New Hampshire: Tulsi Gabbard Faces Foreign Interference Allegations

Gabbard challenged at Hanover town hall and Londonderry town council

Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard is facing allegations of foreign interference in her past congressional campaigns as she crisscrosses New Hampshire hosting daily town halls for her presidential campaign.

On Sunday evening, reported The Hill, Gabbard was questioned at a Hanover, NH town hall over “whether she had financially supported India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).” Challenged over a picture of her wearing a scarf with the BJP’s logo, she responded: “Somebody put something around my neck and snapped a picture without my knowing what it was…. That’s what happened in the picture.”

“Ignorance is bliss,” remarked questioner Jada Bernard afterwards. “I would love to take her at her word that she was naive enough to take that picture with a BJP lobbyist while wearing a BJP scarf, but it wasn’t the first event she spoke at while wearing the BJP scarf throughout. She dismissed me as a religious bigot, but argumentum ad hominem is a fallacious argument directed at the messenger instead of the topic at hand, which is BJP events, money, and ideology. It doesn’t matter who I am. Google the info, not me. I’m not running for president. I’m a barber.”

On Monday evening, Bernard was joined by South Asian affairs analyst Pieter Friedrich at the Londonderry, NH town council meeting.

In public remarks to the council, Friedrich referenced Gabbard’s presence at an Overseas Friends of the BJP banquet in 2014, saying, “The BJP’s Foreign Affairs Cell Chief discussed her campaign for re-election to a second term. The foreign politician told the American congresswoman: ‘Your victory later this year is a foregone conclusion.’ Then Gabbard posed for pictures wearing a scarf with the BJP logo.”

Bernard told the council, “We all heard how Hillary Clinton accused Tulsi Gabbard of being a Russian asset. But Tulsi doesn’t want you to know that Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, a national media watch group, called the Russia accusations a ‘distraction’ from the ‘reality that Gabbard’s most troubling attribute is her documented connection to the far-right Hindu nationalist, or Hindutva, movement known as Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the parent organization of India’s ruling BJP party.’”

Discussing the influence of the Ku Klux Klan while he was growing up in Louisiana, Bernard added, “Today, the Klan is a widely despised group in America which holds no official political power. But the KKK of India has held power there for the past five years. India’s KKK is called the RSS. The RSS is responsible for lynchings, assassinations, bombings, and pogroms against Christians, Muslims, and anyone who stands up against its xenophobic agenda.”

Video of the Londonderry remarks by Friedrich and Bernard as well as Bernard’s question at the Hanover town hall have gone viral on Twitter.