Tyler Robinson, the Utah man accused of assassinating Charlie Kirk, smirked Thursday during his first in-person court appearance since his September arrest.
Footage of the 22-year-old sitting in the Provo court shows him sport a smile while speaking with his attorney:
“Zero remorse,” wrote Jack Posobiec, a close friend of Kirk’s:
Robinson was granted permission to wear street clothes instead of a typical prison jumpsuit before the judge, but his request to ditch the shackles was denied, Fox News noted in its coverage.
He is facing charges of aggravated murder, felony use of a firearm, obstruction of justice, witness tampering, and commission of a violent offense in the presence of a child for the September 10 shooting at Utah Valley University.
Robinson, who was arrested on September 11 after allegedly confessing to a family member that he had killed Kirk, has not yet entered a plea to those charges, according to CNN.
His Thursday hearing was centered on “issues of transparency and public accessibility to the case,” the outlet noted.
Robinson’s defense wants cameras to be banned in the courtroom, but Kirk’s widow, Erika Kirk, has advocated for the proceedings to be made public.
“We deserve to have cameras in there,” she told Fox News’s Jesse Watters last month. “Why not be transparent?”
Her husband was the co-founder of conservative organization Turning Point USA and was speaking at an event on the UVU campus when investigators say he was fatally shot in the neck by a gunman perched on a nearby rooftop.
The FBI confirmed that DNA matching the suspect was found on the rooftop and on a towel that covered the murder weapon where it had been hidden in a wooded area. A message allegedly sent by Robinson to his transgender romantic partner, with whom he lived, appeared to confess to the assassination and complained of Kirk’s “hatred,” Breitbart News reported.
In the charging document, prosecutors described how Robinson’s mother “explained that over the last year or so, Robinson had become more political and had started to lean more to the left – becoming more pro-gay and trans-rights oriented.”
“She stated that Robinson began to date his roommate, a biological male who was transitioning genders,” the document states. “This resulted in several discussions with family members, but especially between Robinson and his father, who have very different political views. In one conversation before the shooting, Robinson mentioned that Charlie Kirk would be holding an event at UVU, which Robinson said was a ‘stupid venue’ for the event. Robinson accused Kirk of spreading hate.”
Kirk’s final book, STOP, in the Name of God, was posthumously released earlier this week.
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