FBI Director Kash Patel is scrambling to contain the fallout over an investigation into a top counterterrorism official who quit in protest over President Donald Trump’s war on Iran.
“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,” wrote Joe Kent, former director of the National Counterterrorism Center, in a letter posted to X.com on Tuesday.
Two days later, it was revealed Kent, 45, an Army veteran and former CIA paramilitary officer, was being investigated for allegedly leaking classified information to disaffected “America First” media personalities, such as Tucker Carlson.
The probe reportedly predated his departure, but high-profile MAGA figures including Megyn Kelly have warned that going after Kent and Carlson threatens to “rip the GOP apart right to its core and prevent a single America First voter from participating in the midterms.”
Apparently anxious to try to avoid an all-out MAGA civil war, Patel has privately said he wants to declassify as much of the information Kent allegedly leaked as possible, in a bid to defuse accusations that the administration is retaliating against Kent for resigning and contradicting the White House on Iran, NOTUS reported.
Multiple sources confirmed that Kent had allegedly leaked the material to members of the media.
After Kent resigned, Trump, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, and other administration officials rushed to discredit him, in some cases accusing him of deploying antisemitic tropes in his resignation statement.
The president, when asked about Kent’s surprising departure, called him “a nice guy” but “weak on security.”
The Daily Beast has reached out to the FBI for comment.
A day after he posted his incendiary resignation letter, which reportedly blindsided the White House, he appeared on Carlson’s show to further refute Trump’s claims that Iran was developing nuclear weapons when the president decided to launch limited strikes in June, and then an all-out war in late February.
“The Iranians are not stupid people,” he said, adding that the regime had the “brain power” to develop nuclear weapons but had, according to intelligence assessments, refrained from doing so for practical reasons.
Other MAGA podcasters such as Tim Pool and Shawn Ryan also rallied around Kent in the aftermath of his resignation, which put added pressure on his former boss, intelligence chief Tulsi Gabbard, as she sought to play down her own opposition to the war during a congressional hearing Thursday.
