Cotton asks Gabbard not to share intel with Germany that can be used against far-right party

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) asked Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard to refrain from sharing intelligence with Germany’s domestic intelligence agency days after the country's spy arm labeled the far-right Alternative for Germany, or AfD, as an “extremist” political party.

Cotton requested that, until Germany treats the AfD as a “legitimate opposition party” and not as a “right-wing extremist organization,” Gabbard should direct the U.S. intelligence agencies to halt sharing intelligence with the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV).

He also asked that Gabbard deny Berlin’s potential requests to assist in surveilling the AfD and review if intelligence agencies during former President Biden’s administration “cooperated with German requests to surveil the AfD or other opposition parties.” 

“Rather than trying to undermine the AfD using the tools of authoritarian states, Germany’s incoming government might be better advised to consider why the AfD continues to gain electoral ground and how Germany's government can address the reasonable concerns of its citizens,” Cotton, the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, wrote in a two-page Monday letter to Gabbard, which was made public Wednesday. 

The Hill has reached out to Gabbard's office for comment. The Arkansas Republican asked that Gabbard alert the Senate about anything she uncovers in the requested review.

Cotton’s request comes less than a week after BfV marked the AfD, the party that won the second most votes in Germany’s recent election, as an extremist entity that represents a threat to democracy. 

The designation came shortly after BfV’s three-year investigation found that AfD is breaching  “fundamental principles” of the German Constitution. Now, Germany’s spy agency is allowed to increase surveillance and oversight of the political party. 

“Central to our assessment is the ethnically and ancestrally defined concept of the people that shapes the AfD, which devalues entire segments of the population in Germany and violates their human dignity,” BfV said, adding that the “concept is reflected in the party’s overall anti-migrant and anti-Muslim stance.”

The move received strong pushback from top Trump officials over the weekend. 

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who also now serves as national security adviser, slammed the spy agency and claimed that the development does not equal “democracy — it’s tyranny in disguise.” 

“What is truly extremist is not the popular AfD — which took second in the recent election — but rather the establishment’s deadly open border immigration policies that the AfD opposes,” Rubio said on Friday, urging Germany to “reverse course.”

Vice President Vance, who met with party leader Alice Weidel in February, praised the AfD as the “most popular party in Germany, and by far the most representative of East Germany. Now the bureaucrats try to destroy it.”  

“The West tore down the Berlin Wall together. And it has been rebuilt — not by the Soviets or the Russians, but by the German establishment,” Vance said Saturday.

Germany’s foreign ministry pushed back on Rubio’s statement, arguing the decision came after a “thorough & independent investigation to protect our Constitution & the rule of law.”

“It is independent courts that will have the final say. We have learnt from our history that rightwing extremism needs to be stopped,” the office added on the social media platform X.