Law enforcement officials arrested the man accused of shooting and killing conservative activist Charlie Kirk in Utah on Friday after a frantic 33-hour manhunt. The suspect’s fate now hinges on whether the state pursues capital charges as political pressure mounts.

Prosecutors have not yet filed charges against Tyler Robinson, the 22-year-old accused of killing Kirk after driving nearly four hours to Utah Valley University, where the longtime Trump ally was speaking. It also remains unclear whether they will seek the death penalty, a step publicly urged by both President Donald Trump and Utah Gov. Spencer Cox. 

At a Friday news conference, Cox said investigators used surveillance footage from the stadium and tips from Robinson’s family and friends to identify him before the arrest. He also said charges would be filed ‘soon.’ 

‘We got him,’ Cox said. 

The governor vowed that Robinson would be ‘held accountable’ for Kirk’s death, which he called a ‘political assassination.’

‘This is certainly about the tragic death, assassination, political assassination of Charlie Kirk, but it is also much bigger than an attack on an individual,’ Cox said. ‘It is an attack on all of us. It is an attack on the American experiment.’ 

Kirk’s graphic death and the scant public information revealed in its wake have left the nation reeling and revived heated debate about political violence in the U.S. It’s also sparked a litany of questions about how prosecutors will bring the case against Robinson, with Utah law and years of precedent making capital punishment difficult to pursue. 

Robinson is being held at Utah County Jail. A probable cause affidavit reviewed by Fox News Digital lists potential charges including aggravated murder, felony discharge of a firearm causing serious injury and obstruction of justice.

Utah law allows prosecutors to seek the death penalty only in cases where an individual is charged with ‘aggravated murder’ — or a murder that knowingly ‘created a great risk of death’ to another person besides the victim or defendant. The offense is listed in the affidavit, which could open the door for prosecutors to seek the death penalty. 

The clock is ticking: Utah law requires state prosecutors to file a specific notice of intent within 60 days after an individual is arraigned on aggravated murder charges to notify the court and defense attorneys that they plan to try the case as a capital felony. Doing so sets into motion a complex legal process — including a two-part, or bifurcated trial, to decide both guilt and whether the defendant should receive capital punishment. 

Otherwise, the case is tried under charges of a ‘noncapitalist fist-degree penalty,’ eligible for a maximum sentence of life in prison without parole. 

Cox and Trump both suggested in interviews earlier this week that the state should seek the death penalty against Kirk’s killer, even before Robinson was named as a suspect. 

‘I hope he gets the death penalty,’ Trump said Friday morning on ‘Fox & Friends,’ calling Kirk ‘the finest person.’ 

The Beehive State is one of 27 states that still allows the death penalty, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. It’s also one of just five states where execution by firing squad remains legal.

Even so, capital punishment cases are rarely pursued in Utah. The state has carried out only two executions in the past 20 years, and inmates spend an average of 34 years on death row.

Only four men are currently on death row in Utah, each for ‘decades,’ according to KUTV.  

For Robinson, whose criminal trial will draw national attention, particularly from the president and his allies, it’s still far too early to predict the outcome. 

Already, Robinson’s case has fueled intense speculation — even as some lawmakers urged calm.

‘History will dictate if this is a turning point for our country,’ Cox said, ‘but every single one of us gets to choose right now if this is a turning point for us.’ 

When President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, it took more than a decade before Americans saw the infamous Zapruder film.

Today, the killing of conservative firebrand Charlie Kirk can be replayed in dozens of high-definition clips across social media, reshaping how the nation confronts political violence in real time.

‘You’ll never have an assassination again that we don’t have footage of,’ Tevi Troy, a presidential historian and former secretary of Health and Human Services under the Bush administration, told Fox News Digital. 

‘I have an image in my head of what Lincoln’s assassination might have looked like, but every assassination since the Kennedy era, or even assassination attempts, there’s generally going to be footage about it now, and that’s just a very difficult thing.’

The Zapruder footage of Kennedy’s assassination remained largely unseen by the public until 1975, when it aired on national television more than a decade after his death. Its grainy frames shocked viewers. Americans, at the time, were ‘much more dependent on what the caretakers of the culture would put on TV,’ Troy said, and if a broadcast was missed, there was often no second chance to see it. 

‘The gatekeepers controlled what you saw.’

In the minutes after Kirk was shot in the neck on his ‘American Comeback Tour’ at the Utah Valley University on Wednesday, graphic video clips captured by bystanders using phones flooded social platforms like X, Facebook, TikTok, Instagram and YouTube. 

Traditional outlets held back from airing the moment of impact, but social media users shared multiple angles — including real-time replays and slowed-down segments — many without content warnings or editing.

‘Desensitizing is the right word. … It’s not good for you,’ Troy said when asked what the impact of such high-speed graphic footage could do to the public. 

‘It’s not good for your soul. It’s not a question of not being available. It is available. Then you have to make an effort not to see it,’ he said.

Troy noted that in the immediate aftermath of Kirk’s killing, some voices on the left appeared to rationalize or downplay the violence, while others rushed to frame the suspect’s background in ways that minimized political fallout for their side. He called the reaction ‘a ghoulish exercise.’

‘There’s a horrible tragedy where this person who just wants to have political conversations was murdered with three young kids,’ Troy said. ‘But this is where we are today. If there is political violence, they want to make sure it’s framed in such a way that it doesn’t bring their side down.’

Kirk, 31, was killed Wednesday by suspected shooter Tyler Robinson while answering a question at Utah Valley University. He leaves behind his wife and two children, ages one and three. 

Lawmakers are divided on whether to tone down heated rhetoric after conservative activist Charlie Kirk was shot and killed at Utah Valley University on Wednesday, reigniting debate over the role fiery language plays in America’s surge of political violence.

Political violence has been a steady constant in recent years, including a pair of assassination attempts against President Donald Trump in 2024 and the slaying of a Democratic state lawmaker in Minnesota earlier this year.

Kirk’s death has again reignited the discussion on what role political rhetoric, be it inside the walls of Congress or around the country, has to play in political violence in the U.S.

‘This is on all of us, right?’ Rep. Jared Moskowitz, D-Fla., told Fox News Digital. ‘I mean, you know, everyone’s been ramping up the rhetoric, right?

‘If the left is going to blame the right, and the right is going to blame the left, and we’re going to continue to say ‘It’s your fault,’ and we’re not collectively going to try to bring it down together, then this cycle is just going to continue to go on.’

And Republican leaders are hoping to turn the temperature down in Congress in the wake of Kirk’s death.

‘I’m trying to turn the temperature down around here,’ House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said. ‘I always do that. I’ve been very consistent.’

Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso, R-Wyo., told Fox News Digital he believed reining in hostile or divisive rhetoric is ‘always a conversation with people in leadership.’

‘And it should be in both parties to make sure that you don’t incite this kind of an activity,’ he said.  ‘And you just don’t know somebody, and based on their mental health, what kind of activity they may — what role that may play in this. We still don’t know what’s happened here.’

Some lawmakers fear that the escalation in political violence has America returning to the violent and chaotic time of the 1960s, which saw the assassinations of civil rights leaders Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Medgar Evers, John F. Kennedy and his brother and presidential hopeful Robert F. Kennedy, among others.

‘The message was love and not violence,’ Rep. Glenn Ivey, D-Md., said of the turmoil in the 1960s. ‘So, you know, returning to a message like that could be good, but it didn’t change the outcome of the assassinations during that era. So, I don’t know that there’s an easy answer.’

Still, emotions were running high on the Hill in the days following the shooting at Utah Valley University, which resulted in a two-day manhunt and the eventual arrest of 22-year-old Tyler Robinson.

When asked how much of a role rhetoric had to play in Kirk’s slaying, Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C., said, ‘A lot.’

‘You say you’re a Nazi and a fascist and a threat to democracy, how does that help? If you disagree on issues, that’s one thing, but [you’re] not saying that,’ Norman said. ‘The left is a poster child.’

Sen. Bernie Moreno, R-Ohio, told Fox News Digital he had known Kirk for a decade and noted that the late founder of Turning Point USA ‘stood for the open exchange of ideas.’

‘I think what we have to learn from that is that we need to go back to the principles that built this country, which is that it is actually a positive and healthy thing to debate ideas,’ Moreno said. ‘We don’t have to be mad at each other because we have a different point of view, let alone escalate the violence.’

But Moreno noted that for the last decade, Trump and Republicans like himself have been compared to Adolf Hitler, Nazi sympathizers and fascists, ‘which the Democrats do every single day.’

‘What’s the problem?’ Moreno said. ‘Like, you signed up for politics, you got to be able to have a thick skin. It’s not about that. It’s about that you send a message to crazy people, that says, ‘You’re actually doing a good deed if you kill somebody who would otherwise be a Nazi and a fascist who will end our democracy.”

Trump put the blame, in part, on Democrats in an address to the nation on Wednesday night, where he charged that ‘those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and the world’s worst mass murderers and criminals.’

He repeated that sentiment during an appearance on ‘Fox & Friends’ Friday morning when he was asked about radical elements on the conservative side of the aisle.

‘I’ll tell you something that’s gonna get me in trouble, but I couldn’t care less,’ Trump said. ‘The radicals on the right oftentimes are radical because they don’t want to see crime. The radicals on the left are the problem.’

When asked for his response to Trump’s address, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said, ‘This is a time that all Americans should come together and feel and mourn what happened.

‘Violence affects so many different people, so many different political persuasions,’ he said. ‘It is an infliction on America, and coming together is what we ought to be doing, not pointing fingers to blame.’

Former White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told House investigators that she did not see a change in former President Joe Biden’s competency over several years, but she acknowledged that he was ‘not the same speaker he was when she met him.’

Jean-Pierre was the latest in a string of former Biden White House officials to be interviewed by House Oversight Committee investigators over an alleged cover-up of the ex-president’s mental acuity.

She did not speak to reporters on her way into the interview just off Capitol Hill, nor did she speak after the nearly five-hour, closed-door transcribed interview.

But a source familiar with the interview shared with Fox News Digital that Jean-Pierre told investigators that while working for Biden in various capacities from 2009 to 2025, ‘she did not see a change in President Biden’s competency.’

‘She did acknowledge President Biden is not the same speaker he was when she met him,’ the source noted.  ‘She does not know why his speaking changed and never asked him.’

Jean-Pierre, who is one of the most high-profile figures from the Biden administration to appear before the committee, was among those who publicly defended Biden after his June 2024 debate against then-presidential candidate Donald Trump.

During the debate, Jean-Pierre said she was told by ‘senior staff that President Biden had a cold,’ the source said.

Shortly after the debate, she told reporters at a press briefing in early July that Biden was ‘as sharp as ever.’

Jean-Pierre told investigators that talking points were entered into her binder for press briefings by ‘various advisors,’ but specifically ones related to Biden’s health and mental acuity ‘were handled exclusively at the senior level.’

She cited the ‘cheap fakes’ talking point, which at the time, Jean-Pierre charged were people online manipulating videos of Biden to mislead the public on his health and cognitive ability. She told investigators that point in particular ‘appeared as a talking point in her binder, but she does not know specifically who added it.’

She also said that she never spoke with anyone in the White House ‘personally concerned about President Biden’s health.’

Jean-Pierre began her role as White House press secretary in 2022, shortly after former White House press secretary Jen Psaki left the position, and she stayed on until the end of Biden’s presidency in January.

But her relationship with Biden-world became estranged after her departure from the Democratic Party earlier this year, which was announced in a press release for her forthcoming book, ‘Independent: A Look Inside a Broken White House, Outside the Party Lines.’

Jean-Pierre’s appearance before investigators came as House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer, R-Ky., said earlier this week that his panel’s ongoing probe into Biden’s use of an autopen was coming to its conclusion.

The focus in particular was whether top officials engaged in a cover-up of Biden’s mental and physical state in the White House, and whether any executive actions or a litany of pardons were approved via autopen without the then-president’s full awareness.

Comer said heading into the hearing that one of the questions at the top of his mind were whether ‘these pardons and executive orders [are] legal?’

‘I don’t think anyone’s going to argue that the process that was used for these autopens is the ideal process,’ Comer said. ‘And what we’ve seen with the emails that have surfaced in the last week — even the Merrick Garland Department of Justice was very concerned about how this administration was using the autopen.’

‘When people in the Department of Justice email people who they believe were the ones making the decisions on the autopen,’ he continued. ‘And asked the question via email from the Department of Justice, ‘Does the president even know who they just pardoned?’ I mean, that’s very concerning.’ 

Fox News Digital reached out to Jean-Pierre’s lawyers and Biden’s office but did not immediately receive a response.