FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino on Monday said the agency is looking into whether a possible “extended network” had any role in “aiding and abetting” the man accused of assassinating Charlie Kirk last week at Utah Valley University.
Mr. Bongino, the second-in-command at the FBI, said investigators are also attempting to determine if anyone outside of suspect Tyler Robinson, 22, had knowledge of the plot to kill the popular conservative activist during an outdoor event Wednesday on the Orem campus.
“If this was a larger effort, there was any aiding and abetting, whether it be financial, whether it be who knew the specifics of it … [we] are looking into that,” Mr Bongino told Fox News on Monday.
He went on to say the agency is scouring the web for clues as to how much planning went into the deadly shooting that killed Mr. Kirk, the founder of Turning Point USA and a married father of two.
“We’ll also be dropping a lot of paper, a lot of subpoenas out there to take a look to see if there was any extended network,” Mr. Bongino said. “We’re looking into everything, though. There’s not going to be a stone left unturned.”
The agency is already investigating if some of the online communities potentially linked to Mr. Robinson had any indication the shooting was going to take place, according to the New York Post.
That includes pro-trans groups such as Armed Queers SLC, or Salt Lake City, which took down its Instagram page after Mr. Kirk’s slaying.
An application form to join the group describes itself as a “revolutionary LGBTQ organization dedicated to the defense, and success, of oppressed people’s movements.”
Some of the Armed Queers’ stated principles are the end of “capitalist exploitation” and the creation of socialist society; “trans liberation” from the gender binary; the abolition of prisons and police, and the “armed and militant protection of queer and trans communities, and all oppressed people.”
Mr. Bongino said the suspect had expressed a desire for targeted violence against Mr. Kirk prior to last week’s shooting, and even had a conversation with a family member about their shared dislike of the conservative activist. But investigators are still piecing together the timeline of those comments.
The FBI deputy director did say that Mr. Robinson had become more political, and in the process, more detached from friends and family.
“It appears from the data we’ve accumulated that this ideology had infected him and had taken over,” Mr. Bongino said. “He was intent on making Charlie his target and people may have known in advance.”
Authorities nabbed Mr. Robinson about 33 hours after a single gunshot wound to the neck killed Mr. Kirk in front of a crowd of 3,000 people. Court documents list charges of aggravated murder, felony discharge of a firearm causing serious bodily harm and obstruction of justice against the suspect.
Utah allows the death penalty, and Mr. Robinson could face such a fate if convicted of the murder charge.
Investigators said they found anti-fascist and pro-trans messages engraved on the shell casings of the bolt-action rifle linked to Mr. Robinson.
Mr. Robinson reportedly has a live-in boyfriend who is in the process of undergoing a sex change procedure to present as a woman.
Utah Gov. Spencer Cox last week said the suspect had been “deeply indoctrinated with leftist ideology.”
FBI Director Kash Patel told Fox News separately that Mr. Robinson sent a text message saying he had an “opportunity to take out Charlie Kirk — and he was going to do it because of his hatred for what Charlie stood for.”
• Matt Delaney can be reached at mdelaney@washingtontimes.com.
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