FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino told Newsmax on Monday that investigators have uncovered "significant developments" suggesting a broader network of people might have been involved in the assassination of conservative icon Charlie Kirk.
Bongino told "Rob Schmitt Tonight" the bureau is working to determine whether online chatter that surfaced around the time of Kirk's murder indicates foreknowledge of the plot. He cautioned that investigators are still sorting out a timeline.
"The only question is the timeline that other people knew about the incident," Bongino said. "Did they know before? Did they know afterward? … When you read some of the traffic, it's unclear if that message was received before or after."
Bongino confirmed much of the evidence came from the chat platform Discord, where suspected gunman Tyler Robinson, 22, was active.
"It is not a safe harbor to go on a platform and say, 'I can threaten to kill or harass someone,'" Bongino said. "We'll go anywhere to look for you if we believe you committed a crime."
Bongino stressed the investigation is in its early stages.
"This is not the end of the investigation," he said. "It's not even the end of the beginning. … We are investigating a potential broader network of people who may have known."
Pressed on whether the "developments" involved other individuals, Bongino acknowledged that was the case but said he had to tread carefully.
"That's an accurate assessment," he said. "My goal in coming on your show, Rob, is I and [FBI Director] Kash Patel obviously want to be transparent and get out into the public. We don't want an information vacuum which can be filled by others. What we can get out there we fully intend on doing, but we still have to respect process in the investigation."
Bongino also addressed the Trump administration's nationwide anti-crime push, launched five months ago in coordination with the Department of Justice. The campaign has flooded federal resources into cities hindered by gang violence, carjackings, and narcotics trafficking.
"People can say, 'Stay out of our cities,' all they want, but their cities are in the United States of America," Bongino said. "We have a field office presence in just about every major city."
The FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration, and local police have worked jointly on what Bongino described as a "baseball card" system, targeting fugitives and violent offenders one by one. He said recent declines in crime rates in cities such as Chicago, Los Angeles, and Memphis, Tennessee, are directly tied to the federal surge, despite Democrat leaders' claims of success on their own.
Bongino's comments came after President Donald Trump and senior adviser Stephen Miller urged an expansive federal response to what they described as organized networks fueling political violence. Miller went viral earlier Monday for warning about the growing faction of extremists celebrating Kirk's murder online.
"We're not the Federal Bureau of Fairy Tales," he said. "We're the Federal Bureau of Investigation. If you break the law and threaten to kill or in fact violently attack someone … you don't get a pass because you disagreed with his politics."
He emphasized that the bureau intends to keep the public informed while safeguarding the integrity of the case.
"What we can get out there we fully intend on doing," Bongino said. "We don't want an information vacuum that can be filled by others."
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