Joe Kent, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, resigned Tuesday over objections to the war in Iran. He’s the first senior Trump administration official to do so.
“Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby,” Kent, a top adviser to Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, wrote in his resignation letter.
In the letter, Kent wrote that he supported the anti-intervention foreign policy agenda that President Donald Trump campaigned on in each bid for the White House, but that the president shifted his thinking last summer.
“Early in this administration, high-ranking Israeli officials and influential members of the American media deployed a misinformation campaign that wholly undermined your America First platform and sowed pro-war sentiments to encourage a war with Iran,” he wrote.
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Trump commented on Kent’s departure during a meeting with the taoiseach of Ireland at the White House Tuesday.
Kent “was a nice guy, but I always thought he was weak on security,” Trump said. “When I read his statement, I realized that it’s a good thing that he’s out because he said that Iran was not a threat. ... Iran was a threat to every country.”
Many inside or close to the White House attempted to discredit Kent on Tuesday, accusing him of leaking information and saying his access to important meetings had been cut off.
“Joe Kent is a crazed egomaniac who was often at the center of national security leaks, while rarely (never?) producing any actual work,” Taylor Budowich, former White House deputy chief of staff and Trump’s close adviser, said on X. “He spent all of his time working to subvert the chain of command and undermine the President of the United States.”
One senior administration official told NOTUS that Kent had been removed from the Presidential Daily Briefing last year amid concern that he was leaking information.
That said, Kent is a popular figure among the MAGA-right part of the president’s base, and his appointment was celebrated by many in the Republican Party.
Kent, who formerly served in the Army Special Forces and as a CIA officer, deployed to Iraq in 2003 and served 11 combat tours. His wife, Shannon Smith, was killed in a suicide bombing in Syria in 2019.
Before joining the Trump administration, Kent unsuccessfully ran for Congress twice in 2022 and 2024. Both his congressional bids and his appointment to lead the counterterrorism center were mired in controversy around Kent’s associations with white nationalist groups.
He said he first decided to run for Congress after his representative, former Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler, voted to impeach Trump after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. Kent has repeatedly spread conspiracy theories about the Jan. 6 attack. He lost both times to Democrat Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez.
Trump nominated Kent to lead the National Counterterrorism Center in 2025. The Senate voted 52-44 along party lines to confirm him.
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