Tulsi Gabbard, her guru and the mysterious messages that helped shape her political career

[muriel_volestrangler]

I obtained hundreds of confidential memos detailing politics and policy guidance for Gabbard from her years in Congress, then embarked on a quest to identify who was behind them.

Saltzburg had heard I’d been asking people about Chris Butler, the eccentric religious leader Gabbard once described as her guru. Gabbard grew up in Butler’s breakaway Hare Krishna group. Her parents held senior positions in the organization. Saltzburg said that she herself had been a member since moving to Hawaii with a college friend in the 1990s.
...
Some former members, however, have called the group a cult and said disciples were isolated from the outside world, characterizations the group has denied. Former devotees had been telling me for weeks that Butler controlled his followers’ major life decisions and demanded total obedience and secrecy. They said he spent years working to extend his reach into politics — and they suspected Gabbard’s rise in Washington was the culmination of that effort.
...
Dozens of attached memos appeared to document directives and advice for Gabbard from her time in Congress. Some contained instructions on what legislation she should propose, which policies she should embrace and how she should conduct herself on television. They had an air of authority. A memo about a proposal to partition war-torn Iraq into three states quoted an unnamed person as saying it was “time for TG to come up with this idea.”
...
Saltzburg kept searching her email and social media accounts, and sending documents. Eventually, the files she shared ran to more than 25,000 pages, including hundreds of memos reflecting guidance for Gabbard between 2011 and 2017, most from her first two terms in Congress.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2026/06/21/tulsi-gabbard-her-guru-mysterious-messages-that-helped-shape-her-political-career/?

There's a gift link at https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2026/06/the-science-of-identity-foundation-candidate , whose comment is:

I wish I could be more surprsed that Tulsi Gabbard was for all intents and purposes the sock puppet of a crackpot cult leader, but:
...
Whatever other errors the Democratic primary electorate has made, Tulsi finishing in 37th place or whatever in 2020 was not one of them.

And Trump put her in charge of US intelligence. What happened to government vetting? I'd have thought that Republicans, or Trump himself from a purely narcissistic point of view, would also have been appalled at someone else's sock puppet having that access and power? Did Trump just think "she's my sock puppet now"?

[sunnybrook]

1. But he's the sock puppet

I'm sure he had orders from headquarters i.e. Putin to install Gabbard

[eppur_se_muova]

2. Just hoping this is well and truly the end of her political career.

Send her to the Koch Brothers' Home for Old Cosplayers.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

3. MaddowBlog-Tulsi Gabbard and Senate GOP face difficult new questions over influence of her 'guru'

“No one knows who this guru really is, what his connections are and where the instructions came from,” Chuck Schumer said. “We need answers.”

As Tulsi Gabbard faces a fresh round of exceedingly difficult questions about the influence of her “guru,” it’s also worth asking the 52 Senate Republicans (including alleged "moderates" like Susan Collins) who ignored every red flag and voted to confirm her to serve as DNI:

Any regrets?

— Steve Benen (@stevebenen.com) 2026-06-23T18:49:58.260Z

https://www.ms.now/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/tulsi-gabbard-guru-dni

But in case that weren’t quite enough, let’s also not overlook the fact that Gabbard was a member of a secretive Hare Krishna offshoot religious sect that is considered by many of its former members to be an abusive cult.

Gabbard, who wrapped up her tenure as DNI last week, has long insisted that any suggestion that she was somehow enthralled to or controlled by this sect or its leader, whom she has referred to as her “guru,” is just bigotry against her faith.

But it’s against this backdrop that The Washington Post obtained hundreds of secret memos prepared for Gabbard during her congressional tenure, which were put together by members of the alleged cult and which included thousands of pages of specific directives to her on policy and politics.

After careful analysis of thousands of these documents, which have not been independently verified by MS NOW, the Post determined that they likely came from Gabbard’s secretive guru, a man named Chris Butler......

This week, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer spoke on the Senate floor and commented on the reporting:

There are reports that Tulsi Gabbard was receiving instructions from a so-called guru and repeating them word for word. That ought to concern all of us if it’s true. No one knows who this guru really is, what his connections are, and where the instructions came from. … We need answers.

.....It stands to reason, for example, that Gabbard has some explaining to do, but I’m also interested in the answers from those who elevated her to an influential intelligence office in the first place.

In February 2025, confronted with an avalanche of reasons to reject Gabbard’s nomination, 52 Senate Republicans — every GOP member except Kentucky’s Mitch McConnell — shrugged off every red flag and voted to confirm her as the nation’s DNI, including so-called “moderates” such as Maine’s Susan Collins and Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski.

The question for these 52 senators seems obvious: Do you regret that confirmation vote and now recognize it as a mistake? Or do you still think it was a good idea to put Gabbard in this influential intelligence position?

[LetMyPeopleVote]

4. 'There's a problem here': MS NOW hosts flabbergasted by Trump official's 'cult' ties

Gabbard was a puppet and obey the instructions of her guru

MS NOW's Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski expressed shock over a new report exposing the decades-long influence of Tulsi Gabbard's religious mentor over her political career. "It is a Hare Krishna-styled group that many people have compared to a cult."

— Raw Story (@rawstory.com) 2026-06-22T16:30:04Z

https://www.rawstory.com/tulsi-gabbard-cult-ms-now

MS NOW's Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski expressed shock over a new report exposing the decades-long influence of Tulsi Gabbard's religious mentor over her political career.

Gabbard recently stepped down as President Donald Trump's director of national intelligence after serving as a Democratic congresswoman, but the Washington Post reported over the weekend that that she has been guided every step of the way by eccentric religious leader Chris Butler, head of a Hare Krishna breakaway group called the Science of Identity Foundation.

"Some people call it a cult," Scarborough said.

A former member of the group provided Post reporter Jonathan Swaine with thousands of emails and documents that revealed Butler's advisory role to Gabbard, who had been asked about her relationship with the guru during her confirmation hearings.

"Dozens of attached memos appeared to document directives and advice for Gabbard from her time in Congress," Swaine reported. "Some contained instructions on what legislation she should propose, which policies she should embrace, and how she should conduct herself on television. They had an air of authority."

The reporter compared Gabbard's remarks in 32 television interviews between 2014 and 2016 and found she used language that was nearly verbatim to Butler's talking points memos, and Scarborough was stunned.

"It is a Hare Krishna-styled group that many people have compared to a cult," he said. "People don't suggest that being in a Hare Krishna group is the same as being in a cult, but in this case, when you have something that may be a spinoff of that and a cult-like leader advising members of Congress how to speak, how to, how to put forward legislation, how how to style their hair. There's a problem here."

[Aristus]

5. Did her guru recommend that idiotic Cruella de Vil hair dye-job?

Just asking…