An armed collective of leftist LGBT activists in Salt Lake City is reportedly under federal investigation, as authorities probe far-left Utah groups and others operating online for potential foreknowledge of or involvement in Charlie Kirk’s assassination.
Law enforcement sources told the New York Post that investigators are looking into the Armed Queers of Salt Lake City (AQSLC) to see whether it had helped alleged assassin Tyler Robinson or at least was aware of the assassination plot.
Recommended Stories
- How the CCP's propaganda machine uses Western elites to bolster its legitimacy
- Patel clashes with Hirono over FBI fitness standards for women: ‘One pullup is not harsh’
- Terrorism charges against Luigi Mangione in UnitedHealthcare CEO killing case dropped
Kirk was killed while speaking about mass shootings perpetrated by transgender people, and over the weekend, it was revealed that Robinson is in a domestic relationship with a transgender partner, further fueling speculations over the shooter’s motive. Prosecutors said on Tuesday that Robinson told his romantic partner that he’d killed Kirk because he viewed the conservative activist as hateful.
AQSLC, a transgender-led gun group championing Marxist-Leninist militancy, hosts monthly “training sessions” at the shooting range to coach “effective organizers in the struggle.”
According to its membership sign-up form, AQSLC seeks to establish a socialist society, achieve “trans liberation from the gender binary and biological essentialism,” and dismantle the so-called “bourgeois non-profit industrial complex,” replacing it with a revolutionary regime.
Its recommended reading list includes books by Karl Marx, author of the Communist Manifesto; Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin; Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin; and Chinese Communist Party chairman Mao Zedong.
TRUMP SAYS LEFT-WING GROUPS ‘ALREADY’ UNDER INVESTIGATION AFTER KIRK ASSASSINATION
AQSLC belongs to the National Network on Cuba, a coalition working to take Cuba off the U.S. state sponsors of terrorism list.
This spring, AQSLC leadership traveled to Cuba as members of the network’s May Day brigade, which brainstorms ways to “become better armed” and “counter Washington’s lies…against the revolution.” In a since-deleted YouTube video discussing the trip, AQSLC organizers shared plans to replicate the revolution in America.
“We were there in Cuba to learn of the successes of the revolution and bring it back home with us,” an AQSLC organizer said in the video, titled “Cuba Report Back.”
Ermiya Fanaeian, a transgender woman of color and formerly a diversity director at the University of Utah, founded AQSLC after parting ways with the Pink Pistols, an LGBT organization advocating in support of firearm safety and bearing arms as a means of self-defense.
In a statement responding to Kirk’s death, Pink Pistols said Fanaeian had renamed her chapter to AQSLC after “violating our rule that we are a single-issue organization devoted solely to the safe, legal, and responsible use of firearms by the queer community.”
“From that point forward, she no longer represented Pink Pistols,” the statement said, “and the Salt Lake City chapter was formally listed as defunct on our website, where it remains.”
Fanaeian has publicly advocated for political violence. In an interview with a Utah TV station, she said, “I absolutely agree that sometimes violence, really riots, and those kinds of loud rebellions must take place for tangible change.”
TRUMP RESOLVES TO GO AFTER ORGANIZATIONS THAT FOMENT ‘POLITICAL VIOLENCE.’
In an appearance on Fox News, FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino indicated that the agency is widening the scope of its investigation to see whether Kirk’s killing was part of “a larger effort.”
The assassin could have been “aided and abetted’’ by an “extended network,” Bongino said. “We’ll also be dropping a lot of paper, a lot of subpoenas out there.”
Many social media figures started pointing fingers at AQSLC following news that the Trump administration is targeting far-left agitators in search of possible accomplices.
Amid scrutiny, AQSLC immediately deleted its Instagram and Facebook pages, though the group’s X account was still active until Tuesday afternoon.
Now, some of AQSLC’s past activities and affiliations are raising eyebrows.
AQSLC held a lecture on “queer resistance” at the University of Utah, approximately 45 miles away from the scene of Kirk’s assassination on Utah Valley University’s campus.
A flyer promoting the 2023 event depicted an activist holding an AK-47 rifle with her finger on the trigger in violation of a fundamental firearm safety rule. “AGITATE” appeared at the top of the promotional material. AQSLC’s seminar was sponsored by an antifascist student club formed to combat the school’s Young Americans for Freedom chapter. Young America’s Foundation, the latter’s parent organization, is similar to Kirk’s conservative student group Turning Point USA.
Two years ago, AQSLC hosted educational workshops on “protecting oppressed people’s movements” with the Texas-based Elm Fork branch of the John Brown Gun Club, an antifascist cohort inspired by a radical pre-Civil War abolitionist.
JBGC’s satellite Elm Fork chapter has ties to a Texas antifa cell accused of ambushing an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Alvarado, Texas.
During a coordinated Independence Day attack, multiple gunmen positioned from various vantage points opened fire on federal officers they lured outside the facility, injuring a local police officer who had responded to calls for help. More than a dozen suspected cell members, some identifying as transgender, are facing federal and state-level charges, including attempted murder, terrorism, and organized crime, over the targeted attack.
ANTIFA INC: HOW AN IDEOLOGY BECAME AN ORGANIZED CRIMINAL NETWORK
Alleged ringleader Benjamin Hanil Song, codename “Delete,” is a former Marine reservist with documented connections to the JBGC Elm Fork chapter. Archived video footage shows Song, charged with furnishing four firearms used in the Alvarado plot, providing weapons training to antifa militants in the Dallas-Fort Worth region.
In 2023, Song was named as a co-defendant in a lawsuit against JBGC Elm Fork brought by Christian counterprotesters who disrupt Texas-area drag shows, after a violent altercation between the two groups.
Self-styled as “community defense,” the Elm Fork offshoot acted as armed security at transgender activism events around north Texas, such as “Transgender Storytime” and drag performances. TPUSA was cited as one of JBGC Elm Fork’s political opponents “spinning” coverage of these storytime sessions “to see the manifestation of their yearning for terrorism come to light.”
Like AQSLC, the radical-left gun rights group has called for its followers to overthrow the “fascist” government.
In a blog post on the JBGC Elm Fork website, an organizer wrote, “Without us, this state is nothing. We outnumber them. We are the only ones giving them power. We can take just as quickly as we can give. And we will take just as quickly as we gave.”
“There will never be a right time to take our liberation back,” the declaration said of an uprising. “The only time is now. We have nothing to lose but our chains. We are the insurrectionist generation.”
However, it appears that JBGC Elm Fork has been disbanded since 2023.
AQSLC and Fanaeian were contacted for comment. The FBI declined to answer the Washington Examiner’s inquiry.