‘Banana republic stuff’: Trump’s new counterterror chief pioneered J6 terror denials

Joe Kent, the newly confirmed director of the National Counterterrorism Center, once complained that federal agencies responding to the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol were promoting “a narrative that labels all of us terrorists or insurrectionists just for questioning things.”

It was September 2021, and Kent was an Iraq war veteran and candidate for Congress, speaking at the “Justice for J6” rally at the U.S. Capitol.

Kent claimed without evidence that the Jan. 6 defendants were “political prisoners” who had been “denied due process” — thereby pioneering a false claim Donald Trump would use in his 2024 presidential campaign.

Federal law enforcement and prosecutors were engaged in “banana republic stuff” when they investigated and charged those who attacked the Capitol, Kent claimed.

In fact, every Jan. 6 defendant held in jail before trial received a detention hearing, in which the government persuaded a judge that they posed a flight risk or a danger to the community.

“That happens overseas all the time,” said Kent, a retired member of the Army Special Forces and CIA paramilitary officer. “Unfortunately, we conducted operations like that when I was in Iraq serving overseas, and it did nothing but further radicalize people.”

Some analysts have traced the rise of ISIS to the power vacuum and destabilization created by the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Kent holds a painful connection to this history: his first wife, a Navy cryptologist and linguist, was killed by an ISIS suicide bomber in Syria in 2019.

At the Capitol in September 2021, Kent seemed to argue that arresting and jailing the perpetrators of the Jan. 6 attack risked further radicalizing them.

He could not be reached for comment for this story.

As director of the National Counterterrorism Center, Kent will be responsible for leading “U.S. government efforts to analyze, integrate, and share intelligence to prevent and respond to terrorist threats at home and abroad.”

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard praised Kent on Thursday for his “practical understanding of the enduring and evolving threat of Islamist terrorism, as well as the threats we face from the cartels’ human trafficking and drug trafficking operations.”

Left unmentioned was the threat from far-right extremists whom Kent suggested were unfairly labeled “terrorists or insurrectionists” through the FBI’s sprawling Jan. 6 investigation.

‘We’re at war’

During two unsuccessful runs for Congress, Kent continued to demonstrate a penchant for provocative statements and associations with extremists.

When the FBI executed a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s private residence, in August 2022, Kent said on MAGA strategist Steve Bannon’s podcast: “This just shows what many of us have been saying for a very long time. We’re at war.”

Kent lost his 2022 general election to Democrat Marie Gluesenkamp Perez after sitting for an interview with Nazi sympathizer Greyson Arnold, whom he later disavowed.

Arnold went on to threaten Washington state Gov. Bob Ferguson on X with a “judgement by lead.” The Washington State Patrol investigated but no charges have been brought.

During his rematch with Gluesenkamp in 2024, Kent hired a campaign consultant, Graham Jorgensen, who was revealed to be a member of the Proud Boys.

Photos of Jorgensen archived by an antifascist group show him attending two 2017 rallies in the Pacific Northwest organized by the far-right group Patriot Prayer, which frequently clashed with left-wing opponents.

Kent brushed off the matter during a debate when Gluesenkamp asked him to “apologize to southwest Washington for hiring a Proud Boy.”

“This is a complete distraction from your actual voting record of voting for more inflation, voting for a wide-open southern border, fentanyl killing our loved ones and neighbors,” Kent responded.

‘Domestic terrorism’

Contrary to Kent’s claims about Jan. 6, the FBI and at least two federal judges have decided the term “terrorism” fits the attack on the Capitol, which disrupted a joint session of Congress to certify Joe Biden as the winner of the 2020 presidential election.

“That attack, that siege, was criminal behavior, plain and simple,” then FBI Director Christopher Wray testified before Congress in March 2021. “And it’s behavior that we, the FBI, view as domestic terrorism.”

Two federal judges, sentencing leaders of the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys for seditious conspiracy two years later, ultimately agreed.

Prior to sentencing members of the Proud Boys leadership cadre, U.S. District Court Judge Timothy Kelly cited statements by members of an elite planning group convened on Telegram by Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio.

On the morning of Jan. 6, one chat member wrote: “I want to see thousands of normies burn that city to ash today. The state is the enemy of the people.”

“I will settle with seeing them smash some pigs to dust,” another wrote.

During a melee at the Capitol, one Proud Boy, Dominic Pezzola, stole a police riot shield, which he later used to smash a window, resulting in the initial breach of the building. Pezzola was convicted of felonies including obstruction of an official proceeding, but not seditious conspiracy.

In a statement to the court, Capitol Police Officer Mark Ode, the victim of Pezzola’s assault and robbery, said Jan. 6 was “not a random response of a small group of angry demonstrators who simply disagreed with the political climate of the period,” but rather “a planned and organized attempt to overthrow our constitutional process by individuals” who “decided to use violence and terror to impose their will.”

Judge Kelly applied a terrorism enhancement to the sentences of Pezzola and Tarrio, along with Joe Biggs, Ethan Nordean and Zachary Rehl, based on the finding that their crimes were “calculated to influence or affect the conduct of government by intimidation or coercion, or to retaliate against government conduct.”

Judge Amit Mehta, who sits with Kelly on the District Court for the District of Columbia, applied the terrorism enhancement to Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes’ sentence.

“This is an additional level of calculation,” Mehta said. “It is an additional level of planning. It is an additional level of purpose. It is an additional level of targeting, in this case, an institution of American democracy at its most important moment, the transfer of power.”

Shortly after his 2025 inauguration, Trump pardoned Tarrio, while commuting the sentences of the other Proud Boys and Oath Keepers leaders.