Warner TRAPS Gabbard & Patel on Iran Imminent Threat — Explosive Dodge Triggers LIVE Hearing Meltdown
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In this video, we break down the Senate Intelligence Committee hearing where Senator Mark Warner questioned Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and FBI Director Kash Patel about intelligence assessments, the Iran conflict, and counterintelligence capacity before the war began. The hearing focused on whether intelligence assessments about Iran’s nuclear program and the Strait of Hormuz were fully communicated, why certain parts of the written threat assessment were omitted from oral testimony, and whether U.S. counterintelligence capabilities were affected by personnel decisions before the conflict. Warner also pressed officials on whether foreign intelligence services were increasing operations against the United States during the Iran conflict and requested classified briefings on counterintelligence capacity.
Two minutes ago, Mark Warner asked Tulsi Gabbard a question she refused to answer, and then explained to a live television audience exactly why her refusal to answer was itself the answer. The question was this: did you brief the president that if he starts a war of choice against Iran, the likely result would be that Iran would strike adjacent Gulf nations and close the Strait of Hormuz? Gabbard said: I have not and won't divulge internal conversations. Warner nodded. And then he did something that happens in congressional hearings only when a witness has just confirmed, through their refusal, the precise thing the questioner was asking about. He said: so you're saying you can't tell us whether you warned the president about the consequences of starting this war. She said that the intelligence community had provided the president with ongoing intelligence before and during the operation. He said: that's not what I asked. He looked at her across the witness table with the expression of a man who has been on the intelligence committee for eleven years and has been lied to by more officials than he can count. Then he said: the American people are watching seven of their servicemembers come home in flag-draped caskets. They are watching oil at a hundred and three dollars a barrel because the Strait of Hormuz is closed. They are watching the administration say nobody expected this. And I am telling you, sitting here today, that the intelligence community expected exactly this. Because that is what your own written threat assessment says. He held up a printed document. It says it right here. In your words. And you skipped it when you read your statement aloud.
Watch this video until the very end because what happened in the next thirteen minutes is not just a congressional hearing. It is the documented moment when the intelligence officials responsible for assessing the threats that justified an ongoing war were forced to sit in public, under oath, and explain the growing gap between what they told the president before the bombs fell and what they are now telling Congress about what the president apparently chose not to hear. And if you are new here, subscribe right now and hit notifications because the House continuation of this hearing is today and the second round will be even more specific.
Let me lay out the documented sequence of facts because this story requires precision. On February 28th, 2026, the United States and Israel launched Operation Epic Fury, a sustained air campaign against Iran. The stated justification from the White House was that Iran posed an imminent nuclear threat to the United States and its allies. President Trump said on March 1st: the strikes on Iran were necessary to take out Iran's imminent nuclear threat. He said on March 4th, in a meeting with congressional leaders: if we didn't hit within two weeks, they would've had a nuclear weapon. When crazy people have nuclear weapons, bad things happen. Those are his words. They are documented. They were reported by multiple news organizations present at the briefing. On March 3rd, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Grossi, said the nuclear watchdog had no evidence of Iran building a nuclear bomb. The same day, Joe Kent, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center and a Trump administration official, submitted his resignation. His resignation statement said Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation and that he could not in good conscience support the war. Yesterday, Tulsi Gabbard's written threat assessment, submitted to the Senate Intelligence Committee as an official document, stated that Iran's nuclear enrichment program was obliterated in last year's strikes and that as of the hearing, Iran had made no efforts to rebuild its enrichment capability. That is what the written document says. That is the official intelligence community assessment. It says obliterated. It says no efforts to rebuild. These are not Democratic talking points. These are the written words of the Director of National Intelligence submitted as official testimony to a Senate committee.
And here is what Gabbard did when she stood up to deliver her opening remarks. She skipped those sentences. She said Iran was trying to recover from the severe damage to its nuclear infrastructure. She did not say obliterated. She did not say no efforts to rebuild. She moved past those paragraphs and continued. And it was Warner who noticed. He had the written document in front of him. He had been reading it as she spoke. And when she finished, he asked her the question that stopped the room. He said: I noticed you omitted from your oral statement the part that says Iran's nuclear enrichment program was obliterated and that there have been no efforts to rebuild. Why did you skip those sentences? Gabbard's answer was: I recognized that the time was running long and I skipped through some of the portions. Warner looked at her. She did not flinch. And then he said, quietly and with the precision of someone who has been doing this for over a decade: so you chose to omit the parts that contradict the president.
If you are still watching, hit the like button right now. Drop a comment below. Because what Warner just documented in public is the core of why this hearing matters more than any hearing since the Iraq WMD testimony. The intelligence community's own written assessment contradicts the president's stated justification for the war. Iran's nuclear program was already obliterated before February 28th. The IC assessed it was not being rebuilt. Trump said the war was necessary because Iran was two weeks from a nuclear weapon. Both things cannot be true. They are in the same document. And Gabbard skipped the paragraph that makes them irreconcilable. Comment below: do you think she skipped it deliberately, or do you believe the running-long explanation?
Warner was not finished with the oral testimony dodge. He connected it to the Strait of Hormuz question, which is where the hearing's most explosive exchange happened. The intelligence community, Gabbard confirmed under questioning, had long held an assessment that Iran would likely use the Strait of Hormuz as leverage in any conflict. That is documented in the 2025 threat assessment that was submitted the previous year. It has been a bedrock assessment for years. And the Strait of Hormuz is now closed. Oil is over a hundred dollars a barrel. Seven American servicemembers are dead. More than two hundred are wounded. Gulf nations that the United States called allies are being struck by Iranian drones and missiles. And the president said publicly, on multiple occasions, that nobody expected this. Warner asked the question that had been building throughout the hearing: did you brief the president that striking Iran would result in the Strait being closed and Gulf nations being struck? Gabbard said: I have not and won't divulge internal conversations. Warner said: I'm not asking you to tell me what you said. I'm asking you whether you said it at all. That is not the content of an internal conversation. That is a yes or no question about whether a briefing on a foreseeable consequence occurred. Gabbard said: the intelligence community has continued to provide the president with intelligence related to this operation before and on an ongoing basis. Warner said: that is a statement, not an answer. Did you specifically brief the president that Iran would close the Strait of Hormuz if attacked? Yes or no? Gabbard looked at him. I will not divulge internal conversations. Warner looked at the cameras. The way senators look at cameras when they want the record to contain what they are about to say. The intelligence community's own 2025 assessment said Iran would likely use the Strait as leverage. The Strait is now closed. The president says nobody expected this. And the Director of National Intelligence just told this committee she will not say whether she warned him. He paused. The American people can draw their own conclusions.
Kash Patel came into focus next. Warner had spent thirty minutes on Gabbard. Now he turned to the FBI director. Director, your agency is responsible for identifying and monitoring domestic threats from Iranian-backed actors. We had a shooting in Austin, Texas earlier this month that investigators were examining for potential Iran connection. We had an attack in Virginia. We have active open cases on Iranian assassination plots against American officials that have been running for years. He looked at Patel. You fired CI-12, the FBI's primary Iran counterintelligence unit, twenty-seven days before this war began. He held up a document. Warner signed a formal briefing request he had placed on the table three days earlier, now carrying Patel's acknowledgment signature from the beginning of the hearing. You signed this request acknowledging that this committee has requested a classified briefing on CI-12's current operational capacity within seven days. He looked at Patel. That briefing has not yet occurred. So I want to ask you one question for the record. Is there any foreign government whose intelligence services are currently attempting to exploit the degraded state of our domestic counterintelligence to expand operations against American citizens or officials? Patel's answer was immediate and it was the answer that Wyden had already identified as intelligence lingo: the FBI maintains its full counterintelligence mission and continues to identify and disrupt threats from all foreign adversaries. Warner nodded. That is not an answer to the question I asked. He looked at the full witness panel. Director of National Intelligence, same question. Has any foreign government's intelligence service increased its domestic operations against Americans in the wake of the CI-12 firings and the Iran conflict? Gabbard: the intelligence community continues to assess all relevant foreign intelligence threats. Warner set his papers down. Everyone at this table just confirmed that they are aware of foreign intelligence threats and declined to say whether those threats have increased since we went to war with Iran while simultaneously gutting our primary Iran counterintelligence unit. He looked directly at the cameras again. I want the American people to understand what they just heard. Not what was said. What was not said.
The exchange with Gabbard over the Fulton County election center was the third major line of questioning and it produced the most personal confrontation of the hearing. Gabbard had been present at an FBI raid on a voter data center in Fulton County, Georgia, in January 2026, where agents seized election materials tied to the 2020 presidential election. The presence of the Director of National Intelligence at a domestic FBI law enforcement operation was, as Warner described it, an organized effort to misuse her national security powers to interfere in domestic politics and potentially provide a pretext for the president's unconstitutional efforts to seize control of the upcoming elections. Gabbard said she was present at the request of the president and did not participate. The exchange became heated when she attempted to turn a question back on Warner, asking him whether he had concerns about election interference more broadly. Warner cut her off with the line that has already become the clip of the hearing. He said: if you want to ask the questions, you should have stayed in Congress. The room went completely still for four seconds. Then Gabbard continued. And Warner continued. But the line was already in the record and already spreading before the session ended.
The hearing lasted more than four hours. Cotton, the chairman, defended the administration at every turn, calling the intelligence community's contributions to Operation Epic Fury timely, accurate and fact-based. Ratcliffe said he disagreed with Kent's assessment that Iran posed no imminent threat, though he declined to provide specific intelligence to support that position in an open session. Patel cited counterterrorism arrest statistics. And Gabbard maintained throughout that only the commander in chief could determine what constituted an imminent threat, a position that Jon Ossoff called in real time an evasion that would contradict the White House if answered candidly. By the time the gavel fell, six specific claims from the hearing were already being checked against the public record by every major news organization. Iran's nuclear enrichment program was obliterated before the war started. That is in the written testimony. The Strait closure was a foreseeable intelligence assessment. That is in the 2025 threat report. Nobody expected this was the president's claim. Warner's exchange with Gabbard shows that both the foreseeability and the briefing question remain officially unresolved. The American people know enough to ask the question that the Director of National Intelligence would not answer. Subscribe right now because the House continuation is today and the second round will press on all of these exact points. Share this everywhere. Two witnesses. One document. The paragraphs Gabbard skipped. And the answer she would not give.