A transgender woman of color affiliated with Utah-based gun groups is reportedly being investigated by federal authorities in relation to last week’s murder of conservative commentator Charlie Kirk.
Newsweek reached out to the U.S. State Department, Department of Justice and FBI via email for comment.
An FBI spokesperson declined to comment to Newsweek when asked if the individual, Ermiya Fanaeian, or her group were under investigation in Kirk’s murder.
Why It Matters
Kirk, 31, was fatally shot in the neck on September 10 at Utah Valley University while the Turning Point USA founder debated with students as part of a national tour.
Tyler Robinson, 22, has been charged with aggravated murder and other offenses, including felony firearm discharge, obstruction of justice, and witness tampering. Prosecutors have indicated that they will seek the death penalty.
What To Know
Ermiya Fanaeian is a transgender woman born by Iranian immigrants who has been linked to different Utah-based gun groups over the years.
The New York Post reported Wednesday, prior to Robinson’s charges being announced by local law enforcement officials, that Fanaeian—connected to pro-gun LGBTQ groups Armed Queers SLC and the Salt Lake-based chapter of Pink Pistols—was under investigation by the FBI, which had secured and downloaded open-source information on Armed Queers SLC after the group wiped its online presence following Kirk’s shooting.
Armed Queers SLC was “identified as a radical transgender political organizer with ties to communist politics,” per The Post.
Fanaeian was recognized by a State Department-affiliated nongovernmental organization (NGO), Utah Global Diplomacy, as a recipient of the “7 for 17” Award for advancing the UN’s “17 Goals,” according to reports. That was also scrubbed from online pages in wake of the Kirk shooting.
“Any ties between the State Department and to Utah Global Diplomacy, which existed indirectly, have been completely severed and dismantled,” State Department deputy spokesperson Tommy Pigott said on X on Thursday. “No organization that maintains any relationship with the Department can engage with groups who turn a blind eye to left-wing radicalism.”
Who Is Ermiya Fanaeian?
Fanaeian’s Instagram profile, which is set to private, says, “Revolution + Trans liberation in our lifetime!”
The Post reported that she has advocated violence to achieve the aims of LGBTQ groups, citing the Stonewall Riots as an example in a TV interview on the campus of University of Utah.
In July 2020, Fanaeian started the Salt Lake-based chapter of Pink Pistols—a national organization started in 2020 whose mission is to arm LGBTQ people, according to KUER, part of National Public Radio (NPR) which broadcasts from the Eccles Broadcast Center at The University of Utah.
Fanaeian told KUER about five years ago that Pink Pistols hosted trainings at shooting ranges and also educated members—including those of the LGBTQ+ community—about gun safety and buying firearms.
At age 17, Fanaeian was also a founding member of March For Our Lives Utah, which came into effect following the 2018 high school in Parkland, Florida.
“I used to think that guns were a scary thing,” she told KUER at the time. “Back then, I would have agreed with Joe Biden’s assertion to take everyone’s AR-15s away. And now I own one.”
As part of March For Our Lives Utah she helped organize an event in which about 8,000 protesters met at the state Capitol to demand stricter gun laws, according to Deseret News.
“The left’s idea of a ‘gun nut’ typically is white men who are upper class and see this as a hobby that will make their egos bigger,” she told the Deseret News in November 2020. “But the reality is this is a form of empowerment for me.”
Fanaeian also reportedly spent several years working for the campaigns of Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, being viewed as an advocate to spread the Democratic Party message in Utah.
In September 2023, the Young America’s Foundation—a national group for conservatives across college campuses—warned about a “socialist student organization” sponsoring a lecture on “queer resistance.”
Lucy Atwood, chairwoman at the time of University of Utah’s Young Americans for Freedom, said that she and colleagues would stand up to group or its members: “We won’t be intimidated by this group and we will continue to stand up for conservative values.”
What People Are Saying
Tucker Carlson on Wednesday’s episode of The Tucker Carlson Show”: Consider what it means if you don’t respect free speech, which is another way of saying free conscience—the right of other people to make up their own minds about the basic questions of what is right or wrong, and to express their views on those issues,” Carlson said.
“If you don’t respect the right of other people to do that, and if you take steps to prevent them from doing that, what are you really saying? You’re saying, “I don’t think you have a soul. You’re a meat puppet I can control. I think you’re an animal, maybe a sub-animal. You’re a slave.'”
Former President Barack Obama during an interview at the Jefferson Educational Society in Pennsylvania on Tuesday: “We are certainly at an inflection point, not just around political violence, but there are a host of larger trends that we have to be concerned about. I think it is important for us, at the outset, to acknowledge that political violence is not new. It has happened at certain periods in our history, but it is something that it is anathema to what it means to be a democratic country.”
What’s Next
Robinson has not yet entered a plea and is being held without bail. His next court appearance is scheduled for September 29.