A team working for U.S. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard last spring led a little-known investigation into Puerto Rico’s electronic voting machines, a probe that began amid unproven allegations of Venezuelan meddling and has sharpened questions about the Trump administration’s election-fraud push, according to US officials.
Officials Say Probe Found No Venezuelan Hack
Six current and former officials told Reuters on Wednesday that the operation was launched to work alongside the FBI to examine claims that Venezuela had hacked voting machines in the US territory. They said the effort ultimately produced no clear evidence of Venezuelan interference in Puerto Rico’s elections.
Gabbard’s office confirmed the May 2025 investigation but rejected any Venezuela focus, saying the review centered on cybersecurity weaknesses in Puerto Rico’s voting infrastructure. Her office said an unspecified number of machines and copies of election data were taken into federal custody as part of a “standard practice in forensics analysis,” and that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence found “extremely concerning cybersecurity and operational deployment practices that pose a significant risk to US elections.”
Officials said the Puerto Rico case appeared to fit into a broader effort by Trump-aligned aides to continue pursuing claims of voter fraud that date back to his 2020 election loss and have persisted into his second term.
Partnership With FBI Blurs Election Security Lines
The Puerto Rico operation was coordinated with an FBI field office in Florida and a mixed group of national security officials, law-enforcement agents and contractors, according to two people familiar with the matter. Domestic election security is typically handled by law enforcement and state officials, not the intelligence community, a division of roles some experts say Gabbard has blurred.
Her recent appearance at an FBI raid on an election warehouse in Fulton County, Georgia, part of a separate probe into Donald Trump’s contested 2020 loss there, has already prompted bipartisan concern that ODNI is overstepping its authority in highly charged domestic cases.
Maduro Allegations Deepen Scrutiny Of Gabbard’s Tenure
Reuters’ sources said it was the allegation that Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro’s government had tampered with Puerto Rico’s voting systems that initially raised the question of foreign interference, an area where ODNI has clear legal authority. That said, no public evidence has emerged to substantiate that claim.
Maduro, who denies US charges that he ran a narco-trafficking enterprise, was seized by American forces in Caracas in January and brought to New York to face prosecution, further intensifying regional tensions. The episode adds to mounting scrutiny of Gabbard’s tenure atop the intelligence community, including earlier criticism over sweeping internal cuts she championed at ODNI, which she argued had become “bloated and inefficient” and prone to leaks.
Photo Courtesy: Maxim Elramsisy on Shutterstock.com
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