WASHINGTON AP - The Senate confirmed President Donald Trump's pick to lead the National Counterterrorism Center, Joe Kent, on Wednesday evening as Republicans looked past his connections to right-wing extremists and support for conspiracy theories about the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.
Kent won confirmation on a 53-44 party-line vote. He had already been working for Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. As the head of the National Counterterrorism Center, he will oversee an agency tasked with analyzing and detecting terrorist threats.
In the role, he plans to devote agency resources to targeting Latin American gangs and other criminal groups tied to migration. He is the latest Trump loyalist to win Senate confirmation to the upper echelons of U.S. national security leadership at a time when Trump is stretching his presidential wartime powers to accomplish his goals.
"President Trump is committed to identifying these cartels and these violent gang members and making sure that we locate them and that we get them out of our country," Kent said at his confirmation hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee in April.
Kent enters the top role at the counterterrorism center after two unsuccessful campaigns for Congress in Washington state, as well as a military career that saw him deployed 11 times as a Green Beret, followed by work at the CIA. His first wife, a Navy cryptologist, was killed by a suicide bomber in 2019 while fighting the Islamic State group in Syria.