Former National Counterterrorism Center director Joe Kent is being investigated for allegedly leaking classified information, according to a report.
Kent announced his surprising resignation from his post on Tuesday, citing his disagreement with Donald Trump on the Iran war. The investigation, according to Semafor, predates his exit.
Kent, 45, became the first senior member of the Trump administration to resign because of the war, which has angered many of the president’s “America First” supporters.
Kent, an Army veteran and former CIA paramilitary officer, wrote in his resignation letter that 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.”
Trump, he went on to say, was deceived by “high-ranking Israeli officials and influential members of the American media” into thinking that war was necessary.
“This was a lie and is the same tactic the Israelis used to draw us into the disastrous Iraq war that cost our nation the lives of thousands of our best men and women,” he wrote. “We cannot make this mistake again.”
Trump and others in the administration then tried to discredit him.
Kent was “a nice guy” but “weak on security,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. “It’s a good thing that he’s out because he said Iran was not a threat.”
Before news of the investigation into him dropped, Kent on Wednesday appeared on ally Tucker Carlson’s show to again reject the president’s claim that Iran posed an imminent threat.
“No. They weren’t three weeks ago when this started, and they weren’t in June either,” Kent said, referring to last year’s strikes on the country’s nuclear facilities.
“I mean, the Iranians have had a religious ruling of fatwa against actually developing a nuclear weapon since 2004. That’s available in the public sphere, but then also we had no intelligence to indicate that fatwa was being disobeyed or it was on the cusp of being lifted.”
The Daily Beast has contacted Kent for comment. The White House deferred to the FBI, which declined to comment.
Kent served under Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, a former Democrat who warned during Trump’s first term that he was taking the U.S. to brink of war against Iran.
Gabbard, in a statement Tuesday, restated the actions Trump took. She did not mention Kent.
“After carefully reviewing all the information before him,” she wrote, “President Trump concluded that the terrorist Islamist regime in Iran posed an imminent threat and he took action based on that conclusion.”
