WASHINGTON — 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 Tuesday of Kent, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, according to those people, who discussed a continuing investigation on 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 President Donald Trump, which landed as the president was grappling with the economic and geopolitical fallout from the Iran war.

Kent Says US Attacked Iran Because of Pressure From Israel

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 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 antisemitic and anti-Israel worldview.

Yet his resignation widened a rift among Republicans over the war and the U.S. 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.”

Kent’s Interview With Carlson

In his appearance with Carlson, Kent effusively praised the president and his previous policies, including past acts of aggression toward Iran, such as the assassination of Gen. Qassem Soleimani in 2020 and the U.S. bombing of Iranian nuclear facilities last year.

But Kent also repeated his claims that there was no evidence of an imminent attack from Iran before the war began, and that the United States had been drawn into the conflict by Israel. He called on Trump to bar Israel from striking Iran, and to stop supplying Israel with defense systems if it refused.

“He has to address the main issue,” Kent said. “The main issue is what the Israelis are doing. And he needs to — very forcefully, and probably with a new team of diplomats — go to the Israelis and say: ‘You’re done. We will defend you. We will make sure that, you know, ballistic missiles aren’t rained down upon you. However you are done going on the offense because this is our war.’”

Kent is not an ordinary war critic. He has long had a penchant for conspiracy theories, suggesting without evidence that FBI agents could have been responsible for orchestrating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. He has dismissed allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 election, saying that such accusations were part of the “Russia hoax.”

And in his appearance with Carlson, the two promoted unfounded claims that Israel may have been involved in an attempted assassination of Trump in 2024, as well as the killing of right-wing commentator Charlie Kirk last year.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

Glenn Thrush and Chris Cameron/Pete Kiehart

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