Joe Kent under FBI investigation for alleged leaks amid resignation over Iran war

By Jon Brown, Christian Post Reporter Thursday, March 19, 2026

Joe Kent, who served as director of the National Counterterrorism Center until resigning earlier this week over the war in Iran, is reportedly under investigation by the FBI for allegedly leaking classified information.

The investigation into Kent, which began months before his resignation, was first reported by Semafor and confirmed by multiple other outlets. News of the investigation came a day after Kent, a former U.S. Army warrant officer and former Central Intelligence Agency paramilitary officer who ran unsuccessful campaigns for U.S. Congress in 2022 and 2024, published his resignation letter to President Donald Trump on Tuesday.

In the letter, Kent said he supported the president’s noninterventionist foreign policy platform dating back to 2016 but had come to believe the president had grown beholden to Israeli interests that pushed him to attack Iran.

After much reflection, I have decided to resign from my position as Director of the National Counterterrorism Center, effective today.

I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran. Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this… pic.twitter.com/prtu86DpEr

— Joe Kent (@joekent16jan19) March 17, 2026

Kent claimed the president was subjected to an Israeli "misinformation campaign that wholly undermined your America First platform and sowed pro-war sentiments to encourage a war with Iran."

Kent also provided a nearly two-hour interview with Tucker Carlson on Wednesday, during which he claimed there was "no intelligence" showing Iran posed an imminent threat to the United States or was close to obtaining a nuclear weapon and that Israel drove the decision to strike.

Joe Kent tells Tucker Carlson that President Trump’s administration misled the world about Iran being an imminent threat.

Kent says the real imminent threat came from Israel, which he claims was planning to strike Iran first, putting U.S. soldiers in harm’s way.

He says this… pic.twitter.com/iAGXU3ADD4

— Shadow of Ezra (@ShadowofEzra) March 18, 2026

Kent told Carlson that he and other key decision-makers were "not allowed" to express dissenting opinions and that the decision to go to war was made without "robust debate."

He also claimed that Israel felt "emboldened" in believing the U.S. would have to follow and react to an attack against Iran, which he suggested indicated problematic influence from the Israeli lobby.

Carlson began his interview with Kent by replaying a clip from 2024 in which Kent warned that any attempt by the U.S. to wage war in Persia would be an ancient mistake and would only benefit a rising China.

"If we get deeply involved and deeply entangled with Iran, we are playing right into China's hands, because China would like nothing more than for us to be committing our military-industrial base to a war in eastern Europe and Ukraine, and then to be committing our conventional military power, our blood and our treasure, back in the Middle East," he said.

The White House pushed back against the assertions in Kent's letter, with White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt saying it was filled with "false claims."

"Iran was aggressively expanding their short-range ballistic missiles to combine with their naval assets to give themselves immunity — meaning they would have a degree of capabilities that would give them immunity to hold us and the rest of the world hostage," she said.

Leavitt said Iran was close to a nuclear weapon and that attempts to negotiate with the Islamic regime had failed, dismissing Kent's claim that Trump is beholden to Israel as "both insulting and laughable."

Trump himself touched on the issue, telling reporters Tuesday that while he found Kent to be "a nice guy," he believed he was "very weak on security."

"When I read his statement, I realized it's a good thing that he's out," he said, adding that he believes Iran was an imminent threat.