FBI Director Kash Patel on Wednesday provided more details on how the suspect accused of Charlie Kirk’s assassination was turned in by his parents.
On Tuesday, the Utah County Attorney’s Office announced charges against suspect Tyler Robinson, including counts for capital aggravated murder, obstruction of justice, witness tampering, and others. The attorney included details about how Robinson was captured last week, saying his parents intervened.
During a Wednesday congressional hearing, Patel provided a statement about Robinson’s parents in the lead-up to the 22-year-old’s arrest. Robinson’s family, Patel said, “has since been interrogated” and told federal investigators that “because of the video that the FBI released at my direction, and because of the photographs that they released, they identified their son.” Patel was referring to photos and video footage that were released online after Kirk’s assassination and before Robinson’s arrest.
“They confronted their son when he swung by their home,” Patel said during a House Judiciary Committee hearing on oversight of the FBI. “And that’s what led to his apprehension.”
Patel noted that Robinson was captured in 33 hours and noted that in several other high-profile cases, it took days to capture a suspect.
“To put it in perspective, the Boston bomber took five days and Luigi Mangione took five days,” Patel told the panel, referring to one of the suspects who planted explosives at the 2011 Boston Marathon in an attack that left three dead and the suspect accused in the 2024 shooting of the UnitedHealthcare CEO, respectively.
Patel added that the FBI still “has that investigation ongoing, and it continues to be ongoing,” referring to the Kirk assassination case.
Robinson is charged with one count each of aggravated murder, felony discharge of a firearm causing serious bodily injury, and violent offense committed in front of a child. He is charged with two counts of obstruction of justice and two counts of witness tampering.
Prosecutors said Robinson set about killing Kirk for his political views, and after the shooting, hid the rifle and the clothing he wore. He then allegedly tried to persuade his roommate to delete an incriminating text exchange and to not talk to the police. The state is seeking the death penalty for Robinson, who is being held without bail.
According to the criminal information document released on Tuesday, Robinson allegedly planned Kirk’s murder for more than a week and did so because Kirk, he said, was “spreading hate.”
Surveillance cameras reviewed by police showed that at the time of the incident on Sept. 10, someone who appeared to be Robinson entered the campus of Utah Valley University from the north.
The suspect wore a dark shirt with an American flag, a dark baseball cap, and large sunglasses. As he proceeded across the campus, he walked with an unusual gait that was consistent with a rifle being hidden in his pants, the document said.
Officials have said since Robinson’s capture that he had a leftist viewpoint.
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