Donald Trump said on Friday morning that it was his understanding that a suspect has been arrested for the fatal shooting of rightwing activist Charlie Kirk on Wednesday at an event Utah Valley University.
The US president in a TV interview on Friday morning said he had been informed moments before going on air of an arrest.
“I think with a high degree of certainty we have him in custody,” Trump said in a live studio interview with the Fox & Friends morning program.
The intense hunt for Kirk’s killer had entered day three, as the FBI faced scrutiny for its response to the attack and officials had pleaded with the public for help.
More details were awaited after Trump’s surprise announcement just after 8am ET.
More than 24 hours after Kirk was shot while speaking in front of thousands of people at a Utah university, the state’s governor, appearing alongside FBI director Kash Patel and other officials, had said “we need as much help as we can possibly get.”
Patel and the FBI deputy director, Dan Bongino, had chewed out FBI agents on a Thursday conference call, according to the New York Times. This followed Patel himself fumbling early announcements in the case, saying on social media on Wednesday that “the subject for the horrific shooting today that took the life of Charlie Kirk is now in custody” – before that unnamed person was released hours later without charges and the urgent search for the actual perpetrator resumed.
Related: A quiet Utah town reckons with Charlie Kirk’s shooting: ‘Nothing like this has happened here’
Investigators and the public had been poring over newly released video showed a person wearing a hat, sunglasses and a long sleeve black shirt running across a roof, climbing off the edge of the building and dropping to the ground. The suspect is believed to have fled into the local neighbourhood after firing the one shot and has not yet been identified.
It was unclear on Friday morning if this was the person whom the president said had been apprehended.
Investigators had said they had obtained clues, including a palm print, a shoe impression and a high-powered hunting rifle found in a wooded area along the path the shooter fled. But they had not named a suspect or cited a motive in the killing.
The FBI had offered up to $100,000 for information leading to the identification and arrest of the person.
The death of Kirk – a close ally of Trump – has drawn renewed attention to the escalating threat of political violence in the United States which, in the last several years, has cut across the ideological spectrum. The assassination drew bipartisan condemnation from political leaders.
Cox said on Thursday, “there is a tremendous amount of disinformation” online.
“Our adversaries want violence,” Cox said. “We have bots from Russia, China, all over the world that are trying to instil disinformation and encourage violence. I would encourage you to ignore those, to turn off those streams.”
Cox also pledged to find the killer and pursue the death penalty.
Kirk’s casket arrived in his home state of Arizona aboard Air Force Two on Thursday evening, accompanied by JD Vance. The vice-president’s wife, Usha, stepped off the plane with Kirk’s widow, Erika.
Vance helped carry Kirk’s casket with a group of uniformed service members as it was loaded on to the plane. Kirk’s conservative youth organisation, Turning Point USA, was based in Phoenix.
“So much of the success we’ve had in this administration traces directly to Charlie’s ability to organize and convene,” Vance wrote on social media, referencing Kirk’s role in getting Donald Trump elected last year. “He didn’t just help us win in 2024, he helped us staff the entire government.”
Kirk was a provocateur and a divisive figure who is credited with helping bring young people, especially men, into the US president’s Make America Great Again (Maga) movement.
In a statement on Thursday, TPUSA wrote: “All of us have lost a leader, a mentor, and a friend. Above all, our hearts are with Erika and their two children. Charlie was the ideal husband and the perfect father. Above all else, we ask you to pray for the Kirks after the incomprehensible loss they have suffered.”
Kirk’s killing drew bipartisan condemnation of the rise in political violence in the US.
Trump, who said he would award the Medal of Freedom posthumously to Kirk, spoke to Kirk’s wife on Thursday.
In a video address from the Oval Office on Wednesday night, Trump had said: “My administration will find each and every one of those who contributed to this atrocity and to other political violence, including the organizations that fund it and support it,” Trump said.
One day after his inflammatory address, blaming “the radical left” for Kirk’s death, Trump appeared to strike a more conciliatory tone, agreeing with a suggestion from a reporter that his supporters should not respond with violence.
The White House quickly posted the exchange on social media, perhaps hoping to tamp down anger that has already spilled into violence, with the beating of a critic of Kirk in Boise, Idaho, during a vigil on Wednesday night.
Don Bacon, a Republican from Nebraska who is retiring after this term, told NBC News that he wished Trump would unite the country after the shooting, “but he’s a populist, and populists dwell on anger”.
“I have to remind people, we had Democrats killed in Minnesota too, right?” Bacon added, in reference to the murder of Minnesota’s former house speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, in June by a gunman with a hitlist of 45 people, all Democrats.
With Reuters and the Associated Press
