Joe Kent, President Donald Trump’s former counterterrorism director, claims he was blocked from investigating Trump’s Butler, PA assassination attempt in July 2024 along with Charlie Kirk’s assassination in September 2025. Kent also alleges that Kirk’s last plea to him was to “stop the USA from getting into a war with Iran.”
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As background, Kent is the former Director of the National Counterterrorism Center and President Trump’s former principal counterterrorism advisor.
He served 20 years in the U.S. Army with 11 combat deployments fighting terrorist networks with the 75th Ranger Regiment, Army Special Forces, and U.S. Army Special Operations Command. Additionally, Kent’s first wife, Navy Senior Chief Petty Officer Shannon Kent, also served and was killed while fighting ISIS in Syria in 2019.
Donald Trump’s Former Counterterrorism Director Joe Kent Says His Office Was Blocked Upon Investigating Charlie Kirk Assassination
While appearing on the March 18 episode of ‘The Tucker Carlson Show,’ Joe Kent sat for his first interview since resigning as President Trump’s counterterrorism Director, a positioned he exited as a result of the ongoing U.S.-Israel Iran war.
During the interview, Carlson asked Kent how could Trump — who campaigned as a no-war president during both of his terms — end up launching a war with Iran, alongside Israel. Kent shared his thoughts and mentioned a “darker” theory, referencing Trump’s Butler shooting, Kirk’s assassination, and how his counterterrorism office was blocked from investigating both incidents. He said:
“I think there’s two potentials or two schools of thought. I mean, one is the media echochamber, the donors, the way the Israelis come in and kind of launder the information, like I described previously. And then the other option is much darker. I mean, we still don’t know what happened in Butler. We don’t know what happened with Charlie Kirk. And by no means am I saying like, ‘the Israelis did this or any of that,’ but I’m saying there’s a lot of unanswered questions there. And there is enough data to at least say that there’s a good chance that President Trump feels like he is under threat.
We’re not allowed to ask basically, ‘Was there any linkage between what took place with Asif Merchant’ — who was recruited by the Iranians to come to America to recruit proxies to kill President Trump? The FBI put a confidence human source at him. All this is public now. This is all out there in the open. And he’s arrested. And then two days later, a sniper takes a shot at President Trump. We think Merchant—we know the CHS was talking about the human source that the FBI put at Merchant. They were talking about, ‘Hey, we could kill the president potentially with a sniper rifle.’ But then they arrest him. Two days later, Butler happens.
And [Thomas] Crooks, according to the official narrative anyways, is an enigma. We don’t know anything about him. We can’t get into his devices. If we did get into his devices, maybe there’s nothing there. No more questions are allowed to be asked about Thomas Crooks. The DHS IG is currently being blocked from investigating Butler as well. That’s out in the media. That’s all well known. Your investigative journalists found that Crooks did indeed have an online persona—an online footprint, he was talking to people.
So, it’s like, why aren’t we investigating this? Attempted murder of a presidential candidate. And then there’s another assassination attempt. There’s been multiple public breaches of President Trump’s security over the last year. And then Charlie Kirk is killed publicly in a very horrific way. And we’re not really even allowed to look into that at all. And Charlie Kirk was one of President Trump’s closest advisors. And he also advocated heavily against a war with Iran. He was in the Oval Office in the lead up to the 12-day war. I wasn’t particularly close with Charlie. He was very gracious to me when I was running for Congress. Very, very supportive. So, we knew each other. And the last time I saw Charlie Kirk on this Earth was in June, in the West Wing, in the stairway. And I said hi to him and he looked me in the eye and he said very loudly—and it’s a small, you’ve been in the West Wing, it’s small, it’s a tight space—and he said, ‘Joe, stop us from getting into a war with Iran.’ Very loudly. And he walked off and he went, I believe, into the Oval.
So, when one of President Trump’s closest advisors who is vocally advocating for us to not go to war with Iran, and for us to rethink, at least, our relationship with the Israelis, and then he suddenly publicly assassinated, and we’re not allowed to ask any questions about that, it’s a data point. It’s a data point that we need to look into.”
Carlson then asked, “What do you mean when you say we’re not allowed to ask any questions about that?” Kent continued:
“We’ve been told that this individual, [Tyler] Robinson, is a lone gunman, and maybe he is. But the investigation that I was a part of, the National Counterterrorism Center was a part of, we were stopped from continuing to investigate. And the FBI will say that they stopped that because—they wanted to turn everything over to the Utah State Authorities. Everything’s going to trial. It’s very, very sensitive. But there was still a lot for us to look into that I can’t really get into. But there was still linkage for us to investigate, that we needed to run down—I’m not making any conclusions. I’m not saying because of this, this happened. I’m not saying that at all. I’m just saying there’s unanswered questions.
We know the pressure because of the text messages that have been made public, that Charlie was under a lot of pressure from a lot of pro-Israel donors. And again, we know Charlie was advocating to President Trump against this war with Iran. And we knew at the end of the 12-day war, at the end of Midnight Hammer, that the Israelis were going to come back and ask us to go back to war again. So, we have a lot of data points between Butler, the assassination attempts against President Trump, the breaches of his security, and what happened to Charlie Kirk.”
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