Virginia senator on election system protections, election concerns for 2026, Tulsi Gabbard and Iran

WASHINGTON (CBS, KYMA) - Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) spoke with Margaret Brennan on Face the Nation Sunday about election system protections.

Last month, according to Brennan, the FBI went to Fulton County, Georgia and seized ballots and 2020 voting records linked to the presidential election.

Tulsi Gabbard, the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), said her presence in Georgia "had been personally requested by the president of the United States," and said she "had broad statutory authority to coordinate, integrate and analyze intelligence related to election security."

This prompted Brennan to ask what would justify her involvement, and if there is any foreign nexus that he has been informed of, Sen. Warner said:

"We have not been informed of any foreign nexus. The job of the director of national intelligence is to be outward facing about foreigners, not about Americans, and remember, many of the reforms that were put in place actually took place after the Watergate scandal under President Nixon, where a president was directly involved in certain domestic criminal activities and appeared with the Watergate break-in. And my fear in this case is it almost seems Nixonian. If the president asked Gabbard to show up down in Georgia on a domestic political investigation- first of all, how would he know about the search warrant even being issued? That's not his job. And then to have the irector of national intelligence down there, which is totally against her rules, unless there is a foreign nexus, and she has not indicated any foreign nexus to us to date."

Brennan then asked the senator if his Republicans colleagues on the Senate Intelligence Committee are concerned after the White House argued that federal law "assigns a DNI statutory responsibility to lead counter intelligence matters related to election security, election voting system risk, software, voter registration databases," and Warner said:

"Here's the ironic thing...many of the protections for our election system were put in place during the first Trump administration. We set up CISA, the cybersecurity agency, to help work with state and local elections. There was an FBI center set up for foreign malign influence, foreign influence. And then we put into law something called the Foreign Malign Influence Center at the Director of National Intelligence office. All of those entities have been basically disbanded. CISA cut by a third. The FBI center cut back. The ODNI center cut back, which we think is, frankly, counter to the law. But it all...in terms the ODNI has to be involved, of foreign involvement, there has been no evidence of that to date."

When asked where is his colleague, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), who is the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, on this, Warner said:

"We have jointly been making sure that we get updates on election security, and I think we see more of that to come, because this is critical. And my concern is that when we see artificial intelligence tools and others...it was almost child's play. What happened in 2016, China, Russia, Iran others could be interfering. We've not seen evidence to date. Gabbard, if she's got any evidence, should have provided it to the Congress. I think this was an effort where Donald Trump can't get over the fact that he lost Georgia so obsessed. And it begs the question is, what was Gabbard doing there? And it frankly, begs the question is, why was the president even aware of this investigation before the search warrant was issued?"

During the interview, Brennan and Warner talked about election concerns for 2026, with Warner saying there's an effort to interfere, leading Brennan to ask what evidence does the senator have, to which he said:

"This was what I'm seeing from the president's own comments about nationalizing elections and putting Republicans in charge, counter to the constitution. We've seen these activities in Georgia, where could there be some effort that suddenly gives him an excuse to try to take some of these federalization efforts we've seen ICE. We focused a lot of this activity on ICE in terms of they're going rogue in Minneapolis. But there is a very real threat, without reforms at ICE, that you could have ICE patrols around polling stations, and people would say, 'Well, why would that matter?' Because we've seen ice discriminate against Latinos families. We've seen as well mixed families where someone may be legal and others not. And candidly, you don't need to do a lot to discourage people from voting, and we've more recently seen ICE starting to use technology where they can get information about Americans. Recently, there was an individual in Minnesota that got denied a global entry card to get through TSA quicker because he or she appeared at a protest rally. Do we really want ICE having that information? Hypothetically...that was what happened in Minnesota. Hypothetically, if ICE is getting information, and you've got an unpaid parking ticket, would you go vote if you've got an unpaid parking ticket, thinking that an ICE patrol might be at a polling station, this is uncharted territory, and yet you've got the president's own words, in many ways, raising concerns, because he says, 'Well, gosh, we Republicans ought to take over elections in 15 states.'"

Brennan and Warner then talked about Gabbard after a whistleblower filed a complaint against her personally and offered to come to Congress to share the information.

According to the whistleblower's attorney, this is in regards to a complaint that two inspectors general, one of them from the Biden era, "concluded had a non-credible nature," prompting Brennan to ask Warner if he accepts their conclusion after viewing the redacted version of the complaint, and he said:

"First of all, the previous Inspector General, who'd been a long-term professional, viewed [the original complaint] as credible...I can't talk about the contents of the complaint. I'm old fashioned. It's classified, and the complaint is so redacted, it's hard to get to the bottom up, I got additional questions. My concern- what the director did, is that this information was not relayed to Congress. There is a process, and we didn't even...and I mean, we the Gang of Eight, didn't even hear about the complaint until November. We only saw it in February, and we've got this complete contradiction where the then lawyer for Director Gabbard said she shared the responsibility she had to share this with Congress in June, the legal responsibility. She later stated that she was not aware of her responsibility. Ignorance of the law is not an excuse if you're the Director of National Intelligence."

Brennan followed up by asking Warner if he will be able to speak with the whistleblower, and if he will be able to see the underlying intelligence, and Warner said, "My understanding is the whistleblower has been waiting for guidance, legal guidance, on how to approach the committee."

Later in the interview, Brennan and Warner talked about Iran, with Brennan saying there has been a number of think tanks publishing photos of what they believe is evidence of Iran rebuilding and reconstituting its nuclear program the U.S. bombed last year.

When asked if they are rebuilding the program, Warner said:

"When we struck Iranians nuclear capabilities, our military did a great job. It was not totally obliterated. So, that standard that the President himself set and Iran has been indicated in public documents, is trying to reconstitute. What I fear is that we don't have the ability to bring the full power of pressure against Iran. A few weeks back, when the Iranian people bravely were in the streets, and there might have been a moment, we couldn't strike, because the aircraft carrier that was usually in the Mediterranean was off the coast of Venezuela, doing the blockade there. On top of that as well, we were unable to bring the full force of pressure of our allies in Europe against Iran, because at that very same moment, President Trump was disrupting NATO with his Greenland play. We are stronger when we use our allies, when we have our full military capabilities in region, and that military is getting stretched, as good as we are, as the President gets engaged in activities all over the world."

To watch more of Brennan's interview with Warner, click here.