Tulsi Gabbard’s nomination to serve as President Trump’s director of national intelligence hinges on questions about the judgment and patriotism of the former congresswoman and Army veteran, doubts that are expected to take center stage at her Senate confirmation hearing Thursday.

Echoing a charge first lodged by Hillary Clinton, Sens. Tammy Duckworth and Elizabeth Warren have spread innuendo that Gabbard is a “compromised” “Russian asset” who has been “in Putin’s pocket.” Former CIA Director John Brennan has speculated that Gabbard may deliberately “withhold” or even “skew” vital intelligence in briefing President Trump. Michael McCaul, the Republican chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, has called Trump’s selection of Gabbard to oversee the nation’s 18 spy agencies “a bit baffling” and predicted a defeat of her nomination in the Senate.

While eyebrows have been raised over Gabbard’s support of a pardon for Edward Snowden – the contractor who stole and released classified information revealing that the U.S. government was conducting domestic mass surveillance and who eventually received asylum in Russia – the main criticism involves Gabbard’s views on Syria, whose recently deposed, Russian-backed dictator, Bashar al-Assad, engaged in a long and brutal war against U.S.-backed insurgents. 

In January 2017, just as the U.S. was winding down a covert war to topple the regime, Gabbard met with Assad in Damascus. With designated terror groups occupying swaths of the war-torn country, Gabbard warned that Assad’s removal would create a destabilizing power vacuum filled by Al-Qaeda. And when these same insurgent groups accused Assad’s government of chemical weapons attacks, Gabbard voiced skepticism of the allegations, particularly in two incidents that prompted U.S. military airstrikes.