US counter-terrorism chief who resigned says he fears retaliation but has no regrets | Trump administration
The counterterrorism official who resigned from Donald Trump’s administration over the US and Israel’s war against Iran said he was preparing for political revenge but would still do it again.
Asked by conservative podcaster Megyn Kelly if he was concerned about a pre-existing FBI investigation investigating him for leaking classified information, Kent said he was undecided.
“He wasn’t worried because I know I didn’t do anything wrong”. But he touched on the Trump administration’s efforts to criminally prosecute people the president sees as enemies, adding: “Of course I’m concerned because we’ve all seen the full weight of the FBI and the government fall on people speaking out.”
“That worried me a little bit,” he also told Kelly. on his podcast on Friday. “But I know the facts and truth are on my side.
“The important issues to address are what we have, why we are at war, and how to get out of the situation we are in right now.”
Kent, a former U.S. army special forces veteran, resigned as director of the national counterterrorism center on Tuesday and has since been on a conservative media tour alongside Kelly and his colleagues. tucker carlsonPeople who sympathize with Trump but have broken ties with the president over the war in Iran and other issues.
In conversations with Kelly, Carlson and Freddie Sayers on the UnHerd podcast, Kent argued that the president cannot “conscientiously” continue in office because of the war he launched in Iran on the side of Israel in late February without congressional authorization.
In his widely publicized resignation letter, he said Iran “does not pose an imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war because of pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby.”
The city was previously the ideological soldier of Trump’s “Make America great again” (Maga) movement; He was defending the Jan. 6, 2021 U.S. Capitol attack by the president’s supporters, promoting debunked theories that the 2020 election won by Joe Biden was stolen, and interviewing anti-Semitic far-right extremist Nick Fuentes. He paid a member of the far-right Proud Boys group to work on Kent’s unsuccessful 2022 run for Congress.
The city has also been accused of peddling anti-Semitic tropes by blaming the “Israel lobby” for the Iran conflict.
Kelly asked Kent on Friday whether he’s worth being a Maga hater now that he’s joined the rebellion of Iran war skeptics on the fringes of Trump’s movement.
“Absolutely,” Kent said in response to Kelly. “I think I have a duty, and I think it’s to do everything I can to stop this war.”
The White House dismissed Kent as “weak on security,” insisting that Iran poses a “tremendous threat” and suggesting that those who disagree lack judgment. “If somebody didn’t think it was a threat, we don’t want those people,” Trump said.
At a recent hearing of the House permanent select committee on intelligence, Kent’s former boss, Tulsi Gabbard, said she “can’t say how much she disagrees” with Kent’s letter.
“She said a lot of things in that letter,” said Gabbard, the national intelligence director. “Ultimately, we gave the president the intelligence assessments, and the president is elected by the American people and makes his own decisions based on the information he has.”
One report Kent followed up this claim in the right-leaning UnHerd magazine published on Saturday, saying: “Even though Trump is the one calling the shots… [he] “This ecosystem, which I explained to Israeli officials, was being largely dominated.”
He blamed media outlets such as Fox News, the Wall Street Journal editorial board, and the New York Post, which he claimed were repeating the “same talking points”; they were all part of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire.
Kent claimed that these publications “said basically the same thing, almost in line with what Israeli officials say, especially about the lack of enrichment, saying that enrichment means Iran having nuclear weapons”; This couldn’t be further from the truth.
“By saying this,” Kent claimed, Iran was “short-circuiting negotiations” on the future of its nuclear program.
The former intelligence official added that he expected Israel to return after the “12-day war” between Israeli forces and Iran in June 2025, after which US missile strikes destroyed Iran’s nuclear enrichment sites.
“We knew they were going to do it, and when they came back, I found that the harsh debates on my part had sort of disappeared and President Trump had a much smaller group of advisors around him,” Kent said.
And again he added: “This is based on the official involvement of Israelis and is later repeated by pro-Israeli media heads in Trump’s media diet.”
