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The Curious Case Of George Zinn

by | Sep 17, 2025

With Tyler Robinson in custody facing the death penalty for the murder of Charlie Kirk, authorities have turned their focus to pursuing others involved in a larger criminal conspiracy behind the assassination. Although FBI Director Kash Patel has insinuated that transgender militant groups were integral to the lethal plot, any potential accomplices of Robinson’s still remain at large, if extant at all. The lone figure who faces any criminal charges related to Kirk’s assassination is Utah resident George Zinn. Zinn, who was arrested on an obstruction of justice charge that led to him being detained in the chaotic aftermath of the shooting after indicating to authorities that he was the perpetrator, was subsequently charged for child sex crimes after child pornography was reportedly discovered on his smartphone.

While that development stunned a public questioning the scope of Zinn’s involvement in the shooting, those familiar with him understand the charges are the most recent chapter in a decades-long saga chronicling his volatile behavior and political activism. For nearly 40 years, Zinn has cultivated a reputation across Utah as an agent provocateur on the fringes of the Republican Party by being arrested dozens of times at various political events. While his reputation is unbeknownst to a nation whose eyes are transfixed on each development in the investigation into the Kirk assassination, an examination of Zinn’s decades-long track record raises serious questions about how he fits into the emerging narrative hyperfocused on the role of militant leftists in the shooting.

Local media outlets covering Zinn’s surreal political ascent from local eccentric to national pariah have described him as a “gadfly” in the Utah Republican political landscape due to his constant presence for years at events running the gamut from protests to rallies across the state. In 2012, the Salt Lake Tribune’s Sean P. Means sardonically quipped that the coverage of Zinn’s erratic behavior had become so regular that he facetiously referred to his most recent piece on the subject as the latest installment in “The Further Adventures of George Zinn.”

The laundry list of criminal charges brought against Zinn over the years made him even more familiar to local prosecutors. While learning of his checkered past may serve to trigger the confirmation bias of those eager to brand Zinn as a radical leftist, accounts of his criminal history paint a picture in diametric opposition to that presumption. According to Salt Lake County District Attorney Sim Gill, Zinn’s unhinged personality left very little to the imagination. That included his political persuasion. Gill characterized Zinn as a conservative libertarian who would mock the district attorney for being a Democrat.

Gill’s account of Zinn’s political leanings challenges the emerging suspicions that he was a deeply embedded left-wing extremist. It also confirmed Zinn’s volatile mental state. According to the district attorney, his office repeatedly attempted to use the cases brought against him to admit him into mental healthcare, but Zinn refused time and time again, instead preferring to defend himself in court.

Zinn’s arrest history makes his fractured mental state utterly apparent. Most of the charges brought against him were related to trespassing charges and other miscellaneous misdemeanors. In May, Zinn was brought into custody in what may have been his most bizarre arrest until that point when he was arrested for refusing to stop obstructing a public road. Zinn stood in the middle of the road, telling police that he didn’t care if he caused a traffic jam all day before demanding that the officers take him into jail. That arrest was preceded by another in January when Zinn was arrested in Park City, Utah, for trespassing at the Sundance Film Festival after being barred from entering a question and answer session during the event.

Yet, not all of Zinn’s arrests could be written off as the quirky exploits of an eccentric with a few screws loose who only posted a threat to himself. In 2019, Zinn was arrested at a political protest organized by left-wing groups, including the national Earth First! movement, as well as local Utah organizations ICE Free SLC, Civil Riot, Rose Park Brown Berets, Canyon Country Rising Tide, Utahns Against Police Brutality, and Wasatch Rising Tide. Despite the left-leaning position of those organizations, Zinn was not arrested for joining their cause but instead for pushing leftist protesters at the demonstration, ironically because they were obstructing the path of a Utah Transit Authority bus. Zinn’s violent opposition to those left-wing groups adds credence to the claims pointing to the longstanding right-wing political position he held, in line with the account of Salt Lake County District Attorney Sim Gill.

That 2019 arrest occurred 6 years after Zinn committed the most disturbing of his crimes which demonstrated the risk he presented to society. In 2013, Zinn was charged with one count of making terroristic threats, a second-degree felony, after he emailed the Salt Lake City Marathon requesting to help place bombs at the marathon’s finish line. The bomb threat came less than one week after the Boston Marathon bombing. In addition to demonstrating the threat Zinn posed to the public, the charges also revealed his longstanding untreated mental illness. Zinn ultimately agreed to a plea deal in November of 2013 in which he pleaded guilty to a Class A misdemeanor charge that let him avoid any jail time, instead being sentenced to 24 months probation, a mental health evaluation, and subsequent treatment.

In all, Zinn’s criminal history dating back to 1989 includes dozens of convictions for charges on petty crimes, including criminal trespass, theft of services, interfering with a police officer, and disturbing the peace, with his lone felony arrest being for the bomb threats he made in 2013. The red flags that rap sheet raised made his presence at political rallies throughout Utah much more visible. Yet, despite his clearly unwell mental state, Zinn maintained the outward appearance of sanity while he attended events in support of Republican candidates for state, local, and federal offices, with his lone violent outburst being the one attacking left-wing protesters in 2019. In 2023, Zinn attended an event hosted by the conservative public policy think tank the Sutherland Institute, headlined by U.S. Sen. Mike Lee. In 2020, he attended former Utah House Speaker Greg Hughes’ 2020 announcement that he was running for governor. While in attendance at those events, Zinn caused no disruptions.

Further potential evidence proving Zinn’s irrefutable conservative political ideology is found on the website for the Utah Federation of College Republicans, which lists a George H. Zinn as an alternate national delegate at-large for the organization. According to arrest records, Zinn’s middle name is Hodgson. However, the UFCR website does not list a full middle name nor a date of birth for the listing attributed to a George Zinn on their website.

Zinn getting the autograph of Republican mainstay Rudy Giuliani, as most left-wing extremists do…THEY EVEN HAVE THE SAME HAIRCUT!!!

For decades, Zinn attempted to join the Utah delegations attending Republican National Conventions. The first instance of him attempting this scheme occurred in 1988 when he showed up to the Republican National Convention in New Orleans. Zinn’s haphazard plan left him stranded in New Orleans with no place to stay until he ultimately convinced fellow Utahn and Reagan Secretary of Education Terrel Bell to let him sleep on a cot in his hotel room. In 2012, Zinn tried to reenact the events of the 1988 RNC when he attempted to join the Utah contingent attending that year’s convention. While security at the Airport Hilton in Tampa refused to let him in when it was revealed to them he was not an official delegate nor a guest at the hotel, some members of the Utah delegation familiar with Zinn pleaded with the guards to allow him to stay. Their pleas were to no avail, as hotel security ultimately kicked Zinn out of the Hilton.

The attempt of some delegates at the 2012 RNC to allow Zinn to stay with them at their hotel was not the lone instance of the Utah Republican Party embracing Zinn. Earlier that year, Zinn was arrested and jailed in Davis County, Utah, for failing to pay fines for riding public transit without proof of payment. A campaign led by former GOP State Chairman Richard Snelgrove launched a fundraising drive to raise the $1,700 in outstanding fines Zinn had. According to financial disclosures from the Salt Lake County Clerk Election Division, Zinn worked on Snelgrove’s 2010 campaign for the Salt Lake County Council. Zinn earned a paltry $74 for running errands and assisting in campaign preparations on two separate occasions occurring on October 12th, 2010 and October 19th, 2010, respectively.

Following Zinn’s arrest for obstruction of justice at Utah Valley University, in which he dramatically shouted out a false confession to being the assassin of Charlie Kirk, his image has transcended from a mentally ill loner on the fringes of the Republican Party, the likes of Travis Bickle, to being made into a central person of interest in the Charlie Kirk assassination as if he were a character straight out of Alan J. Pakula’s 1974 political assassination thriller The Parallax View. The subsequent development of him confessing to being in possession of child pornography further molds his image into a perverted leftist that would fit right into a Discord chat created to sell off market estrogen to minors.

However, the public image that the right-wing media has cultivated for Zinn as a radical leftist ally entirely omits decades of evidence to the contrary that reveals his long-standing connections to the Republican Party. Zinn’s confession to obstruction of justice and possession of child pornography, like his false confession at the crime scene of Kirk’s assassination, seems to fit the official narrative about the slain conservative activist’s assassination woven by the FBI all too conveniently. That narrative subjugates any evidence of connections he already had in favor of connections the authorities investigating the Kirk assassination seem to have premeditatively constructed.

Given his fragile mental state and decades-long aspirations to become more deeply involved in the Republican establishment, it’s clear Zinn already had political connections. The question that remains is who were those connections really to? Was Zinn truly an accomplice of left-wing extremists, an operative of a state actor behind the shooting, or a mental case with a narcissistic personality disorder that made him the perfect patsy? With the hysteria surrounding Kirk’s assassination only being exacerbated, the public appears to be more willing to accept answers to those questions than to find them themselves. That dynamic is a deathknell for the truth and, in turn, any hope of finding justice for the late Charlie Kirk.

Reprinted with permission from ZeroHedge.

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