Joe Kent’s resignation as director of the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) over the war in Iran earlier this week touched off a fierce debate among those arguing for and against the United States’ involvement in the conflict.
But the decorated Army special forces veteran has also made headlines for comments he made to Tucker Carlson in the wake of his resignation about the investigation into the assassination of Charlie Kirk and the possibility that foreign actors were involved in his death.
On Friday’s show, Kent joined Megyn to discuss his remarks and why he believes there is much more to investigate related to Kirk’s murder.
The NCTC Investigation
During his appearance on Carlson’s show, Kent suggested there were certain leads he and his team wanted to pursue in the Kirk investigation but were blocked from doing so. As he explained to Megyn, the NCTC’s role “was to look to see if there’s any foreign involvement.” That potential “foreign involvement” could mean a few things. “That could be government or that just could be foreigners themselves,” Kent noted.
He made clear to Megyn that he was not implying there was any sort of “smoking gun evidence of a government involvement,” but rather that there were leads he believes should have been more fully investigated.
“All I can say is that there were additional leads that we needed to run down and fully investigate, and that just simply was not done from the time that Tyler Robinson turned himself in and was arrested and his fingerprints were found on the rifle,” Kent said. “The FBI said, ‘Hey, this is now going to go over to the Utah law enforcement, and we are not investigating anything further.'”
Kent said there was “a lot of back and forth about that” decision because, “in the opinion of the National Counterterrorism Center, there was other leads for us to run down.” He alleged that he also spoke with “ground level” members of the FBI who agreed with him and “wanted to continue to investigate.”
“I’m not alluding and saying, ‘I know what the truth is.’ I’m not trying to be cryptic,” Kent said. “What I’m saying is that there were things that we still needed to investigate that were not investigated.”
Megyn asked Kent if he could say whether any of those leads involved Israel. “Not specifically,” he said. “The amount of pressure that Charlie Kirk was under from the donors but then also his influence with President Trump and the fact that the Israeli lobby really relied heavily on getting into that media ecosystem to influence President Trump, I think that can’t be overlooked.”
“Now, I am not saying that that is a smoking gun. I’m not saying that that means really anything,” he added. “I’m just saying that that needs to be considered into the Charlie Kirk investigation.”
As he explained, the NCTC has “more robust and broad authorities to investigate the foreign angle,” while the FBI “has the more broad and robust authorities to investigate the domestic angle.” Even so, Kent said FBI can influence the work of the NCTC.
“The way it happened was, initially, it was just like, ‘Hey, the FBI says you guys can’t look into the case file – the case file is kind of where all the data is – and you’re done. You guys can’t work on this case anymore,'” he recalled. “We argued that we should still be involved in that case, and we won the argument. We got kind of put back on the case.”
But then, according to Kent, government bureaucracy got in the way. “After a while, the government has a great way of making things just die in process, so, essentially, all of our requests, our ability to investigate was cut off,” he recalled. “I’m sure someone at some point in the government is going to come out and say, ‘No, no, we’re still looking into all leads in the Charlie Kirk case.’ But this is how you kill things in the government, you just let them die in this never ending coordination process or requests that go unanswered. That’s kind of where we were at.”
The ‘Transtifa’ Connection
While Kent said he doesn’t doubt prosecutors have a “slam dunk case” against Robinson as has been suggested, he does believe there are also other non-foreign angles to the case – chiefly, who knew what and when – that need to be explored.
“All I can say with authority right now is that there were additional leads for us to run down,” he said. “We know that there was people who were posting about Charlie Kirk being killed before Charlie Kirk was killed, so we do know there are other people here who had some prior knowledge. I find it hard to believe that, you know, multiple people predicted Charlie’s death at [Utah Valley University] that day… That, to me, is just one of the biggest gaps that remains.”
To that point, FBI Director Kash Patel told Megyn during a December interview that the so-called “transtifa” connection to Kirk’s murder was “most definitely under investigation.” As Megyn explained at the time, “there were texts by certain trans individuals online before the assassination talking about something big is going to be happening and then after he was killed, saying, ‘And there it is,’ leading many of us to wonder whether there was some sort of ‘Transtifa’ connection to the murder, or at least maybe some tip off to the community.”
Kent acknowledged that it is entirely possible the FBI is still investigating such connections, but he said it is tough to say for sure given his experience at the NCTC. “I know that the scope that we had of foreign involvement, we did not get an opportunity to run down all of those potential leads,” he said. “I think Charlie Kirk deserves justice. I think people deserve the truth about what happened on that day.”
You can check out Megyn’s full interview with Kent by tuning in to episode 1,277 on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And don’t forget that you can catch The Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM’s The Megyn Kelly Channel (channel 111) weekdays from 12pm to 2pm ET.