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

Joe Kent, who resigned Tuesday as National Counterterrorism Center director, has been a stalwart Trump supporter, backing him since his 2016 campaign, through his 2020 election defeat, the Jan. 6 riots, as well as during his own conservative media advocacy and two failed congressional bids.

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

Kent, 45, is a special forces combat veteran with ties to right-wing extremists and was viewed as a Trump loyalist. His reasons for resigning contradicted the president’s assertion that Iran was poised to attack the U.S. 

On Feb. 28, in a video announcing the first airstrikes, Mr. Trump said his objective was “eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime.” 

“Its menacing activities directly endanger the United States, our troops, our bases overseas, and our allies throughout the world,” Mr. Trump said of Iran.

Kent, in his resignation letter to Mr. Trump suggested the president had been misled and that “high-ranking Israeli officials and influential members of the American media deployed a misinformation campaign … to encourage a war with Iran.” GOP Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky in a post on X attacked the “virulent anti-Semitism of his resignation letter” and said it was clear Kent was incapable of upholding a pledge he’d made to senators “to lead with integrity and accountability.” 

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

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 U.S.

“After carefully reviewing all the information before him, President Trump concluded that the terrorist Islamist regime in Iran posed an imminent threat and he took action based on that conclusion,” she wrote in a social media post Tuesday.

Association with far-right figures, conspiracy theories

In his Senate confirmation hearings, Kent acknowledged that during one of his two failed congressional campaigns, a political consultant set up a call joined by right-wing white nationalist Nick Fuentes. Fuentes has said that Jews are holding the U.S. “hostage” and once proclaimed that “Hitler was awesome; Hitler was right.”

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

Kent has also endorsed a number of conspiracy theories and made a number of controversial claims. He’s claimed the COVID vaccine wasn’t a vaccine, but rather, “an experimental gene therapy” and has also said Anthony Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, should face murder charges. Kent also said he believes the 2020 election was stolen from Mr. Trump and has referred to the Jan. 6, 2021, rioters as “political prisoners.” 

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

Kent later disavowed some of his right-wing ties and said he rejected all “racism and bigotry.” During his Senate hearings, he declined to distance himself from his 2020 election denialism.

He was confirmed in July on a 52-44 Senate vote that fell closely along party lines. Every Democrat opposed his nomination, citing his right-wing ties. GOP Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina was the only Republican to oppose Kent’s confirmation.

As the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, Kent led an intelligence agency that was created after the 9/11 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 background

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

After his retirement in 2018, he became a paramilitary officer with the CIA and served as a counterterrorism adviser to Trump’s 2020 presidential reelection 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 paved the way for the increased inclusion of women in Special Operations Forces. She served multiple tours 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 U.S. intervention around the world. “That is why I have a skepticism of our federal government,” he said, adding that Shannon had died because “Republicans and Democrats consistently lied to the American people to keep us engaged in wars abroad.”

During the U.S.’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, Kent lambasted the defense industry and “permanent ruling class” in Washington. He suggested some proponents of foreign nation building were naïve and others were driven by profit motives.

“It speaks to our hubris,” Kent told reporters while campaigning for Congress. “For us not to have learned from all this just shows that there are people making money and making their careers at the other end of it. They’ve been doing it on the backs and dead bodies of U.S. 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 eradicating all terrorism, from the jihadists around the World, to the cartels in our backyard.” 

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

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

“President Trump is committed to identifying these cartels and these violent gang members and making sure that we locate them and that we get them out of our country,” Kent told the Senate Intelligence Committee.

His nomination faced some scrutiny when emails emerged showing that while he was Gabbard’s chief of staff, he had pressed senior intelligence analysts to amend an assessment of links between the Venezuelan government and the criminal gang, Tren de Aragua. In the emails, Kent pressed the analysts to align the assessment more closely with Trump administration policies and to include references that criticized Biden-era immigration programs. Kent’s revisions supported Mr. Trump’s assertions that Tren de Aragua members could be removed under the wartime Alien Enemies Act.

Signal chat about strikes on Houthis

During his confirmation hearing, Democratic senators grilled Kent about his participation in a group chat on Signal 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 magazine, showed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth provided information about the timing of warplane launches and airstrikes against Houthis in Yemen in March 2025. The disclosure of typically classified information came before the men and women flying those attacks were airborne.

It became an embarrassing flashpoint for the administration, though top Trump administration officials denied classified information was divulged and Hegseth, Kent and others faced no consequences from the president.