‘Amateur Hour’: FBI Director Stumbles in Charlie Kirk Murder Investigation
Kash Patel Wrongly Announced Killer Had Been Caught — Suspect Still at Large
FBI Director Kash Patel is facing harsh backlash after he mistakenly announced that law enforcement had apprehended the person responsible for assassinating conservative commentator Charlie Kirk — a claim that was quickly walked back, leaving even some of Patel’s right-wing allies outraged.
Among the most vocal critics was Joe Biggs, a Proud Boys leader who helped orchestrate the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol and later had his 17-year prison sentence for seditious conspiracy commuted by President Donald Trump. Biggs questioned why the FBI director was “speculating” rather than providing confirmed information.
“Stop all this click-bait shit you keep doing,” Biggs wrote on X, directly tagging Patel. “It’s unbecoming of the office in which you represent and only proves you were a horrible pick for this position.”
Kyle Seraphin, a right-wing former FBI agent and occasional Patel critic, was equally scathing.
“FBI director fucked up and is desperate for a win,” Seraphin posted. “This is absolutely ridiculous.”
Echoing the criticism, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) slammed Patel’s handling of the crisis.
“It was amateur hour. He was doing a running commentary. Historically, the FBI keeps its mouth closed until it believes it’s the right time and the right message,” Durbin said.
The uproar mirrors concerns Democrats voiced long before this incident, when Patel — a former Trump administration official who later reinvented himself as a right-wing podcaster and entrepreneur — was nominated to head the FBI. At the time of his confirmation hearings in February, Durbin warned:
“After meeting with Mr. Patel, reviewing his record, and questioning him at his hearing, I am convinced that he has neither the experience, the judgment, nor the temperament to lead the FBI.”
The controversy erupted in the wake of the Sept. 10 assassination of Charlie Kirk, 31, founder of Turning Point USA. Kirk was shot in the neck at Utah Valley University in Orem during his “American Comeback Tour.” The gunfire triggered chaos as thousands of students and attendees fled the courtyard, while campus and local police scrambled to lock down the area and track down the shooter.
According to timelines, Kirk was struck around 2:20 p.m. Eastern. By 2:53 p.m. Eastern, Patel had already issued a statement claiming the FBI was monitoring the situation and would deploy agents immediately.
Complicating matters further, photos circulated online shortly after the attack showed Utah police detaining an older man at the scene. Later identified as a 71-year-old local with a reputation as a “political gadfly,” the man was charged with obstruction of justice but was not connected to the shooting itself, the Salt Lake Tribune reported.
A second individual was also detained as a person of interest, questioned, and released without charges. Authorities have since confirmed that neither man had any ties to the fatal shooting.
At 6:21 p.m. Eastern, FBI Director Kash Patel announced on X that the “subject for the horrific shooting today that took the life of Charlie Kirk is now in custody.”
The post exploded across social media, amassing nearly 35 million views in a matter of hours.
But just minutes after Patel’s sweeping declaration, Utah Gov. Spencer Cox (R) contradicted him during a press conference, stating only that a “person of interest” had been detained. At the same event, Utah Public Safety Commissioner Beau Mason went further, confirming that Kirk’s shooter was still “at large.”
Then, at 7:59 p.m. Eastern—a little more than an hour after his initial statement—Patel returned to X. This time, without acknowledging his earlier error about the gunman being captured, he vaguely stated that a “subject in custody” had been released after questioning.
“Our investigation continues and we will continue to release information in the interest of transparency,” Patel wrote.
Yet Patel never clarified whether the person he referenced was one of the two men Utah police had already questioned or someone entirely different.
Traditionally, in high-profile investigations of this nature, critical updates are not rolled out haphazardly on social media by the FBI director. Such announcements are generally delivered by local police, often in coordination with regional law enforcement partners, including local FBI field offices.
“It was amateur hour,” said Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, which oversees the Justice Department. “He was doing a running commentary. Historically, the FBI keeps its mouth closed until it believes it’s the right time and the right message.”
Neither the FBI nor the Department of Justice responded to HuffPost’s requests for comment on Thursday.
Later that same morning in Utah, FBI officials held a press conference where they revealed progress in the investigation. Agents had located what they believed to be the murder weapon, along with footwear impressions, a palm print, and forearm imprints for forensic analysis.
Patel’s leadership of the FBI was already under a harsh spotlight. On Wednesday, three former senior FBI officials filed a lawsuit claiming Patel had unlawfully fired them for purely political reasons, including their involvement in prosecuting Jan. 6 rioters.
The lawsuit described in detail how Patel had commissioned an unusually large “challenge coin” to distribute among his subordinates, engraved with his name stylized as “Ka$h Patel.” It also referenced his office, which was reportedly stocked with an extensive whiskey and cigar collection.
“Patel not only acted unlawfully but deliberately chose to prioritize politicizing the FBI over protecting the American people,” the plaintiffs — Brian Driscoll, Steven Jensen, and Spencer Evans — asserted in their complaint filed against Patel and Attorney General Pam Bondi.
The three former officials, who identified themselves as seasoned career professionals, argued that they represented precisely the type of leadership the Bureau required to counter complex public threats. They accused Patel of having “degraded the country’s national security by firing three of the FBI’s most experienced operational leaders, each of them experts in preventing terrorism and reducing violent crime.”
