National intelligence director spent years elevating an anti-interventionist agenda before joining Trump administration

The White House excluded Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard from months of planning to oust Nicolas Maduro because her previous opposition to military action in Venezuela cast doubt on her willingness to support the operation,

Tulsi Gabbard congratulated President Trump and the military on its capture of Nicolas Maduro — after previously warning about US intervention in Venezuela

The White House excluded DNI Tulsi Gabbard from planning the operation to oust Nicolas Maduro, citing concerns over her past opposition to military action. Officials deny tensions, but former intelligence leaders say her absence is unusual.

The director of national intelligence was conspicuously absent among Trump’s top national security advisers during the planning for the Maduro mission.

The move to cut Gabbard out of the meetings was so well-known that some White House aides joked that the acronym of her title, DNI, stood for 'Do Not Invite'

Gabbard has since been called out for doing an about-face on Venezuela while working in the Trump administration. In a Jan. 6 post on X—three days after Maduro’s capture—Gabbard applauded the “flawless execution” of the military operation.

Several years before the U.S. conducted airstrikes on Venezuela and captured President Nicolás Maduro, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard warned against that exact intervention, predicting it would be "disastrous.