The Dictatorship
Change my mind: Searching for reality in Charlie Kirk’s murder case
PROVO, Utah — There were three of them that first day, milling about outside Utah’s Fourth District Courthouse, after failing to secure one of the 14 seats reserved inside for the public. I had taken to calling them the Freedom Ladies; named for their shirts and other merch emblazoned with the word freedom, like the one conservative activist Charlie Kirk had been wearing when he was killed last September at a debate event.
We agreed to stick to first names as they didn’t trust the mainstream media and said they didn’t know how I’d spin what they would tell me. The Freedom Ladies — Brandy, Jamie, and Hayley, Utahns in their 40s — had each been in the crowd at Utah Valley University, watching Kirk speak when he was shot.
“We’re trauma sisters,” Brandy told me, wrapping her arm around Jamie.
They had driven to Provo this week for the preliminary hearing of Tyler Robinson, the 23-year-old the state has charged with Kirk’s murder. They were there, Jamie told me, looking for answers. The government’s story just didn’t sit right with them: that Robinson found Kirk’s right-wing politics hateful, and so drove 250 miles with his grandfather’s WWII-era rifle and a bunch of bullets etched with internet memes, climbed onto a campus rooftop and shot Kirk in the neck.
Prosecutors would spend the week laying out that case in a small fourth-floor courtroom, using DNA evidence, surveillance video, and several confessions the state alleges Robinson made, to ask a judge to send the case to trial. Robinson has yet to enter a plea.
Outside, the Freedom Ladies — part of a small, passionate crowd of lookie-loos, true-crime junkies, Charlie Kirk fans, and conspiracist creators — were weighing alternative narratives, assembled mostly online, that were unfounded yet felt to them somehowmore true: that Robinson had been set up, a patsy in conspiracist speak; or that Kirk’s own organization, Turning Point USA, was involved in his death; or that Israel, perhaps, was pulling the strings. The one thing nearly everyone I spoke to seemed to agree on was that Erika Kirk, Charlie’s widow, was somehow involved — suspect at best.
“She’s evil,” Jamie said of Charlie Kirk’s widow.
Rarely do I get to spend a week around people who traffic in conspiracy theories as they’re shown, up close, evidence that flies in the face of their beliefs. While the state made its early case against Robinson, I watched from the jury box, alongside a dozen other reporters who’d landed media seats. And when I wasn’t in the courtroom, I was with the believers: waiting out in the middle of the night beside people camped in the public linetalking during breaks to the members of the public who’d made it inside, trailing conspiracist creators as they lingered in the parking lot after court. I was also searching for an answer to a question of my own: What would change someone’s mind?
***
Almost immediately following Charlie Kirk’s killing, the conspiracy theories began. Since the 2012 massacre of school children at Sandy Hook Elementary School, it’s become expected in the face of mass tragedy or high profile shootings that a cadre of fabulists will deny the event outright and spin up a narrative to counter the official ones. But Kirk’s killing widened the audience of people who were willing to believe such things well beyond the usual fringe, to elected officialspopular right-wing influencers, and Kirk’s closest friends and allies.
Candace Owens, a former Turning Point employee and friend of Kirk, has since led the conspiratorial charge. Less than a week after his death — days after Robinson turned himself in and was arrested for the murder, authorities said — Owens branded herself an investigative journalist and set out on her next crusade: finding out who really killed Charlie Kirk.
As difficult as these last few days have been, it brings our family comfort to know that the world has witnessed the overwhelming evidence of what occurred to Charlie that day.”
statement from the family of charlie kirk
Early episodes of her popular online show included “Charlie Kirk Shooting Suspect Charged. Something Isn’t Right…” and “Who Ordered The Hit On Charlie Kirk?”
Owens had been clawing her way back to the spotlight after she was fired by The Daily Wire for veering from culture-war podcasting into open antisemitism and conspiracist content, including a ham-fisted deep dive into the debunked theory that the first lady of France is secretly a man. With the Kirk investigation, Owens’ YouTube audience grew fourfold overnight; her channel now has over six million followers.
Since September, Owens’ theories about Kirk’s death have expanded, and she and much of her rabid audience have decided that the case against Robinson is rigged. Across thousands of podcast episodes and online posts, a network of conspiracist creators — with Owens at the top — has implicated state prosecutors, federal agencies, foreign governments, and TPUSA in a plot against Robinson.
“I know this is controversial,” Brooke Johnson, an Orem native and Utah Valley University graduate, told me around 2 a.m. as she waited in the overnight line for one of the 14 public courtroom seats, “but there are certain questions that Candace has asked that need to be answered.”
Owens dismissed the court proceedings before they began.
“Today the Tyler Robinson show trial begins,” she posted.
But a preliminary hearing is not a trial. It exists to determine whether the state has enough evidence to move a case forward to trial. And for five days, prosecutors tried to prove it, one exhibit and witness at a time. I watched them from two perspectives: one focused on the evidence and another on what the far-out internet, led by Owens, would make of it.
The state’s first witness was a campus police officer who had been working an overtime shift on the day Kirk spoke. Officer Christopher Bagley said he saw Kirk being shot, recognized the sound of a rifle, and climbed to the roof of a building with a clean line of sight down onto the stage, where he found a screwdriver and a disturbance in the gravel: the distinct impression, he said, of someone laid out flat, in “sniper position.”
Prosecutors showed video from campus surveillance cameras they said tracked Robinson — a young man with a slim build and a baseball cap pulled far down onto his brow — as he moved across campus four separate times that day: in his car, arriving in a maroon shirt and shorts, leaving and then returning on foot in different clothes, walking with a heavy limp to conceal a long gun. In the footage the state played in court, a young man climbs a stairwell, crosses a walkway, rolls over a railing onto the roof, drops into position, and, after the shot that killed Kirk, runs back across the roof and disappears off campus and into the trees.
Online conspiracists claim the videos showed nothing; they were too blurry, shot too far away. They had been doctored by authorities, some said. Others posited that the videos had been engineered on purpose, using decoys who looked just enough like Robinson to frame him.
“This is a psyop for the general public,” wrote Jose “Chille” DeCastro under his X account Project Constitutiona self-described YouTube cop watcher turned Kirk conspiracist creator who has been cited by Owens on her show. “The feds and their media lapdogs are trying to convince people this blurry, unidentifiable footage proves Tyler did it.”
Sgt. Jennifer Faumuina of the Utah Department of Public Safety testified that she oversaw the securing of the crime scene and the evidence. Prosecutors showed photos of a rifle wrapped in a towel and stuffed behind a tree near campus, and a spent .30-06 cartridge case — the brass from a fired round — alongside three unfired bullets, each engraved with a message. They showed photos of the same kind of ammunition recovered in a search of Robinson’s home, along with paper targets and a round from his bedroom etched with the words “test shot.” And they showed results of DNA testing that linked Robinson to the screwdriver found on the roof, the towel, the rifle and to a tool prosecutors say Robinson used to scratch the messages into the bullets.
I feel so bad if it really does turn out that Tyler Robinson did this. I’ll feel like such an asshole.”
Brooke johnson, Utah Valley University graduate
Some online conspiracists have pushed an unfounded theory and framed the rifle as a distraction from the real murder weapon: Kirk’s microphone.
“We don’t know what Robinson’s actual role was, but Charlie was taken out by an exploding lav mic,” offered Stew Peters, a well-known antisemitic conspiracy theorist.
Then there were the alleged confessions. The state presented evidence – text messages, a group chat, a physical note, and testimony – that they claim shows Robinson repeatedly confessing to the killing.
“I had the opportunity to take out Charlie Kirk and I’m going to take it,” Robinson allegedly wrote in a note to his boyfriend and roommate, Lance Twiggs.
“I had enough of his hatred,” Robinson allegedly texted to Twiggs. “Some hate can’t be negotiated out.”
In a recorded interview played in court, Twiggs told prosecutors that Robinson confessed in person the day after Kirk’s killing.
“He started crying a little bit and said he wishes he hadn’t done it,” Twiggs said in the video.
Baron Coleman, an attorney turned YouTuber, who Owens describes as the “after party” to her show, suggested on X that the note hadn’t been written by Robinson because it lacked commas.
***
Resting the state’s case, Chief Deputy Utah County Attorney Chad Grunander said, “the evidence is overwhelming. It’s devastating.”
Owens’ response was predictable.
“The ‘evidence is overwhelming’ campaign has begun!” Owens posted on X Friday. “This is all so pathetic. And obvious. And [sic] utter disaster of a non-existent case.”
The people I spent the last week with were a little harder to read.
One court-watcher who declined to be named had arrived certain that Robinson was being framed, and that Twiggs was in on it. But she told me the evidence presented in court had gotten to her. Watching Twiggs on the screen, she’d started to believe him. He was a kid, she said, “without a fully formed brain” who was in over his head. Kirk’s killing was starting to look less like a conspiracy and more like a tragedy, she said.
Johnson, who told me on Monday that Erika Kirk seemed “suspect,” had softened by Friday. She still saw holes in the case, but said she was hesitant now to cast blame — on Erika Kirk especially, whom she’d been seated behind on the last day of court, and had watched as the widow and her mother-in-law embraced and cried while prosecutors showed surveillance video of the man they say was Robinson crouching on a roof before shooting Charlie Kirk.
“You never want false accusations,” Johnson said. “I feel so bad if it really does turn out that Tyler Robinson did this. I’ll feel like such an asshole.”
The Freedom Ladies didn’t come back into court to watch the defense try to poke holes in the state’s forensic science and cast doubt on the completeness of the state’s investigation.
Jamie told me she’d changed her m ind about Erika Kirk, too — but she wouldn’t come back to court. Another person in their group had made national news for a moment of sympathy shown toward Erika Kirk, and Candace Owens had called her outsuggesting she’d be the next target of her show. Jamie didn’t want to be next.
The Kirk family released a statement on Friday.
“As difficult as these last few days have been, it brings our family comfort to know that the world has witnessed the overwhelming evidence of what occurred to Charlie that day,” it read. “Nothing will ever undo the loss of our beloved Charlie. As this case moves into its next phase, we pray that truth will continue to be heard through a process that is fair, transparent, and grounded in the facts.”
One conspiracist creator, popular within Owens’ network, told me after court on Thursday she was having second thoughts about the case. On camera and on social media, she leaned into the narratives being pushed by her colleagues online. But in private — and asking me not to use her name —she conceded that the state’s case was strong. She might even step back from the conspiracy world, she said, “but not yet.”
“I gotta do it slowly,” she told me. “I don’t want to make people mad.”
Brandy Zadrozny is a senior enterprise reporter for MS NOW. She was a previously a senior enterprise reporter for NBC News, based in New York.
The Senate Judiciary Committee postponed a vote on acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s nomination, a spokesperson said late Wednesday, as two retiring Republicans on the panel dug in over President Donald Trump’s personal “anti-weaponization” deal with the government he runs.
Sen. Chuck Grassley’s decision to delay the committee vote that had been set for Thursday marks a setback for one of Trump’s highest-profile Cabinet nominees, at the hands of Texas Sen. John Cornyn and Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, a pair of Republicans set to leave the chamber next year.
“Chairman Grassley works to set President Trump’s nominees up for success in committee, not failure. Senators Cornyn and Tillis want written assurances from the Department of Justice regarding the Trump-IRS settlement,” the committee spokesperson said.
Blanche’s nomination to permanently head the Department of Justice needs the support of either Cornyn or Tillis to make it out of the committee to a vote by the full Senate, assuming all Democrats remain opposed.
“Why don’t you call over the Department of Justice and tell them they have one hour and 50 minutes to get me what I asked for,” Cornyn told reporters Wednesday afternoon amid the hardening standoff over his demand that Blanche and the DOJ put in writing a commitment never to pursue the president’s prized “anti-weaponization” fund, and to clarify the terms of Trump’s personal deal with the Internal Revenue Service.
Tillis told MS NOW that the conversations were complicated by the need for the Justice Department to get “several parties” to agree on the language of the statement Cornyn and Tillis are seeking.
“What I’ve advised the chair, and I would assume Senator Cornyn said something similar, is that we’re not prepared to vote yes yet,” he added.
“The Department has been in regular communication with Committee members for weeks, and we look forward to continuing to work productively with Senators to address any concerns,” a Justice Department spokesperson said in response to the decision to postpone the committee vote.
Cornyn was set to meet with Blanche on Wednesday morning, but the meeting was called off after Blanche failed to meet the senator’s demand for written proposals to modify the controversial settlement agreement he brokered between Trump and the IRS. The Republican senator is set to leave Congress when his term ends in January after a bruising May primary loss to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, Trump’s chosen candidate.
“Maybe John Cornyn’s upset with me because I didn’t endorse him,” Trump told reporters Wednesday afternoon in the Oval Office. “I don’t know what it is, but I haven’t heard that there’s a problem. I heard (Blanche) is going through quite nicely.”
Cornyn made clear to Blanche during his confirmation hearing that he will not get his support until he agrees to reopen and modify the settlement. Due to the committee’s narrow Republican majority, one GOP “no” vote is enough to sink Blanche’s nomination.
The senator has asked Blanche to provide proof that the proposed nearly $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund established as part of the deal between Trump and the IRS is formally dead, and he has also demanded Blanche narrow the tax audit immunity provisions the settlement afforded to Trump and his family.
Blanche has publicly stated that his department has dropped the fund, but he and the DOJ have dodged requests from Cornyn and a federal judge to put that in writing.
After announcing his meeting with Blanche would not take place Wednesday morning, Cornyn told reporters that changes from Blanche “in a modified release form” would be acceptable, but that “for some reason … they simply refuse to do it,” referring to the DOJ.
Shortly after the meeting was called off, a Justice Department official told MS NOW that the department “provided a written proposal to Senator Cornyn’s staff yesterday following ongoing discussion with both the Committee and the Senator’s office.”
Cornyn said that proposal was “not responsive” to his demands because it did not address the tax audit immunity provisions in the settlement, one of his key demands.
In May, Blanche signed an addendum as part of the deal that granted Trump, his family and his businesses immunity from pending IRS tax audits. That agreement, which has been decried by former IRS officials and legal experts as unlawful self-dealing, is being contested in federal court.
Cornyn noted that Blanche testified under oath that he could meet the request during his confirmation hearing.
“Maybe they think I’m just going to give up or you know, go along, but they’re mistaken,” Cornyn said when asked why he thinks the DOJ could be slow-walking his request.
Kevin Frey contributed to this report.
Sydney Carruth is a breaking news reporter covering national politics and policy for MS NOW. You can send her tips from a non-work device on Signal at SydneyCarruth.46 or follow her work on X and Bluesky.
Mychael Schnell is a reporter for MS NOW.
Ebony Davis is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW based in Washington, D.C. She previously worked at BLN as a campaign reporter covering elections and politics.
When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrived this week for his tour of Washington, he may have had a mission in mind.
Netanyahu needed to overcome his newly diminished stature and waning influence over his once close friend President Donald Trump as both leaders grapple with the unpopularity of a war they started together and is escaping their control.
His meeting at the White House with Trump on Tuesday, which was closed to the press, was the first face-to-face encounter between the two allies since the U.S. and Israel launched a joint attack against Iran on Feb. 28.
Trump gave him a muted welcome and afterwards simply described the meeting as “very good.” “Obviously, many important subjects were discussed,” the president wrote on Truth Social.
Rather than an intimate one-on-one setting, the Oval Office was full of top U.S. officials — Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine, and special envoy Steve Witkoff.
But Netanyahu continued the full court press on the Trump administration.
Over the course of two days, in addition to seeing Trump and attending Sen. Lindsey Graham’s funeral at the Capitol, Netanyahu also met separately with Vance, Hegseth, and Rubio, White House and Israeli officials confirmed to MS NOW.
The Israeli prime minister’s slate of meetings with key U.S. national security officials comes at a pivotal moment in the Iran conflict as tensions escalate in the region and Americans increasingly sour on the war. A recent Quinnipiac poll shows 60% of American voters opposing U.S. military action against Iran and 74% against sending U.S. ground troops into Iran.
Not only does Trump face pressure as Republicans face an uphill battle to retain congressional control in this fall’s midterms, Netanyahu’s fate as prime minister is at stake in Israel’s upcoming September elections – and he can’t afford to lose Trump’s favor.
The talks largely focused on what to do next as Iran continues to menace shipping in the Strait of Hormuz and retaliate against American bases in the region and launch attacks on Gulf allies.
According to a senior Israeli official who was granted anonymity to describe the closed-door meeting, President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu did not come to a final decision after discussing three paths forward: get a “good deal” focused on Iran’s nuclear program and enriched material, have no deal and instead continue the blockade and economic pressure, or take escalated military action.
But Netanyahu did not tell Trump what he should do – nor did he express a preference.
The senior Israeli official noted Netanyahu has not ruled out diplomacy – as long as it is coupled with “very strong pressures,” calling the push to dismantle Iran’s nuclear program “a contest of will and a contest of force.”
“There are ways of squeezing them and squeezing them and squeezing them and negotiating at the same time,” the official said.
Netanyahu did not present President Trump with new intelligence regarding the underground Iranian nuclear facility Pickaxe Mountain, per the senior Israeli official, noting the U.S. and Israel already are constantly sharing intelligence – and know where Iran’s highly enriched material is. “We don’t think it’s moved, and I think we have a pretty good grasp on that,” the official said.
During their meeting on Tuesday, Trump and Netanyahu discussed ways Israel and the U.S. can work together to stop Iran’s nuclear program and get the Strait of Hormuz open to maritime trade, the senior Israeli official said.
The two leaders also discussed a third goal: to continue to undermine the Iranian regime and “possibly create future conditions for a change in that area.” U.S. officials have backed away from pursuing paths that would overthrow the current leadership, but Netanyahu still believes that could happen.
“The chasm that has been created between the people and the regime is not about to be closed,” the senior Israeli official said of Netanyahu’s thinking.
Netanyahu advised Trump in February that Israeli intelligence indicated launching strikes against Iran would lead to the toppling of the Islamic Republic’s regime – and five months later, the slain ayatollah’s son retains power with a close circle of hardliners, calling into question the accuracy of Israel’s intelligence apparatus.
But the senior Israeli official said at the time, Netanyahu did not promise the Iranian people would take fate into their own hands following a coordinated attack. Rather, he chose his words carefully and said that an attack could create conditions to “advance the probability or the possibility that that would happen.”
The conditions needed for the Iranian regime to fall, “did not materialize,” the official told MS NOW, adding, “not for lack of insight, but for either operational failure or decisions that were made.”
Despite Netanyahu insisting Israel and the U.S. are on the same page, differences still remain: the sale of F-35 fighter jets to Turkey and the Saudi nuclear arrangement did not come up during Wednesday’s White House meeting, according to a second Israeli official granted anonymity to describe sensitive discussions.
Meanwhile, the conflict continues to spread, with an Iranian drone attacking a U.S. gas storage tanker off the coast of Egypt on Wednesday.
Trump indicated he would not let Iran’s latest action slide, telling reporters on Wednesday that the U.S. would retaliate against Iran even as he leaves room for diplomatic talks to resume.
“It’s our turn, and we’ll see if we get there with an agreement at some point,” Trump said. “But we’re going to hit them very hard.”
As for what it would take for Israel to join the U.S. strikes, the senior Israeli official said that if Israel is attacked by Iran, “We will respond very, very forcefully and very quickly. And I think Iran would make a great mistake.”
Julia Jester covers politics for MS NOW and is based in Washington, D.C.
International rage over FIFA’s close ties to President Donald Trump has reached a fever pitch after soccer’s governing body announced a plan to sell a significant stake to an investor group led by Joshua Kushner, the brother of Trump’s son-in-law.
The president and his family have all but turned the White House into their personal piggy bank. And FIFA — which has its own sordid history of corruption — seems to have made itself a party to Trump’s self-enrichment under Gianni Infantino’s leadership, such as by paying for space inside Trump Tower in New York. (The organization has defended the office rental as a World Cup outpost.)
Soccer is seen by many as a unifying game. But Trump’s incorporation of FIFA into his political dynasty is threatening that idea.
FIFA has announced plans to sell a large minority stake in a new company that will run its main events, including the World Cup and Club World Cup, as part of a plan to triple the amount of development money it dishes out to its 211 member associations.
Under the proposals — which are subject to approval by a majority of those national associations and FIFA’s 37-member council — a new entity called FIFA Forward Enterprises (FFE) will take over all commercial operations, while FIFA remains the game’s global governing body and retains a majority stake in FFE.
A press release from FIFA confirmed the plans and said Thrive Eternal, which was launched by Joshua Kushner, is expected to lead the investment group that would control FIFA Forward Enterprise. FIFA did not clarify why Thrive Eternal was selected, and Kushner was already dabbling in sports.
But Trump basically has already given son-in-law Jared Kushner carte blanche to dictate U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East while simultaneously hatching business plans in the region. (Jared Kushner has denied any conflicts of interest.)
Joshua Kushner reportedly has been a major donor to Democrats. But, predictably, the idea of another Kushner becoming financially entwined with the World Cup — the world’s most popular sporting event — and basically being dropped into a position of global significance isn’t going over well. Several other soccer governing bodies have expressed concerns, including Europe’s UEFA.
“This crosses a line that football’s governing institutions should never cross,” UEFA said in a statement about The Athletic’s report, adding: “The soul and governance of football are not assets to trade — especially with zero transparency as to who gains financially. None of us are the owners of football. It is not FIFA’s to sell.”
Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee also rebuked the plan, writing on X: “Apparently the fake Peace Prize and giant lease with Trump Tower weren’t enough — now Infantino performs a kickback hat trick by pursuing a multibillion-dollar deal with Jared Kushner’s brother to sell ownership stakes in the World Cup to private investors.”
FIFA, Donald Trump’s favorite corrupt racketeering enterprise in world sports, is now going directly into business with the Trump family!
Apparently the fake Peace Prize and giant lease with Trump Tower weren’t enough—now Infantino performs a kickback hat trick by pursuing a… https://t.co/knSZibuMea
— House Judiciary Dems (@HouseJudiciary) July 28, 2026
Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., has already launched an investigation into the FIFA leader’s relationship with the Trump administration, while dozens of European lawmakers — citing concerns about “potential breaches of political neutrality” — have called for the FIFA Ethics Committee to investigate Infantino. This new proposal seems unlikely to assuage those concerns.
But what it does seem likely to do is fuel global anger toward the U.S. — the kind that has been growing since Trump retook office.
And when you consider that, it’s truly remarkable how the same MAGA movement whose members whined for years about politics mixing with sports is now in lockstep with a president who seems dead-set on casting his shadow over every sports event he can.
This post on X basically sums up the foul stench around FIFA’s latest proposal.
Sepp Blatter was Infantino’s predecessor as FIFA president and oversaw the organization amid some of its many scandals. When heof all people, is warning about how Trump and Infantino’s relationship is “deeply damaging” soccer, it’s a sign of how far FIFA has descended into the gutter.
Ja’han Jones is an MS NOW opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog.
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