Trump's Trials - What's next in the investigation into Charlie Kirk's assassination

Episode Date: September 15, 2025

NPR's Michel Martin asks former FBI counterterrorism analyst Javed Ali about the next steps in the investigation into Charlie Kirk's assassination.Support NPR and hear every episode of Trump's Terms��sponsor-free with NPR+. Sign up at plus.npr.org.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

I'm Scott Detrow, and this is Trump's Terms from NPR. We're going to be doing all sorts of things. Nobody ever thought was even possible. President Trump has brought back string to the White House. We can't just ignore the president's desires. This will be an entirely different country in a short period of time. Every episode, we bring you one of NPR's latest stories about the 47th president and how he is trying to remake the federal government.

Today's story starts right after this. Shortwave thinks of science as an invisible force, showing up in your everyday life. Powering the food you eat, the medicine you use, the tech in your pocket. Science is approachable because it's already part of your life. Come explore these connections on the Shortwave podcast from NPR. I'm Michelle Martin. We wanted to hear more about where the investigations of Charlie Cook's murder goes from here. So we've called Javette Ali.

He's a former FBI counterterrorism analyst who now teaches courses on counterterrorism and national security law and policy at the University of Michigan. Good morning, Professor. Thank you so much for joining us. Michelle, thanks for having me this morning. You know, when something happens like this, it's so shocking and upsetting, the obvious question is why. So a lot of people are looking at things that were etched into bullet casings that were recovered at the scene. How typical is it to find evidence like this? And what, if anything, does it tell us?

So, Michelle, the Y part of this event is terrible event and similar types of attacks, this is one of the most difficult aspects for investigators and analysts to try to figure out. And as you mentioned already, there may be some potential clues or insights like the inscriptions on the bullet casing, but that may not be the totality that explains the attack in this case. And there could be, there's always a number of factors that drives an individual to conduct an attack like this may not even be a shooting per se. And trying to figure that combination of factors out, it just takes a significant amount of time. You know, Spencer Cox, the governor of Utah said in several television interviews over the weekend that the suspect lived with a partner who is making a gender transition. Is that relevant to investigators? Again, it may be something they're looking at, but was that something that in Robinson's mind was a factor that then led him

to commit the attack? Only Robinson can answer that question. And if he's not cooperating, it's going to be difficult. So if that type of issue is something that could have been a mobilizing factor for the attack, then the investigators are going to have to pour through all these different streams of evidence to look at to figure out if that was a, you know, a factor, or there could be 10 other ones. It's just very, very early right now in the stage. So the FBI has a term called nihilistic violent extremism, and I understand from you that this isn't a term that even existed some few years ago. What does that mean? And is it relevant to the issue we're talking about now? Yeah, that's another interesting development on the FBI side.

So over the years, there have been different terms that have been developed in the intelligence community and within the FBI as part of that to help describe the types of threats we were seeing inside the country, especially from what we would call lone offenders. One of them going back almost 15 years ago was something called homegrown violent extremists. And that was describing people who were inspired by the first al-Qaeda and then ISIS ideology, sort of using that jihadist belief to then go out and conduct attacks here. What may be occurring now is a term like the FBI apparently developed, this nihilistic violence that doesn't necessarily fit into a single label, but there's a combination of ideological issues that are now in this basket called nihilistic

violence, and that potentially could also be where Robinson lands from a motivation standpoint, but again, very early. And you say that because we don't necessarily know that he doesn't seem to be affiliated with some group. There doesn't seem to be some clear sort of ideological patterns. that we are aware of, and that's what makes it this nihilistic violence? Right, right. People sort of conducting these very violent and terrible attacks on the name of some undetermined belief system, but it's not driven by a particular religion or sort of racial animus or ethnic animus. There are other categories of threats. I described one, that homegrown

violent extremist one. There's another term the FBI had come up with the intelligence community racially moated violent extremism. There's been anti-government extremism. So these different categories of fit under this taxonomy, but this nihilistic violence, to me, seems newer and different and harder to describe, too. From the outside looking in now, having not been in government since 2018, I can't tell you all the different sort of components that the FBI has used to come up with this nihilistic violence term. You know, the president keeps focusing on the radical left, but the fact is that there have been attacks on people from both political parties, violent, sometimes fatal attacks, and often by lone gunmen with little to no prior interaction with authorities,

which would seem to be very difficult to guard against. So we only have a little bit of time left, and obviously this is a broader conversation, but what is the way forward here? So this pattern or wave that I've been calling of recent political violence, yeah, most of the offenders are using guns to carry out these attacks, but there are. their motivation is across this ideological spectrum. And so it's not just coming from one particular category. But what I'm asking you is, is there any way to guard against something like this? That's what I'm asking you. Well, yeah, this is the significant challenge for FBI and law enforcement. How do you get upstream with individuals who are not part of formal groups? They're not part of

networks. They're operating by themselves. They have access to weapons. And they haven't committed a crime. That's Javid Ali. He's an associate professor at the University of Michigan and a former FBI counterterrorism analyst. Professor Raleigh, thank you so much for joining us. All right. Thank you, Michelle. Before we wrap up, a reminder, you can find more coverage of the Trump administration on the NPR Politics Podcast, where you can hear NPR's political reporters break down the

day's biggest political news with new episodes every weekday afternoon. And thanks, as always, to our NPR Plus supporters who hear every episode of the show without sponsor messages. You can learn more at plus.npr.org. I'm Scott Detrow. Thank for listening to Trump's terms from NPR.