The federal investigation into the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk has yet to find a link between the alleged shooter, 22-year-old Tyler Robinson, and left-wing groups on which President Donald Trump and his administration have pledged to crack down after the killing, three sources familiar with the probe told NBC News.

One person familiar with the federal investigation said that “thus far, there is no evidence connecting the suspect with any left-wing groups.”

“Every indication so far is that this was one guy who did one really bad thing because he found Kirk’s ideology personally offensive,” this person continued.

In addition, two of the people familiar with the probe said it may be difficult to charge Robinson at the federal level for Kirk’s killing, while the third source said there is still an expectation that some kind of federal charge is filed against Robinson.

Factors that have complicated the effort to bring charges at the federal level include that Robinson, a Utah resident, did not travel from out of state; Kirk was shot during an open campus debate at Utah Valley University. Additionally, Kirk himself is not a federal officer or elected official.

A Justice Department spokesperson said, “The investigation is ongoing and beyond that we decline to comment.”

  • Clbull@lemmy.world
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    7 days ago

    I think the only reason there hasn’t yet been a full-blown pogrom against the LGBTQ community is that the shooter they apprehended was a far-right groyper and not the far-left antifa terrorist they assumed would target someone like Kirk.

    But with the sheer number of people on the left openly celebrating Kirk’s death, I don’t think they’ll really need evidence to start going after the left.

    • flying_sheep@lemmy.ml
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      I heard that he might be one at first, but newest news say exactly what the article said: no groyper, no leftist.

      Which makes sense because it both sounded weird to me that a leftist would write “whoever reads this is gay lol” or that a right-winger would write “Bella chiao” or “take that, fascist”.

      • BanMe@lemmy.world
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        7 days ago

        This is a great example of how BOTH sides live in bot-fed echo chambers - just as much misinformation was flowing in the progressive online communities (including here) and it didn’t help our credibility.

        We really need to get in the habit of sourcing things before we breathlessly repeat them on social media. It’s not hard to verify something.

  • fox2263@lemmy.world
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    8 days ago

    “Yet”

    The investigation will continue until we have completed the manufacturing process.

  • Eezyville@sh.itjust.works
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    8 days ago

    They don’t need any links or ties to justify their hate. They just need feelings of being oppressed, wronged, robbed, and disrespected. There is no excuse needed to blame and attack people who aren’t like them. It’s in their DNA, they’ve done this since before this country was a country.

  • CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world
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    8 days ago

    Yeah, no kidding there is no connection because there is virtually nothing organized on the left. And what prominent left wing groups use the kind of stochastic terrorism that the conservatives use?

    I mean, on the conservative side, it starts from the very top, with Taco, and continues on down to the very bottom to your average red-hatter. All of them constantly make threats involve violence, all the time.

    Taco talked about “second amendment people”.

    Project 2025 architect says there will be a bloodless revolution, if liberals allow it.

    Kirk gets shot and the conservatives all, without knowing anything about the shooter, decared war on the majority of the country…

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    If the Discord groups he hung out in were leftist or in any way “antifa” they would have been screaming about it this whole time. He hung out in far right meme circles. It looks like they’ve decided on the lone, crazy gunman approach so they can avoid accountability yet again.

      • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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        8 days ago

        Maybe. That might have also been fully fabricated. Hard to tell anymore.

        Will be very funny if all this bullshit FBI efforts to blame someone other than him somehow gets his case thrown out.

        • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
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          Yeah we’ve left the era in which we can trust narratives that are being built, and that’s really fucking bad for everyone. This is especially present whenever claims of trans people come up. History may find out what happened but we won’t know aoon

      • nozone@sh.itjust.works
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        A) Unless the FBI are totally incompetent they know which Discord groups he was active in. B) They haven’t said anything about them so they don’t support the official narrative they’re trying to create (ie: leftist trans people are responsible). C) The bullet casing memes they released (if they’re real) are used in right wing meme circles (they didn’t understand them which is why they made them public).

        I don’t know the names of his Discord groups however. If the FBI ever releases that info then I’ll let you know.

    • HeyJoe@lemmy.world
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      Yeah, from the stuff posted, it sounds like he used it just like most people do. To have conversations with friends about life and games. But that won’t stop them from continuing to talk about them like they were. It’s all lies all the time.

  • Jaysyn@lemmy.world
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    And there won’t be.

    This was predicted during the first Trump administration. A MAGAt is primed for violence for ten years & then figures out he’s been lied to and propagandized the entire time. They then use that violence on the very scum that lied to them.

    Sometimes the Stochastic terrorism boomerangs.

  • y0kai@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    He’s a shadow recruit of George Soros, who is incredibly rich with $7 billion, which is a lot more than Elon Musk’s paltry $429 billion and why he’s so much more effective than poor, sensible, people like Musk at influencing politics and must be stopped. /j

  • logicbomb@lemmy.world
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    Here is what we know for sure about the shooter’s politics. His entire childhood, he was raised right wing. He even dressed up as Trump for Halloween a year or two ago.

    Unless he specifically joined a group that promotes violence, there is simply no reason to think that his violence came from anything but his childhood.

    So, even if it was hypothetically true, what MAGA has been saying, that he had recently been dating a trans woman, and his politics had changed, even if that hypothetical was true, it would just mean that his conservative upbringing that glorified violence got a different target.

    • drunkpostdisaster@lemmy.world
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      He started leaning left at some point.

      Look, we need to accept that he was probably a liberal. It changes nothing, no one loses or gains the moral high ground with nazis and everything this administration is doing is shit they planned for. It might even be better this way then the slow trickle that they would have gone with otherwise because that is easy to distract from.

      The first shots where fired every time an lbgtq person was the victim of a hate crime at the hands of one of Kirks followers.

    • jj4211@lemmy.world
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      He even dressed up as Trump for Halloween a year or two ago.

      Well if you want to dress up as something scary…

  • TheJesusaurus@sh.itjust.works
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    It honestly doesn’t matter. Did or didn’t, left right, or corkscrew. If we knew definitively now factually 100% he can conclusively be put into 1 bucket. The facts don’t matter to them. The truth is already in.

    To be on their side, you “know” the “truth”.

    And if you don’t “know” the “truth”, than by gee you seem awfully suspicious mr…

    • nickiwest@lemmy.world
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      And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed – if all records told the same tale – then the lie passed into history and became truth.

      — George Orwell, 1984

  • D_C@sh.itjust.works
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    Bullshit. I heard his bestmates’ mothers’ hairdresser’s nephew once changed the oil on a cars transmission.
    Checkmate, you murderous loony lefties!!!

    • Fedizen@lemmy.world
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      Since when have the american right ever cared about facts? These guys are all feefees, no brain. Its why every time somebody capitulates to their demands they create a new dumber demand.

  • dream_weasel@sh.itjust.works
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    Man I really thought his steam play history (specifically power washing simulator) was going to reveal some radical left links!