Armed Trans Group That Scrubbed Pages After Charlie Kirk Assassination Tied to Hostile Foreign Governments

"I absolutely agree that sometimes violent protest and really riots and those kinds of loud rebellions must take place for tangible change..."

First, Charlie Kirk is assassinated in cold blood. Days later, a radical leftist militia tied to hostile foreign governments suddenly disappears from the internet.

And now federal investigators are asking the same question you are: What exactly was were they hiding?

An armed leftist group reportedly under investigation in the murder of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk is tied to activist networks with connections to the Chinese and Cuban regimes.

Federal law enforcement is probing Armed Queers Salt Lake City and other groups in Utah and online over whether they had advance knowledge of Kirk’s Sept. 10 assassination in Orem, The New York Post reported Sunday, citing a law enforcement source.

Armed Queers SLC, Fanaeian and his alma mater, the University of Utah, deleted or hid web content and social media profiles pertaining to him or his organization after Kirk’s death, the Daily Caller News Foundation found.

The sudden purge raised red flags: why would a group with a history of glorifying radical politics go dark just as investigators began looking into the motives behind Kirk’s assassination?

Tyler Robinson, 22, climbed to a rooftop and fatally shot Kirk during a Turning Point USA event at Utah Valley University (UVU), driven by hatred of Kirk’s “political expression.” The defendant’s family told authorities he had leaned more to the left in recent years, contradicting his father’s values, and was dating a transgender roommate. Robinson’s previous online presence and members of a chat room that he belonged to are under investigation, as well as anyone close to him who may have known of his plans in advance, according to FBI officials.

No evidence has surfaced that Robinson or his roommate were involved with Armed Queers SLC. Still, the group’s deletion spree has become part of the larger mystery surrounding how an anti-conservative assassin was radicalized — and whether extremist networks played a role.

Armed Queers SLC did not respond to multiple requests for comment from the DCNF. Fanaeian did not respond to a direct message on X from the DCNF.

Fanaeian, who calls himself transgender, formerly worked with the group Pink Pistols but parted ways in 2021 to form Armed Queers SLC, Pink Pistols said in a Monday statement addressing Kirk’s assassination.

“Any social media accounts calling for or celebrating violence are not affiliated with [Pink Pistols],” the group said, calling it “monstrous, unethical, and hypocritical” to praise the murder. Pink Pistols confirmed to the DCNF in an email that it has not had contact with Fanaeian since 2021.

Training And Indoctrination

Armed Queers SLC is listed as a member organization by the National Network on Cuba (NNOC), a U.S.-based group that offers trips to Cuba for Americans through its May Day Brigade program.

The NNOC has organized the May Day Brigade trips in coordination with the Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples (ICAP). Late Cuban dictator Fidel Castro created the ICAP to advance his communist propaganda efforts, according to a 2012 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) report.

In a now-deleted May YouTube video, Fanaeian said he was told in Cuba that “it’s time for you to go home and make your own revolution” during a May Day Brigade trip, Just the News reported.

The NNOC did not respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.

Armed Queers SLC’s involvement with the NNOC should be a wake-up call for the State Department and U.S. intelligence agencies to investigate the May Day Brigade program, Kyle Shideler, senior analyst at the Center for Security Policy, told the DCNF. Shideler has personally advised senior government officials on U.S. homeland security issues.

“The links to the NNOC and the May Day Brigade is perhaps most worrisome, because of NNOC’s direct links to the Cuban regime,” Shideler told the DCNF. “Historically the Cuban regime has used such ‘brigade’ trips to identify potential assets and provide additional training and indoctrination to such individuals, who then return to the states to engage in subversion, and sometimes violence.”

“It’s unlikely we would necessarily ever know whether this specific individual was selected for such a role,” Shideler said of Fanaeian.

This isn’t just campus activism. It’s indoctrination straight from Havana — and it raises serious questions about whether communist regimes are helping radicalize activists inside the United States.

A Radical Record

In the wake of Black Lives Matter riots, Fanaeian endorsed violence as a means of political change in a 2020 interview with local news outlet KMYU while he was director of diversity and inclusion at the Associated Students of the University of Utah.

“I’m a member of the LGBTQ community, and our liberation and our rights came after the Stonewall riots … I wouldn’t even be able to be a student at this school if it wasn’t for a violent riot that took place within a span of three days, so I absolutely agree that sometimes violent protest and really riots and those kinds of loud rebellions must take place for tangible change,” Fanaeian told KMYU.

This public endorsement of violence underscores a disturbing pattern: the normalization of radical tactics among far-left groups cloaked in the language of “social justice.”

The Singham Network

As of 2022, Fanaeian was also an organizer for the Salt Lake City chapter of the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), a socialist group involved in protests for leftist causes around the country, according to ABC4. Leaders of PSL have also held leading roles in groups funded by Neville Singham, a left-wing businessman reportedly based in Shanghai whose projects revolve around propagating pro-China narratives, the DCNF previously reported.

For example, one woman has been a central committee member and presidential candidate for PSL and a founder of the Singham-funded People’s Forum and secretary of the Singham-funded BreakThrough BT Media.

Armed Queers SLC and the PSL have also participated in events together in Utah since at least 2023, archived webpages show.

The PSL did not respond to the DCNF’s request for comment. Singham could not be reached directly.

“Given the relatively moderate Republican leanings common to Utah, it’s not surprising to see a handful of individuals appear again and again among far left groups, as they are likely pulling from a fairly narrow group of individuals predisposed to their cause,” Shideler said about Armed Queers SLC. “It’s also extremely common to see individual organizers create or utilize multiple organizations with overlapping memberships to make their movement appear larger than it is, and as organizers change the name of their groups to emphasize the current cause of the day.”

The PSL has celebrated mass-murdering dictator Mao Zedong for creating the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and denied the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre of protesters in China, echoing the CCP’s own propaganda. Members of Congress have repeatedly expressed concerns in recent months over whether Singham and his activist allies have engaged in illegal foreign lobbying efforts for China.

Armed And ‘Anti-Fascist’

Gun-toting leftist groups are becoming increasingly common, according to Shideler, who told the DCNF he and his organization have tracked Armed Queers SLC’s activities for about 3 years.

Armed Queers SLC is dedicated to “the armed and militant protection of … oppressed people,” abolishing prisons, creating “a socialist society” and other goals, an online membership form says. “Participation in such armed Antifa groups or in armed demonstrations has been a common denominator related to far left attacks,” Shideler told the DCNF.

The most recent alleged case was a July 4 shooting ambush at an Alvarado, Texas, immigration detention facility that has led to more than a dozen arrests, Shideler noted. Some of the defendants, including alleged ringleader Benjamin Song, previously belonged to the leftist Elm Fork John Brown Gun Club, The Washington Post reported, citing three people close to Song. The gun club’s members often show up dressed in black and armed with rifles to guard local LGBTQ events or protest conservative speakers.

Shideler also pointed to Willem van Spronsen and Charles Landeros, Antifa-style activists who died in shootouts with police in Washington State and Oregon, respectively, in 2019. Van Spronsen was a member of the leftist Puget Sound John Brown Gun Club, while Landeros was a founder and instructor for a “Community Armed Self-Defense” group focused on protecting LGBTQ people and ethnic minorities, according to news reports.

Armed Queers SLC is “fairly typical of the kind of armed ‘anti-fascist’ ‘community defense’ organizations which are becoming increasingly prolific on the radical left,” Shideler said.

Editor’s note: The story is an edited version of a Daily Caller News Foundation investigation.