Who is Joe Kent: Former US Counterterrorism Official
Joe Kent (born April 11, 1980) is an American politician, former United States Army warrant officer, and former Central Intelligence Agency paramilitary officer who was the director of the National Counterterrorism Center from 2025 until 2026.
Kent, a Republican, ran for the United States House of Representatives in the third congressional district of Washington in 2022 and 2024.
Kent was nominated for director of the National Counterterrorism Center by President Donald Trump in February 2025. That month, he was appointed chief of staff to Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence. The Senate confirmed Kent in July.
In March 2026, Kent resigned as the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, claiming disagreement about American involvement in the Iran conflict.
Joe Kent Biography
Joseph Clay Kent was born on April 11, 1980, in a cabin in Sweet Home, Oregon. Kent was the first child of Roman Catholic parents, and he eventually graduated from law school. He was raised in Portland, Oregon. Kent showed an early interest in the military, building weaponry out of Lego pieces.
He was inspired to join the US Army after seeing television footage of the Battle of Mogadishu. Kent graduated from Norwich University with a degree in strategic studies and defence analysis.
Career
At the age of 17, Kent enlisted in the Army under a Ranger contract, allowing him to join the 75th Ranger Regiment. He applied for the Special Forces before the September 11 attacks and completed a certification course days before the attacks.
Following his training, Kent was deployed to Iraq in September 2003, where he participated in the First Battle of Fallujah and sought out Iraqi officials. He completed eleven combat missions, including deployments to Yemen and North Africa, before retiring.
Kent’s last rank was Chief Warrant Officer. He eventually became a paramilitary officer with the Central Intelligence Agency.
On February 18, 2021, Kent announced his intention to run for the United States House of Representatives in Washington’s third congressional district as a Republican, citing Jaime Herrera Beutler’s decision to vote to impeach Donald Trump in his second impeachment attempt following the January 6 Capitol attack.
Kent allied himself with Trump at his candidacy announcement. By July, he had raised US$366,000, the most of any contender in the contest at the time, and had financial backing from Steve Wynn and Peter Thiel.
In September, Trump endorsed Kent. Tucker Carlson, who featured him frequently on his Fox News show Tucker Carlson Tonight (2016-2023), contributed to his rise to stardom.
By February 2025, Kent was serving as the acting chief of staff to Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence; The Washington Post revealed his post in March.
In response to a request from the Trump administration, Kent requested that the National Intelligence Council conduct an intelligence assessment on connections between the Venezuelan government and Tren de Aragua; after the report failed to yield associations between the government and the gang, he pressed Michael Collins, the acting chairman, to reassess its analysis after The New York Times reported on the internal report.
The evaluation contradicted Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act, which requires a tie to a foreign power. Kent was a Signal group chat user who participated in one of the US government group chat leaks. On February 3, 2025, Donald Trump announced Kent as his nominee for director of the National Counterterrorism Center.
On April 9, he testified before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, defending his membership in the Signal group conversation and asserting that the government was involved in the January 6 Capitol attack. On July 30, Kent was confirmed by the Senate on a 52-44 party-line vote.
The New York Times reported in October that Kent had gotten access to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s files on Charlie Kirk’s assassination, which alarmed the bureau’s director, Kash Patel.
Joe Kent Resigns
Kent resigned as director of the National Counterterrorism Center on March 17, 2026, due to the Iran war, writing on X that the US entered the conflict under “pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby”. Kent added that Iran did not pose an “imminent threat” to the United States.
Joe Kent Wife
Kent married Shannon Smith, a cryptologist he met while stationed at Fort Belvoir with the Army Special Operations Command, in December 2014. They have two children, born in 2015 and 2017.
In January 2019, Shannon was killed in a suicide explosion in Manbij. Following the bombing, Kent left his government job and began writing essays for CNN, Breitbart News, and Fox News criticising the war on terror.
Joe married his current wife Heather Kaiser in 2023. Like Kent, she served in the United States Armed Forces. Although Joe is active on social media, he does not tag his wife in any of their family posts, implying that she either does not use social media or wishes to keep some aspects of her life secret.