The FBI has opened an investigation into Joe Kent, a counterterrorism official who was pilloried by the White House after he quit over the war with Iran, for possibly leaking sensitive intelligence, according to two people with knowledge of the situation.
The investigation predated the resignation on Tuesday of Kent, the director of the National Counterterrorism Centre, according to those people, who discussed a continuing investigation on the condition of anonymity.
Disclosure of the inquiry, which was reported earlier by Semafor, came after a coordinated Trump administration effort to discredit Kent as untrustworthy and disloyal.
The FBI and justice department under Trump have frequently targeted the President’s critics and political enemies for criminal investigations, often without sufficient evidence to obtain or sustain a criminal indictment.
“Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation,” Kent wrote in his public resignation letter to US President Donald Trump, which landed as the President was grappling with the economic and geopolitical fallout from the Iran war.
Kent, the first senior member of the administration to quit over the war, claimed that the attack on Iran was "due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby".
He was interviewed on Wednesday by Tucker Carlson, a close friend, on his popular online podcast. Carlson, who gained notoriety for a sympathetic interview with a white nationalist last year, has been one of the most visible conservative opponents of the war and a vocal critic of Israel.
Kent’s critics have long accused him of promoting an anti-semitic and anti-Israel worldview.
Yet his resignation widened a rift among Republicans over the war and the US relationship with Israel. Trump, who as President is sensitive to the Right-wing media sphere, quickly rebuked Kent after his resignation, saying "it’s a good thing that he’s out because he said Iran was not a threat".
New York Times News Service