The Biden administration's Transportation Security Administration (TSA) placed Tulsi Gabbard, a critic of the administration, on a terror watch list.
Tulsi was a member of the Democratic Party and ran against Biden in the 2020 primary, but has since changed her political affiliation to Independent. In particular, she voted “present” on the impeachment of Donald Trump (Ukraine edition), becoming the only Democrat who did not vote for it.
According to reporting by Matt Taibbi:
This story began two weeks ago, when the former congresswoman from Hawaii returned home after a short trip abroad. At airport after airport, she and her husband Abraham Williams encountered obstacles. First on a flight from Rome to Dallas, then on a connecting flight to Austin, and later on various flights to cities such as Nashville, Orlando, and Atlanta, their boarding passes were marked with the designation “SSSS,” which stands for “Secondary”. Security screening selection.” The “Quad-S” marker is often a sign that the traveler has been put on a threat list, and Gabbard and Williams were forced to conduct “random” searches of up to 45 minutes .
“It happened every time I boarded,” Gabbard says. The Iraq War veteran and current Army reservist tends to be slight, but that doesn't matter.
“I have a couple of blazers in there and they're tightening every inch of the entire collar, every inch of the sleeves, every inch of the hem of the blazers,” he says. “They're tightening or padding underwear, bras, workout clothes, every inch of every piece of clothing.” The officers unzipped the lining inside the roller board of his suitcase, pounding every inch inside the lining. Gabbard was asked to remove all electronics and turn them on, including his military phone and computer.
Gabbard says she sometimes uses her military ID to get through security, but she couldn't get through this time.
A TSA agent who was surprised to see that someone with a military ID had an SSSS designation told him that he had encountered Trump supporters who previously had no problem traveling but were marked as SSSS since Biden assumed the position.
Gabbard was placed on the list on July 23, and the trio of air marshals began following her on flights beginning on July 25. The surveillance of her was carried out in at least eight flights, with different teams of three marshals on each flight.
The story about Gabbard was brought forward by two TSA whistleblowers, including one detailed to follow her. When Gabbard read this, she felt a jolt of recognition. “When I saw it, I thought, 'Whoa, okay.' So everything I was experiencing was exactly what I feared was happening,” she says.
Gabbard is probably the most high-profile person under this kind of surveillance by the Biden administration — how many others are watching that we just don't know about?
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