Marina Medvin 🇺🇸
@MarinaMedvin
Fascinating article in the Washington Post today. It’s an investigation into a secretive Hare Krishna breakaway sect to which Tulsi Gabbard belonged and which influenced and controlled her political career —the Science of Identity Foundation (SIF).
The story originates from a review of 25,000 pages of documents provided by a former SIF member and former digital strategist for Gabbard’s campaigns after a falling out with SIF leadership.
Documents retrieved from a private email network contained explicit, highly specific directives for Gabbard. These memos instructed her on what legislation to propose, how to handle television interviews, what to tweet, and what foreign policy stances to take (particularly regarding Syria and Iraq).
The investigation cross-referenced the memos with Gabbard's public record and found numerous instances where she adopted the exact phrasing, policy proposals, and social media posts dictated in the documents.
The leaked documents also exposed a coordinated effort by SIF members to use fake online profiles (pseudonyms with fabricated backgrounds) to defend Gabbard in comment sections and on social media.
SIF leadership and Gabbard's team dismissed the investigation as “anti-Hindu bigotry” and attempted to discredit the leaker by claiming its revenge for a failed $250,000 extortion attempt related to a separate legal dispute. The reporter, however, independently verified and compared the emails to Tulsi’s public record and Tulsi referred to the SIF leader as her Guru.
The reason this is such a scandal is because this SIF group is not a mainstream religious organization but is instead a controlling cult. Former members describe it as an authoritarian cult where Chris Butler demands absolute obedience and his word is treated as divine law.
The most alarming aspect of the scandal is that Gabbard was the Director of National Intelligence, a role giving her oversight of the nation's entire intelligence apparatus — and questions now arise as to whether she shared intel with the cult leader. Especially because Butler had all kinds of wold beliefs about the intel agencies.
Tulsi lied in 2019 when she was asked if Butler had any political influence over her — “No, no, not at all.”
From archive.is1:37 PM · Jun 21, 2026
