Trump Praises Bondi, Patel Over Response to Assassination of Charlie Kirk

President Donald Trump lauded Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel for their handling of the investigation into the assassination of Charlie Kirk.

“I think that [Bondi] has done an unbelievable job … and [Patel], take a look at what he did with respect to this horrible person … he did it in two days,” Trump told reporters on Sept. 16 outside the White House, referring to the capture of the suspected assassin this past week.

“It took other similar cases four days, five days, four years if you look at certain shooters,” Trump added. He then said that he has “confidence in everybody in the administration.”

On Monday night, Bondi said in an interview with Katie Miller that her office would go after “hate speech” and suggested such forms of speech would be prosecuted, drawing criticism from prominent conservative X accounts.

On Tuesday, Bondi issued a statement on X clarifying what she said.

“Hate speech that crosses the line into threats of violence is NOT protected by the First Amendment. It’s a crime,” Bondi wrote in a lengthy post on X. “For far too long, we’ve watched the radical left normalize threats, call for assassinations, and cheer on political violence. That era is over.”

She cited a section of the U.S. Code making it a federal crime to transmit “any communication containing any threat to kidnap any person or any threat to injure the person of another,” and another portion of the code making it a felony to threaten public officials, members of Congress, or their families.

When speaking to Miller, Bondi said that “there’s free speech and then there’s hate speech, and there is no place, especially now, especially after what happened to Charlie, in our society.” She added, “We will absolutely target you, go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech.”

Conservative commentators were critical of her comments on social media.

“Hate speech is not prosecutable in America (which is good). Pam Bondi knows this,” media personality Megyn Kelly said in a Tuesday post on X.

The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh wrote on X, “There should be social consequences for people who openly celebrate the murder of an innocent man. But there obviously shouldn’t be any legal repercussions for “hate speech,” which is not even a valid or coherent concept. There is no law against saying hateful things, and there shouldn’t be.”

Prosecutors are preparing to file a capital murder charge on Sept. 16 against the alleged assassin, Tyler Robinson, 22, who authorities say embraced “leftist ideology” and may have been radicalized online before he was arrested this past week. Robinson, 22, is accused of shooting Kirk on Sept. 10 at an outdoor event at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah.

A conservative influencer credited with energizing the Republican youth movement and helping Trump win back the White House in 2024, Kirk co-founded Turning Point USA, a student outreach organization.

Family members had told investigators that Robinson had left-leaning political views, said Utah Gov. Spencer Cox.

Robinson is due to arrive at his first court hearing on Sept. 16.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.