President Donald Trump’s pick to oversee U.S. intelligence on terrorism threats is a retired Green Beret who has called Jan. 6 rioters “political prisoners” and has had ties to a man police say was a member of the far-right group known as the “Proud Boys.”
The selection of Joe Kent as director of the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) is part of a wider effort by the administration to place trusted loyalists and partisan activists in senior government positions in intelligence, law enforcement and diplomacy. Trump and his supporters have said the intelligence community sought to undermine the president in the past and needs a radical overhaul.
The National Counterterrorism Center oversees U.S. government intelligence on terrorist threats and retains a database of all known and suspected terrorists. Kent served in Army Special Forces, undertaking 11 combat deployments during a 20-year career, and later worked at the CIA. He lost his wife, a Navy cryptologist, in a terrorist bombing in Syria in 2019.
Kent ran unsuccessfully for Congress twice in Washington state, in 2022 and 2024. Campaign finance documents show that Kent in 2022 made payments for “campaign consulting” to Graham Jorgensen, who was identified as a Proud Boy in a 2018 law enforcement report.
The Proud Boys are viewed as “an extremist group with ties to white nationalism” by the FBI, and authorities say they played a significant role in the Jan. 6 storming of the Capitol. The group has denied any connection to racist elements and says it is a fraternal group opposed to political correctness.
A Kent campaign strategist told The Associated Press in 2022 that the Army veteran rejected “racism and bigotry.”
Kent spoke at a “Justice for J6” rally in 2021 in Washington, D.C., saying people convicted for their role in the Jan. 6 attack were “political prisoners” who were being denied their civil rights.
“Our fellow citizens, when their constitutional rights are taken, if we do not speak out against that we are guilty of standing by and watching those rights erode,” Kent said. “Make no mistake: What governments do overseas they will do here, and they’ve already started.”
But months earlier, Kent had condemned protesters who resorted to violence on Jan. 6.
“The second people start throwing bricks through windows, we just have to call that out,” Kent was quoted as saying by Oregon Public Broadcasting. “I feel the exact same way about the guys who acted violently on Jan. 6. You know, like, what they did was absolutely atrocious and they should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”
In a 2022 debate, Kent said he wanted to reinstate military service members who had lost their jobs for refusing “to take the experimental gene therapy vaccine.” Kent won the 2022 primary race, defeating the Republican incumbent Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler, who had voted to impeach Trump over the events of Jan. 6. Kent slammed Herrera Beutler for her impeachment vote and won Trump’s endorsement, appearing frequently on Fox News and on Tucker Carlson’s show.
In a post on Truth Social, Trump praised Kent.
“As a Soldier, Green Beret, and CIA Officer, Joe has hunted down terrorists and criminals his entire adult life,” Trump wrote. “Above all, Joe knows the terrible cost of terrorism, losing his wonderful wife, Shannon, a Great American Hero, who was killed in the fight against ISIS.”
“Joe continues to honor her legacy by staying in the fight,” Trump added. “Joe will help us keep America safe by eradicating all terrorism, from the jihadists around the World, to the cartels in our backyard.”
In interviews, Kent has said that he blamed senior officials in the national security establishment for his wife’s death, saying they pushed Trump to walk back plans to withdraw all U.S. forces from Syria.
“My wife would be alive today had Trump not been double-crossed by the establishment,” Kent said at a rally in 2021.
The Trump transition team did not respond to questions about Kent’s past comments and associations.
If confirmed by the Senate, Kent would take over the counterterrorism center after warnings from law enforcement officials and experts of a heightened threat from extremists plotting to stage attacks against U.S. and Western targets. On New Year’s Day, an Army veteran drove a truck into a crowd of revelers on Bourbon Street in New Orleans, killing 14 and injuring dozens of others — the second deadliest terrorist assault since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The FBI said the attacker was inspired by ISIS.
U.S. law enforcement officials in recent years have cited far-right groups as an increasing domestic terrorist threat.
At the State Department, the administration named another far-right figure to oversee America’s public messaging to foreign audiences. Darren Beattie, a conservative author who has promoted conspiracy theories about the Jan. 6 attack and written that “competent white men must be in charge,” will serve as acting undersecretary of state for public diplomacy. The position, in a permanent capacity, requires Senate confirmation.
On his website, Revolver News, Beattie wrote: “We are, of course, best known for directly challenging the official narrative of January 6—and we are especially proud that President Trump, who recently and heroically pardoned the January 6 political prisoners, has himself cited our reporting on this issue frequently and favorably.”
Trump also named a longtime political ally Michael Ellis, who was a congressional aide to former Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., and who worked at the White House National Security Council in Trump’s first term, to serve as deputy director at the Central Intelligence Agency. The No. 2 ranking post, which does not require Senate confirmation, carries substantial power, managing daily operations at the spy agency.
Ellis has been a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation think tank, which produced an influential blueprint for Trump’s second term titled “Project 2025.” The document calls for an “audit of all IC (intelligence community) equities of past politicization and abuses of intelligence information.”
Trump said in a social media post that Ellis is a “smart and highly respected lawyer” who will “fix the CIA, and make it, once again, the Greatest Intelligence Agency in the World.”
Since leaving government, Ellis has been the general counsel at the online video sharing site Rumble, a platform with a significant right-leaning audience. Rumble provided hosting services to Truth Social, the social media platform founded by Trump.
Ellis will arrive at the CIA just as employees weigh a so-called “buyout” offer from the new administration. The CIA informed its workforce on Tuesday that employees can receive eight months pay and benefits if they agree to resign. Similar options have been offered to workers at other federal agencies and departments, prompting criticism from lawmakers and labor unions that the move could strip the federal government of expertise — particularly in the field of law enforcement and national security.
Ellis was an aide to Devin Nunes, the former Republican congressman who served as chair of the House Intelligence Committee during the outset of Trump’s first term. Nunes was a steadfast defender of Trump when lawmakers were investigating Russia’s interference in the 2016 election and contacts between Trump’s campaign and Russian operatives.
During his tenure at the White House, Ellis also was involved in the placement of a transcript of Trump’s phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy into a classified computer system, according to testimony to Congress from Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, then an official on the National Security Council. Vindman said in his deposition to a congressional inquiry that he did not think that Ellis’ suggestion to transfer the transcript to the classified system carried “any malicious intent.”
The July 2019 phone call, in which Trump asked his Ukrainian counterpart to investigate Biden and his son Hunter, became the basis of Trump’s first impeachment trial.
At the end of Trump’s first term, in November 2020, Ellis was named general counsel of the National Security Agency. The NSA’s director at the time, Paul Nakasone, opposed the move. In the final days of Trump’s term, the acting defense secretary, Christopher Miller, ordered the NSA to install Ellis in the general counsel job. But as soon as the Biden administration took over, Ellis was placed on administrative leave by Nakasone, pending an inspector general inquiry into his appointment.
The inspector general’s office concluded that there had been no untoward influence in the appointment. But it also found that Nakasone acted properly in placing Ellis on administrative leave. Ellis resigned from the NSA in April 2021