{"id":350990,"date":"2026-03-21T15:17:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-21T15:17:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/350990\/"},"modified":"2026-03-21T15:17:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-21T15:17:08","slug":"us-counter-terrorism-chief-who-resigned-says-he-fears-retaliation-but-has-no-regrets-trump-administration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/350990\/","title":{"rendered":"US counter-terrorism chief who resigned says he fears retaliation but has no regrets | Trump administration"},"content":{"rendered":"

The counter-terrorism official who resigned<\/a> from Donald Trump\u2019s administration<\/a> over the US and Israel\u2019s war<\/a> against Iran has said he is bracing for political retribution \u2013 but would do it all again anyway.<\/p>\n

Asked by conservative podcaster Megyn Kelly if he was concerned about a pre-existing FBI search<\/a> investigating him for leaking classified information, Kent said he was ambivalent.<\/p>\n

He was \u201cnot concerned because I know I did nothing wrong\u201d. But, alluding to the way the Trump administration<\/a> has sought to criminally prosecute people the president considers enemies, he added: \u201cOf course, I am concerned because we\u2019ve all seen the full weight of the FBI and the government come down on individuals who speak out.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat has me a little bit concerned,\u201d he also told Kelly on her podcast<\/a> on Friday. \u201cBut I know that the truth and the facts are on my side.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe important issues to address are what\u2019s at hand \u2013 why we\u2019re at war and how we get out of the state that we\u2019re in right now.\u201d<\/p>\n

A former US army special forces veteran, Kent resigned as national counter-terrorism center director on Tuesday and has since been on a conservative media tour, including with Kelly and Tucker Carlson<\/a>, who were sympathetic to Trump but have broken with the president over the war in Iran as well as other issues.<\/p>\n

At his stops with Kelly, Carlson and on the UnHerd podcast with Freddie Sayers, Kent has maintained he could not continue in his role \u201cin good conscience\u201d due to the war in Iran that the president started<\/a> without congressional authorization alongside Israel in late February.<\/p>\n

In a widely publicized resignation letter, he said Iran \u201cposed 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\u201d.<\/p>\n

Kent was previously an ideological soldier for Trump\u2019s \u201cMake America great again\u201d (Maga) movement, defending the 6 January 2021 US Capitol attack carried out by the president\u2019s supporters, exalting disproven theories that the 2020 election won by Joe Biden was stolen, and interviewing the antisemitic far-right influencer Nick Fuentes. He paid a member of the far-right extremist Proud Boys group to work on an unsuccessful Kent bid for Congress in 2022.<\/p>\n

Kent has also been accused of peddling antisemitic tropes in blaming an \u201cIsraeli lobby\u201d for the Iran conflict.<\/p>\n

Kelly on Friday asked Kent if it\u2019s worth becoming a Maga enemy now that he has joined an insurgency of Iran war skeptics on the fringes of Trump\u2019s movement.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost certainly,\u201d Kent said in response to Kelly. \u201cI think I have a mission, and I think it is to do everything I can to stop this war.\u201d<\/p>\n

The White House dismissed Kent as \u201cweak on security\u201d, insisting that Iran represented \u201ca tremendous threat\u201d and suggesting that those who disagreed lacked judgment. \u201cIf somebody didn\u2019t think it was a threat, we don\u2019t want those people,\u201d Trump has said.<\/p>\n

During a recent hearing of the House permanent select committee on intelligence, Kent\u2019s former boss, Tulsi Gabbard, said she \u201ccannot say how much\u201d she disagreed with Kent\u2019s letter.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe said a lot of things in that letter,\u201d Gabbard, the national intelligence director, said. \u201cUltimately, we have provided the president with the intelligence assessments, and the president is elected by the American people and makes his own decisions based on the information that\u2019s available to him.\u201d<\/p>\n

In an interview<\/a> with the right-leaning UnHerd published on Saturday, Kent continued with that assertion, saying that while Trump \u201cis the guy who makes the decisions \u2026 the advice that [he] was getting was largely dominated by this ecosystem that I describe with Israeli officials\u201d.<\/p>\n

He blamed outlets that that he claimed echo \u201cthe same talking points\u201d, naming Fox News, the Wall Street Journal editorial board and the New York Post \u2013 all of which are part of Rupert Murdoch\u2019s media empire.<\/p>\n

Kent claimed those outlets were \u201csaying basically the same things, almost in coordination with what the Israeli officials were saying, in particular about no enrichment, saying that enrichment equals Iran having a nuclear weapon, which couldn\u2019t be further from the truth\u201d.<\/p>\n

Kent contended that \u201cby saying that\u201d it \u201cbasically short-circuited the negotiations\u201d over the future of Iran\u2019s nuclear program.<\/p>\n

The former intelligence official added that he had expected Israel to return after the \u201c12-day war\u201d between Israeli forces and Iran in June of 2025 and US missile strikes soon after that destroyed Iranian nuclear enrichment sites.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe knew they would, and when they did come back, that is when I saw, from my perspective, the robust debates kind of go away, and there was a much smaller group of advisers around President Trump,\u201d Kent said.<\/p>\n

And again, he added, \u201cit goes back to the official engagement from the Israelis then echoed by the pro-Israel media heads that were in Trump\u2019s media diet\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The counter-terrorism official who resigned from Donald Trump\u2019s administration over the US and Israel\u2019s war against Iran has…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":345475,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-350990","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350990","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=350990"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350990\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/345475"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=350990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=350990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=350990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}