Joe Kent, ex-Trump counterterrorism chief who resigned over Iran war, under FBI investigation for alleged leaks
The FBI is investigating former National Counterterrorism Center Director Joe Kent in connection with alleged leaks of classified information, multiple sources with direct knowledge of the matter tell CBS News.
The probe began before Kent resigned this week over the Trump administration’s handling of the war with Iran, the sources said. The FBI’s Criminal Division is handling the probe, which has been underway for some time, one source said.
The FBI declined to comment. Kent did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The news was first reported by Semafor.
Former deputy White House chief of staff Taylor Budowich alluded to the issue shortly after Kent resigned, writing on X that Kent was “often at the center of national security leaks” and “spent all of his time working to subvert the chain of command and undermine the President.” He didn’t specify what information Kent was accused of leaking.
Kent announced he was stepping down in an open letter Tuesday that criticized the decision to launch a war against Iran when the country “posed no imminent threat to our nation.” He also asserted that “it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby.”
“I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran,” Kent wrote.
He expanded on his reasoning in an interview Wednesday with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson. Kent insisted to Carlson that there was no intelligence that Iran was going to preemptively attack the U.S. or was on the cusp of building a nuclear weapon, and said there wasn’t a “robust debate” ahead of the war, instead claiming “the Israelis drove the decision.”
The Trump administration has vehemently pushed back. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Tuesday that Kent’s resignation letter was filled with “false claims,” asserting that Iran did pose an imminent threat to the U.S. and calling suggestions that President Trump was driven to war by another country “insulting and laughable.”
Leavitt has also downplayed Kent’s importance, saying in a Fox News interview Wednesday that Kent “was not involved in any of the discussions” before or during the Iran war, and had not played a part in assembling the president’s intelligence brief in “a while.”
Kent appeared to respond to the suggestion that he was out of the loop in his interview with Carlson. He said at one point, after claiming the administration never put out a call for intelligence agencies to share all available information on Iran: “I’m sure the administration will come out and say, ‘No, you just weren’t invited,’ but I’ve got a pretty good idea of how those meetings look, and even if I wasn’t invited, I at least would’ve known that they took place.”
A Trump nominee, Kent was confirmed by the Senate to run the National Counterterrorism Center last summer, after serving as chief of staff to his close ally, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard.
The former Green Beret and congressional candidate has drawn controversy in the past. Kent paid a member of the far-right Proud Boys for consulting work during one of his House campaigns, called the 2020 election stolen and said Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, should be charged with murder for the “scam that is Covid.”
Asked about Kent on Tuesday, Mr. Trump said: “I always thought he was weak on security.”
“I didn’t know him well, but I thought he seemed like a pretty nice guy,” he told reporters. “But 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. Every country realized what a threat Iran was.”
