Joseph Clay Kent (born April 11, 1980) is an American politician, former United States Army officer, and former Central Intelligence Agency paramilitary officer. A member of the Republican Party, he was the Republican candidate in the United States House of Representatives election for Washington’s third congressional district in 2022 and 2024.

Kent enlisted in the 75th Ranger Regiment and applied for the Special Forces before the September 11 attacks. He served eleven combat tours, primarily in Iraq, and retired in 2018, becoming a paramilitary officer with the Central Intelligence Agency. In January 2019, Kent’s wife, Shannon, was killed in a suicide bombing in Manbij. He became involved in political advocacy after Shannon’s death.

In February 2021, Kent announced his campaign for the United States House of Representatives election for Washington’s third congressional district. He established himself as a candidate supportive of Donald Trump. Kent won the Republican primary against incumbent Jaime Herrera Beutler, but lost to Democratic candidate Marie Gluesenkamp Perez in what was considered a major upset. Kent ran again in 2024, losing to Gluesenkamp Perez again by a larger margin.

In February 2025, Trump named Kent as his nominee for director of the National Counterterrorism Center. That month, he began serving as the chief of staff to Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence.

Joseph Clay Kent^[1] was born on April 11, 1980,^[2] in a cabin in Sweet Home, Oregon.^[3] Kent was the first child of Roman Catholic parents who later graduated from law school. He was raised in Portland, Oregon.^[3] Kent expressed an early interest in the military, constructing weapons out of Lego bricks.^[4] He was inspired to join the United States Army after watching television coverage of the Battle of Mogadishu.^[5]

At 17, Kent enlisted in the Army^[5] on an 11X Option 40 contract, allowing him to enter the 75th Ranger Regiment.^[3] He applied for the Special Forces before the September 11 attacks^[5] and took a qualification course days before the attacks.^[3] By September 2003, following his training,^[3] Kent was deployed to Iraq, where he fought in the First Battle of Fallujah^[5] and searched for Iraqi officials.^[3] He served eleven combat tours, including deployments in Yemen and north Africa, before retiring. Kent’s final rank was a chief warrant officer. He later became a paramilitary officer with the Central Intelligence Agency.^[6]

In December 2014, Kent married Shannon Smith, a cryptologist whom he had met at Fort Belvoir, where he had been assigned to an Army Special Operations Command.^[7] They had two children, born in 2015 and 2017.^[4] In January 2019, Shannon was killed in a suicide bombing in Manbij. After the bombing, Kent left government work^[8] and began to write columns for CNN, Breitbart News, and Fox News speaking out against the War on Terror.^[3] He consulted with the White House and volunteered for Veterans for Trump and Concerned Veterans for America.^[5]

On February 18, 2021,^[9] Kent announced his intention to run in the United States House of Representatives election for Washington’s third congressional district as a Republican, citing Jaime Herrera Beutler‘s decision to vote to impeach Donald Trump in his second impeachment following the January 6 Capitol attack.^[10] Kent aligned himself with Trump in his campaign announcement.^[11] By July, he had raised US$366,000, the most of any candidate in the election at that point,^[12] garnered financial support from Steve Wynn and Peter Thiel.^[6] In September, Trump endorsed Kent.^[13] His prominence was bolstered by Tucker Carlson, who had frequently appeared him on his Fox News program, Tucker Carlson Tonight (2016–2023).^[14]

Kent faced allegations of apparent associations between himself and white nationalists during his campaign. In March 2022, he entered into a dispute with the far-right commentator Nick Fuentes, who described a phone call the men had the previous year in which Kent purportedly said, “I love what you’re doing.” After Kent disavowed Fuentes and stated that he had not sought his endorsement over his views on race and religion, Fuentes chastised Kent for not being sufficiently conservative.^[15] Kent was later interviewed by American Virtue, an organization associated with Fuentes, and stated that American culture was “anti-white” and “anti-straight-white-male”.^[16] The Associated Press reported in July that the Kent campaign had paid a member of the Proud Boys, a far-right militia, as a consultant, that Kent was a political ally of Joey Gibson, a right-wing political activist, and that Kent had photographed himself with Greyson Arnold, a self-described Christian nationalist. The campaign told the Associated Press that Kent was unaware of who Arnold was.^[17] In September, CNN reported that Kent had given an interview to Arnold.^[18] In his campaign, he made repeated references to Sam Francis, a white nationalist writer.^[19]

Kent defeated Herrera Beutler in the state’s open primary in August, though he received less votes than Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, a Democrat.^[20] Gluesenkamp Perez shifted her campaign towards issues with broad Democratic appeal, including abortion, as well as schools and jobs.^[21] Kent’s views led to Glusenkamp Perez garnering some Republican support.^[22] She defeated Kent^[23] in one of the largest upsets that year.^[24] He initially refused to concede,^[25] but eventually did so in December.^[26] On January 11, 2023, Kent announced a second campaign for Washington’s third congressional district.^[27] Kent married Heather Kaiser^[28] that year.^[29] Glusenkamp Perez won the 2024 election.^[30]

By February 2025, Kent had been serving as the acting chief of staff to Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence;^[31] his role was disclosed by The Washington Post in March.^[32] Responding to a request from the Trump administration, Kent requested the National Intelligence Council conduct an intelligence assessment on connections between the government of Venezuela and Tren de Aragua; after the report failed to yield associations between the government and the gang, he pressured Michael Collins, the acting chairman, to reassess its analysis after The New York Times reported on the internal report. The assessment conflicted with Trump’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act, which requires a connection to a foreign state.^[31] Kent was a member of the Signal group chat involved in one of the United States government group chat leaks.^[33]

On February 3, 2025, Donald Trump named Kent as his nominee for director of the National Counterterrorism Center.^[34] He appeared before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on April 9, in which he defended his involvement in the Signal group chat and asserted that the government was involved in the January 6 Capitol attack.^[35]

Kent has been described as far-right.^[a] He voted for George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004 before shifting his political beliefs towards libertarianism, supporting Ron Paul.^[6] According to voting records, he was registered with the Libertarian Party in the 2012 presidential election until 2019, when he became a Democrat; Kent voted for Bernie Sanders in the 2020 Democratic Party presidential primaries in order to support Republicans in that year’s presidential election.^[39] A spokesman for Kent described his political philosophy as “inclusive populism”, rejecting discrimination.^[17]

Kent has adhered to false claims of fraud in the 2020 presidential election.^[40] A month following the January 6 Capitol attack, he stated that Donald Trump had “no control” over the mob and attributed the severity of the attack to security planning.^[10] Kent attended the Justice for J6 rally and compared the treatment of rioters to that of Iraqi citizens in the Iraq War.^[41] He later called for releasing security footage of the attack^[42] and claimed that the mob was brought to violence by provocateurs associated with the deep state.^[43] After the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago, Kent told Steve Bannon on War Room that the raid constituted “war”.^[44] He called for defunding the Federal Bureau of Investigation in response.^[45]

Kent led a rally against a false claim that the Washington State Board of Health was set to forcefully quarantine citizens who did not get the COVID-19 vaccine in January 2022.^[46] In March, he appeared at an event organized by the Washington State Three Percenters, a far-right militia.^[47] Kent once advocated for a federal ban on abortion, but later narrowed his position towards states’ rights.^[43] By the following month, he had called for an investigation into Anthony Fauci over the origin of SARS-CoV-2 and for a complete shutdown in immigration to the United States.^[39] In September, Kent stated that Fauci should be charged with murder and described COVID-19 vaccines as “experimental gene therapy”;^[45] he is unvaccinated.^[3] At a rally with Matt Gaetz in September 2021, Kent advocated for school vouchers.^[48]

At a conference held at Washington Marriott Marquis in April 2022, Kent argued that the “political establishment” seeks to initiate a conflict against Russia, including by providing military assistance to Ukraine—a level of support he outright opposed.^[49][39] He stated that Russian president Vladimir Putin‘s demands for Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts were “very reasonable”.^[49] His comments on Tucker Carlson Tonight denouncing support for Ukraine as deterring a peace deal were repeated by TASS, a Russian state-owned news agency.^[50]

Kent is a non-interventionist, citing his military experience and the death of his wife.^[51] He began to question the management of the U.S. military during the Iraq War, when officials sought out to eliminate members of Saddam Hussein‘s government. According to Mother Jones, Kent read David Hackworth‘s memoir About Face (1990), a book critical of the “clerks at the top” directing the U.S.’s involvement in the Vietnam War.^[3] He defended Trump’s pardons of two Army officers convicted of Uniform Code of Military Justice offenses, Mathew L. Golsteyn and Clint Lorance, and his intervention in the case of Eddie Gallagher, a Navy SEAL involved in a high-profile war crimes case; in an interview with The New York Times in November 2019, Kent compared Gallagher’s case with that of Chelsea Manning.^[52]

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