The Department of Homeland Security had warned about radicalization threats posed to youth audiences within certain online platforms, such as Discord, over seven months before the murder of Charlie Kirk.

The warning came in a January intelligence assessment, according to documents shared with the Washington Examiner.

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Discord, an online social media messaging platform, made headlines this month over reports that Kirk’s suspected assassin, Tyler Robinson, used the platform. The FBI is investigating a Discord chat in which Robinson allegedly confessed to the murder.

DISCORD’S LINKS TO SHOOTINGS BACK IN SPOTLIGHT FOLLOWING CHARLIE KIRK ASSASSINATION

Property of The People, an accountability nonprofit organization that disseminates government documents it obtains through records requests, shared three government documents related to the online radicalization of U.S. youth with the Washington Examiner. Two are DHS Office of Intelligence and Analysis documents, and one is an Ohio Statewide Terrorism Analysis & Crime Center document that provides a regional perspective on each federal report. Each is marked as “Unclassified” and “For Official Use Only,” and they were obtained by Property of The People through a series of open records requests.

One of the DHS documents, dated Jan. 24, 2025, reports that the number of juvenile homegrown violent extremists is increasing in the United States, “likely inspired in part by foreign terrorist organization (FTO) media being shared on youth-oriented platforms.” The document cites platforms such as Discord, Roblox, Minecraft, and TikTok as platforms that can put children at risk of viewing radical content from foreign terrorist organizations.

“More specific discussions or aspirational plotting tends to occur on Discord, where the average age of members—when determinable—was 15, according to academic reporting from 2021,” the January DHS report reads.

The assessments were first reported by NBC News. DHS did not specifically confirm or deny the assessments related to Discord, but provided the following statement:

“DHS provides intelligence, which may include publicly available online communications related to violent threats and terrorist activity, to our federal, state, and local law enforcement partners to assist them in identifying bad actors and thwarting criminal behavior,” a senior DHS official said in a statement to the Washington Examiner.

Discord did not respond to the Washington Examiner’s requests for comment.

HOUSE GOP WANTS DISCORD AND OTHERS TO DISCLOSE HOW EXTREMIST POSTS ARE HANDLED

In the wake of Kirk’s suspected assassin’s usage of Discord, the platform has come under fire again from legislators pushing for greater company accountability and disclosure about posts relating to extremism and radical content.

Alleged suspects in several mass shootings have been tied to Discord communications before, including the suspects in the Buffalo supermarket shooting, the Apalachee High School shooting, and the Perry High School shooting, who all used Discord in advance of the attack.