JD Vance has paid tribute to Charlie Kirk while hosting his show and claimed “left-wing extremism” was a factor in his assassination, while the FBI director said DNA matching the suspect’s was found on evidence at the scene.

The vice president hosted The Charlie Kirk Show from the White House in tribute to the right-wing influencer, who was killed at Utah Valley University on Wednesday.

“The last several days have been extremely hard,” he said, adding that: “Everyone in this building owes something to Charlie… I don’t think I’m alone in saying that Charlie was one of the smartest political operators I’ve ever met.”

During his opening monologue, Mr Vance said “we have to make sure that the killer is brought to justice,” before claiming that left-wing extremism was part of the reason behind Mr Kirk’s death.

“We have to talk about this incredibly destructive movement of left-wing extremism that has grown up over the last few years,” he said, “and I believe is part of the reason why Charlie was killed by an assassin’s bullet.

“We’re going to talk about how to dismantle that and how to bring real unity that can only come when we tell the truth and everybody knows that they can speak their mind without being cut down by a murderer’s gun.”

Later, while speaking with White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, Mr Vance said the Trump administration is trying to stop “festering violence from the far-left from spreading”.

And in his closing remarks, the vice president claimed without evidence that “Liberal billionaires rewarded” and funded outlets that published criticisms of Mr Kirk after his death.

He also claimed, again without evidence: “People on the left are much likelier to defend and celebrate political violence. This is not a ‘both sides’ problem.”

FBI: Suspect linked to evidence at scene

Tyler Robinson, 22, from Washington in Utah, was arrested after a manhunt on suspicion of killing Mr Kirk, and is due to appear in court on Tuesday.

He is being held without bail on suspicion of aggravated murder, a felony discharge of a firearm causing serious bodily injury, and obstruction of justice.

The motive of the shooting is unclear, while experts said engravings left on ammunition at the scene of the shooting were “extremely online”.

But Utah’s Republican governor, Spencer James Cox, previously claimed in an interview with The Wall Street Journal that he had been “deeply indoctrinated with leftist ideology”.

And on Sunday’s NBC News Meet The Press show, Mr Cox said the suspect was in a relationship with his roommate, who was in the process of transitioning – something unnamed officials confirmed to the channel. So far, no official has yet said whether the relationship is relevant to their investigation.

Later on Monday, FBI director Kash Patel told Fox News that evidence found at the scene had been linked to Robinson via DNA sequencing.

He told Fox and Friends that DNA matching Robinson’s was found on a towel allegedly wrapped around a firearm that was discarded in a wooded area near the university – stressing no other evidence from the scene had been processed as of yet.

Mr Patel added that the suspect’s actions were premeditated, and repeated the claim that the killing was based on his political beliefs.

“His family has collectively told investigators that he subscribed to left-wing ideology,” he said, “and even more so in these last couple of years, and he had a text message exchange… in which he claimed that he had an opportunity to take out Charlie Kirk, and he was going to do it because of his hatred for what Charlie stood for.”

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Vance says ‘I owe so much to Charlie’

The vice president and Mr Kirk were close friends, with Mr Vance saying in his first tribute that “he was a true friend” and that “he didn’t just help us win in 2024, he helped us staff the entire government”.

The vice president also said on the Rumble show that “I owe so much to Charlie”, adding that Mr Kirk texted friends that Mr Vance should be the vice presidential nominee for Donald Trump in the run-up to last year’s presidential election.

“It’s such an honour to have people show me that Charlie said ‘we want JD to be the VP nominee’,” he added.

“Do you know what it means to me that such a good guy, such a good friend, such a lion and visionary of our movement was advocating for me?”

The suspect accused of shooting dead right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk was in a romantic relationship with his transgender roommate, Utah’s governor has said.

Tyler Robinson, 22, from Washington in Utah, is due to appear in court on Tuesday after Kirk, 31, was killed during one of his rallies at Utah Valley University on Wednesday.

Robinson is being held without bail on suspicion of aggravated murder, a felony discharge of a firearm causing serious bodily injury, and obstruction of justice.

According to Utah’s Republican governor, Spencer James Cox, he was in a relationship with his roommate – who was in the process of transitioning.

“The roommate was a romantic partner,” he told NBC News’s Meet The Press on Sunday. “We can confirm that that roommate is a boyfriend who is transitioning from male to female.”

He added that the roommate has been “incredibly cooperative” and had “no idea that this [the shooting] was happening”, but that Robinson has not been cooperating with police.

Kirk, who co-founded the conservative student movement Turning Point USA, regularly expressed anti-LGBTQ views.

The motive of the shooting is unclear, and officials have not said whether Robinson’s relationship – or his roommate’s gender – is relevant to their investigation.

Authorities are still trying to get access to cloud storage linked to Robinson, according to NBC.

Mr Cox has previously said the suspect came from a “conservative family, but his ideology was very different than his family”, adding in an interview with The Wall Street Journal that he had been “deeply indoctrinated with leftist ideology”.

According to the governor, his relatives have said Robinson was critical of Kirk, saying he was “full of hate and spreading hate” and “talked about why he didn’t like him and the viewpoints that he had”.

The 22-year-old is due to be charged when he makes his first court appearance on Tuesday, according to the Utah County attorney’s office.

He was in his third year of an electrical apprenticeship programme at Dixie Technical College in St George, Utah, NBC reported.

A spokesperson for Utah Valley University, where Kirk was speaking when he was shot in the neck, said Robinson studied there for one semester in 2021.

Kristin Schwiermann, a neighbour of his family’s, described him as “smart” and “quiet”, and added that he “never caused any problems”.

Memorial to be held at Super Bowl venue

It was revealed on Sunday that a memorial to Kirk will be held at the stadium where the 2023 US Super Bowl was held.

State Farm Stadium, just outside of Phoenix, Arizona, is home to the American football team the Arizona Cardinals and can hold 60,000 people.

President Donald Trump has said he plans to attend and will posthumously award Kirk with the highest US civilian honour – the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Kirk, who hosted his own self-titled podcast, had millions of followers on social media.

He was a regular visitor at the White House and has been credited with the increase in young men voting for Mr Trump at the 2024 presidential election.

Experts have described engravings left on ammunition at the scene of the Charlie Kirk shooting as “extremely online” – so what do the words and symbols actually mean?

Authorities said on Friday that the suspect accused of fatally shooting the Conservative activist left behind bullet casings featuring references to fascism, video games and internet memes.

To those who aren’t chronically online, the messages may appear to be total gibberish. But for others, specifically gamers, many of the meanings will have immediately been clear.

Here’s what each of the casings reference – and why experts have cautioned against using them to make assumptions about the suspect’s political leanings.

1. ‘notices, bulges, OWO, what’s this?’

This writing appears to reference a meme about the furry subculture, which centres on an interest in anthropomorphic animal characters.

Within the furry community, OwO is an emoticon of a cute face (with the Os as the eyes and the w as a cute mouth or nose) and used as a way of flirting – but outside the community, it is often used in a mocking way, or as part of trolling.

It’s incredibly common for phrases used by people who are “extremely online” – which essentially means highly engaged in online culture – to have double or multiple meanings.

For this reason, experts have cautioned against trying to interpret messages such as these engravings to determine an attacker’s political leanings or motive.

Jamie Cohen, an assistant professor of media studies who studies memes at Queens College in New York, said: “Oftentimes this extremely online disguise is meant to be doublespeak.”

Speaking to Sky News’ US partner NBC News, he continued: “It’s meant specifically for someone like me to dive into what they would call meme culture and declare them something so that they get more press.

“So it could just be another bait and switch for researchers who are falling into the same trap that they are designing for more viral exposure.”

2. ‘Hey, fascist! Catch ↑ → ↓↓↓’

When asked by Sky News’ US correspondent James Matthews what the messages on the casings meant, Utah governor Spencer Cox said the writing referring to a fascist “speaks for itself”.

The second half of the inscription – the directional arrows – were immediately identified by some gamers.

Helldivers 2 players have pointed out that the arrow sequence is the code used to summon a 500kg bomb in the 2024 game – which itself has been interpreted as a satire of fascism.

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3. ‘Oh bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao ciao ciao’

Bella Ciao is a classic Italian song that became a popular anti-fascism anthem during Benito Mussolini’s dictatorship.

It has won renewed popularity in recent years thanks, in part, to featuring multiple times in Netflix’s Spanish television series Money Heist.

A popular remix of Bella Ciao has hit more than 260 million streams on Spotify worldwide and it’s become a favourite on TikTok, as well as within the gaming community.

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4. ‘If you read this, you are gay lmao’

This juvenile insult, using the well-known abbreviation for ‘laughing my ass off’, is a common ‘gotcha’ phrase and simply appears to mock investigators.

The messages, another expert has said, make one thing clear – the suspect was likely seeking fame.

Lindsay Hahn, a University at Buffalo associate professor who researches ideological extremism and the ways in which perpetrators of violence justify their actions, said the messages do not necessarily indicate a specific ideology.

“But what they do indicate, is that the shooter wanted to get a message across and therefore be talked about online,” she told NBC.

“It sort of seems like these messages, at the very minimum, were selected because he knew they were going to be talked about.”