EDIT: That’s all for today. Thank you all for your thoughtful questions. You can reach me on [jon.swaine@washpost.com](mailto:jon.swaine@washpost.com) or jonswaine.55 on Signal.

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Hi Reddit, I’m Jon Swaine, a reporter on The Washington Post’s investigative team.

We recently published Tulsi Gabbard, her guru and the mysterious messages that helped shape her political career, an investigation that I worked on for more than a year. I obtained more than 25,000 pages of records from a former member of Gabbard’s faith group, the Science of Identity Foundation (SIF). Some former members have claimed SIF is a cult, which it denies.

Among the records were hundreds of memos that documented political guidance for Tulsi Gabbard during her time in Congress in the 2010s. Some showed that she was told which laws to propose and what to say on TV. I found unmistakable parallels between the guidance and Gabbard’s actions, raising questions about who was telling Gabbard what to do.

The former SIF member who gave me the documents said the language in the memos came from Chris Butler, SIF’s founder. Gabbard has described Butler as her guru. But an associate of Butler and Gabbard disputed this, sending me on a monthslong journey to try to find the truth.

Proof photo: https://imgur.com/a/XP3rIaZ