Liz Wheeler questions Joe Kent’s resignation letter — ‘You owe us the receipts!’
On March 17, Joe Kent resigned from his position as director of the National Counterterrorism Center in protest over the Trump administration’s ongoing war in Iran. He claimed he could not “in good conscience” support the conflict, arguing that Iran posed no imminent threat to the U.S. and that the war was started due to pressure from Israel and its American lobby.
BlazeTV host Liz Wheeler was taken aback when she read Kent’s accusatory letter.
“This is a very big claim that Joe Kent is making,” she says.
On this episode of “The Liz Wheeler Show,” Liz unpacks Kent’s letter and explains why she’s skeptical of its contents.
“He is making the allegation that President Trump was duped ... with false information into embarking on this military operation in Iran, and he claims that this trickery happened at the hands of Israel and the Israeli lobby in the United States,” she says, summarizing the allegations listed in his letter.
“He further claims that there is no evidence in the intel community, which he would be aware of as the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, of an Iranian threat,” she adds, calling it “the scandal of the century” if proved true.
Liz is unwilling to entertain Kent’s claims until he can provide hard evidence.
“Where’s the evidence of this?” she asks. “If you are so certain that President Trump’s military operation in Iran is essentially based on manipulation by the Israelis and that Iran posed no threat, ... shouldn’t you show us evidence of this?”
While Liz welcomes a “whistleblower,” she demands the “receipts.”
“If you make a claim of this enormity — I mean, the implications of a claim like this being true would shake our nation — then you owe us the receipts. You need to show us the evidence of this,” she insists.
But Kent’s lack of evidence isn’t the only cause of Liz’s skepticism.
She considers his recent podcast appearances a calculated “media tour” on which he speaks only to hosts who are the “least likely to ask the most important questions.”
“To go on a media tour insinuates one of two things,” she says, “that either you have information of severe corruption — so severe that it could not be remedied internally — that you have to take this to the American people rather than go the legal whistleblower route internally in the intelligence community, or there’s some kind of other attention that is being sought.”
Liz acknowledges Kent’s traumatic history — he “lost his first wife” to “an ISIS suicide bomber”; however, the information she currently has makes her believe that Kent is “behaving as an opportunist.”
To hear more of her analysis, watch the full episode above.
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FBI investigating Joe Kent, ex-intel official who resigned over Iran strikes: Report
Sources have informed multiple publications that the FBI is investigating combat veteran Joe Kent over an alleged leak of classified information. Four individuals with direct knowledge of the probe told Semafor that it predates Kent's resignation on Tuesday as director of the National Counterterrorism Center.
A source familiar with the case told Axios that Kent was suspected of leaking information to Tucker Carlson and another conservative podcaster and that the bureau is looking into whether the allegedly leaked information pertained to Israel and Iran.
'Israelis drove the decision.'
When asked for comment, the White House referred Blaze News to the FBI. The FBI declined to comment. Blaze News reached out to Kent for comment but did not immediately receive a response.
Kent — a retired Green Beret and former CIA officer whom President Donald Trump nominated to be NCTC director in February 2025 and the U.S. Senate confirmed in a 52-44 vote in July — wrote in a post accompanying his resignation letter addressed to Trump and published Tuesday that Iran "posed no imminent threat to our nation" and that "it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby."
The ex-intel official said further in the letter:
Early in this administration, high-ranking Israeli officials and influential members of the American media deployed a misinformation campaign that wholly undermined your America First platform and sowed pro-war sentiments to encourage a 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 victory. This was a lie and is the same tactic the Israelis used to draw us into the Iraq war that cost our nation the lives of thousands of our best men and women.
The president told reporters on Tuesday, "I read his statement — and I always thought he was a nice guy — but I always thought he was weak on security, very weak on security."
RELATED: If Congress can’t oversee the FBI, who can?
"When I read his statement, I realized that it's a good thing that he's out, because he said that Iran was not a threat. Iran was a threat — every country realized what a threat Iran was. The question is whether they wanted to do something about it," said Trump.
Trump later shared an image of a tweet that Kent posted in January 2020, imploring Trump, then in his first term, to "wipe Iran's ballistic capability out and get our troops out of Iraq — they are only targets now."
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt claimed on Tuesday that Kent's resignation letter was replete with "false claims" and noted that "the absurd allegation that President Trump made this decision based on the influence of others, even foreign countries, is both insulting and laughable."
On Wednesday, Kent appeared with Tucker Carlson, who said about the Iran strikes: "Joe Kent was right. Therefore, Joe Kent must be destroyed. And there is, of course, this ongoing effort to do that — to dismiss Joe Kent as a tool of the Islamists or a leaker."
During the interview, Kent explained to Carlson his reasons for leaving the administration, his misgivings about the conflict with Iran, and his support for the president and Trump's previous policies.
Referring to remarks made earlier this month by House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Kent told Carlson — who was denounced on March 5 by the president following months of criticism — that the "Israelis drove the decision" to attack Iran.
Intelligence showed that Iran was neither on the verge of obtaining a nuclear weapon nor planning "to launch this big sneak attack," Kent added.
He further claimed that Trump was siloed when it came to the issue of Iran, stating that "a good deal of key decision-makers were not allowed to come express their opinion to the president."
'He quit because he's under investigation.'
Kent also claimed that when it came to Charlie Kirk's assassination, "we're not really even allowed to look into that at all." Kent even intimated that the assassination might have something to do with Kirk's vocal opposition to a possible regime-change war in Iran.
"One of President Trump's closest advisers who is vocally advocating for us to not go to war with Iran and for us to rethink, at least, our relationship with the Israelis, and then he's suddenly publicly assassinated, and we're not allowed to ask any questions about that — it's a data point," said Kent. "It's a data point that we need to look into."'
One of the sources reportedly familiar with the FBI investigation into Kent told Axios, "He left quite an online paper trail and he has been monitored for months."
"He's going to try to say this was in retaliation for his resignation," continued the source, "but it's the other way around: He quit because he's under investigation — and he knew it."
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'This could set the world on fire': Why Joe Kent's resignation letter may 'fracture public trust'
Joe Kent, director of the National Counterterrorism Center under Donald Trump, abruptly resigned and accused both Israeli officials and U.S. media figures of orchestrating a misinformation campaign that led America into war with Iran.
“President Trump, after much reflection, I’ve decided to resign from my position as director of the National Counterterrorism Center effective today. I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran. Iran 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 wrote in his resignation letter, which he posted to X.
“This is so damaging,” Blaze Media co-founder Glenn Beck comments. “This is Pentagon Papers stuff. This is as important as the Pentagon Papers. This is going to possibly change the course of America.”
Kent went on to claim that “high-ranking Israeli officials and influential members of the American media deployed a misinformation campaign that wholly undermined your America First platform and sowed pro-war sentiments to encourage a 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. 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,” he continued.
“This is going to set the world on fire,” Glenn says, disappointed.
“This is a senior official in intelligence saying in real time that the United States has entered a war under false pretenses, that Israel got us into the first war in Iraq and now they duped the American president into fighting this war,” he continues.
“This is going to fracture public trust. This is the worst letter that could be done, that I have ever seen ... our allies now are going to be questioning our judgment,” he says, adding, “Our enemies are going to exploit this like crazy.”
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'Insulting and laughable': Trump administration slams Joe Kent's resignation protesting Iran strikes
President Donald Trump and his allies have come out in full force following Joe Kent's resignation as director of the National Counterterrorism Center on Tuesday.
Kent announced his unexpected resignation in a letter to Trump, citing concerns about the United States' military operation in Iran. Kent argued that Iran posed "no imminent threat" and that the United States was forced into the conflict on behalf of Israel, prompting backlash from the administration.
'He had strong and compelling evidence that Iran was going to attack.'
"As a veteran who deployed to combat 11 times and as a Gold Star husband who lost my beloved wife Shannon in a war manufactured by Israel, I cannot support sending the next generation off to fight and die in a war that serves no benefit to the American people nor justifies the cost of American lives," Kent said in the letter.
Kent's resignation sent shock waves through the already fracturing MAGA world. Despite the outpouring of support from anti-war commentators, Kent was met with firm disapproval from Trump.
RELATED: Joe Kent resigns from Trump admin, says Israel forced US into Iran conflict
"I always thought he was a nice guy, but I always thought he was weak on security," Trump said in the Oval Office Tuesday. "Very weak on security. I didn't know him well, but I thought he seemed like a pretty nice guy. But when I read his statement, I realized that it's a good thing that he's out because he said that Iran was not a threat."
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt issued a much stronger statement, debunking many of Kent's statements she said were false.
"As President Trump has clearly and explicitly stated, he had strong and compelling evidence that Iran was going to attack the United States first," Leavitt said, pushing back on Kent's claim that Iran didn't pose an imminent threat. "This evidence was compiled from many sources and factors. President Trump would never make the decision to deploy military assets against a foreign adversary in a vacuum."
RELATED: Trump's hilarious response after intel reportedly tells him Iran's new supreme leader might be gay
Leavitt went on to list Iran's offenses against the American people, citing its sponsorship of terrorism and nuclear ambitions. Leavitt also addressed Kent's claim that Israel forced the United States' hand in the conflict, calling the assertion "insulting and laughable."
"And finally, the absurd allegation that President Trump made this decision based on the influence of others, even foreign countries, is both insulting and laughable," Leavitt said. "President Trump has been remarkably consistent and has said for DECADES that Iran can NEVER possess a nuclear weapon."
"As someone who actually witnesses President Trump's decision-making process on a daily basis, I can attest to the fact that he is always looking to do what's in the best interest of the United States of America — period. America First," she concluded.
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