Kash Patel Takes Credit for Alleged Charlie Kirk Shooter Surrendering

FBI Director Kash Patel is hoping to salvage his mishandled manhunt for Charlie Kirk’s killer.

Speaking at a press conference Friday morning, Patel attempted to take a little credit for a job well done.

“This is what happens when you let good cops be cops,” Patel said. “The FBI and our partners are proud to stand here today together to bring justice to the family of Charlie Kirk.”

But Patel’s manhunt didn’t accomplish much—22-year-old Tyler Robinson was “turned in” by a family member, President Donald Trump claimed Friday morning.

Utah Governor Spencer Cox confirmed Trump’s statement, telling the Friday morning press conference that a family friend of Robinson’s had contacted the Washington County Sheriff’s Office, after learning from a family member that he’d confessed. “We got him,” Cox said.

Patel viewed this manhunt as an opportunity to prove himself—but he seemed to stumble through it.

On Wednesday, Patel quickly got out over his skis, when he congratulated state and federal officials for taking “the subject for the horrific shooting today” into custody, only to release that suspect hours later.

Patel completely lost it during a meeting Thursday with 200 agents involved in the manhunt, berating them with expletives and accusing them of slowing down the search.

Former FBI Director Andrew McCabe criticized Patel’s decision to get personally involved in the search, arguing that his presence would impose a “huge burden” on the Salt Lake City field office and that his missteps were either the result of a poor flow of information or Patel’s own utter cluelessness.

Representative Nancy Mace, of all people, is accusing Democrats of derogatory conduct toward Republicans.

In a Friday morning appearance on CNN, Mace, a Republican from South Carolina, attributed the fatal shooting of Charlie Kirk to an increase in political violence and divisiveness—problems that she, absurdly, said were confined to the left.

“It’s very one-sided right now,” Mace said. “I have never called one of my colleagues the kind of names that we’ve been called. I’ve never dehumanized my colleagues.”

The claim echoes those of many prominent Republicans who have baselessly blamed the shooting and the nation’s political temperature entirely on the Democratic Party and left generally.

The sentiment was particularly ludicrous coming from Mace, who has a well-documented history of transphobic attacks.

The South Carolina Republican notoriously responded to the election of the first transgender woman in Congress, Democratic Representative Sarah McBride of Delaware, with an outpouring of hate.

In November 2024, Mace spearheaded an effort to ban transgender people from using Capitol bathrooms, which she said was “absolutely” meant to target McBride. Mace referred to McBride as a “biological man,” saying, “It’s offensive that a man in a skirt thinks that he’s my equal.”

When demonstrators protested the ban, she referred to them using the transphobic slur “tranny.” (When confronted for her use of the term in a congressional hearing, she said tauntingly, “Tranny! Tranny! Tranny!”)

Mace’s hostility toward her colleagues doesn’t stop at transphobia. In January, for example, she responded to criticisms from Democratic Representative Jasmine Crockett with an apparent threat. “If you want to take it outside,” she said, cutting herself off. She later claimed she hadn’t been suggesting “a physical fight.”

President Donald Trump wants to paint right-wing extremists as vigilante heroes, while demonizing “vicious” radicals on the left.

Speaking on Fox & Friends Friday about Charlie Kirk’s death, Trump admitted that he isn’t all that concerned about right-wing radicals.

“Well, I’ll tell you something that’s gonna get me in trouble, but I couldn’t care less. The radicals on the right oftentimes are radical ’cause they don’t want to see crime, they don’t want to see crime,” Trump said. “They’re saying, ‘We don’t want these people coming in, we don’t want you burning our shopping centers, we don’t want you shooting our people in the middle of the street.’

“The radicals on the left are the problem,” he continued, “and they’re vicious and they’re horrible and they’re politically savvy.”

Trump’s blatant effort to defend political violence committed by people he agrees with is not necessarily surprising, given his steadfast support for the rioters at the Capitol on January 6 and accused murderers such as Kyle Rittenhouse and Daniel Penny. He also previously defended attendees of the 2021 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, which was organized by neo-Nazis.

But Trump’s statement is deeply misleading about the trends in politically motivated violence in the United States. Right-wing attacks and plans accounted for the majority of all terrorist incidents between 1994 and 2020, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Between 1975 and September 2025, individuals motivated by right-wing ideologies such white supremacy, involuntary celibacy, and anti-abortion beliefs committed 391 murders, according to the Cato Institute. Comparatively, people motivated by left-wing ideologies were responsible for 65 deaths.

As recently as this week, a 16-year-old in Colorado who was accused of shooting two of his classmates reportedly embraced antisemitic and white supremacist social media content.

Within hours of Kirk’s death and without knowing any information about the shooter, Trump blamed the “radical left” and their rhetoric for political violence by “demonizing those with whom you disagree day after day, year after year in the most hateful and despicable way possible.”

Meanwhile, Democrats uniformly condemned Kirk’s murder—and right-wing activists were foaming at the mouth for an all-out war.

It seems clear that Trump isn’t interested in turning down the temperature on political tensions in the United States, and he’s just given the go-ahead to right-wing radicals to take matters into their own hands.

Bullet casings engraved by Charlie Kirk’s alleged killer tell a very different story about his political ideologies than previously understood.

Authorities identified the suspect as Tyler Robinson, a 22-year-old from Utah. Robinson reportedly revealed his actions to his family members, who turned him in Friday morning. He has been booked into the Utah County jail, according to Governor Spencer Cox.

During an FBI presser Friday, Cox revealed that police had located four bullet casings connected to Robinson—one fired, three unfired. The text on the fired casing made a possible reference to an old Reddit copypasta, reading: “Notices bulge OWO what’s this?”

The unfired casings featured different scrawls. One read, “Hey fascist! Catch!” Another: “Oh bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao ciao ciao,” possibly referring to an Italian anti-fascist folk song. The last casing read: “If you read this you are gay LMAO.”

Contrary to prior reporting, none of the text suggested that Robinson was transgender or supported transgender people. But that didn’t stop the transgender community from catching heat: A bulletin circulated among law enforcement officials Thursday suggested that symbols on Robinson’s weapons expressed “transgender and anti-fascist ideology.” That detail was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.

The Journal eventually retracted the premature release, though its correction wasn’t enough to stop MAGA-heads and other far-right personalities from dogpiling on the transgender community in their vengeful grief over Kirk’s murder. In the wake of that reporting, conservatives referred to trans people as a “species” that deserves “no mercy,” calling for them to be “rounded up” and “deported.”

Robinson was registered as a nonpartisan voter. Both of his parents, however, are registered Republicans, according to public records.

Citing one of Robinson’s family members, Cox said at the news conference that the suspect had “become more political in recent years,” particularly about Kirk.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has offered his own unhinged theory as to who shot Charlie Kirk, asserting without any evidence that the Turning Point USA founder was killed by a team of “radical Islamists and ultra-progressives.”

“This is a worldwide problem. The people on the extremes, the Islamists … the radical Islamists and their union with the ultra-progressives, they often speak about human rights. They speak about free speech. But they use violence to try to take down their enemies,” Netanyahu said on Fox News on Friday. “Whether it’s President Trump, who’s been almost assassinated twice, or they try to kill me here too. But they got Charlie Kirk, and it’s just heartbreaking.”

So, just to be clear: The Israeli Prime Minister decided to appear on American media to assure its audience Israel had absolutely nothing to do with Charlie Kirk’s death but that some anonymous cabal of Muslims and leftists does.

This makes no sense, as no one knows the motive behind Kirk’s killing at this moment, especially not Netanyahu. The prime minister is dipping into the same obtuse, harmful rhetoric of the American right, declaring war on an anonymous “they,” latching on to a fictional scenario to project their own biases onto the situation.

Netanyahu decrying political violence is rich, as just this month he has starved Palestinians, bombed residential buildings in Gaza City, set siege to the West Bank, and attacked Hamas leadership in Doha, Qatar.

FBI Director Kash Patel unleashed a profanity-laced tirade on federal agents, as he cracked under the pressure of finding Charlie Kirk’s killer. 

The New York Times reported Thursday that Patel completely lost it during an online meeting with 200 agents involved in the manhunt for Kirk’s killer. 

One official recounted to the Times that among Patel’s mostly expletive-laden remarks, he warned agents he wouldn’t put up with anymore “Mickey Mouse operations.” But it was Patel who’d turned the investigation into a farce by congratulating state and federal officials Wednesday for taking “the subject for the horrific shooting today” into custody—a claim that officials were forced to backtrack hours later.

In the Thursday meeting, Patel was furious that it had taken 12 hours for him to see a photograph of the suspected killer, and blamed agents in Salt Lake City (where he had fired the head of the FBI field office for unclear reasons just weeks earlier). He also berated subordinates he said hadn’t provided him timely information.  

Patel and his deputy, Dan Bongino, relayed that they were under immense pressure to succeed and prove that they were capable of conducting a manhunt. As it turns out, they were not.

President Donald Trump claimed Friday morning on Fox & Friends that a 22-year-old suspect had been apprehended, but only because one of his family members turned him in. 

Former FBI Director Andrew McCabe criticized Patel’s hands-on approach to the search, as the director’s handling of the case has come under increasing scrutiny. On Wednesday, Patel was the subject of a major lawsuit against the Department of Justice, accusing him of unlawfully ousting any employee that had investigated Trump.

Poland is not allowing Donald Trump to brush off Russia’s recent drone incursion.

Nineteen Russian drones, many originating from Belarus, crossed into Polish airspace late Tuesday, forcing the Eastern European nation to shut down four of its airports as it scrambled to fire up its defense systems. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk invoked Article 4 of the NATO Treaty the following day, calling the ​​situation the “closest” that Poland had come to armed conflict “since the Second World War.”

The U.S. president, however, told reporters Thursday that the attack “could have been a mistake.” The White House did not clarify Trump’s remarks.

Polish leadership was unequivocal in its response.

“We would also wish that the drone attack on Poland was a mistake. But it wasn’t,” said Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk. “And we know it.”

Deputy Foreign Minister of Poland Radosław Sikorski also responded to Trump’s eyebrow-raising comment, plainly explaining that the Russian advance “wasn’t a mistake.”

Trump, who claims he has a good relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin, has yet to meaningfully comment on the drone incursion into Poland. On Wednesday, he wrote on Truth Social, “What’s with Russia violating Poland’s airspace with drones? Here we go!”

Trump has little to show for the profound international recognition he’s offered the Kremlin over the last few months. Against the advice of world leaders, Trump invited Putin to Alaska in August—tasking U.S. soldiers to literally roll out the red carpet for the Russian dictator. It was the first time that a Russian leader had stepped foot on U.S. soil in more than a decade.

Still, Russia has not agreed to peace terms in its ongoing war against Ukraine. The superpower has instead insisted on receiving “international legal recognition” of its 2014 annexation of Crimea, an internationally recognized portion of Ukraine, along with four regions it has claimed in the three years since it first invaded Ukraine.

Rather than de-escalate the situation after it breached Polish airspace this week, the Kremlin decided to stoke more fear, tossing threats at Finland if it decided to oppose Russia’s power.

President Donald Trump announced Friday that the suspected killer of conservative activist Charlie Kirk has been apprehended.

“I think, with a high degree of certainty, we have him in custody,” Trump said on Fox and Friends.

“Essentially, somebody that was very close to him turned him in,” the president continued, noting that additional details would be provided later that day. “I just heard about it five minutes before I walked in. As I’m walking in, they said, ‘Looking real good.’ They have the person that they wanted.”

“So you have breaking news, don’t you, eh? You always have breaking news, Ainsley,” he added, turning to host Ainsley Earhardt, before joking that Sean Hannity, who hosts another show on the network, would “be very disappointed that we’re not doing it on his show.”

“He’ll be very thankful and appreciative of the police officers that got this guy,” Earhardt replied.

Trump later expressed that he hopes the gunman “gets the death penalty.”

Somewhat surprisingly, Kirk’s death on Wednesday was announced not by his family or local authorities, but by Trump himself.

During the ensuing manhunt, the FBI’s MAGA partisan director, Kash Patel, faced criticism for a clumsy and confusing response.

On Wednesday, Patel prematurely declared that “the subject for the horrific shooting today” was in custody—a claim that was almost immediately contradicted by local officials, and which Patel later backtracked on, writing that the “subject” was released.

Former FBI Director Andrew McCabe is perplexed by current FBI Director Kash Patel’s decision to head to Utah himself to search for Charlie Kirk’s assassin.

“That one’s really hard to figure out. There are many good reasons why you wouldn’t go if you’re the director. You would not go out to the scene of an ongoing crisis, post–crisis investigation … you know, typically, directors don’t do that,” McCabe told CNN’s Abby Phillips.

McCabe continued, saying: “The presence of the director imposes a huge burden on the field office. There’s all kinds of arrangements that have to be made. There’s all kinds of security concerns that arise. Transportation becomes very complicated. And that’s the last thing you wanna do to the field office while they’re in the middle of investigating a critical incident,” he said.

“So, again, strange to go out there under those circumstances. Why he went and then did not say anything at the press conference, I really, I really don’t know. I’m a bit at a loss to understand, like, what was the purpose of going out there,” McCabe concluded.

Patel’s visit comes after a series of blunders. First, he announced that “the subject for the horrific shooting today that took the life of Charlie Kirk is now in custody,” a few hours after Kirk’s murder, as if the case was closed.

Then, just hours later, he said the “subject” was free to go.

McCabe wasn’t the only one concerned with Patel’s handling of the situation.

“What’s clear is that the information flow to [Patel] has not been accurate, or he is not interpreting it correctly, because it was just remarkable to have him say that—essentially imply that the shooter had been caught and then two hours later announcing that that person was not, in fact, the shooter and had been released. That just doesn’t happen in these situations,” NBC intelligence correspondent Ken Dilanian said Wednesday on MSNBC.

He also noted that Patel had fired the decorated and experienced head of the FBI’s Salt Lake City Office just two weeks before Kirk’s assassination.

On Friday morning, President Donald Trump announced on Fox & Friends that they have Kirk’s shooter in custody (again).

“With a high degree of certainty, we have him in custody,” the president said. This has not yet been confirmed by Patel and the FBI.

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez decried Republican condemnation of the left in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination as the FBI still struggles to detain the shooter, much less parse their politics and motive.

“[The president] in his speech, he was very critical of left-wing violence,” a reporter asked Ocasio-Cortez on Wednesday. “What do you think of that message, and do you agree with them that left-wing violence is a problem?”

“There is no understanding as we know publicly, of who this individual is, what their motivations were, where they came from. Whether it is a member of Congress, whether it is the president of the United States—to assume and assert, cast blame, when the FBI has failed to even apprehend the assailant, is absolutely an irresponsible action,” Ocasio-Cortez said.

Conservative officials, talking heads, and influencers have all been calling for war against the left over the past 24 hours, as if they were given marching orders.

“The left is the party of murder,” Elon Musk wrote. “THIS IS WAR,” posted right-wing social media account Libs of Tiktok. “They’ve declared war,” political commentator Gunther Eagleman weighed in. “They are at war with us,” Fox host Jesse Watters contributed. “Whether we want to accept it or not, they are at war with us. And what are we going to do about it?”

President Donald Trump himself put out a four-minute-long video announcement Wednesday, stating that “radical left political violence has hurt too many innocent people and taken too many lives. Tonight, I ask all Americans to commit themselves to the American values for which Charlie Kirk lived and died.”

All of these comments conveniently ignore the troubling trend of right-wing violence—from the attempted kidnapping of Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer to the attack on Representative Nancy Pelosi’s husband, the assassination of state representative Melissa Hortman and her husband—and the fact that no one has any idea right now what the political leanings of Kirk’s assassin were.

Senator Elizabeth Warren also chimed in on the discourse surrounding political violence.

“Oh please,” she said when asked if the left needs to tone down its rhetoric. “Right, why don’t you start with the president of the United States? And every ugly meme he has posted, and every ugly word.”