Joe Kent, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, testifies during a House Homeland Security Committee hearing entitled “Global Threats to the Homeland” on Wednesday, Dec. 11, 2025, in Cannonville.
Tom Williams | Cq-roll Call Inc. | Getty Images
Joe Kent, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, announced Tuesday that he is resigning in response to the Trump administration’s war on Iran.
“I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war,” Kent said in a letter to President Donald Trump. The letter was posted to Mr. Kent’s personal account X.
Kent, a far-right conspiracy theory promoter who was narrowly confirmed by the Senate last July, accused the president of being deceived by Israel into supporting war.
“Iran is not an immediate threat to our country, and it is clear that we started this war under pressure from Israel and its powerful U.S. lobby,” Kent said in the letter.
Trump later on Tuesday disputed Kent’s claims.
“I always thought he was a good guy, but I thought he was weak on national security,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office during a bilateral meeting with Irish Prime Minister Michael Martin.
After reading Kent’s statement, Trump said he “understood it was a good thing for him to step down” because “every country realized what a threat Iran is.”
The comments came shortly after White House press secretary Caroline Leavitt said in an X post that Kent was parroting “the same false claims that have been repeated over and over again by Democrats and some in the liberal media.”
Mr. Levitt said that President Trump “had strong and convincing evidence that Iran was going to attack the United States first,” and that he would “never make a decision to deploy military assets against a foreign adversary in a vacuum.”
He also said Kent’s claims about Israeli influence over Trump were “insulting and ridiculous.”
The National Counterterrorism Center did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
The NCTC Director directs the United States’ counterterrorism and counternarcotics efforts and advises the President directly. An hour after Kent announced his resignation, he was still listed as the center’s director on the government’s official website.
The NCTC is housed within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, headed by Tulsi Gabbard, who has been vocal in opposing war with Iran but has remained silent on the Trump administration’s recent military actions. Gabbard was scheduled to testify before the House Intelligence Committee on Tuesday, but the hearing was postponed until Thursday.
In an X-Post Tuesday afternoon, Gabbard did not comment directly on Kent or explicitly endorse the view that the United States faces an imminent threat from Iran.
Gabbard wrote that President Trump has the responsibility to “determine what is and is not an imminent threat” and decide whether to act accordingly. ODNI’s job is to “coordinate and integrate all information” to provide the president with “the best information available to inform decisions,” she wrote.
“After carefully considering all the information before him, President Trump has concluded that the terrorist Islamist regime in Iran poses an imminent threat, and he has acted on that conclusion,” Gabbard wrote.
Kent, 45, is a U.S. Army veteran and former CIA militia officer who served 11 tours in the Middle East over 20 years, according to his official biography. His first wife, US Navy officer Shannon Kent, was killed in a suicide bombing while deployed to Syria in 2019.
Joe Kent ran for Congress as a Republican in 2022 and 2024, but lost in both elections to Democratic Rep. Marie Grusenkamp Perez. He later served as Gabbard’s acting chief of staff.
President Trump nominated Kent to lead the NCTC in February 2025, saying he would “help keep America safe by eliminating all forms of terrorism, from jihadists around the world to cartels in our own backyards.”
Kent echoed Trump’s false claims that the 2020 presidential election was “rigged” and suggested the FBI was involved in planning and directing the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot.
Kent said during his April 2025 nomination hearing in the Senate that U.S. intelligence agencies were investigating the FBI’s role in the riot.
Kent’s announcement of his resignation Tuesday morning drew mixed reviews. Opponents of the war, including Democrats and some sympathizers of President Trump’s MAGA movement, praised Kent.
“Joe Kent’s history is deeply disturbing and, in my view, he should not have been confirmed to lead the National Counterterrorism Center,” Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chairman Mark Warner (R-Virginia) said in a statement. “But he’s right on this point: There was no credible evidence of an imminent threat from Iran that would justify the United States entering another war of choice in the Middle East.”
But Trump’s allies pushed back on Kent’s assertion that Iran is not an imminent threat to the United States.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) told reporters at the Capitol: “We’ve had all the briefings. It was clear there was an immediate threat that Iran was very close to building a nuclear capability.”
“I don’t know where Joe Kent is getting his information, but obviously he wasn’t at the press conference,” Johnson said.
Some attacked Kent in personal terms.
“Joe Kent was a crazed egomaniac who was often at the center of national security leaks, but produced little (any?) real work,” Taylor Budowicz, Trump’s former White House chief of staff and political consultant, said in the X-Post.
“This is not a principled resignation. He just wanted to make some noise before he gets canned. What a loser,” Budowicz said.
— CNBC’s Emily Wilkins contributed to this report.
