Trump says a person is in custody linked to Charlie Kirk manhunt

Trump announced in an interview on Fox News this morning that law enforcement have the suspect in the Kirk shooting in custody.

“I think, with a high degree of certainty, we have him — in custody … everyone did a great job we worked with the local police, the governor, everybody did a great job,” he said.

“I hope that he was going to be found guilty, I would imagine, and I hope he gets the death penalty. What he did, Charlie Kirk, was the finest person but he didn’t deserve this. He worked so hard and so well. Everybody liked him. I’ve been watching even the left is having a hard time.”

“Essentially, somebody that was very close to him turned him in,” Trump said.

Trump also added some doubt to his statement, saying: “I’m always subject to be corrected … I’m just giving you based on what I’m hearing.”

The person has not been named and law enforcement officials have yet to formally announce any arrest.

State and federal officials are hosting a news conference at 9:00 a.m. ET to discuss the ongoing manhunt for the suspect they believe shot and killed Charlie Kirk.

Expected speakers are: Gov. Spencer J. Cox; FBI Director Kash Patel; Beau Mason, Commissioner of the Utah Department of Public Safety; and FBI Special Agent in Charge Robert Bohls.

Local police arrested a Utah man who snuck into the crime scene at Utah Valley University yesterday to take pictures of and film the area, according to a probable cause affidavit.

The man, Russel Kennington of Pleasant Grove, was charged with criminal trespass and obstruction of justice in the first degree.

According to the probable cause affidavit, a man in a lab coat was seen inside the crime scene, which was secured and roped off with indicators that no one should cross. The man had crossed the crime scene tape anyway and was using his phone to take photos and videos of the evidence at the scene.

After attempting to flee police, the man identified himself and was detained in handcuffs, the affidavit said. He told police he was there because he was “reminiscing” and wanted to document the scene.

He admitted he knew he was not supposed to cross the yellow crime scene tape but did so anyway in order to capture photos of himself and of the crime scene.

Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy reflected on the death of Charlie Kirk and his relationship with the late conservative activist and described him as a keen debater and talented activist.

Less than a week before he was killed, Kirk was in Asia spreading his conservative and anti-immigration message, making stops in South Korea and Japan, where he urged people to have more children and embrace religion.

“Their country is totally under attack,” he said of South Korea on his podcast this week after returning from his trip. “The same things that we have been fighting for here, whether it be lawfare in South Korea or mass migration in Japan — this is a worldwide phenomenon.”

There is a receptive audience for messages such as Kirk’s in South Korea and Japan, both East Asian democracies and U.S. allies with highly monoethnic populations, falling birth rates and growing far-right movements.

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Residents of Orem, Utah, describe the police presence in their town after the fatal shooting of conservative activist Charlie Kirk during an event at a nearby college campus. Authorities say the gunman fled the scene into a neighborhood, where a bolt-action rifle was found in a wooded area.

For years, Charlie Kirk’s appearances at college campuses were major events — drawing thousands of students and attracting protesters, often staged to maximize his interaction with the crowds of young conservatives he inspired.

And each event came with unique security risks, which campuses around the country handled case by case, according to interviews with Kirk’s former security chief and organizers at several colleges who spoke to NBC News.

Kirk’s assassination Wednesday is raising questions about whether more should have been done at Utah Valley University, in Orem, where roughly 3,000 people came to hear the conservative activist speak.

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Video taken moments after Charlie Kirk was fatally shot at an event in Utah appears to show a figure running across a rooftop opposite to where the conservative activist was sitting.

Charlie Kirk was killed on the first day of a speaking tour across university campuses, dubbed The American Comeback. At least one of the colleges on the tour, Virginia Tech, says it has not yet canceled the event in light of Wednesday’s shooting.

College spokesperson Mark Owczarski told NBC News last night that the scheduled Turning Point event there Sept. 24 could still take place.

“The university’s focus has been directed on caring for those students who have been affected or impacted by those events. When the time is right, we’ll work with students to help them figure out what they may wish to do next. Their immediate needs come first, the logistics of a future event will follow,” he said in a statement.

Kirk planned to host a “prove me wrong table” format event at Virginia Tech where he would take questions from the crowd, just as he did in Utah on Wednesday when he was fatally shot.

The other colleges scheduled to host events on the tour have not yet responded to requests for comment.

Vice President JD Vance and second lady Usha Vance accompanied Charlie Kirk’s family to Phoenix with Kirk’s casket aboard Air Force Two. Kirk’s casket was transported to a mortuary.

Vance was a close friend of Kirk’s and credits him with playing a key role in his own political career and the electoral success of Trump.

Graphic videos of Kirk’s assassination continued to spread across social media platforms today, with many companies choosing to put the footage behind content warnings rather than taking it down entirely.

On YouTube and Meta, videos that showed the moment Kirk was hit by the bullet required users to acknowledge that they were willing to see sensitive content.

On other platforms, including X and TikTok, many of the videos remained easily accessible without any warning.

The spread of videos depicting violent incidents, like shootings, has been a perennial issue for social media platforms, complicated in recent years by a shift away from aggressive, human-based moderation. Most companies still have policies either banning or limiting the spread of gory videos.

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Following Charlie Kirk’s assassination, President Donald Trump may be uniquely positioned to tamp down the anger that suffuses American politics and lead a movement to bind up a bitterly divided country if he chooses.

But, political strategists and officials from both parties told NBC News, that’s not the path Trump appears to be taking.

Trump has been both a target of assassination attempts and a fount of vitriolic rhetoric. He knows firsthand the passions that drive American voters and, were he to renounce partisan attacks and call on others in both parties to do the same, that gesture could potentially send a healing message.

With the killer still at large and a manhunt underway, Trump, in his video response, laid blame on familiar foils. In a message from the Oval Office Wednesday, he singled out the “radical left” and made no mention of cases in which Democratic elected officials in Minnesota and Pennsylvania were targets of violent attacks.

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