Conservative commentator and former Deputy Director the FBI Dan Bongino used his show on Tuesday August 18th to call out the “suckers” like Joe Kent and John Yep who are publicly questioning why the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) during Kent’s leadership was instructed to stop their investigation into Charlie Kirk’s assassination.
Gen. Michael Flynn weighed in by sharing Joe Kent’s response to Bongino’s outburst, writing, “Our founding fathers believed that power without oversight inevitably leads to corruption, insisting that public servants and institutions must remain strictly answerable to the people. This is how and why we have sustained our nation for 250 years. Keep asking tough questions and keep demanding answers on everything our government does.”
Days before during an interview, Kent had publicly reiterated a previous claim: that the FBI, and Kash Patel personally, instructed the NCTC to stop their investigation into foreign leads that might have been connected to the public assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk on September 10, 2025.
“I was told the same thing I was told with Butler,” Kent explained on The Jimmy Dore Show, referring to the attempted assassination of President Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania in 2024. “If you keep investigating, then you’re going to mess up the trial against Tyler Robinson.”
On Monday, John Yep, President of Catholics for Catholics, shared the video clip of Kent’s interview on X and asked why the FBI would block the investigation.
Tuesday morning, Bongino took to X and, referring to Yep’s post, wrote, “I’m sorry to have to waste your time addressing this nearly unprecedented stupidity today on my show. But, stupid is a choice. And Joe consistently chooses stupid.”
In his podcast show later, Bongino asked, “How many suckers are going to continue to believe this?” and proceeded to read from Yep’s original post on X asking why the FBI blocked the investigation, according to Kent’s public and repeated testimony. Bongino then claimed to “literally have the receipts” to demonstrate that Kent would not have had the legal authority to investigate the case anyways. The receipts were actually the responses to a query he input into ChatGPT asking about the NCTC’s investigative role compared to the FBI’s.
Following this social media post, Yep responded, citing the stated mission of the NCTC per federal law and the fact that according to Kent, Patel did not block the NCTC’s work due to lack of investigative authority, but because the FBI considered it a “slam dunk case” and wanted to turn it over to the state of Utah.
“This is coming from the same FBI which no longer seems to be investigating the Butler assassination attempt on our President, nor arresting those evil accomplices of Jeffrey Epstein,” Yep said.
Classy and insightful response to @dbongino's tirade vs us. America is blessed to have warriors like @joekent16jan19 https://t.co/dlHLKu1wSK
— John Yep 🇺🇲 (@USAYep) August 19, 2026
Joe Kent also took the time to weigh in on Bongino’s response. In a video, he outlined the role of NCTC intelligence analysts that were working at the request of the FBI to assist in the investigation of Kirk’s assassination. After assisting in the investigation for about a week or two, “we were told that our services were no longer required – that we no longer had access to the repository the FBI had where all the information on the investigation was being kept.”
“I protested, I disagreed,” Kent said. “I thought that we still had a lot more work to do and I still believe that to this day.” He also reiterated his concern that there were people online posting ahead of the assassination that Kirk was going to be killed that day in Utah, which of course flies in the face of the current state narrative that Tyler Robinson acted as a lone gunman.
“That strongly indicates that there were more people involved in the plot to kill Charlie Kirk, so I think it’s critical that we continue to ask, ‘Who killed Charlie Kirk, how, and why?’”
Kent closed his response with a quote from Kirk: “It is critical that we continue to ask questions, because it is the only thing that keeps us free.”
Dan,
— John Yep 🇺🇲 (@USAYep) August 19, 2026
In your post below and subsequent podcast on the subject you refer to former National Counterterrorism Center director @joekent16jan19 and I as “stupid and suckers” for continuing to draw attention to the strange decision of the FBI last year to stop his office from… https://t.co/J7laBbdvxn
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