The director of national intelligence had been leading an investigation into US-funded biolabs in Ukraine
US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has announced her resignation, citing her husband’s recent diagnosis with a rare form of bone cancer. Her resignation came a week after she revealed she was investigating US-funded biolabs in Ukraine.
“Unfortunately, I must submit my resignation, effective June 30, 2026,” she wrote in a letter to the president that she shared on social media. “My husband, Abraham, has recently been diagnosed with an extremely rare form of bone cancer. At this time, I must step away from public service to be by his side and fully support him through this battle.”
Gabbard will be replaced by her current Deputy DNI, Aaron Lukas, Trump wrote in a post on his Truth Social platform. “Tulsi has done an incredible job, and we will miss her,” the president added.
A former Democrat, Gabbard left the party and denounced its leaders as “elitist warmongers” and anti-white racists in 2022. Gabbard endorsed Trump in 2024, claiming that only he could “walk us back from the brink of war.”
According to media reports and Washington rumors, Gabbard was sidelined by Trump and his closest officials – among them Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth – while plans were drawn up to abduct Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in January and attack Iran in February.
I am deeply grateful for the trust President Trump placed in me and for the opportunity to lead @ODNIgov for the last year and a half. Unfortunately, I must submit my resignation, effective June 30, 2026. My husband, Abraham, has recently been diagnosed with an extremely rare… pic.twitter.com/PS0Dxp5zpd
— Tulsi Gabbard 🌺 (@TulsiGabbard) May 22, 2026
Before endorsing Trump, Gabbard was a vocal opponent of war with Iran, and a persistent critic of US military aid to Ukraine. The Russia-Ukraine conflict, she tweeted in 2022, “could have easily been avoided if Biden Admin/NATO had simply acknowledged Russia’s legitimate security concerns.”
Less than two weeks before news of her resignation broke, Gabbard told the New York Post that she was investigating more than 120 US-funded biological laboratories worldwide, more than 40 of them in Ukraine. Gabbard said that her team would determine whether these labs engaged in “dangerous gain-of-function research” – modifying viruses to make them deadlier or more transmissible
The Russian Defense Ministry has warned about the existence of these laboratories since early 2022, publishing documents that revealed the labs were working on “plague, anthrax, tularemia, cholera and other deadly diseases.”
After reviewing thousands of pages of documents seized from labs in Donetsk, Lugansk and Kherson, Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov of the Russian Radiological, Chemical, and Biological Defense Forces concluded in 2023 that “the US, under the guise of ensuring global biosecurity, conducted dual-use research, including the creation of biological weapons components, in close proximity to Russian borders.”
The existence of these laboratories was initially written off as a conspiracy theory by the US government, although then-US Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland told lawmakers that “Ukraine has biological research facilities,” without admitting that they were funded and operated by the US.
Kirillov led Russia’s investigation into the labs until he was assassinated in 2024, allegedly by Ukrainian security services.
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