Joe Kent Says Kash Patel Shut Down Investigation Into Charlie Kirk Assassination Just Two Weeks After Incident

Articles | August 18, 2026 | by Catholics for Catholics

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The assassination of Charlie Kirk took place on September 10, 2025 in Orem, Utah while Joe Kent was the Director of the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC). 

During an interview on the Jimmy Dore Show recently, Kent reiterated what he has publicly claimed before: that the NCTC was pursuing many international leads pertaining to Kirk’s death when the FBI, and then Director Kash Patel personally, shut down the investigation.

Kent says “within about a week or two” after September 10, the FBI blocked the NCTC from access to the case file information. Upon Kent’s objection, Kash responded and doubled down, saying that the FBI was handing everything over to the Utah state authorities. Kent was warned that his continued investigation could interfere with the trial against Tyler Robinson, who is accused of killing Kirk. Kent was threatened that he may be called to the stand by the defense team if his investigation continued.

According to Kent, he did not have an issue with this; as long as the defense team, or anyone else, had the proper authorities to seek information from the NCTC, Kent was happy to share information pertaining to their investigation.

The NCTC is generally involved in investigating any domestic terror event to look into potential international ties, including high profile political assassinations, like Kirk’s.

INVESTIGATION INTO FOREIGN INVOLVEMENT IN CHARLIE KIRK'S ASSASSINATION BLOCKED BY THE FBI?

Wow, so it was @FBIDirectorKash who blocked @joekent16jan19 former Director of Counterterrorism, from investigating the foreign leads into Charlie’s assassination.

I trust Joe Kent.
Now…

— John Yep 🇺🇲 (@USAYep) August 17, 2026

“Kirk had a global presence, there was a big crowd there that day…there was a lot that was taking place online,” Kent explained. He has trouble believing that Robinson acted as a lone gunman because there were social media accounts beforehand saying that Kirk would die on UVU campus that day.

Kent said when the FBI shut down the investigation, they still had leads they wanted to run down. “A lot of times in investigations, you get 100 leads and 99.5 of them end up not panning out, but I still felt that we had a lot more work to do on the case,” he said.

“I was told the same thing I was told with Butler,” Kent explained, 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.”