Ex-Counterterrorism Official Joe Kent Makes Fresh Claims That FBI Blocked Probe Into Foreign Influence in Charlie Kirk’s Murder

A former director of the National Counterterrorism Center, Joe Kent, who resigned in protest of the Iran war, continued to level accusations against the Trump Administration and the FBI for preventing his agency from looking into alleged ties between the killer of conservative activist Charlie Kirk and possible foreign influences. On a recent media tour that included interviews with Megyn Kelly and Breaking Points host Saagar Enjeti, Mr. Kent said that while he was not suggesting there was “a smoking gun evidence” of foreign government involvement in Kirk’s murder in 2025, he maintained that his agency was denied the opportunity to “fully investigate for foreign links.”“I even spoke with members of the FBI who were on the ground level, and they agreed with me. We wanted to continue to investigate,” Mr. Kent told Ms. Kelly during an appearance on “The Megyn Kelly Show” on Friday. A law enforcement source said Mr. Kent was not “blocked” from investigating leads he would normally be able to pursue, as he alleged.“He was blocked from accessing files he had no role or statutory authority to access,” the law enforcement source tells the Sun.Mr. Kent’s remarks on Friday were a rehash of earlier claims he had made in an interview with Tucker Carlson earlier this week. Details remained vague. Mr. Kent told Mr. Carlson he “can’t really get into” the possible linkages he had wanted to investigate between Kirk’s death and foreign influences. Mr. Kent claimed that he last saw Kirk, an informal advisor to President Trump, in June 2025 in the West Wing, where Kirk had pleaded with Mr. Kent to “stop us from getting into war with Iran.”Mr. Kent then pointed to Kirk’s September 10th murder at Utah Valley University as “a data point that we need to look into.”The FBI concluded that the suspect in the murder, Tyler Robinson, 22, acted alone. This week, Axios and other media sources reported that Mr. Kent had been the subject of a “months-long” FBI probe before his March 17th resignation for allegedly leaking sensitive information. An FBI spokesman did not respond to questions about the exact date its investigation into Mr. Kent launched.In February 2025, President Trump named Mr. Kent, a former Army Green Beret and CIA paramilitary officer, as NCTC director. A two-time failed candidate for Congress in Washington state, Mr. Kent had, during his campaigns, in 2022 and 2024, come under criticism for ties to controversial figures such as the antisemitic influencers Nick Fuentes and Greyson Arnold..In a letter posted on his X account Tuesday, Mr. Kent said he resigned from his role at the NCTC over President Trump’s decision to invade Iran due to what he alleged was “pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby.”He also levied accusations against “high-ranking Israeli officials and influential members of the American media” for undermining Mr. Trump’s America First platform to push the President into attacking Iran. Mr. Kent’s remarks about Israel and its supports were widely denounced as antisemitic. The NCTC was established by President George W. Bush in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attacks as a centralized federal resource for terrorism-related intelligence.

Ex-Counterterrorism Official Joe Kent Makes Fresh Claims That FBI Blocked Probe Into Foreign Influence in Charlie Kirk’s Murder

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