‘Was he truly a lone actor?’ Congressman digs into Kirk case

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Shelby Talcott and Burgess Everett: What’s the biggest challenge the prosecutors face?

Rep. Brad Knott: The biggest challenge here is going to do a thorough investigation with the sensationalization around the crime. Everyone saw it within 15 minutes. It was all over X, Facebook. You’ve got late night TV shows getting fired because of it. I mean, it is a sensational crime across every metric.

Do not give in to the reactionary tendencies of, ‘we’re going to prosecute hate speech’. … Maintain a sole focus on, ‘we are here to investigate — everyone is innocent until proven guilty,’ and at the same time, voraciously go after every lead you can conceive of. That means chasing down the leads that you have, and that means developing new leads.

The biggest concerns I would have as a prosecutor is allowing the media to sensationalize it, allow the investigators to sensationalize it, or the prosecutors. It needs to be a one-unit approach. You can’t control what the media says, but whenever the media contacts you or your prosecutors or your investigations, it’s either no comment or ‘we are chasing down everything we can, and we will do our talking in the court of law.’

What did you think when the FBI director tweeted they had a subject and then they didn’t?

I don’t think it was a violation, given the sensationalization of it. Would I have handled it differently? Potentially. But I don’t see everything that Kash [Patel] has. Kash probably is in a spot right now, given the high-profile nature of this crime, that he sees a lot more information than I would.

Obviously, he got a little bit of egg on his face, but I’ll say it took the Boston Marathon bomber five or six days to get apprehended. This was faster.

How much more difficult is it for the prosecution because Robinson hasn’t confessed directly to police, he’s just confessed in those text messages? How much more difficult is it to prosecute that case?

I made my career prosecuting people who didn’t confess. My pitch to the jury is, I don’t care what he says, I want you to look at this evidence. You are tasked with applying your common sense to your analysis here. Let him argue he didn’t do it.

When I charged someone, I knew they were guilty, and I would charge my cases in a way that if I lost counts one, two and three, I had counts five, six, and seven, and maybe four. I never lost a jury trial — but even on my worst day, my hope, my desire, my goal, was to remove a dangerous person from polite society.

And so my pitch to the defense lawyer was, you can beat me on first, second, third, fourth, 10th, whatever charge. I’m gonna get him on something, and we’re gonna put him away for as long as we can. He chose not to confess, he chose not to assist, he chose not to accept responsibility ... so we’re gonna prove our case, and we’re gonna go for the hardest sentence we can.

The fact that he’s not confessing makes me think in some ways, he’s already trying to figure out how to beat it. Game on.

Is finding a nonideological jury going to be difficult in a case as politicized as this?

My hope, honestly, is that the people who would go against the charge of the court and their analysis of the jury just for an ideological position or an ideological statement — that is such a small portion of the society.

It would be a very nefarious act for someone to conceal their mission to sink the jury. And with the appropriate rigor, I think that can be identified and disqualified.

Can you find people who haven’t heard much of the case or pre-judged it?

No. Every person in that jury system, given that it took place in that community, will have heard of this case. But there’s still a lot of unanswered questions. I mean, the question that comes to my mind, was he truly a lone actor? What kind of statements did he make to other people? What kind of admissions did he make after the crime allegedly took place?

You only weigh the evidence that is presented. You check your preconceptions at the door, and if the government meets its burden, you have a duty to find guilty. If they do not meet its burden on any of those counts, you have a duty to find not guilty. And that’s the end of the story.

Would you be surprised if other people end up getting charged in this — and from a prosecution point of view, the family turned him in, the roommate is cooperating. Do you still treat them as hostile witnesses, given their close relationship?

I say that from what I’ve seen in the charging documents for the summaries I’ve already seen, I don’t think there’s any hostility to be derived for people who are assisting now. Again, that’s why you have to get all the evidence. Was he truly a lone actor? Or was he not? And if he was not, you’ve got to be very careful with how you formulate that analysis.

But would I be surprised? I have looked at the evidence, honestly. It looked like, to me, he was acting by himself. He may have publicized it, but that alone isn’t enough to charge somebody.