Don’t say they weren’t warned. Honolulu Civil Beat reports:

A former member of a secretive Hawaiʻi religious sect is warning members of Congress about the potential dangers of confirming Tulsi Gabbard as President-elect Donald Trump’s next director of national intelligence.

Anita van Duyn says she spent 15 years inside the Science of Identity Foundation, a fringe offshoot of Hare Krishna that was formed in the 1970s and has been described by defectors as a cult.

She has sent the letters only to Democrats so far, so I don’t know how effective that will be. And as the article acknowledges, Senators are loathe to criticize anyone for their religious beliefs(well, unless the person is a Democrat in which all bets are off.) Most DC types seem to think they should really go near this issue.

But Gabbard hasn’t been nominated to be the head of Housing and Urban Development she’s been tapped to be the head of all the Intelligence Agencies and she’s a lifelong member of a cult! And it’s a real one:

The van Duyn letters outline what she says are Butler’s long-standing political ambitions and the ways he groomed and supported his disciples, Gabbard included, in their pursuit of public office while promoting his own ideologies, which include a long history of espousing anti-gay rhetoric.[…]

Throughout her public life, Gabbard has been dogged by her ties to the Science of Identify Foundation and Butler, in particular, who has openly described Gabbard as a star pupil.

“Everybody is thinking her allegiance is to Trump, but in reality her allegiance was already given away to her guru,” van Duyn said in an interview with Civil Beat. “You can’t just go in and out of that. That’s a lifetime commitment.”

Gabbard has been vague about her own experiences in the group and in 2017 told a reporter for The New Yorker magazine she’d never heard Butler say anything mean or hateful about anyone. “I can speak to my own personal experience and, frankly, my gratitude to him, for the gift of this wonderful spiritual practice that he has given to me, and to so many people,” she said.