Former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii, speaks during the 2020 Public Service Forum hosted by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees at UNLV on Aug. 3, 2019 in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii, on Tuesday called on President Joe Biden to reject efforts to expand national security, calling those within government and Big Tech who are pushing such efforts "domestic enemies" seeking a "police state."
In a video posted to Twitter, Gabbard, who served in Congress from 2013 to 2021 and ran for president in 2020, said, "The mob who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 to try to stop Congress from carrying out its constitutional responsibilities were behaving like domestic enemies of our country."
But, she added, "Let's be clear, the John Brennans, Adam Schiffs and the oligarchs in Big Tech who are trying to undermine our constitutionally protected rights and turn our country into a police state with KGB-style surveillance are also domestic enemies — and much more powerful, and therefore dangerous, than the mob that stormed the Capitol."
Brennan served as CIA director under President Barack Obama, and Schiff is a congressman from California who chairs the House Intelligence Committee.
Gabbard's video includes a clip of Brennan in an MSNBC interview in which he says members of the Biden administration "are now moving in laser-like fashion to try to uncover as much as they can about what looks very similar to insurgency movements that we see overseas, where they germinate in different parts of the country and they gain strength, and it brings together and unholy alliance frequently of religious extremists, authoritarians, fascists, bigots, racists, nativists, even libertarians."
"President Biden, I call upon you and all of Congress from both parties to denounce efforts by Brennan and others to take away our civil liberties endowed to us by our Creator and guaranteed in our Constitution," Gabbard said. "If you don’t stand up to them now, then our country will be in great peril."