OREM, Utah — Ethan Werner drove from his home in Georgia and stopped here on Thursday to see the memorial for Charlie Kirk. Werner plans to continue on to Arizona. First, he wanted to see the collection of Kirk photos, posters, and notes still sitting under trees on the south end of the Utah Valley University campus.
“I have a lot of questions about the Charlie Kirk incident,” Werner told FOX 13 News. “It’s still a layer of mysteries.”
“Just a lot of weird stuff, especially just with Tyler Robinson,” the suspect in the assassination, Werner, said. But the university has been slow to provide answers about preparations for Kirk's Sept. 10 rally on the campus. Some details of the murder investigation remain sealed, as well.
Exceptional circumstances
UVU has neither granted nor denied public record requests submitted by FOX 13 News in the days after the shooting. Instead, it has sent the station notices that it needs more time to respond due to a “high volume” of requests.
FOX 13’s requests seek the event application submitted by Kirk’s Turning Point USA. The station has also asked for records describing security preparations for the rally where Kirk was assassinated.
Michael Judd, a media law attorney in Salt Lake City, said there’s little requestors can do to make the government move faster.
“A lot of governmental entities will say, ‘Hey, it's just busy season,’” Judd said.
Watch: Nate Carlisle discusses FOX 13's investigation into Charlie Kirk's murder
State law says requests must be granted or denied within 10 business days, but there’s an exception for exceptional circumstances. Requesters can appeal the delay, but Judd said that can bring a new problem.
“Any time that the governmental entity might have wanted in order to answer that request ends up getting spent in the appeal process anyway,” Judd said.
UVU administrators have said no significant threats were detected in preparation for Kirk’s rally. Eight police officers were present at the event.
Missing numbers
FOX 13 has also been looking for search warrants served after the Kirk shooting and subsequent arrest of Robinson. Such warrants typically describe facts of the alleged crime and how it has been investigated.
In modern murder investigations, law enforcement often asks judges for permission to search everything from a suspect’s car and home to phones and social media accounts. After the searches, the documents are returned to the court – usually with an inventory of anything seized.
That's unless the records are sealed, which is another request law enforcement can make of judges. In the Kirk murder, it’s not even known which courts issued any search warrants – state or federal.
Judd did some sleuthing on the federal docket.
“There's an unusually long stretch of numbers just missing from the public docket numbers,” Judd said.
He noted that about 20 cases seem to be missing from Utah’s federal court system in the days after Kirk’s assassination and Robinson’s arrest.
The Utah County Attorney’s Office, which is prosecuting Robinson, did not respond to a FOX 13 inquiry regarding the search warrants.
FOX 13 News has also made multiple requests to interview Val Peterson, UVU’s Vice President for Administration and a member of the Utah House of Representatives, as well as UVU Police Chief Jeffrey Long. None of the requests has been granted. And while UVU announced that it would seek an independent review of the Kirk preparations, the university has not said who will conduct that review or when a report will be provided to the public.
