What to know about Joe Kent, Trump counterterrorism chief who resigned over Iran war

Joe Kent, who resigned on Tuesday as director of the National Counterterrorism Center, he has been a strong supporter of Trump, supporting him from his 2016 campaign, through his 2020 election defeat, the January 6 riots, as well as during his own conservative media advocacy and two failed congressional bids.

But it ended with Mr. Trump’s war in Iran and his alliance with Israel against the Islamic clerics who ran the government in Tehran. In a resignation letter he posted on X, Kent said Tuesday that Iran “poses no imminent threat to our nation,” and he asserted that “we started this war under pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby.”

Kent, 45, is a special forces veteran with ties to right-wing extremists and was considered a Trump loyalist. The reasons for his resignation contradicted the president’s assertion that Iran was prepared to attack the United States.

On February 28, in a video announcing the first airstrikes, Mr. Trump said his goal was “to eliminate imminent threats from the Iranian regime.” He said Iran’s “threatening activities directly endanger the United States, our troops, our overseas bases and our allies around the world.”

Kent, in his resignation letter to Mr. Trump, suggested that the president had been misled and that “high-ranking Israeli officials and influential members of the American media had deployed a disinformation campaign…to encourage war with Iran.”

Republican Senator Mitch McConnell denounced the comment as “virulent anti-Semitism” and said in an article on

An administration official told CBS News that Kent was not involved in the Iran briefings.

The Free Press: Joe Kent resigns. Will others follow?

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, whose office oversaw Kent’s work, said it was up to Mr. Trump to decide whether Iran posed a threat to the United States.

“After carefully considering all information available to him, President Trump has concluded that the terrorist Islamist regime in Iran poses an imminent threat and has taken action based on this conclusion,” Gabbard wrote in a social media post Tuesday.

On Wednesday, several sources with direct knowledge of the matter told CBS News that the FBI is investigating Kent in connection with alleged leaks of classified information. The investigation began before Kent resigned this weekthe sources said.

The FBI declined to comment on the matter when contacted by CBS News.

Association with far-right figures, conspiracy theories

During his Senate confirmation hearings, Kent acknowledged that during one of his two failed congressional campaigns, a political consultant made a call that right-wing white nationalist Nick Fuentes joined. Fuentes said Jews were holding the United States “hostage” and once proclaimed that “Hitler was great; Hitler was right.”

When he ran for parliament in 2022, Kent paid Graham Jorgensen, a member of the far-right military group, the price Proud Boysfor consulting work. He also worked closely with Joey Gibson, founder of the Christian nationalist group Patriot Prayer, and attracted support from various far-right figures.

Kent has also endorsed a number of conspiracy theories and made a number of controversial claims. He claimed the COVID vaccine was not a vaccine, but rather “an experimental gene therapy,” and also said Dr. Anthony Faucithe former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, is expected to face murder charges. Kent also said he believed the 2020 election was stolen from Mr. Trump and called the January 6, 2021, rioters “political prisoners.”

He echoed a conspiracy theory that federal agents somehow incited the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. He said Biden should be impeached and called for an investigation into the 2020 election. Kent called for defunding the FBI after its search of the president’s Mar-a-Lago home for classified documents.

Kent later disavowed some of his ties to the right and said he rejected all “racism and bigotry.” During his Senate hearings, he refused to distance himself from his denial of the 2020 elections.

He was confirmed in July by a 52-44 vote in the Senate, which fell closely along partisan lines. All Democrats opposed his nomination, citing his ties to the right. Republican Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina was the only Republican to oppose Kent’s confirmation.

As director of the National Counterterrorism Center, Kent led an intelligence agency created after the September 11 attacks to analyze and detect terrorist threats. Among other tasks, the agency maintains the U.S. government’s list of known and suspected terrorists.

Kent’s military experience

Prior to his confirmation, Kent worked as Gabbard’s chief of staff. He is a retired Green Beret who flew 11 combat missions, primarily in Iraq, during a 20-year career in the Army.

After retiring in 2018, he became a CIA paramilitary officer and served as a counterterrorism advisor to Trump’s 2020 presidential re-election campaign. He was a regular on conservative cable shows and podcasts before and during his 2022 and 2024 congressional bids.

Kent’s first wife, Shannon Kent, was a Navy cryptologist killed by a suicide bomber in 2019 while fighting the Islamic State group in Syria. She was fluent in seven languages ​​and led the way for increased inclusion of women in special operations forces. She flew several missions in Iraq and participated in a number of special operations that resulted in the capture of hundreds of enemy insurgents, according to the Navy.

After his wife’s death, Kent spoke out against American intervention in the world. “This is why I am skeptical of our federal government,” he said, adding that Shannon was dead because “Republicans and Democrats have consistently lied to the American people to keep us engaged in wars abroad.”

During the chaotic US withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, Kent lambasted the defense industry and the “permanent ruling class” in Washington. He suggested that some proponents of foreign nation-building were naive and others were driven by profit motives.

“It speaks to our hubris,” Kent told reporters while campaigning for Congress. “The fact that we haven’t learned from all of this just shows that there are people making money and making careers on the other side of the road. They’re doing it on the backs and bodies of American soldiers.”

Mr. Trump praised Kent when he nominated him in February 2025, saying in a social media post that Kent “will help us keep America safe by rooting out all terrorism, from jihadists around the world to cartels in our backyard.”

During Senate confirmation hearings, Kent focused on cartels rather than the Middle East

But during his Senate confirmation hearings, Kent focused heavily on Latin American drug cartels rather than the Middle East.

“President Trump is committed to identifying these violent cartels and gang members and ensuring that we locate them and remove them from our country,” Kent told the Senate Intelligence Committee.

His appointment undergoes careful scrutiny when emails were released showing that, while Gabbard’s chief of staff, he had pressured top intelligence analysts to change an assessment of ties between the Venezuelan government and the criminal gang, Train from Aragua. In the emails, Kent pressed analysts to more closely align the assessment with Trump administration policies and include references criticizing Biden-era immigration programs. Kent’s revisions support Mr. Trump’s claims that Tren de Aragua members could be removed from office under the Wartime Foreign Enemies Act.

Signal discussion on strikes against Houthis

During his confirmation hearing, Democratic senators questioned Kent about his participation in a Signal group chat used by Mr. Trump’s national security team to discuss sensitive military plans.

The Signal chat, which inadvertently included the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic magazineshowed that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth provided information on the timing of warplane launches and airstrikes against the Houthis in Yemen in March 2025. The release of generally classified information occurred before the men and women piloting these attacks took off.

It has become an embarrassing flashpoint for the administration, even as senior Trump administration officials denied that classified information was disclosed and Hegseth, Kent and others faced no consequences from the president.