Overview
- The Washington Post published an investigation on Sunday that reviewed more than 25,000 pages of emails and memos, including hundreds of internal files from 2011–2017 that appear to show advice from Chris Butler’s Science of Identity Foundation to Tulsi Gabbard.
- Many memos offered directive-style guidance on what bills to introduce, which policies to promote, and how to speak in television interviews, and the reporters found multiple instances where Gabbard used memo language nearly verbatim.
- Rebecca Saltzburg, a former Gabbard campaign digital strategist, provided recovered emails from the NineIsles.com domain that she says were used by Butler’s office and shared the material with reporters.
- Gabbard’s team rejected the portrayal and called the reporting anti-Hindu bigotry, Butler and the Science of Identity Foundation declined to comment, and there have been no legal findings or official sanctions so far.
- The disclosures revive oversight and political questions about the role of a religious group in shaping an elected official’s decisions and could prompt further media scrutiny and congressional or ethics inquiries.