Stefanik presses Gabbard on Kent’s resignation letter: ‘Do you agree or disagree?’

Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) pressed Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard on the resignation letter from Joe Kent, one of her top aides, who resigned earlier this week over his opposition to the U.S. launching strikes against Iran and accused the U.S. of attacking Tehran under pressure from Israel. 

“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, who was director of the National Counterterrorism Center, said in a letter which he shared publicly on Tuesday morning. 

Stefanik, during Thursday morning’s House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence hearing on worldwide threats, said she “cannot say how much” disagrees with Kent’s letter and asked Gabbard, who previously was a critic of U.S. military entanglements overseas, if she agreed with Kent’s remarks. 

“He said a lot of things in that letter. Ultimately, we have provided the president with the intelligence assessments, and the president is elected by the American people and makes his own decisions based on the information that’s available to him,” Gabbard told Stefanik. 

“But do you agree with that statement he made, blaming Israel concern you,” Stefanik followed up. 

“Yes,” Gabbard said.  

The CIA Director John Ratcliffe expressed his disagreement on Wednesday with the ex-counterterrorism chief, who argued that Iran was not an imminent threat to the U.S.

Ratcliffe told Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) during the Senate Intelligence Committee hearing that there’s no indication that Iran had halted its nuclear ambitions or its goal to continue building ballistic missiles. 

“In fact, the intelligence reflects the contrary,” Ratcliffe said.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt and other U.S. officials denounced Kent’s reasoning for resignation, while President Trump said he “thought he was a nice guy, but I always thought he was weak on security, very weak.” 

Kent, who reiterated his opposition to the war with Iran during a Wednesday interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, another critic of U.S. attacks on Tehran.

“The Israelis drove the decision to take this action,” Kent told Carlson on Wednesday. “Which we knew would set off a series of events, meaning the Iranians would retaliate.”

Kent is under investigation by the FBI for allegedly leaking classified information, a source told NewsNation on Wednesday.

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