Kirk Family Blames Utah Officials for 'Reckless Decisions' as FOIA Documents Reveal IRS Agents Detailed to FBI Dissent-Tracking Center

Since Charlie Kirk's assassination at Utah Valley University on September 10, 2025, and last week's one-year memorials in Dallas and Orem, two concrete developments have moved the story from remembrance into legal and institutional accountability.

The Family's Claim Against Utah

On September 9, attorneys for Kirk's family sent a formal notice of claim to Utah state and university officials, a required legal step before filing suit, according to CBS News. The notice names Utah Valley University, then-president Astrid Tuminez, campus police chief Jeffrey Long, and the state of Utah.

Attorney D. Loren Washburn wrote that a string of "reckless decisions" left Kirk exposed to a shooter who fired from a rooftop more than 400 feet away. The notice points to specifics: campus police staffing far below recommended levels for a school that size, no drone deployed to monitor rooftops, no coordination with local law enforcement to secure the outdoor courtyard, and no bag checks or metal detectors for the roughly 3,000 people in attendance.

Washburn also argues the university should have known better. "The risk of a rooftop shooter should have been especially top-of-mind given the attempted assassination of President Trump by a rooftop shooter the previous year," he wrote, according to CBS News. The family also says Kirk was taken to the hospital in a private vehicle rather than an ambulance because no first responders were staged nearby.

UVU told CBS News it is "aware of the notice of claim" and addresses legal matters through its "established processes," adding its focus "remains on supporting our campus community." The Utah Attorney General's Office said it does not comment on potential litigation. Chief Long said after the shooting that six officers staffed the event alongside Kirk's eight-person private security detail, and the school has said it is expanding its police force.

None of this resolves the criminal case. Tyler Robinson, 23, has pleaded not guilty to aggravated murder, and Judge Tony Graf has allowed prosecutors to pursue the death penalty, according to Breitbart News.

The Federal Response Draws Scrutiny

The second new thread involves how Washington built its response to Kirk's death. Documents obtained by the watchdog group American Oversight through a public records request, and shared with Talking Points Memo, show the FBI has assembled a National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 Joint Mission Center that pulls in personnel from across federal law enforcement, including 13 IRS employees whose names were redacted in the released records.

NSPM-7, issued after Kirk's killing, directs federal agencies to treat beliefs like anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity, along with what it calls extremism on migration, race, and gender, as indicators of domestic terrorism, per TPM's review of the documents. Organizational charts dated May 20 show two attorneys from the Justice Department's Office of the Deputy Attorney General embedded in the center. Emails obtained by American Oversight reference a "Violent Anarchist Task Force Working Group," and separate IRS staff assigned to Tax Exempt and Government Entities and Criminal Investigations appear on the same distribution lists.

At DOJ, the operational arm is Joint Task Force Vanguard, co-led by Brian W. Lynch, a former organized-crime prosecutor who, TPM has previously reported, marched on the Capitol on January 6, and Jason Kellhofer, a longtime counterterrorism prosecutor. The Justice Department declined to comment on the new documents; it has in the past denied that its NSPM-7 efforts amount to a political crackdown.

TPM's reporting notes the memo has already been cited in the field. DHS agents in Minneapolis invoked NSPM-7 while using undercover operatives and financial-investigation tactics against unions and churches protesting the federal deployment there, and the administration has used the memo to justify charges against people for social media posts.

The concern raised by American Oversight's records is straightforward: turning IRS financial investigators loose on people's political and religious beliefs, rather than on specific criminal conduct, risks repeating the kind of ideological targeting the IRS was accused of during the Tea Party scandal over a decade ago, just aimed at a different set of Americans this time. That is a fair worry regardless of which political tribe sits in the crosshairs.

The administration's counter, embedded in the memo itself, is that it was written in direct response to an actual assassination, that Robinson's bullet casings referenced Antifa-linked imagery including the song "Bella Ciao," and that tracking organized violent extremist networks is a legitimate law enforcement function, not viewpoint policing. No court has yet ruled on that distinction, and no NSPM-7-related prosecution has been tested on First Amendment grounds in the documents reviewed by TPM.

Both threads point to the same unanswered question a year on: whether the institutions responsible for public safety, on a Utah campus and inside the federal government, get real accountability, or just more memos and notices. The Kirk family's claim is a legal first step, not a filed lawsuit. American Oversight has not said whether it will pursue further FOIA requests to unredact the IRS employee list.