A veteran Green Beret, appointed by President Donald Trump to lead U.S. intelligence on terrorist threats, has referred to the Jan. 6 rioters as “political prisoners” and has connections to a man who police said was a member of the far-right organization known as the “Proud Boys.”
The administration’s decision to appoint partisan activists and allies to high-level government roles in intelligence, law enforcement, and diplomacy includes Joe Kent’s appointment as director of the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC). Trump and his followers have claimed that the intelligence agency needs a drastic reform because it has previously attempted to discredit the president.
The National Counterterrorism Center maintains a database of all known and suspected terrorists and is in charge of U.S. government intelligence on terrorist threats. During his 20-year tenure in Army Special Forces, Kent participated in 11 combat deployments before joining the CIA. In 2019, his wife, a Navy cryptologist, was killed in a terrorist attack in Syria.
In 2022 and 2024, Kent made two unsuccessful attempts to run for Congress in Washington state.According to campaign finance records, Kent paid Graham Jorgensen for “campaign consulting” in 2022. Jorgensen was named a Proud Boy in a 2018 law enforcement report.
The FBI considers the Proud Boys to be an extremist organization with connections to white nationalism, and investigators claim they were heavily involved in the Capitol storming on January 6. The group claims to be a fraternal group that opposes political correctness and has denied any affiliation with racial elements.
The Army veteran repudiated prejudice and discrimination, according to a Kent campaign consultant who spoke to the Associated Press in 2022.
Speaking at a Justice for J6 event in 2021 in Washington, D.C., Kent claimed that those convicted of their involvement in the Jan. 6 attack were being denied their civil rights and were therefore political prisoners.
According to Kent, if we do not speak up against the violation of our fellow citizens’ constitutional rights, we are complicit in the erosion of those rights. Without a doubt, governments here will do what they do abroad, and they have already begun.
However, Kent had denounced demonstrators who used violence on January 6 months prior.
Oregon Public Broadcasting cited Kent as saying, “We just have to call that out the second people start throwing bricks through windows.” Regarding the men who behaved violently on January 6, I had the same feelings. They should face the harshest penalties possible because of what they did, which was truly horrible.
During a debate in 2022, Kent stated his desire to reinstate military personnel who had been fired for declining to get the experimental gene therapy vaccination. Kent defeated Republican incumbent Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler, who had voted to impeach Trump because to the events of January 6, to win the 2022 primary. After winning Trump’s support and criticizing Herrera Beutler for her vote to impeach him, Kent made frequent appearances on Tucker Carlson’s show on Fox News.
Trump gave Kent a lot of praise in a post on Truth Social.
Trump stated, “Joe has spent his entire adult life hunting down terrorists and criminals as a Soldier, Green Beret, and CIA Officer.” Joe is most aware of the horrible cost of terrorism because he lost his amazing wife, Shannon, a Great American Hero, in the battle against ISIS.
By continuing to fight, Joe honors her legacy, Trump continued. Joe will assist us in protecting America by eliminating all forms of terrorism, from domestic cartels to Islamists worldwide.
According to Kent’s interviews, he blamed his wife’s murder on senior members of the national security establishment who pressured Trump to rescind his intentions to remove all American personnel from Syria.
“If the establishment hadn’t betrayed Trump, my wife would still be alive today,” Kent stated during a 2021 rally.
Questions concerning Kent’s prior affiliations and remarks were not answered by the Trump transition team.
After law enforcement officials and academics warned of a heightened threat from extremists planning attacks on Western and U.S. targets, Kent, if confirmed by the Senate, would assume control of the counterterrorism center. The second-deadliest terrorist act since the Sept. 11, 2001 assaults occurred on New Year’s Day when an Army veteran crashed a vehicle into a gathering of partygoers on Bourbon Street in New Orleans, killing 14 people and wounding dozens more. According to the FBI, ISIS served as the attacker’s inspiration.
Far right organizations have been mentioned by U.S. law enforcement as a growing domestic terrorist danger in recent years.
Another far-right individual was appointed by the administration to the State Department to manage American public message to audiences abroad. The interim undersecretary of state for public diplomacy will be Darren Beattie, a conservative writer who has argued that capable white males must be in command and supported conspiracy theories around the Jan. 6 attack. Senate confirmation is required for the permanent position.
We are especially proud that President Trump, who recently and valiantly pardoned the January 6 political prisoners, has himself cited our reporting on this issue frequently and favorably, Beattie wrote on his website, Revolution News. We are, of course, best known for directly challenging the official narrative of January 6.
Trump also appointed Michael Ellis, a longtime political buddy who served at the White House National Security Council during his first term and was a congressional staffer to former Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., to be the deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency. With significant authority, the No. 2 ranking position oversees day-to-day operations at the espionage agency and is not subject to Senate confirmation.
Ellis has served as a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation think tank, which created Project 2025, a significant plan for Trump’s second term. According to the memo, all IC (intelligence community) stocks should be audited for previous instances of political manipulation and misuse of intelligence data.
In a social media post, Trump said that Ellis is a knowledgeable and well-respected attorney who will reform the CIA and restore it to its former status as the world’s greatest intelligence agency.
Ellis has served as general counsel at Rumble, an online video sharing platform with a sizable right-leaning audience, since leaving government. Truth Social, the Trump-founded social media network, used Rumble’s hosting services.
Ellis will get to the CIA as staff members consider a purported buyout offer from the incoming government. On Tuesday, the CIA told its employees that if they agree to resign, they will receive eight months’ worth of pay and benefits. Workers at other federal departments and agencies have been given similar alternatives, which has drawn criticism from politicians and labor organizations who fear the move could deprive the federal government of expertise, especially in the areas of national security and law enforcement.
Devin Nunes, the former Republican congressman who chaired the House Intelligence Committee at the beginning of Trump’s first term, had Ellis as an aide. When Congress were looking into Russian meddling in the 2016 election and interactions between Trump’s campaign and Russian agents, Nunes stood firmly in support of Trump.
According to testimony given to Congress by Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, a National Security Council official at the time, Ellis was also involved in the placement of a transcript of Trump’s phone conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy into a classified computer system while he was employed at the White House. In his deposition for a congressional investigation, Vindman stated that he did not believe Ellis’ recommendation to move the transcript to the classified system was motivated by malice.
Trump’s first impeachment trial was based on a phone conversation from July 2019 in which he requested that his Ukrainian counterpart look into Biden and his son Hunter.
Ellis was appointed general counsel of the National Security Agency in November 2020, at the conclusion of Trump’s first term. Paul Nakasone, the NSA’s director at the time, was against the action. Christopher Miller, the acting defense secretary during Trump’s last days in office, gave the NSA the order to appoint Ellis as general counsel. However, Ellis was put on administrative leave by Nakasone as soon as the Biden administration assumed power, while an inspector general investigation into his appointment was conducted.
The office of the inspector general came to the conclusion that the appointment had not been influenced negatively. However, it also concluded that Nakasone had taken the right course of action by putting Ellis on administrative leave. Ellis left the National Security Agency in April 2021.