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Trump On Kirk Suspect: "I Think We Have Him"; Soon: FBI Update After Trump Says Kirk Shooting Suspect In Custody. Aired 9:30-10a ET

Aired September 12, 2025 - 09:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: In custody the suspected killer of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.

[09:30:03]

CNN also has reporting that they do have a suspect in custody being questioned about this right now.

Let's play for you just as we are standing by for this press conference to start really, at any point, what we heard from President Trump that this announcement, this breaking news this morning. Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I think with a high degree of certainty, we have him in custody, right, in custody. Everyone did a great job. We worked with the local police, the governor, everybody did a great job.

You know, getting somebody that you start off with absolutely nothing. We started off with the clip that made him look like an ant. That was almost useless. We just saw there was somebody up there.

And so much work has been done over the last two and a half days. You know, it's amazing actually, when you start off with that and then, all of a sudden, you -- you get lucky or talent or whatever it is. But yeah, we're -- I think we're in great shape. He's in custody.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right. That's the president saying he's in custody.

All right. The map you're looking at right now is pretty telling as well. You can see right there Orem, Utah, highlighted there. That is where Utah Valley University is. And then down in the lower left in southwest Utah, that is Washington County. That is where we believe the suspect was taken into custody.

You can see, it's not particularly close. It's about 250 miles, maybe a little bit more than that, a 3-1/2 hour, maybe four-hour drive there. So, this suspect, if it was him, was able to get a fair distance away from the scene of the shooting, which you can see right there.

Our Evan Perez in Washington has been doing some terrific reporting, getting new details in about what's been happening over the last several hours.

Evan, what's the latest on what you've learned?

EVAN PEREZ, CNN SENIOR JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: You know, one of the biggest things that that has been done over the last few hours, John and Kate, is that the FBI and the local, the Utah state police have been exploiting all this media, trying to figure out, you know, again, confirm that this is the person that they're looking for. They're also trying to see whether they can discern any motive.

Again, we don't know whether he's actually cooperating with investigators at this hour. It is possible he isn't. And so as a result, the investigators have to spend a lot of time looking at any social media, any computers, anything that he has that, that they can try to get any -- try -- any kind of evidence to try to confirm that he was either planning this or that he had some kind of motive to carry this out.

Again, we don't know very much more than that, but that's certainly what has occupied, authorities over the last -- the last few hours. The other thing that they've been doing, again, is grabbing, trying to get as much evidence as physical evidence to try to confirm this. So DNA, of course, is going to be is going to be key.

We know that the firearm, it's very hard. And I think John has already alluded to. We don't believe that any fingerprints they were able to retrieve from that. There's a fiberglass part of the gun that, that, that was -- that was retrieved there from the scene and say that probably did not yield anything but DNA evidence is certainly going to be very key. And that is also something that they're trying to do.

We expect that that might -- might take several more hours today before they can confirm that. Again, all of this work being done in the overnight hours, because some of this went down literally just overnight and he was brought up from that Saint George, Utah area. That's where that -- that is where this this all started.

And he is now in custody. I think, clearly, the authorities there in the Provo area in Orem, have been trying to make sure that they do everything to preserve the evidence. They, of course, are going to -- are going to need search warrants before they can exploit anything from his home. For instance, any -- any computers or any phones or anything like that. But all of that work has been done over the last few hours -- Kate, John.

BOLDUAN: Evan. And again, amazing reporting. And I'm pushing you even further. Is it clear when they picked -- when they picked him up, they were able -- if they've moved him now, the three-hour-plus, whatever you said, drive to back to kind the Orem area.

When did this go down? Was it overnight? Was it this morning? PEREZ: Yeah, it would have been early morning hours, our time in the

East Coast. And so that's the -- that's the best as I have been able to discern. Certainly, that's what I was told, in the overnight hours as we were working our sources to try to get more information about this and to really understand whether indeed, this time they had the right person.

BOLDUAN: That's exactly right, Evan. Thank you. Amazing reporting.

PEREZ: Sure.

BERMAN: Elie Honig, you know, senior legal analyst here, one of the bits of information that our team and Evan have found out is that this suspect allegedly confessed to his father.

The timeline of events here is the father saw the photo. The father confronted the son.

[09:35:00]

The son we think may have made some sort of a statement or confession to the father.

What happens with that?

ELIE HONIG, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: Crucial evidence. Absolutely is admissible against him at trial.

One of the things that I assure you investigators are doing now is trying to figure out every person this individual interacted with from the moment he got off that roof to the moment they picked him up, because if there were others, if there were friends, if there were boyfriends, girlfriends, whatever, if there were other family members, if he posted anything, if he texted, emailed, they're going to get that. They're going to dump his phone and do a forensic dig into his phone. All of that is going to be admissible against him.

Separately, important to understand, if he is making confessional statements right now, assuming he's been properly advised of his Miranda rights, which I'm sure he has been, because that's basic, that, too, will be admissible against him and in all likelihood, any statements that he's making now to the police are being recorded. Video recorded. So there won't even be a dispute about what he said.

This is all vital evidence. If you get an admission like this, DNA is great. It's not 100 percent. It's close. Other circumstantial evidence, other in-person identifications are great. But if the person admitted it, that really conceal your case.

BOLDUAN: As we control them if you can, if that was any kind of a heads up warning, let us know. Since we weren't hearing that audio from.

BERMAN: Is Nick Watt still there?

BOLDUAN: We'll get to Nick. When Nick is up, we can get back to him to see kind of the update of what, when and what we're expecting when this is going to begin.

But still, Elie, when you're talking about, when you -- everything you add up, what charges are you looking at?

HONIG: So, I think the most straightforward charge that we are most likely to hear is going to be a Utah state charge for first degree murder. That just means an intentional killing of another human.

Now, we've heard a lot of talk about death penalty. In order to get it up to a death eligible offense, they have -- prosecutors will have to show an aggravating factor. I do think there's an easily applicable factor here, which is if in the course of killing a person, you also endanger others in a serious way. When you're on a roof and you fire a shot into a crowd, I think that qualifies.

So that I expect to hear on the state side. Now, we don't know whether we will also hear of federal charges. There may be ways the feds can charge this as well, but important to remember, what we hear today in terms of charges is the starting point.

BOLDUAN: Right.

HONIG: They can always add more charges. They can always enhance the charges up further. But I am confident we will see first degree murder charges out of Utah, the state of Utah.

BERMAN: Very quick check in with Nick Watt, who is in that room in Utah right now for the latest status report on what they're saying when they're saying we may get more information, Nick.

HONIG: Well, we are hearing that it is not going to be now. We do not have an exact start time. We are told that we will hopefully get a five-minute warning when that happens. I'm seeing officials are -- press officials are gathering on the balcony above me, but no word yet on exactly when we hope to be able to give you a five-minute warning when that comes -- John.

BERMAN: All right. Here's what we're going to do then. We've got this team of reporters and analysts standing by. We're waiting for this news conference. Every minute that passes, we get new information in.

BOLDUAN: That's right.

BERMAN: Which informs us as what we are likely to hear. But the big news coming from the president, they say they believe they have a suspect in custody in the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. News conference straight ahead.

Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:43:00]

BOLDUAN: All right. Welcome back. That's a live picture inside the room. We're going to have some big

developments coming. We're standing by for a press conference of Utah officials, state officials, the FBI, federal officials all coming together. As you've seen, we're standing by for that major announcement.

While we have already heard from President Trump, who announced in an interview earlier this morning that they believe they have the suspect, they believe they have the alleged killer of conservative activist Charlie Kirk in custody. And CNN is building, reporting and has some great reporting on this as well.

With that, let's go to Andy McCabe.

Andy, I'll bring you back in one of the big developments from overnight were those enhanced images that were put out by officials, later in the evening yesterday. We have them up on the screen right now of the man that they are looking for. When you look at these enhanced images, what do you see in it? How critical was this, do you think, and what were about to learn in this press conference?

ANDREW MCCABE, CNN SENIOR LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: I think it was absolutely critical. So, as John mentioned before, the video that they released with these image images also super important, but for an entirely different reason. The video is designed just to get people's attention.

And then you package that with the still images, which are really the images that give you the detail that would enable you to identify this person, or if not, you know, fully identify you see those sneakers? You see the hat on his head. You see, you know, the sunglasses that are distinctive.

And that's what trips something in someone's mind to say, hey, wait a minute, that looks like the guy down the street or my son or someone else.

So, yeah, I think when they -- really, it was that release that put the crowdsourcing and the public identification of this guy into high gear. That was -- that was going all in. And, and it paid dividends, right. Because I think we don't -- we don't know this for sure yet, but ultimately, when this story is completely told, I would expect that the relative or the father of this person, as we've learned so far this morning, who ultimately made that connection, probably did so based upon those still images that you just had up.

[09:45:17]

BERMAN: All right. Andy McCabe, stand by one moment here.

John Miller, CNN's senior law enforcement and intelligence analyst, is with us.

And, John, I do understand you've got some new information.

JOHN MILLER, CNN CHIEF LAW ENFORCEMENT AND INTELLIGENCE ANALYST: Well, just to fill out a little more perspective around the suspect. We know he's 22 years old, born in 2003 from Washington, Utah. So, you know, he is within the realm of, you know, college age and that's a fair distance away, I think, from the scene of the crime.

BERMAN: We've seen that map, and we can get that up again so people can see Washington, Utah, is in the southwestern corner of the state. You can see Orem, where Utah Valley University is, right there in the middle, not far from Salt Lake City, about 250-plus miles, a three and a half plus hour drive there.

MILLER: Right.

HONIG: Very quick point, if I could. The fact that he's 22 is significant. That means he will be tried as an adult, right?

It could have been -- when -- based on those photos, maybe he could have been 17 or something. So, he would have had maybe juvenile issues, much less penalty. He's an adult. He'll be tried accordingly.

BOLDUAN : So they -- so we're waiting for the announcement. We're waiting for what were going to be hearing in this press conference. You were talking about charges, what charges this person will first face. What's going to be the first court action we're going to hear.

HONIG: So in all likelihood, this will start in the state court I would expect, because again, it's a more direct, straightforward charge if -- the first degree murder charge in Utah, assuming there will be a court appearance today, here's what the basics will be. First of all, they'll make sure this guy has a lawyer if he has the right to hire a lawyer, if he cannot afford one, one will be provided for him from the public defender service.

They will generally advise him of what the charges are. Typically, you would enter a plea at that point, it will be a plea of not guilty. Sometimes they don't even ask at this point for a plea, but typically he will be advised of the charges and then they'll set bail. I don't expect this individual to ever see the outside of a prison cell.

He will not be given bail, although theoretically, I guess it could be possible. But I think he will be denied bail. He will be locked up pending his trial. And those are the basics.

And they won't -- probably won't set a trial date today. If they do, it's probably just what we would call a hold date. But they'll set a -- there's a lot of pretrial motions that have to happen. We're a long ways off from trial here.

BERMAN: Boston former Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis, who I believe is still with us.

Now we have that map up on the screen so people can see the distances that we're talking about here. Orem is where Utah Valley University is, where the assassination took place. The suspect detained down in the southwest corner of the state, Washington, where he's from 250 miles away. So, that distance he had to travel from the college to his home down

there. What clues will that provide? What information will they want to dig into there?

ED DAVIS, FORMER BOSTON POLICE COMMISSIONER: Well, they'll look at a number of different data points, along that route. So, is it a toll road? Are there cameras there that are recording license plate numbers. That happens quite a bit.

They first determine what vehicle he has access to, whether it's his own or his family vehicle. They'll look for that license plate along the route.

They'll look at gas stations. It's likely that 500-mile round trip will require a stop at a gas station. Did he use a credit card? Is he -- is he appearing on video at a gas station or another store that he might have stopped at?

Two hundred and fifty miles, three-hour trip, it's like going from Boston to New York. It's fairly easy to do if you have a vehicle. So, this is not out of the realm of possibility. And there can be a lot of evidence collected about that commute.

BOLDUAN: Yeah. It makes you -- it does make you wonder how long he actually had been home, you know, until before all of this started coming together.

On the details of how he -- and how he ended up being turned over to authorities, let's get to CNN's Evan Perez.

Evan, you've got had great reporting. You and the team in Washington with -- from your sources of how this capture went down, bring us up to speed.

PEREZ: Yeah. I mean, look, I think, as you can see from last night's update from the investigators, they really still were at a dead end. They were trying to get the public to provide more information.

You know, I think Ed, from his experience in Boston, you know, can tell you how much debate there is behind the scenes of when to release that kind of media, including, the images that were that were released yesterday morning, if you remember, from the FBI and the and the state police that first image was kind of grainy.

And one of the things that that we all were talking about was, you know, why didn't they refine it? Why didn't they enhance it?

And hours later, that is exactly what they did. They released an enhanced version. And then, of course, they released that video.

[09:50:00]

And I think all of those things really does help the public generate tips, gets -- generates tips from the public. And that is exactly what appears to have happened here. Now, we believe that again, late last night, there was some contact made by the -- by the father to the U.S. Marshals, which identified that, you know, this person, his son appeared to be the person that was being sought for the -- for the murder of Charlie Kirk, that he matched the description. And those images there that had been released.

And so that's when the work began. They went down there, to the -- to that area in Washington County in southern Utah to try to pick him up. What we're told is that the father confronted his son or talked to his son and that the son made statements that appears to have been interpreted by the father as a confession that it indeed he had carried out the shooting.

Again, this is what we're told by sources, and we'll find out more from the -- from law enforcement soon.

Now, we don't know whether -- since he has been in custody, he's been getting questioned by the investigators. We don't know whether he's made any further statements, whether he's cooperating at all, but certainly what the father relayed to the marshals, all of that will be very, very key part of this investigation and the work over the last few hours, over the overnight, in the early morning hours, there in southern Utah, you know, they've been trying to gather as much evidence as possible, secure it as well.

And as you guys were just talking about, you know, one of the things that they're now going to do is, is, is figure out how he traveled, where he went. Every place that he may have stopped. They're going to try to get as much evidence as possible to connect him to the shooting, again, in case he doesn't cooperate. And in case this becomes a contested case, right?

All of that stuff is being done as we speak. This is a very high priority for these people.

BERMAN: It's a little bit interesting at this point to me that this news conference, the timing keeps on slipping --

BOLDUAN: I agree.

BERMAN: It does indicate perhaps there is something going on behind the scenes. Maybe they're getting more information from this suspect. Maybe they want to wait before they say anything out loud for that to reach its fruition.

We're going to take a quick break. Obviously, we're standing by to hear much more from officials. The president of the United States says there is a suspect in custody in the assassination of Charlie Kirk.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:56:59]

BERMAN: All right, live pictures from Orem, Utah. Any second now, a news conference from state and local officials on what we believe to be the apprehension of a suspect in the killing of Charlie Kirk.

I want to get to Nick Watt, who's in the room right now. Officials should be walking in any second, Nick.

WATT: That's right. John. We were given a four-minute warning. Three minutes ago, so we are expecting any second to see the officials coming in.

We are told to expect a similar cast of characters that we saw last night. That would be the governor. That would be the Utah public safety commissioner. That would be Kash Patel from the FBI and the FBI special agent in charge.

John, any second we should be seeing them coming into this room for the press conference. That four-minute warning has now expired.

So, any second now, John, we should be hearing more information in this case.

BERMAN: All right. Nick Watt, we'll let you sit down and get ready for this event, which should start any second.

And just to bring people back up to speed about where we are. It was two hours ago when the president made the statement, they believe they have a suspect in custody in the killing of Charlie Kirk, and over the last two hours, through CNN's reporting, we've pieced together some of how that happened.

BOLDUAN: Some of the reporting from our Evan Perez, Hannah Rabinowitz and Holmes Lybrand doing some great reporting here, is that the person in custody is being questioned in connection to the fatal shooting of Charlie Kirk.

Also, that this person is still being questioned as of Friday morning, still being questioned, but also this and how it went down. The two sources telling CNN that the man confessed to his father that he was the shooter, that his father then told authorities and said that he had secured his son until they could arrive to pick him up.

We're also learning more about, as you see on that map, where this all -- where the apprehension occurred. Orem is where not only were this press conference is about to occur, that is where Utah Valley University is, where this assassination took place there. And the southwestern part of Utah is where this suspect is from and where the suspect, we're told, was picked up.

BERMAN: Some 250 miles from Orem, about a 3-1/2-hour drive picked up there and then driven back. We think, to Orem to face questioning there. Weve also learned a few more details. Just a few moments ago, John Miller reported that the suspect in custody is 22 years old and a resident of Washington, which is that area in the southwestern part of the state that is highlighted right there.

Again, the father, who apparently played a crucial role in this and perhaps even received a sort of confession from the son. It does seem as if the father was reacting to the release of the number of photos yesterday of the suspect at the scene of the crime. Also, the video, one of the things we'll be waiting to see from officials very shortly is if there was one specific thing that led the father to question his son.

BOLDUAN: And Evan Perez, who's been bringing us a lot of this reporting, says that sometime in the early hours of this morning, East Coast Time, which would be, you know, the late hours of last night out in Utah is when this all kind of came together, when the apprehension occurred. And they have since moved the suspect back to where Orem, Utah, is.

BERMAN: All right. CNN's coverage continues with this news conference set to begin any second.