Bella's mom

Senator Mark Warner and his friends in the Propaganda Media have repeatedly lied to the American people that I or the ODNI “hid” a whistleblower complaint in a safe for eight months. This is a blatant lie. The truth: - I am not now, nor have I ever been, in possession or control of the Whistleblower’s complaint, so I obviously could not have “hidden” it in a safe. Biden-era IC Inspector General Tamara Johnson was in possession of and responsible for securing the complaint for months. - The first time I saw the whistleblower complaint was 2 weeks ago when I had to review it to provide guidance on how it should be securely shared with Congress. - As Vice Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Senator Warner knows very well that whistleblower complaints that contain highly classified and compartmented intelligence—even if they contain baseless allegations like this one—must be secured in a safe, which the Biden-era Inspector General Tamara Johnson did and her successor, Inspector General Chris Fox, continued to do. After IC Inspector General Fox hand-delivered the complaint to the Gang of 8, the complaint was returned to a safe where it remains, consistent with any information of such sensitivity. - Either Senator Warner knows these facts and is intentionally lying to the American people, or he doesn’t have a clue how these things work and is therefore not qualified to be in the U.S. Senate—and certainly not the Vice Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Here is a detailed chronology of the situation: - June 2025, I became aware that a whistleblower made a complaint against me that after further investigation, neither Biden-era IC Inspector General Tamara Johnson nor current IC Inspector General Chris Fox found the complaint to be credible. - The complaint required special handling and storage in a safe because the complainant chose to include highly sensitive information within the complaint itself rather than referencing the sensitive reporting and leaving the complaint at a lower level of classification. - Security standards for complaints that include such sensitive intelligence required the Inspector General to keep the complaint and the intelligence referenced secured in a safe from the time the complaint was made, until now. - In June 2025 after Biden-era Inspector General Tamara Johnson completed her review of the complaint, no further oversight or investigative activity took place. - Biden-era Inspector General Johnson had communicated with me directly throughout the course of her investigation into this complaint, yet neither she nor anyone from her office informed me that the Whistleblower chose to send the complaint to Congress which would require me to issue security instructions. - When a complaint is not found to be credible, there is no timeline under the law for the provision of security guidance. The "21 day" requirement that Senator Warner alleges I did not comply with, only applies when a complaint is determined by the Inspector General to be both urgent AND apparently credible. That was NOT the case here. - I was made aware of the need to provide security guidance by IC Inspector General Chris Fox on December 4, 2025, which he detailed in his letter to Congress. - I took immediate action to provide the security guidance to the Intelligence Community Inspector General who then shared the complaint and referenced intelligence with relevant members of Congress last week. Senator Warner's decision to spread lies and baseless accusations over the months for political gain, undermines our national security and is a disservice to the American people and the Intelligence Community.