The Atlantic gift article – “About four hours after the right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk was assassinated by an unknown shooter at Utah Valley University Wednesday, FBI Director Kash Patel posted a picture of himself with Kirk on his personal X account. The undated photo shows the two men grinning, apparently about to tape Kirk’s daily livestream show; Patel wears a branded shirt with his own name on it, styled as K$H. Roughly five minutes later, Patel’s official FBI account published another post on X, this time announcing the good news that the suspected shooter was already in custody. Then, an hour and a half later, that account posted again—alerting the public that the suspect “has been released after an interrogation by law enforcement.” The killer remains at large. Prominent MAGA-aligned influencers on X were not amused by the initial mistake. “Why is the @FBI speculating like everyone not in the know?” demanded Joe Biggs, a leader of the Proud Boys who was sentenced to 17 years in prison for his role in the January 6 attack on the Capitol. (President Donald Trump commuted his sentence.) “Stop all the click bait shit you keep doing,” he wrote. Kyle Seraphin, a former FBI agent turned right-wing internet personality after losing his job at the bureau during the Biden administration, put it this way: “These two posts are the most embarrassing thing I have seen from a FBI Director.” X commenters demanded in droves that Patel work more quickly to find the shooter.
Typically, the FBI waits until it’s certain before making announcements. It also doesn’t normally provide quick successive updates midway through a sensitive investigation before abruptly backtracking. But, as the photo with Kirk suggests, Patel is not a typical FBI director. He posted his way into the job—moving from roles as a congressional staffer and national-security aide in the first Trump administration to a career as a pro-Trump influencer who sold MAGA children’s books and called for purges at the FBI to “defeat the Deep State.” Now he’s posting through it. After becoming director, according to a recent lawsuit filed by fired FBI officials, he put a twist on challenge coins—a common token in the national-security bureaucracy—by having an oversize coin made that read DIRECTOR KA$H PATEL. Patel’s handling of the early stages of the Kirk investigation is a reminder that the skill set required to succeed as an influencer is not the same as what is required to effectively run the FBI. It’s not just amateur hour at the FBI, but influencer hour.
See also The Verge – Internet detectives are misusing AI to find Charlie Kirk’s alleged shooter
