Hopes for the fast capture of the person who fatally shot the right-wing activist Charlie Kirk in Utah evaporated on Wednesday when Kash Patel, the F.B.I. director, announced that the authorities had released a man he had described as a central subject of a multiagency manhunt.
“The subject in custody has been released after an interrogation by law enforcement,” Mr. Patel wrote on his X account, adding: “our investigation continues.”
Two hours earlier, Mr. Patel had stoked expectations of a fast end to the search by congratulating state, local and federal officials for taking into custody “the subject for the horrific shooting today.”
The release of the subject capped a day of shock, fear and uncertainty over what officials described as political assassination, committed in broad daylight in front of thousands of people who had come to participate in a discussion with Mr. Kirk, 31, at Utah Valley University.
The backtrack was a source of significant embarrassment for the F.B.I. director on a day when three former F.B.I. agents filed a lawsuit against Mr. Patel that portrayed him as a partisan neophyte more interested in social media, and swag, than in the day-to-day operations of the nation’s flagship law enforcement agency.
That the director of the F.B.I., historically known for careful messaging on fluid investigations — and deferring to local leaders — would personally take the lead in releasing information about the shooting was unusual.
It was even more unusual that he chose to post that information minutes before Gov. Spencer Cox of Utah and officials from the F.B.I. and local law enforcement were scheduled to provide the first on-camera briefing on the shooting.
Moments after Mr. Patel’s post, Beau Mason, the commissioner of Utah’s Department of Public Safety, told reporters that his agency and the F.B.I. would be working together “to find this killer,” suggesting the search was ongoing.
Mr. Cox spoke next, saying that the authorities had “a person of interest in custody,” but also that the police would find whoever had committed the crime.
In response to reporters’ questions about Mr. Patel’s post, the governor repeated his statement that authorities were questioning someone in custody.
Another person who had been taken into custody immediately after the shooting — and seen in videos that circulated widely on social media — was determined not to be the shooter, the authorities said.
Glenn Thrush covers the Department of Justice for The Times and has also written about gun violence, civil rights and conditions in the country’s jails and prisons.
Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs reports on national stories across the United States with a focus on criminal justice. He is from upstate New York.
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