Kent’s resignation on Tuesday ended his tenure as director of the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center, the counterterrorism post he held after Senate confirmation last summer. The Associated Press reported that Kent had spent years as a high-profile Trump supporter through the 2020 election loss, the Jan. 6 riots and conservative media advocacy, and that he resigned amid growing disagreement with the administration’s policy on Iran.
In his resignation letter to Trump, Kent said Iran “posed no imminent threat to our nation,” the AP reported. Kent also argued in the letter that “we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby,” framing the administration’s shift toward war as influenced by Israeli officials and U.S.-based media and political pressure rather than imminent danger from Tehran.
Trump has publicly offered a different explanation of why the United States acted. On Feb. 28, the day the U.S. and Israel launched the first airstrikes reported by the AP, Trump said Iran’s “menacing activities directly endanger the United States, our troops, our bases overseas, and our allies throughout the world,” according to the AP summary of Trump’s remarks.
The dispute also reached the intelligence leadership above Kent. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, whose office oversaw Kent’s work, wrote in a Tuesday social media post that it was for Trump to decide whether Iran posed a threat. Gabbard said, “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,” the AP reported, adding that she did not mention her own views of the strikes.
Kent’s resignation comes after a contentious record that congressional Democrats highlighted during his confirmation. Kent was confirmed in July on a 52-44 Senate vote that fell almost entirely along party lines, with every Democrat opposing his nomination and Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., serving as the lone GOP vote against confirmation, according to the AP. During that process, Democrats cited Kent’s ties to right-wing extremism and antisemitism-linked connections described by the AP.
The AP reported that Kent acknowledged during his Senate confirmation hearings that, in one of two failed congressional campaigns, a political consultant arranged a call that included Nick Fuentes, a right-wing influencer who has said that Jews are holding the U.S. “hostage” and who once proclaimed that “Hitler was awesome, Hitler was right.” The AP also reported that during Kent’s 2022 House campaign he paid Graham Jorgensen, a member of the far-right Proud Boys, for consulting work, and that Kent worked closely with Joey Gibson, the founder of the Christian nationalist group Patriot Prayer.
The AP further said Kent had echoed a conspiracy theory that federal agents instigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack at the Capitol and also had false claims that Trump won the 2020 election over President Joe Biden. The AP reported that Kent called for the impeachment of Biden and an investigation into the 2020 election, and that he called for defunding the FBI after a search at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home for classified documents. Kent later disavowed some of his right-wing ties and said he rejected “racism and bigotry,” the AP reported, while also saying that he declined to distance himself from election denialism during his Senate hearing.
Kent’s role before and during his confirmation centered on intelligence and counterterrorism. The AP reported that, as director, he led an intelligence agency created after the Sept. 11 attacks to assess terrorist threats and help maintain the U.S. government’s list of known and suspected terrorists. Before his confirmation, the AP said Kent served as chief of staff for Gabbard and had previously served as a Green Beret who was deployed to 11 combat missions, mostly in Iraq, over 20 years in the Army.
After retiring in 2018, Kent worked as a paramilitary officer with the CIA and later became a counterterrorism adviser to Trump’s 2020 presidential reelection campaign, the AP said. He also appeared regularly on conservative cable shows and podcasts before and during his 2022 and 2024 congressional bids, according to the report.
The Associated Press also tied Kent’s outlook on the post-9/11 era and U.S. war-making to personal loss. It reported that Kent’s first wife, Shannon Smith, a Navy cryptologist, was killed by a suicide bomber in 2019 while fighting the Islamic State group in Syria, and that after her death Kent spoke against U.S. intervention abroad. Kent told reporters, the AP reported, that Smith died because “Republicans and Democrats consistently lied to the American people to keep us engaged in wars abroad,” and he also said of his skepticism about the federal government that it stemmed from his experience.
In earlier commentary and remarks during political campaigns, the AP reported that Kent criticized what he described as the “permanent ruling class” in Washington, arguing that foreign intervention can generate careers and money. He also described the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in a way that drew attention, the AP said, to the role of profiteering and political motives.
In his Trump administration posts, the AP reported that Kent emphasized anti-cartel efforts, and that Trump praised his nomination in February 2025 in a social media post saying “Joe will help us keep America safe by eradicating all terrorism, from the jihadists around the World, to the cartels in our backyard.” At Kent’s Senate confirmation hearings, the AP said he focused most heavily on drug cartels in Latin America rather than on the Middle East.
The AP also reported that, when he was Gabbard’s chief of staff, Kent told an intelligence analyst to revise an assessment of the relationship between the Venezuelan government and a transnational gang, and that the revision supported Trump’s assertions that gang members could be removed under the Alien Enemies Act, which is typically treated as a wartime law. The report added that Kent became involved in a high-profile matter involving a Signal group chat used by Trump’s national security team to discuss sensitive plans.
During Kent’s confirmation hearings, Democratic senators pressed him about that Signal chat, the AP said. The AP reported that the group chat mistakenly included a journalist at The Atlantic and showed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth providing the exact timings of warplane launches and when bombs would drop in attacks against Yemen’s Houthis in March 2025. The AP said the disclosure came before the airstrikes’ crews were airborne and became an embarrassing flashpoint for the administration, though it reported that Hegseth, Kent and others faced no consequences from Trump.
Kent’s resignation, as described by the AP, leaves the National Counterterrorism Center without its director and raises questions inside the administration about how threat assessments align with the Iran policy choices made at the White House level.