In the News
The Washington Post: Mark Warner Says Spy Agency Visit Canceled Over Posts by Laura Loomer
Nov 03 2025
Mark Warner says spy agency visit canceled over posts by Laura Loomer
By Noah Robertson and Warren P. Strobel
In The Washington Post
The top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee said he was blocked from a planned visit to a major U.S. spy agency as part of his routine congressional oversight duties after a series of social media posts by Laura Loomer, the far-right activist and provocateur.
“This is the kind of thing that happens in authoritarian regimes,” Warner told a small group of reporters Wednesday morning, referencing the canceled visit and purge this year of intelligence officials.
The visit, he said, had been scheduled for weeks and would have been one of the dozen or so trips he’d taken to U.S. intelligence agencies in the past. NGA, like many other intelligence outfits, is headquartered in Virginia, his home state.
It wasn’t the agency’s leadership that canceled the visit, though, but instead Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s office, Warner said. The trip had been classified, he said, which means whoever shared it with Loomer — who does not hold a job in the administration — leaked the information.
“How did a trolling blogger get access that there was a classified meeting going on?” Warner said.
An NGA spokeswoman declined to comment on why Warner’s visit was canceled. A Defense Department spokesperson declined to comment on the record.
For a decade, Warner has been a member of the committee’s leadership, in which he and a select group of other lawmakers in the House and the Senate exercise legislative oversight of America’s vast intelligence apparatus and its top-secret work.
“Is congressional oversight dead? Is congressional power of the purse dead? Those are fair questions to ask,” Warner said.
He and other Democratic lawmakers have expressed concern that constitutional checks are rapidly eroding under President Donald Trump and have complained to Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard about what they say is a failure to inform them of key developments.
Trump and Gabbard have repeatedly fired or reassigned U.S. intelligence officials they deem disloyal or who have presented intelligence analysis at odds with the White House’s views. Those moves are politicizing the ranks of intelligence agencies and increase the danger that the Trump administration will not receive, or heed, vital warnings of threats, former U.S. officials say.
Loomer claimed credit for the aborted visit Tuesday night with a social media post on X. She first posted about the subject over the weekend, attacking Navy Vice Adm. Frank “Trey” Whitworth, the NGA’s director, for agreeing to host Warner and questioning why Whitworth, who assumed his post under President Joe Biden, hadn’t been fired.
“Clearly, a lot of Deep State actors are being given a pass in the Intel community to continue their efforts to sabotage Trump under the Trump admin,” Loomer wrote.
Since Trump took office, Loomer has called for a purge of civil servants and political appointees — many in national security roles — whom she has accused of having insufficient loyalty to the president, at times playing a central role in their ouster. Her campaign has extended even to officials who served in the first Trump administration, or who were recently tapped for top jobs in this one.
Even meeting with a Democrat who has jurisdiction over these agencies can be considered an act of disloyalty. Warner said his office was told that the visit was canceled in part because it wasn’t bipartisan, but he doubted that his Republican colleagues would have been prevented from similar trips.
He planned to raise the issue with GOP colleagues — including Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Tom Cotton (Arkansas) — in the coming days, urging them to preserve norms that lawmakers will want in future administrations.
Cotton’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
“If you’re not worried as a Republican senator that this kind of same litmus test wouldn’t apply to you, then I think you’re missing the picture,” Warner said.
Among those whom Gabbard stripped of their clearances last month was Maher Bitar, national security adviser for Sen. Adam Schiff (D-California). Bitar previously worked for Schiff when he chaired the House Intelligence Committee. Trump has long targeted Schiff for his role in the president’s first impeachment.
The House and Senate intelligence committees were established in the 1970s to strengthen congressional oversight of secretive spy agencies following the revelation of a series of abuses by the CIA, the NSA and the FBI. By law, the intelligence agencies must inform the committees about their operations and the CIA must report any covert actions it undertakes.
