What Exactly Happened to Joe Kent's Wife? She Was Killed While Serving in the United States Armed Forces

As one of the top counterterrorism officials in the country, it's understandable that the news of Joe Kent's resignation made a splash. Kent, who has made antisemitic remarks in the past, wrote an entire resignation letter explaining his reasoning, and suggesting that for him, the war with Iran was the last straw.

Joe also spoke about his wife, Shannon Kent, in the letter, leading many to wonder what happened to her and how it might have shaped his worldview. Here's what we know.

Shannon Kent was a Navy linguist who lost her life during a suicide bombing in Syria in January 2019. She was 35 years old.

Shannon was assigned to Cryptologic Warfare Activity 66, a Navy unit that supports the National Security Agency and military special operations forces. Kent is also a retired Army special operations officer, and the two met because of their highly unusual jobs.

“I actually met her at the Baghdad ‘ville,’ the area where all the different intelligence agencies are," Joe explained in a podcast interview, saying that they first met for just 10 minutes in 2007.

“The war moved fast, and she moved on to a different location,” he said. “And I didn’t see her again for several years.”

Joe explained that Shannon was a native New Yorker and that she joined the Navy after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the city. She had a natural talent for languages and was already fluent in Spanish and French, so she was sent to Monterey, Calif., to learn Iraqi-dialect Arabic. Eventually, she was working for a SEAL task force and tried out for a special reconnaissance team.

Because she was both a woman and fluent in Iraqi-dialect Arabic, she was often invaluable on missions and could ask delicate questions to women more easily than the men she was often surrounded by.

The two reconnected on the first day of a training course for a classified intelligence-collecting unit, and they were inseparable from then on. They married a year later, at the end of their course, and had children together.

In his letter, Joe referenced the death of his wife as part of his rationale for leaving the Trump administration.

“I cannot support sending the next generation off to fight and die in a war that serves no benefit to the American people nor justifies the cost of American lives," he explained, describing the war with Iran.

In his letter, Kent also referenced what he seemed to believe was the undue influence of Israel over the Trump administration and its policies in Iran.

Although the letter has made a splash, in part because it suggests there are real rifts inside the MAGA coalition over the war, Kent is a controversial figure because of his past remarks about the Jewish people. Regardless, the loss of his wife is a tragedy, and one that undoubtedly shapes his thinking about this war.