 – Trump says he’s ‘not involved,’ suggests ignorance
Despite Gabbard saying Trump had “requested” her presence – suggesting he was playing a role in the investigation – the president in an interview Wednesday spun a different tale.
“I’m not involved in it,” Trump told NBC News, “but they are inspecting and checking the ballots.”
Then NBC’s Tom Llamas asked much the same question Trump was asked six days prior: Why was Gabbard at the search of an elections office in Georgia?
But Trump’s answer this time was different.
“I don’t know,” he began.
Trump then suggested Gabbard’s presence made sense given the prospect of “international cheating.”
Version 5 – Trump says Bondi was behind it
But the next morning – Thursday – Trump at the National Prayer Breakfast indicated Gabbard’s presence owed to a new figure entirely: Attorney General Pam Bondi.
“[Gabbard] took a lot of heat, because she went at Pam’s insistence,” Trump said. “She went in and she looked at votes, that want to be checked out, from Georgia.”
“The media asked, ‘Why is she doing it?’ Right, Pam?” Trump said. “Because Pam wanted her to do it, and you know why? Because she’s smart.”
Version 6 – Gabbard’s office says it was both Trump and Bondi
Gabbard’s office clarified later Thursday that both Trump and Bondi were involved in sending Gabbard.
“There’s no contradiction,” Gabbard spokeswoman Olivia Coleman told CNN. “As the President said, he asked for Director Gabbard to be there. Attorney General Bondi also asked for her to be there. Two things can be true at the same time.”
Another spokeswoman posted the same statement on X, but the post no longer appears.
And when Leavitt was asked at a White House briefing the same day whether Trump had asked for Gabbard to be there, Leavitt avoided the question. She instead claimed that Trump had answered the question in his interview with NBC – when he had actually pleaded ignorance.
So what does it all mean?
Not all of these explanations are mutually exclusive. But taken as a whole, they’re really difficult to square with one another.
At the very least, it’s a rather shocking and rapid evolution of the official explanation, in the course of one week’s time.
Let’s list just a few of the inconsistencies:
- Trump has gone from describing why Gabbard was there, in some detail, to saying he didn’t know why she was there.
- Gabbard said Trump sent her, but Trump really seemed to want to say it was Bondi’s idea – saying it three times. Today, Gabbard’s office still seems more keen to say that Trump sent Gabbard than the White House does.
- Despite Trump saying Bondi sent her, Bondi’s own deputy (Blanche) spent days saying he didn’t know why Gabbard was there and distancing her from the grand jury investigation.
- While Blanche said Gabbard was not part of the investigation, Gabbard said Trump had sent her to observe the search, and Leavitt said Gabbard has been “working directly alongside the FBI director” on election security.
- Despite Gabbard’s office saying Thursday that Trump had confirmed he asked for Gabbard to be present, Trump never actually said that himself. In fact, he said just a day earlier that he didn’t know why Gabbard was there – in the actual comments Leavitt cited.
Leavitt on Thursday afternoon downplayed questions about the matter.
“I’ve seen a lot of the media in this room get very caught up in the semantics of why Tulsi Gabbard was there,” Leavitt said. “I will tell you why, and the president agrees with this: Because election security is essential to national security.”
We can only surmise the reasons for these inconsistencies. But a very logical one is that it’s not terribly helpful for it to be known that Gabbard is involved, and it’s even less helpful for it to be known that Trump is.
After all, that raises the appearance that any possible prosecutions that come out of this investigation are political – and could even face motions to dismiss the cases for vindictive prosecution.
It also just seems to be the case that nobody particularly wants to be responsible for this – or at least, nobody besides Gabbard and her team. Her office has actually made a photo of her in Fulton County its banner on X. (She might view her pursuit of these matters as a chance to ingratiate herself to Trump, after some signs that she had been marginalized.)
Gabbard’s team aside, Trump and Leavitt seem to be mostly pushing it off on the Justice Department, while DOJ has downplayed her role.
Blanche’s comments especially – and arguably his testiness on the subject – made pretty clear that he’d prefer Gabbard not be viewed as playing a role in what his department is doing.
So what we’ve seen since then is a bunch of administration officials trying to account for all of it – while dealing with the infamously volatile and often-discordant commentary of their boss.
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