Verdict: Partly True – but the word “raid” is misleading.
Something real happened. The CIA did take classified files. But the viral framing distorts the facts in important ways.
What Actually Happened
On May 13, 2026, CIA whistleblower James Erdman III, a senior operations officer with roughly two decades of service, testified before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. He told senators that the CIA had taken back 40 boxes of JFK and MK-Ultra files that DNI Tulsi Gabbard was processing for declassification.
Erdman also alleged that the CIA had illegally monitored the computer and phone usage of Gabbard’s investigators, who were looking into an alleged cover-up of Covid-19 origins.
So yes – boxes of sensitive files were removed. That part is confirmed by whistleblower testimony and two intelligence officials.
Why “Raid” Is the Wrong Word
Gabbard’s own press secretary, Olivia Coleman, responded directly to the viral claims. “This is false – the CIA did not raid the DNI’s office,” she wrote on X.
NewsNation reporter Katie Pavlich also clarified the timeline. According to an intelligence official she spoke to, CIA personnel took the documents from the National Reconnaissance Office last year, in the middle of the night during a government shutdown – not on May 13, 2026.
Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, the Republican chairwoman of the House Oversight Task Force on declassification, also walked back her initial wording. She clarified that the incident did not happen on Wednesday and was not a raid, though she confirmed it did occur.
So the CIA did not “march into” Gabbard’s office that day. The files were taken earlier, quietly, from a different location.
What Are These Files, Exactly?
MK-Ultra was a covert CIA programme that ran from 1953 to 1973. It used LSD, psychological torture, sleep deprivation, and sensory deprivation on unwitting test subjects across more than 80 institutions, including universities, hospitals, and prisons. When the Watergate scandal threatened to expose the agency’s secrets, CIA Director Richard Helms ordered all MK-Ultra files destroyed in 1973. Most were wiped.
The CIA had previously told Congress that all documents were released and the rest destroyed. These newly surfaced files are allegedly the documents that were never supposed to exist.
That is why their removal is so explosive.
The Legal Question
Rep. Luna argued that the CIA has no jurisdiction to act against a presidential executive order. “The CIA does not have jurisdiction to work against an executive order by the president,” she said, calling the seizure an internal coup carried out while Trump was abroad.
Luna gave the CIA a 24-hour ultimatum to return the documents or face a congressional subpoena.
Former CIA officer John Kiriakou backed that reading on Fox News. “The CIA cannot overrule the president, and the CIA cannot even overrule the director of national intelligence,” he said.
Bottom Line
The core of the claim is true: the CIA did take 40 boxes of JFK and MK-Ultra files that Gabbard was preparing to declassify. But the claim is partly false in its framing. There was no raid on Gabbard’s office. The documents were removed earlier, from a different facility, and the ODNI itself denies it happened the way it was reported. This is a real and significant story — but the “CIA just marched in” version is a distortion that spread faster than the facts.
