The lawyer who orchestrated President Trump's first impeachment is back—this time targeting Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard with a whistleblower complaint that her own office says lacks any credibility.
A classified whistleblower complaint has remained pending within Gabbard's agency for months, drawing attention to the whistleblower's lawyer, Andrew P. Bakaj, known for his role in President Trump's first impeachment. The current complaint was submitted in May 2025 to the intelligence community's inspector general and was classified at a level that has complicated its handling.
Gabbard's office has responded with unequivocal force. In a statement posted Monday, spokesperson Olivia Coleman declared:
There was absolutely NO wrongdoing by DNI Gabbard.
Coleman continued:
Even the Biden-era Intelligence Community Inspector General came to this conclusion, determining that the Whistleblower's allegations against DNI Gabbard 'did not appear credible.
Intelligence officials confirmed that the inspector general determined that some of the allegations against Gabbard lacked credibility, but could not assess other claims. The complaint now sits with Congressional Intelligence Committees for review.
Bakaj was lead counsel for the whistleblower who filed the initial complaint that triggered multiple Congressional investigations into the Trump-Ukraine scandal, the impeachment inquiry into President Trump, and ultimately the first impeachment of Donald Trump. Trump was impeached by the House but acquitted by the Senate in February 2020 over the call during which he asked Ukrainian President Zelenskyy for a "favor."
That first impeachment effort ended in failure. Now, seven years later, the same attorney has found a new target in the Trump administration.
Bakaj previously served as lead attorney for the Central Intelligence Agency officer whose 2019 whistleblower disclosure helped trigger the first failed impeachment of President Trump during his first term. His continued involvement in sensitive national security complaints against Trump administration officials reveals a pattern that conservative observers have noted for years, the New York Post reported.
Bakaj also worked for Democratic senators Daniel Moynihan, Charles Schumer, and Hillary Clinton earlier in his career. His pedigree is not that of a neutral arbiter seeking truth—it is that of a Democratic operative embedded in the intelligence community's legal apparatus.
Bakaj has complained publicly about what he characterizes as obstruction:
From my experience, it is confounding for [Gabbard's office] to take weeks—let alone eight months—to transmit a disclosure to Congress.
But Gabbard's office offers a different explanation. According to people familiar with the matter, the document has been stored in a secure safe accessible only under strict protocols. The Intelligence Community Inspector General has stated that the complaint includes "exceptionally sensitive materials necessitating special handling and storage requirements."
An ODNI official noted that Gabbard issued security guidance shortly after learning about the handling requirement, months after the complaint was initially filed. The complexity here is not obstruction. It is operational security.
Coleman addressed the procedural questions directly:
The Whistleblower's complaint is with the Congressional Intelligence Committees for review.
She added:
Director Gabbard has always and will continue to support [whistleblowers] and their right, under the law, to submit complaints to Congress, even if they are completely baseless like this one.
That last phrase is the key: "completely baseless." The Biden-era Inspector General found the allegations not credible. The complaint involves classified materials requiring extraordinary handling. And the attorney driving it happens to be the same man who engineered the first failed impeachment.
Bakaj's continued involvement in sensitive national security complaints appears to reinforce perceptions that whistleblower mechanisms are being abused as political weapons. This is not whistleblowing in any traditional sense. This is lawfare—the use of legal processes to achieve political ends that cannot be won through elections or legitimate oversight.
The details of the current complaint against Gabbard are not publicly known. The whistleblower's identity remains secret. The specific allegations remain classified. What we do know is the pattern:
Bakaj has disputed the characterization that parts of the complaint were deemed not credible, saying he was never informed that any part of the complaint had been deemed not credible. Yet Gabbard's office cites the Biden-era Inspector General's own conclusion. Someone is not telling the truth.
The complaint reportedly involves a separate federal agency beyond ODNI and raises potential issues of executive privilege. These are not the hallmarks of a straightforward ethics complaint. They are the hallmarks of a fishing expedition designed to entangle a Trump administration official in prolonged legal battles and generate damaging headlines.
Tulsi Gabbard was confirmed as Director of National Intelligence after a career that included military service and congressional experience. Last week, she was pictured observing an FBI raid on a Fulton County, Georgia election center—part of ongoing federal efforts to investigate allegations related to the 2020 election.
The timing of this whistleblower story breaking—just days after Gabbard's visible involvement in that investigation—may be coincidental. It may not be.
What is clear is that the same machinery that attempted to derail Trump's first term has not been dismantled. The same attorney who led the first impeachment effort is now deploying the same tactics against a different target. The institutions may have changed, but the playbook has not.
The complaint is now with the Congressional Intelligence Committees. Christopher Fox, who became the new Intelligence Community Inspector General in October 2025, will oversee the subsequent processes. Whether Congress takes any action on a complaint that the previous Inspector General deemed not credible remains to be seen.
Conservative observers should watch this case carefully. The weaponization of whistleblower statutes—designed to protect genuine disclosures of wrongdoing—into political battering rams undermines both national security and public trust in oversight institutions.
Gabbard's office has stated clearly that no wrongdoing occurred. The Biden-era Inspector General agreed. Bakaj and his anonymous client disagree.
But the American people have seen this movie before. They remember how the first act ended.