‘I’m not buying this’: MAGA dismisses claims Kirk assassin acted alone

Allies of Donald Trump have dismissed claims that Charlie Kirk was killed by a lone assassin.

Senior figures in the MAGA movement believe Tyler Robinson, the student charged with Kirk’s murder, is part of a wider conspiracy involving a left-wing terrorist network, and that authorities need to widen the scope of their investigation.

The FBI has suggested Robinson may have worked with others, although no one else has yet been charged in connection with the crime.

FBI director Kash Patel told senators on Tuesday that the bureau was investigating “who, if anyone, was involved as an accomplice”.

Steve Bannon, President Donald Trump’s former chief strategist, claimed that Kirk’s death was “not a simple murder” and that the truth was “far deeper and far more malignant”.

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“There’s a vast conspiracy at the back of this,” Bannon said on his War Room podcast on Monday. “I am absolutely not buying this [theory].

“Antifa needs to be designated as a domestic terrorist organisation,” he continued, referencing the radical left-wing movement that has been linked to recent attacks on immigration detention centres.

Media reports emerged shortly after Kirk’s death that the ammunition used by the assassin was engraved with expressions of transgender and Antifa “ideology”, but authorities later clarified this may have been a misunderstanding.

Steve Bannon believes a wider conspiracy lies behind Kirk’s death.Credit: AP

It later emerged that one of the bullets was engraved with the phrase: “Hey fascist! Catch” and “Bella ciao”, a reference to a World War II Italian antifascist song.

Bannon went on to suggest that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) may have been involved in the incident by allegedly funding Antifa.

He doubled down on the comments on Wednesday, telling Politico: “The biggest thing is to broaden the assassination investigation from a single murder to the broader conspiracy. If we are going to go to war, let’s go to war.”

‘You shot a man in cold blood in front of the world ... I think your parents may talk about that before they say ‘Oh, by the way, did you bring the rifle back?’ ’

Bannon also told his podcast listeners he was highly sceptical about a text exchange prosecutors said took place between Robinson and his transgender lover.

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According to the messages, released by Utah authorities yesterday, Robinson worried about his father’s reaction if he failed to return with his grandfather’s rifle, which he allegedly used to shoot Kirk last week.

“You shot a man in cold blood in front of the world ... I think your parents may talk about that first before they say, ‘Oh, by the way, did you bring the rifle back?’” Bannon said. “I am absolutely not buying this”.

Echoing sceptics on social media who claimed the messages setting out details of the alleged crime were too convenient, he added: “Why are you explaining everything?

“I’m particularly not buying those text messages, it just seems too stilted, too much like a script – actually, like a bad script.”

Matt Walsh, a MAGA-aligned commentator with the Daily Wire, suggested the text exchange had been planned to protect Robinson’s lover from prosecution.

“The most plausible and sensible theory isn’t that the FBI made up text messages and released them, but that the killer and his boyfriend constructed this highly scripted text conversation as an alibi for the boyfriend,” he said.

Bannon went on to urge investigators to probe connections to the assassination attempt on Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, last year.

Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, shot at Trump as he addressed a campaign rally in June 2024, grazing his ear with a bullet. Authorities have not commented on his motive, and the shooting has spawned a number of conspiracy theories on the right.

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Stephen Miller, the deputy White House chief of staff and a long-time aide to Trump, claimed a “vast domestic terror network” was responsible for Kirk’s death.

Violence is being fomented by “organised doxing campaigns, the organised riots, the organised street violence … and the actual organised cells”, he claimed on an episode of Kirk’s podcast on Monday, hosted by Vice President JD Vance.

“With God as my witness, we are going to use every resource we have … to identify, disrupt, dismantle and destroy these networks and make America safe again,” he vowed.

‘A larger terrorist network’

Sean Davis, founder of conservative magazine The Federalist, wrote on social media: “It’s obvious now that Charlie Kirk’s assassin was not working alone.

“He was clearly operating within a larger terrorist network focused on grooming, recruiting and training terrorists for the purpose of planning and executing terrorist attacks.”

Tyler Robinson, primary suspect in the shooting of Charlie Kirk.

Patel, the FBI director, was repeatedly pressed by Republicans about whether Robinson had allegedly acted alone when he testified in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee for several hours on Tuesday.

A number of people who communicated with the 22-year-old student on Discord, the gaming chat room, are being “investigated and interrogated” by the FBI, he told senators. Asked if others could have been involved in Kirk’s death, he answered: “Yes.”

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At one point, Missouri senator Josh Hawley urged Patel to investigate Kirk’s murder as part of a wider wave of “anti-religion, anti-Christian violence”.

Dan Bongino, Patel’s deputy, has also said the bureau is looking into whether Robinson acted as part of a “larger effort”.

“If there was any aiding and abetting, whether it be financial or someone who knew the specifics of it and failed to report that, we’re looking into that,” Bongino told Fox News on Monday, and declared: “There’s not going to be a stone left unturned.”

Trump this week said he thought the 22-year-old had been radicalised on the internet and “went bad very quickly”.

Next month, the chief executives of Discord, Reddit, Twitch, and other forums popular with young men are invited to testify in front of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on the radicalisation of users.

James Comer, the committee’s chairman, said: “The politically motivated assassination of Charlie Kirk claimed the life of a husband, father, and American patriot. In the wake of this tragedy, and amid other acts of politically motivated violence, Congress has a duty to oversee the online platforms that radicals have used to advance political violence.”

The Telegraph, London

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