Chat Room Users In Charlie Kirk Assassination May Not Face Charges
Federal investigators are combing through the online footprint of Tyler Robinson, the 22-year-old charged with assassinating Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk, but legal experts say members of a Discord group where Robinson confessed are unlikely to face criminal charges without evidence of direct involvement.
Just hours before his arrest, Robinson allegedly admitted in the group chat: “Hey guys, I have bad news for you all… It was me at UVU yesterday… I’m sorry for all of this.”
FBI Director Kash Patel confirmed the bureau is reviewing the chatroom, but pushed back against the idea that agents can instantly track everyone involved.
“We have to go out there with search warrants so that if prosecutors want to later use this evidence, it’s not tainted by being illegally obtained,” Patel explained. “There are scores of individuals that are going to be spoken to.”
Patel said investigators are reaching out to Robinson’s family, friends, and associates to better understand his ideology and motives. “On top of that, unfortunately, it has been leaked that there was a Discord chat… What we’re doing – and we’ve already done – is serve legal process, not just on Discord, so that the information we gathered is sustained and held in an evidentiary posture.”
Pressed by Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., about reports of 20 other users in the chat, Patel responded: “It’s a lot more than that, and we’re running them all down.”
Still, legal scholars say simply reading Robinson’s confession online is not a crime.
“It’s not a crime to see people confessing to a crime. It’s not [a] crime to do nothing about that,” said Eugene Volokh, Professor Emeritus at UCLA Law School and Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford. “You can see or hear someone say, ‘yes, I murdered someone,’ and just ignore it. It’s just not illegal as a general matter.”
Former federal prosecutor Andy McCarthy told Fox & Friends that users in the chat are more likely to be witnesses than defendants.
“Looking at these particular chats, it looks to me like… this is kind of after-the-fact where the guy admits to the crime and says in fact that he’s made arrangements to surrender,” McCarthy said. “I would be looking at them as witnesses that might help me in terms of proving what this guy’s state of mind was in the days leading up to the murder.”
Both McCarthy and Volokh noted that while people who receive explicit threats may sometimes be legally obligated to notify authorities, no such obligation appears to apply here.
“There’s got to be something beyond simply hearing the confession and simply doing nothing,” Volokh concluded.