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.”
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”