'No evidence' found yet of ties between Charlie Kirk's shooting and left-wing groups, officials say
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.”
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/no-evidence-charlie-kirk-shooting-left-wing-groups-rcna232513Open linkView original on lemmy.world
“Yet”
The investigation will continue until we have completed the manufacturing process.
I'm sure they are looking for some sense of organization, a group that they can define and eliminate. That's not going to happen. Read "The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations." This is a leaderless movement where the rhetoric of some inspires others to violence without there being any material connection between the two. It'll increase and it won't stop so long as the conditions continue and so long as these don't morph into an organization with leadership.
None of these shooters are left wing though. It's not like the only thing the administration is wrong about is their level of organisation. The premise that there is a left-wing extremism problem is completely false. They're trying to pin all this violence on completely the wrong people so that they can ramp up their persecution of trans people and anti-fascists.
It's not just that he wasn't actually "organized" with a left wing group, it's that even as they go fishing they can't even find credible evidence of significant leftist influence at all.
He wasn't organized with anyone, and the only whiff of influence they seem to have found was playing with right wing shit post fodder. They haven't indicating finding any sort of "militant" influence at all.
It seems that he just kind of broke on his own, with his gun friendly upbringing escalating that to a supremely high profile assassination out of nowhere.
Now they can certainly find leftists celebrating Kirk's death a bit tastelessly much and they are mad as hell about that all on its own but the actual killing seems to be nihilist violent extremism. They have a good reason to be concerned that obviously tensions are tight enough to have these things pop off. Bernie Sanders certainly seems to understand that and put forward an inclusive message about victims on both sides and for at least some unifying response from both sides.
However the biggest blowhards on the right seen to be doubling down and escalating rhetoric, which is the last thing the situation needs.
Exactly. It's not an organized group. It's just people that still have their moral compass intact.
I wouldn't assume the Kirk shooter has anything particularly "intact". He seemed to enjoy the right wing meme stuff more and treated the killing more like a shit post that any ideological stand.
As a target, Charlie Kirk was actually a pretty terrible choice. He has no real power, and even in terms of influence I'd say he was a bit removed from any directly influential circle. He said vile stuff but say least he did actually let others get a fair share of his stage in his engagements. May have just been for the heightened engagement for content, but either way at least he let things play out in ways that the left could enjoy him getting owned by good points to his face, instead of settling for "reaction videos".
I'm not talking about him, I don't see any reason to consider him a member of antifa or the "left" at all. I've even read that a subset of groypers have a fetish for femboys. Hell, his Steam username was DonaldTrump according to Kotaku. No progressive I know would want to associate with that scumbag, even ironically.
"Yet" appears to be editorialized. The actual quote doesn't use that word
It says "thus far" which is synonymous
Not quite.
Yet implies they expect to.
Thus far is more neutral, erring towards not expecting to find anything.
"Thus far" means "up to this point in time".
It is neutral about anything in the future, yes, because it is avoiding making any commentary on it. But it is NOT "erring towards not expecting to find anything"
It is explicitly not predicting any outcome positive or negative. No expectation of any kind.
It states what the communicator believes are the facts to date with ZERO speculation about the future
It implies the trend is likely to continue. That the searched areas and the unsearched areas are nominally the same.
E.g. An inspector saying they have found 20 problems, this far, while 50% finished implies they expect to find 40ish overall.
Finding zero problems thus far implies you are not expecting to find many/any, if the trend continues.
No it doesn't. It's a summary to a point in time.
If the inspector has found 20 problems then he's found twenty problems. The reader may extrapolate that more will be found, but the statement makes no such implication
Or until they beat the confession into the suspect, whichever happens first.
While the real suspect lives a new life. 👀
If you believe that sort of thing that is
lol It’s so obvious that they’re starting this investigation with a “conclusion” and they’re trying really hard to make it fit.
I'm just shocked that despite that, they seem to actually at some level be admitting the evidence doesn't fit the narrative. I would have fully expected them to try, fail, then just make something up without ever making a peep that the narrative may have been off.
Literally not true.
How so?
How is it obvious they already have a conclusion in mind?
Lmao did you happen to see the president's speech right after it happened (not to mention the sentiment of basically his entire cabinet)? Are you honestly saying him and his cabal didn't already pin this on a particular group of people before looking at any actual evidence or even waiting for there to be any actual evidence?
The president yes, his cabinet yes. The FBI, not as far as I’m aware. Could you share it.
The governor stated he was left wing. Citing evidence that Patel gave him that is now sounding falsified.
I’m just saying to me it sounds like you’re being no better than the republicans and running with baseless theories.
We will see when he’s convicted and shown to be motivated by his own morals and not so much politics.
Utah is on the left side of the Country, he must be left!
No, left
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.
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...
The last time anything resembling the left in this country committed terrorism on a large scale was by anarchists in the late 19th and early 20th century. They did via bombing. https://guides.loc.gov/chronicling-america-anarchist-incidents
Weather Underground was in the 1960s-70s but was bombing as well.
I forgot about them
Hasn't that almost always been the case? It seems to me that generally, left-wing terrorism is rare. When it is committed, it's almost always destruction of property, a building, a piece of equipment, etc. Right-wing terrorism seems to always be about targeted destruction of human lives.
https://theonion.com/left-wing-group-too-disorganized-for-fbi-agents-to-infi-1848923025/
Reality doesn't matter.
No. The right has decided and they’re banded together on this, at least among the people in my circles I still talk to.
“I’m all out of grace for the left.”
“You fascist, hate filled leftists have crossed the line this time. We’re done.”
“We’re past dialogue with you people.”
Catch the running theme? It’s likely what the pundits are pushing as the narrative, I’ve been too busy and too tired to listen in this week, so I don’t know.
And neither do they. But someone on the perception management team over there seems ready to give marching orders.
So yeah, as you say, it likely doesn’t matter.
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.
but hey! he had a trans roommate or something!
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.
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
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.
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.
I'll answer, but only if you're asking for a friend.
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.
Exactly. Just like the attempted assassinations of trump
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
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.
Well if you want to dress up as something scary...
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.
Don't humor lies. That's like 101 here.
I am going to need more proof then '20 year ilds don't text like that!'
You're an idiot. Asking for proof and yet claiming a fact without proof at the same time. Stop drinking.
1.) If you didn't vote in '22 or '24 and legally had the ability, you're not a liberal or a progressive, full stop.
2.) His steam account name was DonaldTrump.
I need more then a steam account that he had when he was deep in the Mormon shit hole.
But somehow trans people are the terrorists. The Heritage Foundation even cited Tyler Robinson as evidence of "trans shooters"
I know that the apparently had a trans woman mate but was he personally himself trans, I hadn't heard that. Was it just more made up nonsense.
it's the trans lady's fault, somehow.
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...
— George Orwell, 1984
Bullshit. I heard his bestmates' mothers' hairdresser's nephew once changed the oil on a cars transmission.
Checkmate, you murderous loony lefties!!!
When I was young, cars were either manual or automatic, none of this in the middle bullshit!
CVTs are a symptom of the woke mind virus
Doesn’t matter the right made up their minds about this the second he was shot.
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.
What leftwing groups or even prominent individuals in the US with any actual following advocate for political assassinations and direct violence against rightwing people they don't like? Where are all the lefties supposedly making calls to violence and terrorism?
The media and even a lot of people here will flip a shit about someone like Hasan Piker being so radical and yet if he even remotely said something like "maybe we should just start shooting rightwing media figures" an overwhelmingly massive chunk of Hasan's audience would tell him to fuck off and cause an uproar because that clashes with the basic foundational ideologies of leftwing movements in the US, they are about obtaining a state of freedom for all, the idea of targeted violence has little salience to a US leftist as we are well aware that 1. senseless violence doesn't change anything, it will not lead to freedom for all, it just accelerates the bad things. 2. the ruling class in the US will jump at any chance to radically villainize the left, the bulk of the country will blindly follow along in this, thus random senseless acts of violence aren't just bad because they are evil they actually existentially threaten leftwing movements in the US as a whole, leftists in the US are WELL aware of this...
The difference between the left vs the center and rightwing of the US is that the left actually builds coalitions on shared values, most leftists in the US these days are strongly influenced by figures like Bernie Sanders who has been mainly focused on broad social programs to improve people's quality of life like healthcare and for fighting wealth inequality. How the hell would advocating for shooting someone like Charlie Kirk make affordable healthcare more likely in the US? How would it help get the public focused on Citizen's United and getting money out of politics? Leftists in the US are about ideas and policies, this isn't just an aesthetic, if you enter US leftist circles and start advocating for targeted violence as retribution, preemptive violence or really for anything for any reason at all the leftists around you are going to turn on you for being a hateful bastard trying to distract from the actual issues at hand.
If there is one thing that ties virtually all leftists in the US together it is that we fucking LOVE to argue about things.... so much so that sometimes we can never agree on stuff because we want to argue the little details on and on forever. It is not lost on us that the very first thing that happens when you commit violence against others is that they stop listening to the wisdom of your arguments and ideas.
If he had actually gotten connected with any decent left wing group - instead of just being stuck mostly alone in Utah to stew with his (totally understandable) anger at the things Kirk was saying - that group probably would have told him something like "bro, chill, shooting people is only going to make shit worse for everybody we care about, now wash these dishes instead so we can open the soup kitchen on time tonight, we got hungry neighbors"
Man I really thought his steam play history (specifically power washing simulator) was going to reveal some radical left links!
And his "donaldtrump" username.
Don't worry I'm sure they'll find some eventually if they just keep looking. The libs are very good at hiding themselves. Sometimes they vote for republicans, that's a sure sign their liberal, voting for republicans.
That is a load bearing “yet!”
Bro he has 2 discord messages in like 4 years and they read like 'trump might get impeached' and 'it looks like trump is in the lead' on election night.
Is there some line where it's acceptable to start murdering oppressors? No one would argue against jews murdering their nazi oppressers, but bisexual murdering homophobic stochastic terrorists? How much must one endure before being permitted to act in favor of their own survival?
Looking at how the palestinians have been treated and our reaction to their resistance shows people need to endure their complete extermination before the oppressors accept acts of defense.
The right knows full well that they openly cheer on terror acts from the right but they pretend to value the same ethics. They don't and we should not give them the benefit of the doubt. We should stand to what we say. It is time to take back the narrative.
Charlie Kirks killing was by no means a tradgedy and i will refuse to be sorry for such a dick reaping the hate he sowed while innocents are getting bombed with the very weapons we supply.
But we sure are lookin'. Cletus has gotten into generative AI, so we'll see what comes up.
Utah gov about to have another press conference, ‘he was so deep into the leftosphere that we haven’t even been able to uncover his presence yet. Mark my words, we are working hard to find the connection.’
"As yet, the Ultimate Evil remains largely unmanifest, and its powers and exact intentions are still a bit obscure since it lurks just outside the range of even the most sensitive, long-range detectors which we feel gives conclusive evidence as to The Ultimate Evil's nefarious intent." - Spathi
I hate to say this but I feel like nbcnews will be shut down for this article
Trump: "If you can't find evidence, invent some. Here, have a sharpie."
And if you won't use the sharpie, you're fired and I'll find someone who will
I don't know why anyone cares about this kid. He's the alleged shooter. The feds still haven't provided anything credible to prove he was the guy, no video of the kid on the roof with the rifle, no bullet, no medical report, weird people in the crowd causing a distraction, tampering of the crime scene, clearly fake text exchange...there are so many more important questions that need answers.
And yet, even with this dude they don't have a shred of evidence of left-wing involvement.
He had a left hand. Checkmate!
Because the current admin needs someone to pin this on to appear competent and strong because that's the foundation of their entire worldview. And they need him to fit an ideological profile so they have something to point to as justification as they continue to escalate their response to political dissent.
Case in point: Jimmy Kimmel was taken off the air for deviating from the accepted party line because the FCC threatened ABC/Disney with retaliation.
Clearly fake text exchange... that the other party of the chat admits participating in?
Have you read the text exchange? No timestamp, no confirmation on what platform the exchange even took place on so that the third party could verify their legitimacy, and their exchange just so happens to layout the motive, discussed the murder weapon, uses perfect punctuation, and just flat out sounds weird.
To be real, I have no idea if those messages are fake or not. At this point, nobody but the FBI can vouch for their legitimacy and they don't have the best track record.
They’ll fabricate something.
forensically
I'm sure the guy who modified a hurricane path map with a sharpie wouldn't cook up the result he wants on this.
If he was a lefty they would have been rubbing our faces in it day 1, not doctoring social media messages.
But damn it all if they aren't going to spend millions looking.
It's the Iraq WMDs of this administration.
Or millions making it up
Why not look at the other wing group? Ah too much evidence
They’ve already spread the message that he is and they’re not known to retract anything, just double down if they’re proven wrong, so they’ve already done their damage. It doesn’t matter what the investigation finds.
So no evidence of collusion with left wing groups and no word about anything on right wing groups.
Not that I trust any of these law enforcement to do any actual due diligence in their investigation of this guys ties to racist Republican ideology even though his whole family is MAGA.
He was a groyper. They have been threatening violence against Kirk, Shapiro and Trump since 2019. They know this, which is why Shapiro is in hiding shitting his pants since Kirk got shot.
The reality is people are messy. They don’t typically fit into neatly defined boxes and neither do their politics, even when given a forced choice in a duopoly every 4 years.
What we know so far. He’s from a conservative Christian family and was raised such that he knew how to use that family rifle and make that difficult shot. And he may be gay with a maybe gay or trans partner, it’s all very mysterious. And the reporting on his politics are flip floppy. No neat box there.
And the engravings, if the article I read today is to be believed, they reference a meme and Helldivers 2? Some inside joke about nuke dropping or something. ??? Was this half LARP for him, hence the disengaged texts afterwards?? Who knows.
There’s no neat and tidy here, no matter how much the perception management brigade wants it to be so.
Jesus christ. How in a country with 4 guns for every person is there someone who thinks a 200yard shot to a soda can sized target is difficult for anyone familiar with their weapon ?
There are literally 10s of millions of Americans who take harder shots (successfully) every hunting season.
don't worry, They don't need actual factual ties.. they've already made plentiful amounts of false information that fox news and other conservative outlets have run with.
cause its not about truth and facts, its about the narrative.. and the narrative has to be about how hateful right wing extremists are the poor victims of the big mean liberal agenda.
The search continues
'yet'
Since when has lack of any evidence stopped Trump farting out his usual halfwitted bullshit? It doesn't matter if they find any evidence or not, the demented orange fuckwit will say it was those evil leftists.
The guy had a left hand. If that's not enough evidence, I don't know what you need.
/s
Damn I wonder why this can't be tied to the left? 🤔 Makes you think
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.
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”.
I think one of them said catch fascist or something like that. Which is kind of funny. But if you can read this you are gay. I think he was just messing with everybody at this point.
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.
Pretending to be sad about the spearhead of the Nazi youth is just pathetic. Even if everyone pretended it would not stop them, it is just a matter of if you go down swinging or not.
They'll make something up. It'll be a bad forgery, but they'll run with it because they're arrogant.
seeing this in my inbox for this was the funniest thing to wake up to
Pretty sure he wasn't shot with a 30-06. And I'm pretty sure those text messages we were shown also weren't real.
Why y'all lyin to us?
...yet
We'd kno wIf he was remotely left of center he'd have gotten the Luigi / Hannibal Lecter treatment
wasn't there a text between the shooter and his "lover" who was trans?
I don't think there's any left wing group he's associated with. But I struggle to see how he would be right anything based on those texts.
I think you are bring misled by attempts to manufacture evidence to fit their pre-determined conclusion.
Maybe?
So was the text fake? I feel like it's weird they would make something while he's alive
The texts are not very interesting, not enough, but seem to imply what the OP said: he was opposed to kirk's ideology. Now watch them offer him a plea bargain to say he was gender confused
I just don't want to see either side making stuff up is all. Especially I don't want to see the left get let down again by jumping on something that isn't true
Agreed
Did you read it? No one writes like that, let alone an internet poisoned 22 year old.
I heard someone said he might be a furry and honestly I've seen furry write like that
If you have ever texted someone aged 15-25 then have a read of those texts and tell me if you think they're fake
(Hint Talking like Ulysses S Grant send a letter home isn't the general style of GenZ comms)
How often does it happen that the loudest opponents of homosexual activity are caught up in "scandals"? I use the quotations loosely as being gay is nothing to be ashamed of.