Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, We got him.
Speaker 1: The FBI identified twenty two year old Tyler Robinson as
Speaker 1: their suspect and the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
Speaker 1: Robinson has been arrested on suspicion of murder and weapons offenses.
Speaker 2: On the evening of September eleventh, a family member of
Speaker 2: Tyler Robinson reached out to a family friend who contacted
Speaker 2: the Washington County Sheriff's office with information that Robinson had
Speaker 2: confessed to them or implied that he had committed the incident.
Speaker 1: Kirk was fatally shot Wednesday during an event at Utah
Speaker 1: Valley University.
Speaker 3: Tyler Robinson is twenty two years old, and as far
Speaker 3: as we understand, he had expressed that he was no
Speaker 3: fan of Charlie Kirk.
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Senior National security reporter Miles Miller.
Speaker 3: He didn't like his ideology. He told this to family
Speaker 3: members during a dinner recast and knew that he was
Speaker 3: coming to Utah and that is all part of the investigation.
Speaker 3: Much of what he did he talked about in a
Speaker 3: discord server with friends, and his roommate shared that information
Speaker 3: with law enforcement, where he hit the gun, how he
Speaker 3: fled this investigation. Now we'll focus on how much of
Speaker 3: that is true, If he was self radicalized, if he
Speaker 3: had any support to do this, where he got the gun.
Speaker 3: There's still so much we don't know.
Speaker 4: Over the last forty hours, I have been as angry
Speaker 4: as I have ever been, as sad as I have
Speaker 4: ever been.
Speaker 1: During the FBI press conference, Utah Governor Spencer Cox warned
Speaker 1: those watching and listening against further violence.
Speaker 4: History will dictate if this is a turning point for
Speaker 4: our country, but every single one of us gets to
Speaker 4: choose right now. If this is a turning point for
Speaker 4: us to make decisions, we have our agency, and I
Speaker 4: desperately call on every American Republican, Democrat, liberal, progressive, conservative, maga,
Speaker 4: all of us to please please please.
Speaker 2: Follow what Charlie tuppy.
Speaker 4: I still believe that there is more.
Speaker 2: Good among us than evil.
Speaker 4: And I still believe that we can change the course
Speaker 4: of history. I'm hopeful because Americans can make it so.
Speaker 1: I'm Sarah Holder, and this is the big take from
Speaker 1: Bloomberg News today. On the show The Latest on the
Speaker 1: assassination of Charlie Kirk, Miles Miller covers national security for Bloomberg.
Speaker 1: He's been closely following law enforcement's investigation into the killing
Speaker 1: of Charlie Kirk and he reports that, according to a
Speaker 1: person with knowledge of the investigation, Robinson's father recognized him
Speaker 1: as the suspect and the photos released by police and
Speaker 1: confronted him, and.
Speaker 3: His father says, you look a lot like that guy
Speaker 3: in the photo. Were you responsible for this? He says, yes,
Speaker 3: I was. Then he says, you need to turn yourself in.
Speaker 3: I'm going to call our youth pastor at our church.
Speaker 3: The youth pastor just happens to be a task force officer,
Speaker 3: which is a local cop who is assigned to a
Speaker 3: federal task force, the one that actually is looking for him.
Speaker 3: He calls a deputy, a deputy calls the FBI, and
Speaker 3: they bring him in. He makes statements, and they arrest him.
Speaker 3: Parallel to that happening, the FBI is doing their own
Speaker 3: investigation into trying to figure out who this person is.
Speaker 3: And so once they did get some information about him,
Speaker 3: then they were able to piece together and confirm things.
Speaker 3: So one thing is that the person who jumped from
Speaker 3: that roof had a Dodge challenger. Okay, this person that
Speaker 3: we know have in custody, we confirm has a Dodge Challenger,
Speaker 3: same person. One thing that's really interesting is that the
Speaker 3: FBI got about eleven thousand leads, and just because this
Speaker 3: person is in custody does not mean those leads go away.
Speaker 3: They'll continue to track all of it down because you
Speaker 3: have to figure out if anybody gave material support, who
Speaker 3: gave him the gun, how he planned this, and was
Speaker 3: anybody else involved.
Speaker 1: And Tyler Robinson has been taken in as the suspect,
Speaker 1: But what evidence has been shared with the public so
Speaker 1: far that links this man with this The car that.
Speaker 3: Was used as part of the getaway, the fact that
Speaker 3: he on discord says I had this gun in the
Speaker 3: drop point that's where police found the gun believed to
Speaker 3: be used in this incident, the fact that he had
Speaker 3: said that he inscribed bullets. All of those things are
Speaker 3: going to be crucial. But the most easy thing that
Speaker 3: links him to all this is that he's wearing the
Speaker 3: same clothes, wearing the same exact clothes that police said
Speaker 3: he was wearing in surveillance video when he jumped from
Speaker 3: that roof.
Speaker 1: If we're going to be passing through all those details
Speaker 1: in the coming days and over the weekend. But I
Speaker 1: want to talk about those inscriptions on the casings. What
Speaker 1: can you tell us about those?
Speaker 3: Yeah, one of the inscriptions talked about fascism. Another one
Speaker 3: was Belichow, which was used in Italy and it was
Speaker 3: linked to fascist anti fascist movements. Another one was a
Speaker 3: reference to the furry community.
Speaker 1: These are very online references, it seems.
Speaker 3: Like, very much so, and so part of our reporting
Speaker 3: today is to figure out how online he was. In
Speaker 3: our initial searches, you know, we're not seeing a lot
Speaker 3: of his public profile being meme driven and all that
Speaker 3: kind of stuff, but it'll take sort of that background knowledge.
Speaker 3: Usually twenty four hours after any incident, we get some
Speaker 3: of his non public social media platforms and then get
Speaker 3: to like parse through that. Oftentimes they'll highlight in incidents
Speaker 3: like this, any posts that are germane to trying to
Speaker 3: piece together the ideology that thinking behind all of this.
Speaker 1: More on the next steps of the investigation. When we come.
Speaker 5: Back, I hope you'll permit me a moment just to
Speaker 5: share a few more thoughts about.
Speaker 4: Where we are and how we got here. Social media
Speaker 4: is a cancer on our society right now, and I
Speaker 4: would encourage again, I would encourage people to log off, turnoff,
Speaker 4: touch grass, hug a family member, go out and do
Speaker 4: good in your community.
Speaker 1: On Friday morning, Utah's Republican Governor Spencer Cox spoke at
Speaker 1: a press conference updating the public on the status of
Speaker 1: the investigation and his thoughts on the last thirty six hours.
Speaker 4: I absolutely believe that this is a watershed in American history. Yes,
Speaker 4: the question is what kind of watershed and that chapter
Speaker 4: remains to be written. Is this the end of a
Speaker 4: dark chapter in our history? We're in the beginning.
Speaker 1: I watched the press conference this morning. After the updates
Speaker 1: on the investigation, Governor Spencer Cox went back to the
Speaker 1: podium to share some remarks about what he thinks the
Speaker 1: shooting means, how he's making sense of it. What was
Speaker 1: his message.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the Governor's message was that, like, everybody needs to
Speaker 3: calm down the rhetoric one and you know, I think
Speaker 3: making a very online message, which is to get offline
Speaker 3: and touch grass.
Speaker 1: He literally said touch grass.
Speaker 3: I was surprised by that because I feel like those
Speaker 3: are not exactly the words of the right, So it
Speaker 3: was very interesting to hear that. But to call for
Speaker 3: toning down of the rhetoric because it's so different from
Speaker 3: what the President spoke about when he was on Fox Today.
Speaker 3: But the one thing that was really interesting that the
Speaker 3: Governor said in Thursday's press conference was that our adversaries,
Speaker 3: China and Russia are using this incident to try to
Speaker 3: incite the right against the left.
Speaker 1: And is there evidence of that?
Speaker 3: You know, I have not seen it, but I'm wondering
Speaker 3: if in the intelligence reports that come out there is
Speaker 3: actual evidence of that.
Speaker 1: What can we say about the role of the FBI
Speaker 1: in this investigation so far, because there's been a lot
Speaker 1: of different information coming out over the past few days.
Speaker 1: The FBI announced they had apprehended someone, then released them.
Speaker 1: How typical is this process for an FBI investigation.
Speaker 3: I cover Cash Bettel pretty closely. I talk with his
Speaker 3: office pretty much daily. I think you can knock him
Speaker 3: for those two tweets announcing that someone was in custody.
Speaker 3: He's trying to be a more modern FBI director. And so,
Speaker 3: you know, getting out and being more transparent about when
Speaker 3: they have information was the goal, but that was not
Speaker 3: the outcome. You know, I spoke with the White House
Speaker 3: today about it. They, you know, have all the support
Speaker 3: for him.
Speaker 1: And what do you make of those eleven thousand leads
Speaker 1: that they're still parsing through. What might we learn in
Speaker 1: the days ahead.
Speaker 3: Somebody may have seen him at a gas station, which
Speaker 3: is good because and it helps investigators figure out, okay,
Speaker 3: was a credit card use? Whose credit card was it?
Speaker 3: You have to track every lead down, some of them
Speaker 3: and then probably the bulk of them are incorrect. You know,
Speaker 3: I saw a lot on social media. Social media was
Speaker 3: very involved, as you know, with this case, identifying people
Speaker 3: who had nothing to do with this, or as people
Speaker 3: that may be involved because of how they look and
Speaker 3: all of that kind of stuff. And so the bulk
Speaker 3: of it is that kind of stuff, the open source things.
Speaker 3: But you know, when they do an appeal for information,
Speaker 3: you always find something that you just weren't looking for.
Speaker 3: And that's the reason why they don't let these leads
Speaker 3: go just because they have a suspect.
Speaker 1: Miles says. The shooting Wednesday is part of a marked
Speaker 1: increase in political violence in the US, and it's got
Speaker 1: authorities on high alert.
Speaker 3: You know, and talking with the Secret Service and talking
Speaker 3: with the FBI. It's something that they're tracking closely, and
Speaker 3: you know, It's something that law enforcement around the country
Speaker 3: is going to have to spend a lot of more
Speaker 3: time and money worried about AOC comes to New York.
Speaker 3: When Kamala Harris, now with no secret service, comes to
Speaker 3: New York, she'll have to get lucky protection by NYPD
Speaker 3: intelligence because they just don't want any problems on their watch.
Speaker 3: Will that happen around the country, That's the thing that
Speaker 3: you will have to look out for.
Speaker 1: So are there conversations going on about increased security measures
Speaker 1: for political figures and politicians?
Speaker 3: One hundred percent. Just look last night to Donald Trump
Speaker 3: at the Yankee game with a big bulletproof barrier at
Speaker 3: Yankee Stadium. That barrier didn't exist before, but it sure
Speaker 3: does now. Let's look back to Butler, after Butler, than
Speaker 3: anytime Trump was in public, the big barricade, And the
Speaker 3: only reason they didn't have that is because it's so
Speaker 3: heavy to carry around and you know, carrying these on
Speaker 3: military planes. That is the new normal, at least for now,
Speaker 3: until some of this sort of settles.
Speaker 1: This is the big take from Bloomberg News. I'm Sarah Holder.
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