Donald Trump with Turning Point USA's Charlie Kirk in Phoenix, Arizona on December 22, 2024 (Gage Skidmore)
Joe Kent, President Donald Trump’s former National Counterterrorism Center Director, told right wing commentator Tucker Carlson on Wednesday that he believes a “foreign nexus” was behind the assassination of the late right-wing advocate Charlie Kirk.
“Things really got going on Tuesday when Kent told conservative writer (and two-time failed California gubernatorial candidate) Michael Shellenberger he’d be willing to testify in accused Kirk murderer Tyler Robinson’s defense that the FBI botched the investigation,” wrote The Bulwark's conservative pundit Will Sommer in an analysis of Kent’s comments. “Kent told Shellenberger he was warned his own inquiry into Kirk’s murder—which he operated from his government post, separately from the FBI—could hurt the prosecution against Robinson.”
Kent then told Carlson, “I was definitely warned of that over and over again. If I end up having to [be called as a witness], then I’ll do it. It’s not something I’m seeking.”
As Sommer pointed out, FBI Director Kash Patel reportedly was concerned about Kent’s investment in conspiracy theories about Kirk’s assassination as far back as October. Now that Kent has gone public with his accusations, he has become a “public player” in the ongoing debate.
“Kent’s recent theorizing about the case has raised questions about how Owens got her hands on group-chat messages Kirk sent just a few days before his death,” Sommer wrote. “Speculation that Kent was her source is now rampant. Those text messages, which Owens published last October, featured Kirk complaining to friends that Jewish donors were pressing him to support Israel in various ways, including banning Tucker Carlson from a TPUSA conference. They provided Owens with evidence for her earliest allegations that Kirk was killed by Israel.”
Separate from the role Kent has played in spreading these conspiracy theories, Sommer concluded that “the controversy itself signals that the right’s divide over Kirk’s death isn’t going away. In fact, the fissures could become completely unbridgeable if Kent’s comments about Kirk’s killing end up materially impacting” the trial of Tyler Robinson, Kent’s alleged assassin.
Historian Max Boot expressed concern for The Washington Post earlier this month that Kent will fan the flames of anti-Semitism by claiming Israel is responsible for the US war in Iran. He resigned as Trump’s National Counterterrorism Center Director earlier in March to protest Israel’s supposed involvement.
“As so often happens, the Jews — or, if you prefer a polite euphemism, ‘Zionists’ or ‘the Israel lobby’ — make a handy fall guy,” Boot explained. “What the right-wing fringe once whispered — that this was ‘a war for Israel’ — suddenly burst onto the front pages last week thanks to Joe Kent’s resignation as director of the National Counterterrorism Center. In a blistering public letter, Kent wrote that ‘Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation’ and that ‘we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby."
Speaking with AlterNet on the subject, Jonathan Sarna, emeritus professor of American Jewish history at Brandeis University and author of “Lincoln and the Jews: A History” and “When General Grant Expelled the Jews,” told AlterNet that he shares Boot’s concerns, particularly when it comes to how the conspiracy theories parallel an infamous 1903 hoax, “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.”
“If you go back to ‘The Protocols of the Elders of Zion’ — the great antisemitic forgery of the turn of the last century — that really began this sense that Jews are all-powerful, that they operate behind the scenes, and that whatever happens is ultimately their fault,” Sarna told AlterNet. “Before then, for centuries, the prevailing view was that Jews were persecuted and lowly because they had killed Christ, and that was what they deserved — they were powerless. That was their punishment. But ‘The Protocols’ flipped that.”