“Signalgate” Snares One of Oregon’s Own

The scandal over President Donald Trump’s national security advisers’ inviting a journalist into a war-planning group chat on Signal snared one of the Portland metro area’s own: Joe Kent, Trump’s nominee to be director of the National Counterterrorism Center.

Kent, a Republican, grew up in Portland and twice ran to serve Southwest Washington in the U.S. House of Representatives. He was defeated both times by Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D-Wash.).

Kent was among a group of officials who participated in a chat on messaging app Signal to plan an attack on Houthi militants in Yemen.

The world knows about the chat because the organizer accidentally added a journalist to it: Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic. Goldberg withheld much of the chat until the Trump administration claimed none of the information was classified, and therefore no laws were broken. Today, The Atlantic released almost all of it.

The Trump administration’s secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, led the discussion, describing detailed times and tactics for the strikes. Among the participants was Vice President J.D. Vance.

During the planning phase, Kent, a former Special Forces soldier, chimed in at one point in the chat to say: “There is nothing time sensitive driving the timeline. We’ll have the exact same options in a month.”

He also said the Israelis would “take strikes” and “therefore ask us for more support to replenish whatever they use against the Houthis.”

Democrats have called for participants in the group to resign because they used a third-party messaging system to discuss classified information. Republicans, including Trump, have said the information wasn’t classified and that it wasn’t a “war plan.”

U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) excoriated Kent.

“The recklessness and incompetence of how Trump’s so-called ‘best and brightest’ handled national security information is bad enough when they’re channeling the offhanded attitude of tweeners texting about their plans for spring break,” Wyden said in a statement. “But the fact they included Joe Kent in this buffoonish behavior only magnifies their dangerous sloppiness and total disregard for intelligence since he hasn’t even been confirmed by the Senate.”

Kent didn’t return an email sent to his old campaign email address. Nor did he immediately answer a message sent to him on LinkedIn.