The former counterintelligence chief who resigned over the ongoing conflict with Iran is reportedly under FBI investigation for leaking classified information.
Joe Kent, who issued a scathing letter of resignation as National Counterterrorism Center Director, has been accused of improperly sharing classified information, according to Semafor.
The probe into his alleged misconduct had been ongoing for months and predates his resignation from the intelligence agency, sources told the outlet.
The shocking development comes just hours after Kent told Tucker Carlson that the US was provided faulty intelligence from Israel before the war.
White House officials suggested Tuesday that Kent was an ‘egomaniac’ who was responsible for ‘national security leaks.’
Kent said in a post to X that he could not ‘in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran’ through his role under Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard.
‘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,’ he wrote.
It marks the first major and voluntary departure of a senior Trump administration official since he retook office last year.
Kent, in his resignation letter, accused the president of going back on the non-interventionist principles he campaigned on in 2024.
Trump said he was glad that the top counterterrorism official resigned over the war with Iran.
Joe Kent issued a scathing letter of resignation as National Counterterrorism Center Director on Wednesday
‘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,’ the president insisted.
Kent is closely aligned with the ‘America First’ wing of the Trump administration, and the President says upon news of his resignation: ‘I always thought he was a nice guy’
Carlson – who said he spent ‘the last 24 hours’ with Kent – led into an interview by playing a chat he had with Kent in 2024, where he predicted that the war would go badly before asking Kent to explain his letter
‘Key decision makers were not allowed to express their opinions. There wasn’t a robust debate,’ Kent told Tucker Carlson on Wednesday. ‘It seemed to be a foregone conclusion that this was happening.’
Kent also warned that the next supreme leader of Iran that replaces Ali Khamenei will be ‘more radical,’ claiming that Ayatollah Khamenei ‘was preventing them from getting a nuclear weapon.’
‘Going aggressively after the ayatollah was the last thing we should have ever done,’ he insisted.
Trump allies had claimed Kent was already in the firing line to lose his job before his resignation.
Kent, who deployed to combat 11 times and lost his wife Shannon in what he calls a war manufactured by Israel, is closely aligned with the populist ‘America First’ wing of the Trump administration.
‘Until June of 2025, you understood that the wars in the Middle East were a trap that robbed America of the precious lives of our patriots and depleted the wealth and prosperity of our nation,’ the former Army Special Forces soldier wrote in his resignation letter.
‘The time for bold action is now,’ he urged. ‘You can reverse course and chart a new path for our nation, or you can allow us to slip further toward decline and chaos. You hold the cards.’
Kent swears his oath of office to work under Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard as Director of the National Counterterrorism Center
Kash Patel’s FBI has reportedly opened an investigation into the former counterintelligence chief
Former Trump deputy Chief of Staff Taylor Budowich suggested that Kent was already on track to be fired and called him a ‘crazed egomaniac’ responsible for ‘national security leaks’ out of his agency.
‘He spent all of his time working to subvert the chain of command and undermine the President of the United States,’ Budowich wrote on X upon news of his departure. ‘This isn’t some principled resignation—he just wanted to make a splash before getting canned. What a loser.’
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said that Kent’s insistence that Iran posed no immediate threat to the US is the ‘same false claim that Democrats… have been repeating over and over.’
She said that Trump had ‘strong and compelling evidence that Iran was going to attack the United States first.’
His resignation lays bare a widening split inside Trumpworld. Kent accused high-ranking Israeli officials and members of the American media of running a ‘misinformation campaign’ to deceive the President into believing Iran posed an imminent threat, drawing a direct parallel to the lead-up to the Iraq war.
The divide pits the Gabbard-Vance non-interventionist faction against hawkish Republicans who back US support for Israel and a harder line on Tehran.