Joe Kent, the former director of the National Counterterrorism Center who resigned over his opposition to the Iran war, shared a post on social media spreading false claims from Iranian state-linked media and Drop Site News that the U.S. was attempting to kill the servicemember whose fighter jet was shot down over Iran over the weekend prior to him being rescued. 

The initial statement on Saturday from Drop Site, a far-left news outlet sympathetic to Hamas and totalitarian regimes, cited a report by Tasnim News, which is linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, claiming that the U.S. had “lost hope” of recovering an airman whose jet was downed over Iran on Friday and was instead “attempting to kill him.” 

The post was then amplified by Kent with the message: “Praying for the rescue of our downed pilot & the safe return of our Special Operators going in to get him back. [U.S. Air Force Pararescuemen and Combat Search and Rescue] Air crews are top notch.” 

The Iranian-state media claim reposted by Kent came a day before President Donald Trump announced on Sunday that the lost crew member had been rescued following what he hailed as a “daring” operation by U.S. forces to retrieve him — contradicting the claim that Washington had been attempting to bomb and kill the missing servicemember. 

In his post on Truth Social, Trump said that the servicemember’s location was being monitored “24 hours a day,” adding that the U.S. was “diligently planning for his rescue.”

Kent initially resigned from his post in March over the war in Iran, claiming that Tehran posed “no imminent threat to our nation” and accusing the U.S. of starting the war “due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby.”

Joe Kent, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, resigned from his role on Tuesday over opposition to the war in Iran, baselessly alleging that Israel had coerced the United States into what he characterized as a misguided military conflict.

In a letter to President Donald Trump shared on social media, Kent, a former Green Beret who had reported to Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, wrote that he “cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran,” claiming that the Islamic Republic “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.”

Kent, a hard-right former congressional candidate in Washington State who has pushed an isolationist foreign policy vision, has previously drawn scrutiny for promoting conspiracy theories, echoing pro-Russia messaging and associating with white supremacists and neo-Nazis, among other controversies.

During a failed House bid in 2022, Kent also said that accepting donations from pro-Israel lobbying groups like AIPAC puts Israel’s “interests ahead of ours” — invoking an antisemitic trope about foreign influence over American politics that is increasingly common on the far right.

Kent’s wife, Heather Kaiser, is a military veteran who has written for The Grayzone, an extremist outlet, authoring articles with its founder Max Blumenthal, a prominent conspiracy theorist who has published sympathetic coverage of Iran and spread misinformation about the Hamas terror attacks of Oct. 7, 2023.  

In his letter, Kent claimed that Trump had been tricked into striking Iran by “high-ranking Israeli officials and influential members of the American media” who “deployed a misinformation campaign that wholly undermined” the president’s “America First platform and sowed pro-war sentiments to encourage war with Iran.”

“This echo chamber was used to deceive you into believing that Iran posed an imminent threat to the United States, and that should you strike now, there was a clear path to a swift victory,” Kent wrote to the president. “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. We cannot make this mistake again.”

Kent, who served in Iraq, also claimed his first wife, Shannon Kent, a military cryptologist who died in an ISIS suicide bombing in Syria in 2019, had been killed “in a war manufactured by Israel.” Israel was not a member of the U.S.-led coalition combating ISIS at the time.

“I pray that you will reflect upon what we are doing in Iran, and who we are doing it for,” he concluded, telling the president that he can “reverse course and chart a new path for our nation” or “allow us to slip further toward decline and chaos.”

Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, rejected Kent’s account. “As President Trump has clearly and explicitly stated, he had strong and compelling evidence that Iran was going to attack the United States first,” she wrote in a lengthy social media post.

She called Kent’s claim that Israel had duped Trump into joining the war “an absurd allegation” that “is both insulting and laughable,” arguing that “Trump has been remarkably consistent and has said for DECADES that Iran can NEVER possess a nuclear weapon.”

Speaking to reporters from the Oval Office on Tuesday, Trump said it was a “good thing” that Kent had resigned, calling him “very weak on security.”  

“He said that Iran was not a threat. Iran was a threat. Every country realized what a threat Iran was. The question is whether or not they wanted to do something about it,” Trump added. “So when somebody is working with us that says they didn’t think Iran was the threat, we don’t want those people.”

Kent’s comments, which underscored deepening divisions in Trump’s MAGA coalition over the war, also drew criticism from Republican lawmakers. 

Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE), a leading moderate voice in the House, accused Kent of fueling antisemitism. “Good riddance,” he said of Kent’s departure on social media. “Iran has murdered more than a thousand Americans. Their EFP land mines were the deadliest in Iraq. Anti-Semitism is an evil I detest, and we surely don’t want it in our government.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) said Kent’s claims about Israeli influence were “clearly wrong” and that “there was clearly an imminent threat” to the United States.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY) also criticized Kent’s letter and said they were glad to see him leave the administration — Lawler called him “a leaker who spent more time undermining our foreign policy than doing his job,” while Graham said, based on his claims, Kent “clearly … did not go to work enough.” 

On the other side of the aisle, Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in a statement that Kent had been “right” to point out “there was no credible evidence of an imminent threat from Iran that would justify” an attack — even as he called Kent’s “record deeply troubling” and believed he “never should have been confirmed” to lead the counterterrorism office.

Meanwhile, Tucker Carlson, a close ally of Kent, praised his decision to resign. “Joe is the bravest man I know, and he can’t be dismissed as a nut,” Carlson told The New York Times on Tuesday.

Adam Mossoff, a law professor at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School, resigned on Thursday from his position as a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation in response to the organization’s president refusing to disavow Tucker Carlson for his platforming of neo-Nazi influencer Nick Fuentes.

In an email to Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts and John Malcolm, director of the Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at Heritage, Mossoff cited Roberts’ Oct. 30 video lashing out at Carlson’s critics and his “subsequent interviews, videos, and commentary” on the subject as the reason for his resignation from the Meese Center. 

Mossoff wrote in the email, obtained by Jewish Insider late Thursday, that the video, in which Roberts called out the “venomous coalition attacking” Carlson, and the Heritage president’s comments after the fact “reflects a fundamental ethical lapse and failure of moral leadership that has irrevocably damaged the well-deserved reputation of Heritage as ‘the intellectual backbone of the conservative movement’ (your words in your October 30 video).”

He explained that Roberts’ handling of the fallout of the original video had “made it clear to me that Heritage is no longer the storied think tank that I was proud to join in 2019.”

After accusing Carlson of “quickly following Candace Owens down the very dark path of Jewish conspiracy theories and defenses of Nazis,” Mossoff then accused Roberts of sending “mixed messages … about the lesson you have learned” from the fallout to his Oct. 30 video. 

“Although you told us in the [staff] townhall last Thursday that you made a mistake in your October 30 video, you have not retracted or withdrawn the video. It remains on your X account with more than 24 million views to date. Thus, it remains unclear precisely and specifically what you regard as your moral mistake and failure in leadership,” Mossoff wrote. 

“You have continually reiterated, for example, your claims in your October 30 video that we should not ‘cancel’ our ‘friends,’ and that Tucker ‘always will be a close friend of the Heritage Foundation.’ As far as I’m aware, you have not disavowed this claim,” he continued. “But you falsely conflate here the struggle sessions and cancelation campaigns that the woke left inflict on their apostates and heretics with the proper and steadfast moral condemnation of nihilism, collectivism, Nazism, and Jew hatred.”

Mossoff also wrote that he “waited two weeks to send my resignation notice” because he “did not wish to act in haste, and I wanted my decision to be the result of a considered judgment, not a reaction based on the passions of the moment.”

Mossoff announced his resignation publicly in a post on X on Thursday morning, in which he wrote that his decision was “based on my considered judgment of Dr. Kevin Roberts’ October 30 video and the subsequent commentary, interviews, and meetings in the past two weeks. I look forward to continuing my research in patent law and my work in innovation policy as a professor and fellow at other think tanks, in addition to my new part-time position at the USPTO [U.S. Patent and Trademark Office].”

Mossoff is a vocal advocate for the U.S.-Israel relationship and is one of two Jewish law professors at George Mason who began needing permanent police protection last year because of an increase in threats. His decision to give up his visiting fellow position marks the latest in a string of resignations in protest of Roberts’ refusal to disavow Carlson. The National Task Force to Combat Antisemitism, a Heritage-aligned operation, also cut ties with the conservative think tank last week. Former Rep. Michele Bachmann resigned from the task force over the weekend, citing the response by Heritage leadership to the controversy.

“I resigned from the Heritage antisemitism task force because Heritage leadership failed to stand against the voices of antisemitism on the political right,” Bachmann told Newsmax. “Inexplicably, consistent voices of antisemitism on the political right were embraced and, worse, defended by the leadership of Heritage Foundation.”

“This is the biggest PR disaster in Heritage’s history,” she added. “Heritage leadership shot a cannon through their brand.”

Reached for comment, a Heritage spokesperson told JI, “We’re thankful for every member of our team and appreciate Adam’s work as a visiting fellow at Heritage. We wish him the best. Heritage remains focused on our vital work to revive the American family, protect the dignity of work, safeguard our national sovereignty, and revitalize the role of citizenship.”