The Megyn Kelly Show - Explosive Moments From Tyler Robinson Hearing, and Trump's FIFA Controversy, with Geragos, Murphy, Aronberg, Merchant, Frei, and Sage Steele | Ep. 1353

Episode Date: July 6, 2026

Megyn Kelly breaks down why The Megyn Kelly Show is streaming every second of the Tyler Robinson preliminary hearing, the commitment to covering every development in the case fairly and objectively, what to expect from the hearing about the assassination of Charlie Kirk all week, and more. Then Sage Steele, host of The Sage Steele Show, joins to discuss whether President Trump helped get Team USA's controversial red card reversed after speaking with the head of FIFA, the backlash to the involvement of Trump, the questions surrounding the referee who issued the red card against Team USA, whether FIFA is a truly corrupt organization, and more. Then Dave Aronberg and Ashleigh Merchant, hosts of The MK True Crime Show, Mark Geragos and Matt Murphy, hosts of In The Well, and former litigator Viva Frei, join to discuss the real reason prosecutors are moving forward with this rare five-day preliminary hearing in the Tyler Robinson case, why Utah's legal process differs from many other states, how the defense can use this week to help their case in the court of public opinion, the key testimony from Tyler Robinson's alleged "trans" lover Lance Twiggs, why Twiggs is a crucial witness in the prosecution's case, the odd alleged text messages between the two of them, the Tyler Robinson defense team's efforts to poke holes in the prosecution's case during the preliminary hearing, questions surrounding George Zinn's bizarre arrest right after the shooting and the lack of security at the event, the major debate over the bullet evidence in the Charlie Kirk assassination, whether the autopsy and forensics will help the prosecution or defense during the trial, and more.   Steele-https://www.youtube.com/@TheSageSteeleShow Frei- https://rumble.com/user/vivafrei Aronberg-https://www.youtube.com/@MKTrueCrime Merchant-https://www.youtube.com/@MKTrueCrime Geragos-https://www.youtube.com/@MKTrueCrime Murphy-https://www.youtube.com/@MKTrueCrime   Birch Gold: Text MK to 989898 and get a free America 250 silver round with qualifying purchase Byrna: Go to https://Byrna.com or your local Sportsman's Warehouse today. ARMRA: go to https://tryarmra.com/MEGYN to get 30% off your first subscription order Herald Group: Learn more at https://GuardYourCard.com     Follow The Megyn Kelly Show on all social platforms: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/MegynKelly Twitter: http://Twitter.com/MegynKellyShow Instagram: http://Instagram.com/MegynKellyShow Facebook: http://Facebook.com/MegynKellyShow Find out more information at:https://www.devilmaycaremedia.com/megynkellyshow Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at New East. Hey, everyone, I'm Megan Kelly. Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show. Hope you had a wonderful July 4th. More on our celebration in just a bit. We have a can't miss show today. We're going to be reacting live to the preliminary hearing of Tyler Robinson in Utah today. He is the man charged in the assassination of Charlie Kirk. Erica is there. Charlie's parents are there, Robert and Catherine, and this is going to be a very emotional week. I think, you know, quite clearly for Charlie's loved ones and possibly for you and I think for me too, this is going to be a rough one, a rough five days as we hear great details about how this went down, what happened to Charlie and, you know, what happened at Utah Valley University last September. This is not a small hearing. As I said, it's five days expected to be. It's essentially a mini trial

with witnesses and cross-examinations, except instead of proving their case beyond a reasonable doubt, prosecutors must only establish probable cause, probable cause that Tyler Robinson was the shooter and murderer of Charlie Kirk. As long as they did, that the case will head to trial at a later date. Now, typically, prosecutors can do this. They always have to establish probable cause against a defendant. Typically, you can do it through a preliminary hearing like this, or you can get a grand jury indictment, though in Utah, the grand juries are far less utilized than in most places. We did not know that, but that's why they're seeking the preliminary hearing, because that's their typical go-to out in Utah, we're told. So that's

the prosecutors are doing this and they're not they're not phoning anything in quite clearly because five days for a preliminary hearing is quite a bit they are calling witnesses there's somebody on the stand right now we actually are going to stream the whole thing live on our youtube page which we are right now during the course of the show when we're live doing you know the the show on serious xm as you guys i think know we do our show live on serious xm channel 11 between 12 and two eastern time monday through Friday. And then later we release the show as a YouTube program and on podcast. So what we're going to do while we're live on Sirius XM is monitor the live hearing update live as we go with anything important and then go back to the constant live stream. So if you want to watch this

thing, gavel to gavel you can on YouTube.com slash Megan Kelly. And then tune in for full analysis with lawyers, prosecutors, defense attorneys, and others as the week goes on. The prosecutors in this case have already announced that they intend to seek the death penalty against Tyler Robinson. It's just one of the many indicias of the stakes of what we're watching out there. We're well aware that there are some who don't believe Tyler Robinson had anything to do with this or that he was potentially manipulated by somebody into doing this. and there remain big questions about whether someone outside of Tyler Robinson, anyone, knew in advance that he was going to be committing this crime. We're going to cover every single angle of this case for our audience.

We're not going to assume anything. We're going to go into this with defense attorneys who will argue on Tyler's behalf or from the defense perspective with prosecutors, who will argue from the prosecution's defense. perspective and from those who think, you know, it's possible this guy had absolutely nothing to do with it. And we'll take a very fair look at this case as we go on. I don't, I just don't care about any of the bullshit around this. I, I care about Charlie, care about his family, and I care about being very factual in our coverage of what happens out there, both this week and when, as I believe it will be held over for trial, we get to trial. So that's my own commitment to you. Before we get to all of that, however, we've got to get into the biggest controversy in the world right now,

and it revolves around the World Cup for soccer. The U.S. set to take on Belgium tonight in Seattle, in the round of 16. But as of last Wednesday night, the U.S. was going to be without arguably its best player. Okay, Florin Balogun. I don't know how to pronounce the names, and I don't really know the soccer players. You guys know that, but I do know that there's a massive controversy unfurling right now around this guy said to be either our best

or one of our best players, because he received a red card in America's win in the last game for the play you're seeing on screen right now. Okay, you see the American in the white outfit, and he stepped on the other sides, on the other teams, the player's leg, ankle, foot. Now, this is slow-mo, but apparently you're not supposed to review whether there's been a foul

based on slow-mo. They don't do that. That you're supposed to leave that up to the call on the field. And many people looked at this, especially on the American side, and said a red card is well beyond the pale on what we just saw there. And a red card means you're not only kicked out of the game you're playing in, you also are barred from the next. So with every single game, an elimination game, that's obviously a huge consequence for America. And just, I mean, objective observers, the game of soccer, and said,

just you could find dozens of them saying, how did that turn into a red card? The refs on the field did not call it. They didn't think it was a red card. They didn't think it was a foul at all, at all. and it was the automatic replay, like video assistant, that thought it might be a penalty. And not only a penalty, it turned into a red card. Okay, so the Americans were crying foul, saying this is absurd. It wasn't a foul at all.

And it certainly wasn't a red card foul to where we lose, arguably, our best player for that game, which we did go on to win. And the next. It was such a big deal that, America basically wound up playing its Trump card. And it was a rather massive Trump card. And now just how big a role the U.S. President had in getting that call reversed, not entirely, but basically the red card's been suspended for a year. Yeah, they say for up to one year.

So I'm not exactly sure what that means, but it means this guy can play in tonight's match, right? And that reversal by FIFA happened after Trump called the head of the organization. All right, watch this. He didn't do anything wrong. And he's our best player or one of our best plays. It's a very vital player. And he gave him a red card. I didn't know what that meant.

I didn't think it meant much. Then I started hearing that that means he can't play in the next game, at least in the next game. I said, boy, that's a big, you know, if it happened to another player, it would have been unfair. but when they take your best player or just about, they have some great players, but, and they say you can't play. That's very unfair. That's, you know, it's one thing to penalize somebody for the game.

But how do you penalize them for a game that hasn't been played yet? It's very unfair. You can't do that. So, yes, I asked for a review by FIFA. He asked for a review. President Trump put in a call. FIFA took another look. And now Balagoon is set to play tonight pending a last-minute appeal by Belgium, our opponents tonight,

who are losing their minds over this call because they don't want to play us. Joining me now to shed further light on this is somebody who does know about sports a lot. And it's our friend Sage Steel. She's the host of the Sage Steel show. Buy gold and put some silver in your pocket. I know what you're thinking. Everything is so expensive right now. How am I going to buy gold? But listen, we got to talk about this. One thing you can control right now that does not cost you anything out of pocket is the ability to diversify your retirement savings.

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advantage of free America 250 silver with qualifying purchase before July 10th. Again, again, and text MK to the number 989898.98 today. Great to see you, Sage. How are you? Hi, Megan. I'm great. Happy fourth to you as well. And, oh, my goodness, this is controversy. Like, only we can create this controversy in America, right? So what, do I basically have it right? The guy stepped on the opponent's foot slash ankle. And the other guy wasn't hurt, but could have been hurt. And then how does this automatic? video review thing work? Is there a person behind that or is it just tech?

Oh, gosh. First of all, you're asking great questions and I will preface my answers by saying, I am not a soccer expert. I am learning quickly, but my life at ESPN and 30 years of sports is football, basketball, baseball, hockey. So this has been new and awesome for me to go to this level and really learn about it. Even if it's not intentional, there can be red cards issued. And that is exactly what happened. The controversy, I mean, we can sit there all day long and review that play and look at what happened and say red card, yellow card, what should have happened? If you ask the analysts that were on the game and my friend Alexei Lales on Fox, he was flabbergasted. He thought it was wrong. All the analysts on Fox thought it was wrong. I have a lot of friends in the soccer world who said,

listen, this sucks for us, but it was the right call. It is so subjective in soccer. You can liken it to how you felt maybe watching ice skating in the Olympics or gymnastics as well, where it is subjective and it is up to the referee, the official on the field at that time. This is the first Olympics, World Cup, where I believe this VAR, this video and review that is there to help the referees is used not just for goals, but for plays away from the goal as well. So a play like this, is fair game to be reviewed and go yes under slow-mo. It's, different than past World Cups for sure, and it is controversial, but they're doing it in an effort to what? To make sure they get the call right. So that's where the beef comes in, because then

people see it and say, well, no way. This was a yellow card, definitely a yellow card, but was it a red card? Again, it's subjective. To me, though, the biggest issue is bigger than that. the biggest issue is should the president of the United States, the leader of the free world, be getting involved in this? And I think that that is also subjective and up for debate. I am so glad that Balagan is playing tonight. I'm so glad he is absolutely our top score. We need him to continue to progress in the World Cup. If we went tonight, we will have never gotten this far in the World Cup for the men.

The women have done it. The men have not. And there's going to be an asterisk by this, isn't there? If we win after Trump has made the phone call, picked up the phone, obviously pressured him, what's the rest of the world going to say? Yeah, you needed your guy to get involved to mention your star player was there in order to beat Belgium. So I just don't like it. I can be really, really excited that he's playing and a little disappointed that President Trump decided to get involved. I mean, he's hedging the way he's talking about it.

I didn't think it was a foul. I asked Gianni infantivo, however you say the last name, the guy who runs Bifa. I asked him to review the call. I didn't tell him what to do, says Trump. I can't tell him what to do. And I don't believe he even made the decision. I think it was a committee that made the decision. But Trump says, I didn't think it was a foul.

So I asked him to review it. So is this one of those, the allegation, I guess, Sage, is that? that it's one of those like, you know, nice game you have there. Shame if anything happened to it kind of phone calls without explicitly saying you change the call or something bad is going to happen between us. Yeah, I mean, wouldn't you have left to have been a fly on the wall for that conversation, along with many others that are far more important than soccer, but just for this, because he even acknowledged, he's like, I don't know, I didn't know what a red, I didn't know

it was a big deal. And then somebody said, no, this is a really big deal. He's like, well, we'll screw this. I got to get involved. This is America. I mean, feel the momentum. And by the way, it has been absolutely incredible, not just surrounding the American team,

but all these other countries coming here and seeing just how great at our countries. It has been awesome, and the timing has been incredible with America 250. But when have we ever known President Trump to be subtle and to just kind of throw it out there and see how the person on the receiving end takes it? No, he's always so direct,

and I cannot imagine. He was like, I don't know, maybe you'd reconsider. What he did talk about, as he said during his press, conference today. I've heard bits and pieces. Are you crazy? There's 50, 60 million people watching this every time. What are we doing? This is like the Super Bowl. You'll get even higher numbers. So I just can't imagine being subtle with it. And by the way, we all agree. It's just, you know, I have, you've heard me talk about this before, Megan, with sports and politics. And yes, it's more intertwined now than ever before, right? But this is what we don't need.

the games are incredible and even if this had not happened and it hadn't been reversed it was still going to be watched by basically the entire country I just think we have to be careful when we're saying stay out of sports you know you stick

to what you're doing here in politics and we're going to do sports when you intermingle it for your convenience that's when I think that we're being a little bit contradictory keep this in mind too Belgium has issued an appeal

to this ruling. So there's still a chance before this game kicks off tonight at 8 o'clock Eastern time that Belgium wins their appeal and our guy isn't able to play. I mean, there's still so much going on, but if I'm them, like put ourselves,

put ourselves in Belgium's shoes. And you're saying, wait a minute, this is the call that's made in the field, whether we agree or not. And now, because you don't like it, the president is going to come and influence FIFA? Like, if I'm in there...

Maybe the Belgian president should call. He probably has. He probably has at this point. I just think what I don't want now... That's not going to hold as much sway. Probably not. But what my team tells me is that there's... There was an independent committee already reviewing the call at the time President Trump called.

And so he did not influence the creation of the of the committee. or the review of the call, though he may have influenced the ultimate decision, the outcome. But let me ask you this stage, because Jim Garrity over the National Review, has a very interesting article up on their homepage right now. And it, it, the reason I went there is because I remember being on the air in 2015 for Fox News covering how corrupt FIFA is. We did a lot of articles on it at the time. There were all these indictments. FIFA, the world body that oversees international soccer is extremely corrupt. This is not a hands clean organization. So like, it's very hard to get that exercised about them reversing this call or, you know, it's like basically for me,

I think, all right, do we get mad at President Trump for interfering or do we get mad at the guy who oversees FIFA for allegedly bowing to Trump's pressure? I mean, I'm an American, so I'm in favor of this whole thing. I have to say it sounds like it was a bull. bullshit call. And we just had our top guy say what the F, but our top guy is a lot more powerful than most. So too bad, Belgium. Work on inventing more things and becoming more powerful. Then maybe your guy will have some sway too. This is why I love you. That's where I stand. Right? I'm like, who cares? I'm sorry, you're so small and you have no international power, but that's not really my problem.

Anywho, I just feel like if FIFA weren't corrupt and corruptible, they would have said, thanks for the call, Mr. President. Goodbye. But this is what Garrity writes. He writes as follows. Even the most enthusiastic soccer fan will readily agree that FIFA has a long and sorted history of corruption. Numerous studies and books have been written about the organization's graft and dishonesty. The journal article, Whose Game, FIFA Corruption and the Challenge of Global Governance published in the European Journal of International Law in 2019, gives one of the most detailed summaries of the bribery-filled sleazy selection process of the 2018 and 2022 World Cup. as well as indictments of a total of 29 present and former FIFA officials for corruption in the organization, including allegations of racketeering wire fraud and money laundering.

In 2014, the HBO comedian John Oliver did a whole segment on how he hated the rampant corruption within the comically grotesque organization, but yet couldn't resist being a soccer fan anyway. It goes on to give some more evidence about how FIFA has an amazing ability to negotiate very generous deals with host countries. this year under a deal negotiated with the U.S. Treasury Department, national associations can seek exemption from U.S. federal income tax on their 2026 FIFA World Cup tournament earnings by applying for tax exempt status. All 48 participating teams receive $2.5 million in preparation money, $10 million in qualification money, $16 million for team delegation costs, increased team ticketing allocations, and so on.

This has already been a very successful year. He writes for U.S. National Men's team and goes on from there. but he's pointing out that half of the people who are associated with FIFA appear to be bought and paid for. And this is something Trump seemed to be tapping into today when he was talking about the ref who made this call. Or I think it might have been the original ref. I'm not sure. But here's what Trump said about the reffing this morning.

Listen. And I'm a person that loves sports and was a good athlete. And I understand sports really well, really well. And that wasn't a foul. That wasn't even an infraction. There was two guys running full speed that happened to crash into each other. You can't take your foot and properly place it on somebody else's foot when you're going, no, these were two great athletes that got tangled up.

And this referee who is a little bit suspect? If you check his past? I don't want to say that because I don't know. like to create controversy, but very suspect. If you'd like, I'll provide you with the past. He made a call that nobody could believe. You know, even people on the other side, they said, oh, we got lucky. Wow. That's, and it's very interesting. They say they don't show them in slow motion. And I never realize that. I'd never heard of that before. Okay. So, President Trump tapping into, you know, existing suspicions about people being corrupt

within the FIFA organization? A couple of things. He's wrong. It was a foul. It did deserve to be called. And he acknowledged he doesn't know soccer. It's a parent there. And that's fine.

We can still love him for other things. And same as the audience knows. Right. I mean, stop. That absolutely deserved to be called. You can, we'll debate forever. Red card, yellow card. That is a very, very fair debate.

Secondly, we all knew FIFA was corrupt beforehand. Maybe President Trump didn't. We all knew this. This is one of the issues with the sport, frankly, on a global level and even here in the United States. I mean, people don't even love sometimes the way the game is played and the flopping, et cetera. I mean, MLS numbers and the women's league numbers aren't great. Like, this is a thing in soccer, as it is with the IOC, as it is with controversies in the NFL and the NBA. I mean, there are so many things that are unfair about all of these sports.

And soccer's at the top of that list. I wonder if these conversations were had by President Trump leading up to the World Cup, you know, because of these things, and these are legitimate issues that the author of that article brought up. But it is what it is. And so then to only bring it up after, well, this whole thing is unfair, I have a problem with that. Again, I am so with you. It is awesome that he's playing. He's a 25-year-old kid. He's worked his butt off.

He turned 25 on the 3rd of July. Like, how amazing is this for this young man after being devastated, I'm sure, not just that he couldn't play, but that he let down his teammates by not being able to be there? I just think it's a very fine line. And did you see the comment also? He's like, by the way, good thing it's me. If this were Biden, he would have been asleep at the wheel. It never would have. I made the call and now look what's happening.

I mean, it's hysterical. And the biggest thing to me is going to have an. asterisk by it. If America wins this game. Does anyone care? Well, I have to say, maybe it's just me because I'm like, who cares if we win? Like, this would be such an accomplishment for American men's soccer. And it's not like we asked, like we cheated. It's like we just want our player to play. That we're not asking for like to make another team man down. It's like we want our player to play. The penalty was excessive. And a FIFA agrees. But I see your point. I see your point. Let me run this by you.

Dave Portnoy, who we both know, Barstool Sports, sports, sports analyst as well. He said the following. Like, this has got some appeal, too. I know. I think I read this. Go ahead. Yeah. We have had, what is it, maybe 18 hours now of crying like I have never seen in my lifetime.

Maybe when the Patriots were on their run and the flight gate things like this, maybe Michigan, Brandon Walker, Gene. But this on a global scale. The crying, the Euro tears, the sheer wippery of Europe regarding this decision. Everything from Belgium is lowering up. Belgium shouldn't play. Uifa. This is illegal.

You can't do this. And it all stems from one thing and one thing only. People say, oh, you don't like Trump and this and that. No, no, no. They don't like that. We're getting good at soccer boys. The Europe is petrified because if we're. They're good at soccer.

They got nothing. We're bigger than they are. We're badder than they are. We bail them out in every world war. We are the United States. We're the bully. We're the tough guy. And this is the one sport we've never paid attention to.

Sorry, but now we're getting interested. I like it. I have to say, it's got inherent appeal. I like to visit Europe. I'm fine with Europeans, but they are a bunch of winers. And America's got 330 million people. And if we really get serious about soccer, they're in trouble. I agree.

I agree with all of it. I think that we've always been the laughing stock in the soccer world. And that's why all of our best players do what? They go overseas to play because that's where the absolute best soccer is called. It is play. And it's football there, right? They laugh at our American football. Football, everywhere else except North America is soccer.

Again, with Donald Trump, and I wrote this down, I mean, he said the red card equally in game suspension is dumb. It has always been that way. There's nothing new here. So sometimes I'm like, I just want him to just do a little bit more homework before we speak about things. And at the end of the day, I am planning my entire afternoon and evening around watching this game. And I will be cheering just like you. And especially glad that it's a first.

I can't believe it, but I too will be watching this. Here is a little bit more on the ref, okay, who Trump was blasting. So our guy received a straight red car from referee Rafael Klaus after a video review. But the decision was widely condemned as extremely harsh. Klaus did not even award a free kick initially, despite standing yards from the incident. This is what I was saying. At first, he didn't even call it. Like he wasn't bothered by it at all, but was encouraged to review the incident by the video assistant referee.

Now here's the post on Klaus and his previous controversies. He previously was investigated by his home country. due to a 2024 CPI parliamentary inquiry, which summoned the 46-year-old as a witness regarding match, fixing Sage Steel, and sports betting. Multiple clubs, primarily Bodefogo, raised concerns over Klaus's decisions and alleged patterns of irregular cards

in Series A matches. Klaus was found not guilty of wrongdoing by the Brazilian Football Confederation and face no charges as investigators found no direct evidence linking him to any scheme. He wasn't punished and his involvement in the Brazilian investigation did not hinder FIFA's decision to deploy him as a top official at the highest level. Guilty!

Guilty! Yes, and guess what? Let's talk to the president of FIFA. We knew this coming in. So as far as the FIFA governing body, when you've got a guy with that kind of a resume, why the hell is he allowed to even participate in this World Cup in this role? Like, he should have been completely disqualified ahead of time. And the only time we're bringing it up now is when it inconveniences us.

And I agree. There were missed calls throughout that game from the same guy. I mean, he ignored calls and with players being pulled down by their jerseys. Like, I don't like the guy ahead of time because most of us knew that this was an issue. Why is he allowed in? And that's the bigger picture going forward, right? Is that every single referee official needs to be investigated when it's something this big? By the way, just like in the NFL, it takes years and years you start in high school

and then college and then you get hopefully to college football playoff before. It's 20 years before you're allowed to be an NFL referee. You assume that it is a similar setup with the World Cup and with soccer where you're starting low and earning it. And if you don't do a good job officiating in the NBA finals, like you'll never get asked back. But you have to be really good to get to that point. It absolutely should be the same way. It goes back to the corruption with FIFA that has been rampant for you. years. Why they allowed a men, I don't know. It shouldn't have gotten to this point. It did deserve a penalty, a yellow, maybe, not a red. But that is the rule. If you get a red, you're out. And go USA.

I mean, but can I just ask you, like, wouldn't any team contest this? It's just we went a little higher up the food chain than most. But we didn't. Any team would contest this. We didn't. I'm pretty sure Team USA didn't say, hey, get the White House on the line. Maybe he can help us out. Like, no, Trump picked up the phone himself and made the call once he realized what had happened. And it is unfair. And as my dad always told me, life isn't fair. Sports aren't fair. So do we go have, we didn't ask for the president to get involved. I want to make that clear. I don't want people from around the world to be mad at Team USA. You can be mad at our commander in chief and maybe mad at feet for president and everybody else who was involved in the decision to rescind the red card.

But this isn't Team USA. Let's not take it out on the Americans. And of course, the euros probably will, especially if we go on, if we go on to win this game. But at the end of the day, I don't know what could have been differently by, done differently by the Americans. If it were reversed, I would be upset. I think Argentina's one of the ones favored to possibly win. Yep, again. Spain, right, is another one. Like, the Americans are not favored to win the whole thing. I feel like we're arguing over just how far we advance or Belgium advances, okay? But they might. And you know what? Go back to the, if we win the whole thing, yes, it's going to be very controversial. No, but go back to the 1980 U.S. hockey team. There were no expectations for us. And the miracle on

ice, like it happened. This could happen, Megan. You don't know, especially with what has happened in our country. also had an asterix because did that last goal go in before the buzzer or not. So none of this is fair. Right? But we don't care. We don't care. We don't, we think it's fine. We're just asking to have our best player play the game. That's it. Not with any particular advantage. And he was wrongfully punished. I'm, I want to, I'm praying that Belton doesn't get their way with this appeal, right? Because there could be a change before the game starts. So because they have a right to do that too. And if I'm them, I'm doing the same damn thing. This is the, this is, this is. Why are we listening to Belgium? What have they given us besides the waffle?

And when they have given us a Steve Jobs, they can come to the table and bargain equally about presidential power and its use or misuse. The only thing that's missing, Megan, the only thing that's missing is an F-bomb from you. Like, I've been waiting. Come on. I'm doing better, Sage. I'm trying. No, I'm not really trying. I'm mildly trying to cut back. violently. Wait, I want to give you one more day, Portnay. Here he is in SOT 12A. I'm going to need some fact-checking from fact-check people, but I've seen a lot of talk that this has been done before in the World Cup, like Ronaldo had his suspension pushed off a bunch of things. So it's not the first time this has ever happened. It was the right call.

And this is United a Nation. I'll also say, and I know T. Bob, you're not a Trump guy. And I don't know people's politics. If you are against this and you're a United States citizen deported, I want you out of the country. If you have a problem with this guy playing, because you're letting politics get in the way and you know, like

Trump played, place a phone call and you think this is wrong, deported. I want you on the first bus, plane, train, see you, go live somewhere else. This is about winning soccer. You know what? I think there's a few people that I'd like on the list ahead.

of those of us may be questioning that I'd like to have deported. It's a very long list of people I'd love to have deported. And I know we probably agree on a lot of those people. Yeah, it's hysterical. Portney, like, that's why Dave Portner is a genius, too. He just comes on and he tells it like it is. You know, the last thing I'll say is that what if, because they were still reviewing this,

what if they were going to rescind that red card on the run before the president got involved? And by the way, maybe the president got involved, and he didn't have to tell us, and no one would know. And this controversy wouldn't even be. thing. Oh, I mean, it's in the Wall Street Journal today, all the backstory about how Harrod Lutnik and Rudy Giuliani son, Andrew Giuliani, works for the administration, came up with a plan, like, how are we going to get this reversed? Are we going to get the big guy involved? He's going to make a phone call.

Like, they're pretty much owning it. It's not like the White House is denying that he made the call or got involved. It's just a question of nuance, like what was said exactly the president. They could have kept this on the DL and just kept it a secret. I didn't tell him what to do. I didn't tell him what to do. I just made clear, you know, that was a, the rent stays like before. I love it. Sage, thank you for helping us understand it and explaining it to us. It's wonderful to see you. Great to see you.

Have fun watching tonight. Yeah, you too. All right, well, and we'll redux tomorrow and see what happened. Hopefully this call does not get reversed. I don't want to hear it, Belgium. Go work on becoming great in your own right before you try to tear down our soccer players. We just want our guy to play. The red card does not seem like it was an appropriate call, and I too have questions about the ref. Okay, we turn the page. We've got some other news to get to, and we do have to follow what's happening in this Tyler Robinson preliminary hearing.

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police departments, too. Try before you buy, if you like, visit burna.com, B-Y-R-N-A-com, to find a Burna dealer partner near you. That's b-y-r-n-a.com. You know, it was almost exactly a year ago, almost exactly one year, July 11th, I think is the one-year mark that I was with Charlie Kirk at the Student Action Summit being put on by Turning Point. We sat down, we talked about Pam Bondi. That was the big story in the news 12 months ago. Well, this is the first big scandal, I'd say, of the Trump administration that's on team rational. It's not a fake media scandal, like the left tries to create for President Trump every other day.

It's one of the right zone making, and it's not going well. And it has to do with Jeffrey Epstein. Yeah. Let me just ask you, make some noise if you care about the Jeffrey Epstein scandal. Raise your hand if it matters a lot to you. Raise your hand. So every hand of 7,000 people. Everybody cares.

A lot. I said a lot. Every hand. That ridiculous memo from the DOJ saying, you're not getting anything more on Epstein. And everybody was like, what? This is not going to fly. You remember the controversy. And a lot of that entire seminar was devoted to Epstein because Charlie was also outraged over it. And while he didn't feel he could be the chief critic of the administration, he did feel that those of us who had already spoken out about it because the news had already broken prior to my arrival out there. could. They could be his voice and they could give voice to the outrage being felt especially by the young Trump base who did not agree that Epstein was over or that all the disclosures that had been necessary had been made. And he specifically said to me at that at that event behind the scenes

like you have to do it. I, you know, I can't do it. And I said, I'm good. I've been talking with my audience about this all week. No one's going to be surprised where I stand. And he led me in a Q&A about Epstein that was well received by the audience, and we did an audience poll, like how many of you care about this, and they all did. And it was a typical fiery exchange at a turning point event between me and Charlie. It was great, and he was great. And there's a picture of the two of us backstage walking out.

I have on a black dress with polka dots. He's got his suit on. He's got a huge thousand-watt smile on. And I'm doing one of those like, you know, sort of, here we go. Finger points at the camera. And we were both having a great time. You know, it was a little bit of a controversial moment for the Trump administration, which we both supported.

But we were thrilled that President Trump was president, that he was enacting his agenda, that turning point was on top of the world. Charlie had built this juggernaut of an organization into a hundred million dollar org per year, and we had a national voice and we had young people there by the thousand to participate in the political process and express themselves. And it was also at that event that Charlie Tucker Carlson and I spoke backstage about Tucker and his criticism of Israel and Netanyahu and the war and their interference in American politics. politics and I was a witness to Charlie saying to Tucker before he went out there because Tucker had offered like, you know, do you want me to dial that back? I know your donors may not love all that. And I was with them when Charlie came back over to Tucker and said, go Max. And it was tape that we just happened to capture my team. As we were, you know, getting behind the scenes footage and we put it out there just to show that's where Charlie was on, his increasing questions around Israel's role in American politics. He wanted Tucker to quote,

Go Max. That's what happened that day almost a year ago. No one there had any idea that almost two months later exactly Charlie would be shot and killed in front of our very eyes. In one of the most traumatic things I think any of us has ever seen on screen. You know, I mean, it was something out of a horror film, only it was real. You know, we saw our friends murder. We saw his neck get blown apart on national TV. And I will never forget what happened. That day, we had been live on the air.

We had done a long show on Irina, the young Ukrainian gal who was murdered on that train in North Carolina. We had Megham Basham. We had Ali Beth Stuckey. we had Heather McDonald and we talked about crime and how this was getting buried, the story, and what the realities were. And then we wrapped. And I went back to my office in my studio and we got word. There's been a shooting at a turning point event. And, you know, sadly in today's day and age, you hear there's been a shooting. You don't, it's kind of like, okay. I mean, that's a sad reality. You're like, was anybody actually shot or was like an attempted thing?

Because we're kind of used to these things. It's not that I had no concern. It's just like, you don't think the worst. And then there was a report that Charlie had been shot. And I immediately texted him saying, are you okay? And there was no response, which didn't necessarily mean anything. You know, it could be, at this point, I didn't know whether the event was ongoing. I didn't even know whether that report was real. You know, there's so much misinformation that comes in an event like this.

And then the first video broke of, Charlie clearly getting shot in a profound way from afar. You know, the video was from afar, but you could see his chest puff up from an explosion. And that was the first indication we had that something catastrophically severe had happened to him. And the deep, deep worry of whether this had actually happened. you think about deep fakes, you think about, I don't know, AI, like we just, in today's day and age, you always have to second guess everything. Sometimes we get burned by it. And just the level of

alarm skyrocketed up. And I said to my team, we got to go back on the air right now, right now, because if something has happened to Charlie, our audience is going to hear it from, going to want to hear it from us. They're not going to trust the mainstream media on this at all. And if something terrible has happened to him. They're going to want to hear it from us. So we went down back into the studio. I sat down on the set and just as I did that other video hit the close-up where you see Charlie's neck explode in a river of red blood immediately emerge out the left side in what seemed almost truly too gruesome to be real. It just did not seem like this was real life. It was so much blood, so instantaneously shooting out of my friend.

It's just like the most rapid and aggressive pace. It just seemed like it had to be somebody's idea of what this kind of murder would look like and not an actual murder because it was just so instantaneously gruesome and voluminous and awful. And I screamed out in the studio and I saw it. I couldn't believe it and instantly burst out into tears, which think about the number of times in your life. You've instantly burst into tears. Hopefully it's been few and far between. It certainly has been for me.

And then we went live moments later. You know, we had our guests lined up, to whom I'll be grateful forever, Glam back, Rich Lowry, Mark Halperin came on, among others. And we got through it together. And then, indeed, we had the confirmation. Deseret news that Charlie was dead. That was September 10th, 2025.

And here we are. It hasn't even been a year since Charlie was killed. And it's almost been a year since I sat with him at that turning point event. And I kind of can't believe that we're here talking about his alleged killer. That's where we are. So much has happened. in the past year, dueling narratives around Charlie's death, serious questions being raised by many people about whether this gun could have caused that injury. And that is a fair question.

People I really trust, like Rob O'Neill, who's a trained Navy SEAL sniper, does not believe that it could happen. And I trust him implicitly, and I understand that's a real question, and we're going to have to get into that. obviously questions about whether somebody else had something to do with it you know whether Tyler was the shooter at all and if he was whether somebody else had something to do with it put him up to it knew about it work to cover it up and that's a very very wide web we saw texts from the trans TFA community the aggressive trans group online predicting something terrible was going to happen to Charlie that day we never heard more about it

never heard anything more about it. There have been questions about whether Israel may have played some sort of a role in this because Charlie was becoming increasingly Israel skeptical and was making room for Israel skeptics in the Republican Party, which was a direct threat to the support that Israel needs from America. That's become extremely controversial. Many people tried to stop the people who are raising that question from speaking about it at all. this past year I have tried to make room for those people to ask their questions because I think

they're fair questions. It's a fair question. The stakes are so incredibly high for Israel and his relationship with America. And Charlie was becoming much more skeptical of Israel and its role in American politics. And I saw it myself. He hosted a roundtable of young Israel skeptics at that event. He told Tucker to go Max in front of my eyes, and he would come back on this show on August 6th in front of all of you and express his consternation over being called an anti-Semite because of what happened at that turning point event around Epstein, as if you're an anti-Semite, if you have criticisms of somebody who happened to be Jewish and American, that's absolutely absurd. If you don't like Megan Kelly, does it make you anti-Catholic? Bullshit. What the way?

What is that? In any event, you heard him here expressing his anger at people who were doing that to him. And look, that's probably not going to be allowed at this preliminary hearing or at the trial. Because while you can have suspicions about somebody else's role in a murder like this one, you cannot get that into evidence unless you have real proof and a legitimate good faith. basis for raising it. And we've discussed with our expert panel before about whether they've got any of that outside of Tyler Robinson. And the last we took a hard look at this, they didn't. So you can speculate all you want. You can have your suspicions. You can have your beliefs. But what you need in order to

introduce it into evidence is proof. As we go through this preliminary hearing this week, we're going to be sticking to the proof that is offered by both sides. And that's the, and that's, that's that's where we begin today. Do we have time to run this setup package, Steve? I've been talking for longer. We said we did a set up package to sort of take you back through how we got here and we're going to play that and then we come back. We'll bring our expert legal panel in and we will get into it. Good morning ladies and gentlemen. We got him. Ten months after Tyler Robinson surrendered to police, prosecutors are finally set to reveal the case they say proves a murdered Charlie Kirk. Could you state your name? Tyler James Robinson. The security for this week's

preliminary hearing will be extremely tight. According to local reporting, Robinson will be brought to court each day in an armored vehicle. This is not a trial. It's the first time prosecutors will have to lay out in open court the evidence they have against Robinson. Surveillance video, witness testimony, evidence prosecutors say shows Robinson planned this attack. Text messages allegedly between Robinson and his so-called trans-furry lover, Lance Twigs. And a letter prosecutors say Robinson left behind for Twigs. We first got our hands on it back in the spring. I had the opportunity to take out Charlie Kirk and I took it.

I wish we could have lived in a world where this did not feel necessary. I wish I could have stayed for you and lived our lives together. I don't think this is going to satisfy people who have doubts about him because it's written in that same formal tone. It doesn't exactly sound like a Gen Zier. But I think what we're seeing here, folks, is that's how this guy talked. Twigs was given partial immunity in exchange for cooperating with investigators. He's not expected to testify in person this week.

Instead, the prosecution is expected to present a recorded interview with investigators. And then there's the forensic evidence police claim they have relating to Robinson. DNA allegedly found on the rifle trigger, DNA on the fired casing, DNA on unfired cartridges, DNA on the towel wrapping the rifle. One piece of that evidence generating sensational headlines earlier this year. A shocking claim in the Charlie Kirk case. An ATF analysis of a bullet fragment recovered during Charlie's autopsy could not conclusively determine whether it had been fired from Robinson's alleged rifle. The defense says it may try to use that analysis to clear Robinson.

The headlines suggested the bullet could not be matched to the murder weapon. And while that was technically true, the full story is a bit more complicated. It's mostly a big nothing to tell you the truth. It's not an all-unusual to have difficulty making a match between a bullet recovered an autopsy and a firearm. You don't actually even need the bullet, of course, to find someone guilty of having fired the bullet. The most powerful moment this week may have nothing to do with the evidence.

It's expected to be the first time Charlie's, widow, Erica, and his parents will come face to face with the man accused of killing him. When I sat down with Erica last fall on our tour, I asked her about that incredible moment at Charlie's memorial service. That young man, forgive him. If you could say something to him, if you say somebody who's parents, like, what would it be? Would it be anger? Would it be sympathy?

What would it be? It's a good question. It wouldn't be sympathy. It wouldn't be anger. Anything that I could ever wish upon him or that family would pale in comparison of the justice of God. The preliminary hearing is in a break right now. We're going to take a break, too. And when we come back on the opposite side, we'll tell you what's happened in court this morning

and what's likely to happen next. We've got our full panel of legal experts. We're going to have this covered for you all week. In the meantime, say a prayer for his suffering family. And keep Charlie in your thoughts as well. And turning point. We'll be right back. Are you feeling sluggish, bloated, not quite like yourself?

This affects so many of us. Life constantly bombards us with silent threats, processed foods, seed oils, artificial light, non-stop stress, all of which can disrupt gut health. drain your energy, and weaken your immune health while you're not even paying attention. When that happens, it's not that your body's broken. It's that it might be missing the right inputs. This is why you need to know about Armoura cholesterol. This thing's packed with more than 400 bioactive nutrients that they say can work at a foundational level to fortify gut health. So many of our issues start with poor gut health that can support immune health. They say it can also

fuel recovery after a workout and promote whole body vitality. Doesn't that sound good? Strong gut integrity can support metabolism, skin and hair health. Yes, if you're having problems there, it could begin in your gut and even performance and recovery, which is why cholesterol has long been valued by some elite athletes. If you are looking to take back control of your health from the inside out, consider Armra. And they have a special deal for you right now. Go to armor.com slash Megan or enter M-E-G-Y-N to get 30% off your first subscription order. That's A-R-M-R-A.com slash M-E-G-Y-N. Sage Steel is still on the soccer case forwarding to me just now the following headline.

Belgium's appeal over for Lauren Belogen has been rejected, rejected by FIFA, clearing path for USA Star to play World Cup game. after Trump's intervention. Yay! That's the right decision. Go Team USA. And then at the same time, FIFA and its president Gianni Infantino has just released this statement. Denying, denying that President Trump's phone call is the reason that the call was initially reversed. And now they're standing by it. He says as follows. He writes as follows in this written statement. I've seen the public comments regarding the decision of the independent FIFA disciplinary committee related to the suspension of Falara and Belogian. And I would like to reiterate a fundamental principle of FIFA's governance. FIFA's judicial bodies are independent. They operate autonomously, apply the FIFA disciplinary

code and decide cases based on the applicable regulations and the specific facts before them. Their independence is essential to the credibility and integrity of football. And this was always be respected. Yes, I regularly discuss matters related to the FIFA World Cup with the President of the United States. And on this matter, I did receive a call from Trump, just as I received calls from heads of state, government officials, football stakeholders, and business execs from around the world on many different issues. During our convo, I explained that there was an ongoing legal process involving FIFA's independent judicial bodies and that the case would be decided in due course by the competent bodies. That's how FIFA's system works. And it's a principle that I will always uphold.

I read the decisions of the FIFA disciplinary committee when they are issued. Sometimes I'm surprised. by them, sometimes I agree with them and sometimes I disagree. What I always do, however, is respect those decisions and the autonomy of the bodies that make them. Whether we personally like a decision or not is irrelevant. Respect for independent institutions

and the rule of laws what protects the integrity of our competitions and the credibility of FIFA at all times. So that's a clear denial that Trump's phone call had anything to do with the reversal, whatever. The reversal stands. The game's going to go on

cry in your soup some more Belgium. Just get your guys out there and try to win. Okay? All we're asking is to play with our regular team. That's it. And having a bullshit call from the sound of it, not standing against us. By the way, online, people are already pointing out that it reportedly Kirstarmor,

you heard Sage make reference to it. Interfired in England's game against Mexico to make sure against somebody in Mexico. Maybe it was Mexico, I don't know, but to make sure that the game was played a little bit delayed. There was bad weather coming. He reportedly wanted them to acclimate. We'll see.

Like, is it really so unprecedented that a leader should contact the head of FIFA and say, gee, I didn't like that? I'm sure it happens. So in any event, we go forward with our full team tonight. Go USA. Okay, it is 1 o'clock here in the east, and we are monitoring the Tyler Robinson preliminary hearing. This is it for the prosecution.

where they have to convince the judge that they do have enough evidence to hold Robinson over for a real trial. Officer Chris Badley-Bagley is on the stand. He's with Spanish Fork Utah Police Department. Now, he was previously with Utah Valley University Police on the day that Charlie was killed. So far, the prosecution has been establishing

his knowledge of the location of various buildings on campus, and he just said this about what he heard when Charlie was shot. You mentioned, so you mentioned you heard something. What did you hear again? I heard a gunshot. Okay. And can you describe the, you described Mr. Kirk's reaction? Was that simultaneous to hearing the gunshot?

Yes, it was. When he fell to the left? Yes. Did you see the reaction from the crowd? Yes. What was that? Everybody kind of got up. They all said, a lot of people were screaming,

sending up and starting to run in all different. directions away from the center of the tent. People are running up, people are laying down on the steps. I'm trying to jump over people to get to the bottom of the stairs so I can help stop an individual as probably shooting. What happened next? By the time I got to the bottom of the stairs, I was informed on the radio that we had a shooter in custody. That of course would not be the actual shooter. It was another man who injected himself into the melee. Joining me now to react to all of this are Viva Fry. He's former litigator and Rumble creator and Dave Arrenberg and Ashley Merchant. They are two of the hosts of our

MKTrue Crime show on the MKMedia Podcast Network, which you can find, just go to any podcast app and type in MKTrueCrime. It'll come up or you can go to mKTRuecime.com and find links to all the multiple platforms. Great to see you all. Dave, let me start with you as former prosecutor, former state's attorney for Palm Beach County. What do you see as the goals for the prosecution here and the challenges for them as they try to convince this court that they do have probable cause to hold Tyler Robinson over for trial? Megan, good to be back with you and my fellow Florida men and women, Ashley and Viva Fry. Ashley, actually, is from Florida. She lives in Georgia now. So we're all Florida people.

So the prosecution here has a slam dunk. I mean, as far as this hearing, this is not beyond a reasonable doubt. They just need to show some probable cause. They've got plenty of that. This is really for the defense. The defense wants to use this as a way to get as much information out there to cross-examine as many people as they can to try to help their defense. It was a loss for them when they couldn't get twigs to appear in person.

They wanted to cross-examine him. They wanted to lock him down. he's going to be on video. Robinson's boyfriend. Correct, correct. Now, Lance Twigs is his name, but the defense, interestingly, the defense refers to him as Luna Twigs, because I guess he is transitioned already. So both sides, the prosecution of the judge call him Lance Twigs, and the defense calls him Luna Twigs. So you can see where they're going. They're going to, they're going to try to discredit Twigs and try to point the finger to him as much as possible. But as far as the prosecution, they're just going to show the evidence. I would say a win for them

would be if they can just show as little as possible to not turn over all their cards unless they absolutely have to because I think they've got Tyler Robinson dead to rights. Why are they doing it this way, Dave, with a preliminary hearing as opposed to going in front of a grand jury? Oh, the defense wants this. The defense wants it. So this is something that in Utah happens. And although I'm not an expert in Utah law, the defense can push for this because they want the prosecution to put up all the evidence so they have a chance to cross-examine it. And so that's what happens. But yeah, it would be much easier just to get an indictment before the grand jury move forward. But here, I guess in Utah, they want the evidence so that the judge

could officially find probable cause and then move forward. But this is something the defense wants, not the prosecution. But is it like, who is it up to? Because our information was that, I mean, of course the defense wants it. They always want it. But our information was that that the grand jury proceedings are actually much more rare in Utah, that they do happen, but they're much more rare. Ashley, do you have any thoughts on it? No, it's, I mean, it's all of the things that both you and Dave were talking about. I have a lot of thoughts on it. It is very rare to have this type of proceeding. Typically, they would just go in front of a grand jury. And the grand jury, I mean,

there's an old adage that it would indict a ham sandwich. That's true. They could definitely avoid this and go to a grand jury. My understanding in Utah is that's not the local custom. them. They typically afford these preliminary hearings, but they definitely don't have to. But as a defense lawyer, I was told by my team is Utah does have grand juries, but they're used much less often than preliminary hearings in Utah. I don't know why. It seems like it might just be a local custom. But it's an odd local custom given the fact that don't prosecutors typically not want to do this because it's really showing your cards to the defense in a way that will better enable them to potentially defeat the charges at trial? It is. And one of the reasons that they do it,

I mean, one of the only reasons is to buy more time if they're not ready to indict. So sometimes, because you have to have a preliminary hearing if a person is being held in custody without a bond. And so they want to have a preliminary hearing so they can prolong the time before they have to go in front of a grand jury. This happens a lot of times when there's like DNA that's outstanding and maybe that, you know, they want that result back before they go in front of a grand jury, things like that. But in this case, it doesn't make sense why they would want to avoid a grand jury. There's nothing really outstanding at this point. And it really does just give the defense really a bite of the apple.

I mean, they can lock in certain testimony, you know, cross-examination, things like that. They get a first bite at the apple at these witnesses, and they can try and poke holes in the case. They lock these folks into testimony. So it's kind of surprising that they're putting all of this up. I'm like Dave, I think that they should put as little up as possible just to get this ruling that there's probable cause so that they can move on and go to the grand jury. It doesn't take much to convince a judge that, and it's a judge decision here, that there's probable cause to hold him over for trial. I mean, Ashley, the alleged confession alone

should do it. Should it not? I mean, there's an alleged confession on Discord, which is a gaming site where you also have chats, and that's going to be introduced. There are text messages, alleged from Tyler Robinson to Lance Twigs with an alleged confession. And then there is something with Tyler Robinson turning himself in to police, though I don't know what exactly was said, if anything, by Tyler Robinson in that setting to the cops. They could take all of this evidence and have a police officer, the lead investigator, testify for less than 30 minutes, and summarize all of this and get over probable cause. They could do that.

They don't have to play all these interviews. They don't have to put forth all of this evidence. I mean, some of the people that they have on their witness list, it sounds like they're actually going to walk through some scientific testimony. They don't need to do that. That's not anything they need to do. So I can only imagine that the reason they're doing this is to try to show the world how strong their cases, to try to somehow influence people who are talking about the case and show how strong

the cases, but I don't think they need to do it. So it's very surprising to me that they're actually going through this process when they really could get probable cause found within, I mean, honestly, less than 30 minutes. There's no need for more than that. And they could have a summary witness, you know, who testifies about all this stuff. That is hugely interesting. Viva, the prosecutor in this case, the prosecutor's office and the prosecutor was just found in contempt because he got out there after that daily mail piece hit that I referenced in the setup package saying the bullet didn't match the gun, right?

Like that was kind of the headline that the bullet retrieved from Charlie's body and the autopsy did not match the gun of this shooter. And he got out there and said, that is not correct. The Daily Mail's headline was wrong, and the takeaway that people are going with is wrong. It's that there was no conclusive proof that it did match. And as Andrew Branca pointed out in that segment we aired in part there, that's not unusual that the bullet would be so destroyed that it's just not capable of being matched up to the gun. his point was, that doesn't mean it wasn't the bullet from that gun. It just means there was so little

left of it that we couldn't make the comparison to affirmatively say one way or the other. So the courts found that was an actually, that was okay for him to come out and say because that report went everywhere from the Daily Mail. But he went beyond that and said, and we think we're going to easily be able to prove that Tyler Robinson committed this crime beyond a reasonable doubt. We have overwhelming evidence against him. And the court said, now you went too far and found him in contempt because he had issued a gag order. The reason I'm raising this with you is because clearly this prosecutor is feeling, forgive the phrase, under the gun. And he is paying attention to the public narratives around Charlie's murder.

And he obviously is very concerned about the public being swayed away from thinking Tyler Robinson did it. Do you think that's why he's doing what Ashley accurately describes is very unusual with like a kitchen sink approach here with a witness list that is going to take us an entire week to get through instead of the 30 minute cop on the stand saying he confessed. Here are the text messages. Bye. It's interesting. People need to understand that distinction that the contempt ruling was not because of what the prosecutor said to correct the record on the misrepresentation of that forensic report. it was that he went on TMZ afterwards and said, we have a strong case, which I don't understand how that's contempt. I mean, I appreciate there's a gag order. A prosecutor saying we have a good case. I would expect them to believe that if they're prosecuting it.

But one thing that's clear. It's so generic. It's generic. I mean, he shouldn't have done it at TMZ. Maybe in court is one thing and then just don't say anything out of court, but he had to correct the record on the misrepresentation of that daily mail article. What's clear is that both parties, prosecution and defense, are trying to wage a war in the Court of Public Opinion. And I wouldn't be surprised if the defense is insisting on this

and happy to make it as robust as possible to confuse the general public into saying, look how unfair this prosecution is. We didn't get to have Lance Twigs testify in person so we could cross-examine him because people don't understand the distinction between a preliminary hearing and a trial on the merits and the burden of proof for probable cause versus a criminal conviction. And the hardest and most concrete evidence of that, I'm having to back and forth now with Candace Owens, who, you know, has already declared this to be a show trial. And I'm like, it's not even a trial yet. This is a preliminary hearing. When it's probable cause and, you know, hearsay evidence is admissible, you don't get to necessarily cross-examine the individual who made the statement.

That is where you go to probable cause. Say, okay, hearsay evidence is admissible. And so you don't get to cross-examine now. You'll pick apart the evidence when it's time to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt. Right now, probable cause, slam-dank like everyone says, how it's going to take five days. don't know, but you know that the defense is going to try to confuse the general public into thinking this preliminary hearing is somehow something of a trial on the merits subject to beyond a reasonable doubt when it's the exact opposite. The witness list goes on and on, Dave. I'm looking at it here. I know you guys have seen it too. There's Officer Bagley, like we just said, he's on the stand now, someone from Utah Bureau of Investigation, Agent Bricker Mortensen, who's also from the State Bureau

of Investigation, Agent Davis, same thing. Lance Twiggs via recorded video. We're going to come back to that in a second. And then, I mean, the evidence list? My gosh, it's, we'll be here all day if I list it all. But here's just a couple things we expect them to introduce. Dron images from Utah Valley University. Photo of a screwdriver, which they allegedly found on the roof. Daytime photo of sniper perch.

Photo of sniper perch. Photo of sniper perch. Video of mother with children and crowd because they need to show that somebody was scared, that he, what he did that day, scared women and children. Written statement of A period, right, videos of shooting from behind questioner, written statement of T. Phillips, video of shooting from behind Charlie, written statement from turning point, video of shooting from behind booth, photo of rifle in bushes, photo of rifle in bushes, photo of rifle in boxes, photo of rifle in box, medical examiner report, doorbell camera surveillance from 910, 2025, written statement of C. Noble of Mike Mitchell, recorded statement of Lance Twigs, text messages between Tyler Robinson and Lance Twigs, there it is, that's an important. one, Discord chats, photograph of note. Okay, I could be here all day. Like, they're going to be introducing a lot of physical evidence. But let's just start with the big one, which is recorded video of Lance Twigs. This is the guy. I thought it was remarkable in the setup package. Jake Whitman, our producer, found these pictures of Lance Twigs looking like a man. Like, I don't want to say a regular normal man, but like a guy, like your typical guy. And then you see the after pictures when he was dating Tyler Robinson and living with him where he's got the ears on and the furry cap. And obviously, this is an unwell person.

You don't declare yourself trans and a furry as this guy did. And I mean, I'm sorry, but like the name Luna is perfect for him, short for, you know what. This person is the prosecution's main witness, Dave, which I would think poses. is a bit of a challenge to them because this is not a well man. Yeah, and you're in Utah, a culturally conservative state. And so they're going to see this individual and they may not like him. But he is a crucial witness because he's the supposedly the motivation for Tyler Robinson.

He did it for love of Lance Twigs. And Lance Twigs, by all account, knew nothing about it. He saw the message afterwards and was shocked. And he is cooperating. But there will always be conspiracy theories out there. And I think you hit it earlier, Megan, when you said that I think the reason why you're seeing so much evidence out there is because the prosecution is very conscious of the conspiracy theories and the narrative. That's why the prosecution did what prosecutors don't normally do and go and respond to the stuff that the defense put out about the ballistics. And even went on TMZ.

Yeah, I think that the judge should not have sanctioned the prosecutor for it, but I understand that it's unusual to go on TMZ as a prosecutor. I never did that when I was state attorney. But this is not like any other case. Yeah, he gave a print statement to TMZ. Didn't physically go on, but it was a statement to TMZ. And TMZ, you know, with all due respect to Harvey, it's considered a tabloid publication. They pay for news. It's, you know, it's, it doesn't have the greatest reputation in the field of actual lawyers.

and judges who practice law for a living. But in any event, that's what he did. And it reached a lot of people. They have wide reach. The Lance Twiggs video statement, Ashley, he's been given use immunity for this statement. Can you explain what that means? Yeah, definitely. So use immunity means that the government cannot use what he says against him.

It doesn't mean that he's immune. So if they found independent evidence that he was somehow involved and they find that and it's not based on his statement, then they can still prosecute him. So they're not limited in their ability to actually go after him. They're just limited in their ability to use his statement or anything that they get from his statement. And so that allows them to actually play this. It undercuts any cross-examination to a certain extent about you got this blanket immunity because he's only got this limited use immunity. Now, the reason they're putting him on the stand, well, via video, the reason that, well, let's just start with that. The reason they're

doing it via video, you tell me, Ashley, is to prevent cross-examination. Yes. Oh, yeah. This was so interesting legally. You know, you've got, typically you don't have witnesses. So that's the first thing. Typically, the defense doesn't get to subpoena witnesses at these hearings. So, you know, that's surprising because they don't need him. He's got a statement that the officer can just get up there. They don't even have to play the statement. He could literally say, hey, this guy told me this. And that's admissible. So, you know, the fact that they actually were trying to get him, but he's also an out-of-state witness. So I thought this was a really interesting part. part of it, the defense was trying to get a court order to compel him from another state to come

into the state of Utah to testify. And that's a big deal. A lot of people don't really realize that, that you can't just subpoena someone from another state and force them to come into a different state to testify because you're essentially forcing them to cross state lines. You have to get a court order of need. And when you're doing that, what you have to tell the judge is, I actually need this witness and there's no other way I can get this evidence in without this witness being forced to travel into this state to testify. So what the defense was asking, they were never going to get. I mean, that was just insane that they thought they would get that. They're never going to get a judge to compel a person to actually enter Utah to testify. So, you know, the fact that they really thought that

that might have happened was surprising to me. I think it was just an effort to sort of some smoke and mirrors, maybe. Why is he necessary at all, Viva? Because they've got, I understand, this is the guy who we're going to allege received text messages and a letter from the accused killer confessing. But they have those writings. They have the text messages, the prosecution. They have the letter. You know, this isn't a trial where you need him to authenticate everything and you need him to contextualize.

Like, you can half-ass all of that at a preliminary hearing to show the judge. You make a proffer as the lawyer. We will be able to call him. We will be able to authenticate. We will be getting all these documents in through him. Here they are, judge, in which Tyler Robinson says, I did it. So, like, what is the point of putting this guy on via video to say all of that? Operating within the bounds of what I know and what I don't know and what I know that I don't know.

You know, I'm not a criminal lawyer. I don't know if there's a, you know, purely strategic reason to show the world that they have Lance Twigs and that he hasn't absconded, like was the rumor back in the day, you know, whether or not it's just to quell certain conspiracy theories. and to show the evidence just to the folks out there who say, you know, that they have the wrong guy. My concern with this, and I'm going to defer to Ashley and Dave on this, is people are now saying, oh, he's not being able to be compelled as a witness when my understanding is it's only for the preliminary hearing, and he can potentially be compelled as a witness by the defense at the trial. And so it's not like he's being totally precluded from any involvement and all that they have going forward for a conviction is this video evidence. It's lending to some confusion.

but my understanding, subject to verification and confirmation from Ashley and Dave, he's not, they can't compel him now, but in theory he could be compelled as a witness at the trial for the, for the benefit of the defense if they so choose, and that he's not been given immunity and now can have nothing further to do with this case. Completely right. And nor could, Ashley, nor could they play this little video they've got going at trial. Like if the defendant has the right to cross-examine and if he doesn't actually show up physically at the trial, the jury will never see this thing. Exactly. And that's what the law says is he has to be available for

cross-examination. Whether or not they do cross-examine him, that's a different story. But that means that the prosecution has to actually bring him and he has to be available for cross-examination. Otherwise, they cannot admit this out-of-course statement in. And typically what happens is he would actually take the stand. He would testify. And if he said something different than what's on this recorded statement, then they would bring that in. But if he says exactly what's on this recorded statement, the jury's just going to hear from his mouth. They're not going to hear this recorded statement, but he 100% has to be available at trial. The only way that he's not, not has to be there for this preliminary hearing is because the rules of evidence don't fully apply. You don't have a right

to confront witnesses at the preliminary hearing like you do at a trial. So Dave, this is a PR play. That's, I mean, that's what's becoming clear that they, there are cameras in this courtroom. They're limited. That was a whole big legal fight that they had on whether there would be cameras, where they'll be positioned, what they'll be allowed to show. But we did get a camera in there. Not we, the Megan Kelly show, but we, the media. So we are going to see this hearing. We're live streaming again, the entire thing at YouTube.com slash Megan Kelly, if you guys want to dip in at any moment in the day. It begins every day except for Wednesday, it's going to begin at 11 a.m. Eastern. On Wednesday, it starts earlier, I think.

I can't remember off the top of my head, but what time, Steve? Oh, okay. On Wednesday, it starts later, 3 p.m. Eastern. But this is a PR play for the nation writ large and for the Utah jury pool, Dave, to put this Luna on the stand, so to speak, via video. Because, you know why? What we're not discussing is there's been a massive controversy over this alleged confession from Tyler Robinson to Lance Twigs, aka Luna,

because it sounds made up. The text exchange between them is so on the nose and artificial sounding that even those of us who believe Tyler Robinson is the shooter have looked at it like, what even is that? You know, like, and I actually, for one, wonder whether the video statement is going to include, if I were the prosecutor, I'd include this.

What's with the formal verbiage between the two of you? Like, you were roommates, you were allegedly lovers. Like, why are you talking like a couple of Shakespearean actors as opposed to what we would envision two Gen Z young men discuss it? It's just very strange, and I'll read some of it. But do you think that's what's happening here? I do think they are calling Lance Twigs for the purpose of making sure you see it all in context, and that even though he's not going to be there in person, that you're going to see that, yes, he can fill in the gaps. You had the handwritten notes, the note that said, I had the opportunity to take out Charlie.

You're going to read that. And then he had the text message to Twig saying, I had enough of his hatred. And then you had the stuff on Discord, right? You had the fact that Robinson also confessed on Discord saying it was me at UVU yesterday. So you have all this stuff. So it's not just one. That's why if they want to say, I don't believe the one message, well, how do you explain all three messages that are consistent with each other? Okay.

Just FYI. This is just breaking. Erica and Charlie's parents left the courtroom when a police officer, this is VF, Matt Finn and Fox. a police officer started describing the moments when Charlie was shot and killed on the campus last September. It was actually, I confirmed with my team, which is monitoring this in real time. It was just the sound bite that we just played. But the family doesn't know exactly where it's going. So they do not wish to hear any details of Charlie's actual murder, the actual moments, and they were told going to be protecting themselves from hearing any of that. They don't want to see the

they don't want to hear the details who on earth could blame them. I don't I don't know I don't know how you could look at that video. Like as somebody who really deeply cared about Charlie Kirk and was was genuinely a friend of his and he was he of mine. It's been hard enough like I wish I had never seen it. I really do. I wish I had never laid eyes on that and I think most people who have seen it can relate to that even if they didn't know Charlie it's deeply disturbing and for the family to have to see that and hear details around it would be too much. So his parents who have remained entirely tight-lipped and private around Charlie's death, Erica, who's going to be there the entire five days, we're told she's his representative.

She's the mother of his children. It's very heavy. So they've left for now. Who could blame them? Back to the text messages. Okay. again, they're bizarre, that they are strange. And one of the things I think that the prosecution needs to establish through Lance Twigs is

show us some other text exchanges between the two of you. Because I want to know if this is how he really talked. Like, is this how Tyler Robinson talks or texts? Because it's very strange sounding. I mean, I've got 30 years on Tyler Robinson. he's 23. And I don't, I've never spoken this formally to anyone in my life, including in legal papers. It's very strange.

His little add-ons, my love, it's, I don't, it's very bizarre. But in any event, here's some of what they're going to introduce. And I know they're going to introduce it because this is in the charging document they use to charge Robinson. On September 10th, 2022, the roommate, not, not 22, it would have been 2025. September 10th, the roommate received a text message from Tyler Robinson, which read, quote, drop what you're doing, look under my keyboard. The roommate looked under the keyboard and found a note that read, quote, I had the opportunity to take out Charlie Kirk and I'm going to take it. End quote. Police found a photograph of this note. The following text exchange then took place.

The roommate responded, what? With multiple question marks. Your joke. right? Robinson. I am still okay, my love, but I'm stuck in Orum for a little while longer yet. There we go. Like, I played this soundbite one time of this woman pretending she was at a Renaissance fair reading these texts. And it was funny because she was funny and she kind of added the dramatic flare. But she's not wrong. It kind of, it kind of has that feel to it, which is one of the reasons why people don't believe it. And we're not going to ignore the realities around this stuff as we go through this. We've got to talk about what people are feeling and how they're reacting. Shouldn't be long until I can come home, but I got to grab my rifle still. To be honest,

I had hoped to keep this secret till I died of old age. I am sorry to involve you. Roommate, you weren't the one who did it, right? Robinson, I am. I'm sorry. Roommate, I thought they caught the person. Robinson, no, they grabbed some crazy old dude, then interrogated someone in similar clothing. I had planned to grab my rifle from my drop point shortly after, but most of that side of town got locked down. It's quiet, almost enough to get out, but there's one vehicle lingering. Roommate, why? Robinson, why did I do it? Roommate, yeah. Robinson, I had enough of his hatred. Some hate can't be negotiated out. I just had, like, this is the piece of this. It always gets me. Because if Tyler Robinson shot Charlie because of the trans thing,

and Tyler was having an affair with a trans furry person. I can't help but feel, I don't know if the word is responsible, but I have a lot of emotions around that because Charlie and I, over the years, discussed the trans thing many times, privately and publicly. And there was an earlier turning point event at which I went and I saw, this is like a year prior to, if not more, the one I mentioned, where Charlie wanted me to talk about. And once again, similar to with the Epstein thing

and Pam Bondi, he wanted me to talk about the trans thing on his show. And he said, can you please, I'm going to ask you questions about it. Can you please explain to our audience why it's a thing and why it's a big deal? And he wasn't yet at the point where he felt comfortable talking about it himself.

And he told me that his sister, who didn't share exactly the same politics as Charlie, had been listening to our show on that issue and that we were starting to persuade her on this. You know, that it was wrong what was happening in girl sports and that was wrong what was happening in women's spaces and so on. And Charlie wasn't yet out there on this issue. And I can't help but feel some sort of like responsibility in getting Charlie talking about it more. And this is my own private stuff to work out, but I'm just sharing it with you because

he did start talking about it more. He started talking about it a lot more. And Charlie appears to have made the fatal mistake of talking about it to young people on college campuses where it would get into the ear of someone like Tyler Robinson, who was obviously disturbed, not mentally insane by a legal standard, but obviously disturbed. And if you believe the prosecution, it was the trigger that led to the release of his trigger against Charlie and took his life. So anyway, this is just, it's awful to read and it's awful to consider. I had enough of his hatred. Some hate can't be negotiated out.

And then goes on to talk about trying to retrieve his rifle. The question, how long have you been planning this? Robinson, a bit over a week, I believe. I can get close to it, his gun, but there's a squad car parked right by it. I think they already swept the spot, but I don't want to chance it. I wish I had circled back and grabbed it earlier. Talks about his grandpa's rifle. I don't know if it had a serial number, but it wouldn't trace to me.

I had to worry about prints. I left it in a bush. I had to change outfits. It's very detailed on what he allegedly did. He wrapped it in a towel. And then he writes this, which is also raised eyebrows on, could this possibly be real? Remember how I was engraving bullets?

The fucking messages are mostly a big meme. If I see notices bulge UWU on Fox News, Fox knew is what he writes. I might have a stroke. All right, I'm going to have to leave it. That really fucking sucks that he's not going to be able to get his gun. Judging from today, I'd say grandpa's gun does just fine. I don't know.

I think that was a $2,000 scope. Then Robinson writes, delete this exchange. Then he writes, my dad wants photos of the rifle, which the father would also say later that he saw the picture of his son on TV and thought it was his son and demanded photos of the rifle from his boy to see like who's got it. Like I want a picture of you with it right now because I'm seeing a photo of what I think

is grandpa's gone on the news as belonging to the shooter. And Robinson writes, my dad wants photos of the rifle. He says, Grandpa wants to know who has what. The fed's released a photo of the rifle. It's very unique.

He's calling me right now, not answering. Since Trump got into office, my dad's been pretty diehard maga. Robinson, I'm going to turn myself in willingly. One of my neighbors here is a deputy for the sheriff. Then you are all I worry about love. roommate, I'm much more worried about you. Robinson, don't talk to the media, please.

Don't take interviews or make comments if police ask you questions, ask for a lawyer and stay silent. That's just one. There's also a letter from Robinson reiterating things about Charlie Kirk, had the opportunity to take out Charlie Cook and I took it. This is beforehand, though, saying, I could be dead if you're reading this or facing a long prison sentence and then allegedly went on discord and said more. So all of this, I mean, honestly, Dave, it's up to the judge entirely, right? There's no other person they have to convince. And this judge is going to take one look at this and say what? Probable cause is found. Let's move to trial. And then you have the long process of discovery.

And then it gets to trial. And the death penalty, remember, is still on the table. One thing the judge could have done when the judge decided to sanction the prosecutors. And I think he should not have sanctioned the prosecutors. But he's, but he should not have sanctioned the prosecutors, but he still, despite that, refused to take the death penalty off the table. He could have done that. We saw that in Idaho when it came to the doomsday cult mom that the judge there didn't like the prosecutor's behavior. So they took the death penalty off the table there. That's not happening here. Yeah, they asked for that. The defense said the punishment should be that the death penalty gets removed for the prosecutor making those statements to TMZ. And the judge said,

no, we're not going to do that. You've got to pay for their legal fees and filing the motion to hold you in contempt, which then people say, well, that's a little silly because this is a public defender. Like, the state's already paying for the legal fees, but okay, whatever. Viva, back to those text messages, they do sound bizarre. They do sound odd. And what do you make of my own theory that if the prosecution is wise, they will introduce some sort of earlier text exchange. between these two to show that this was the way they spoke to one another. Well, look, I was a teenager once. You know, when you're in love and you reread your love letters from, you know,

1996, they are all pretentious, bizarrely written stuff in the first place. Okay, pictures or it didn't happen, Viva. That box has long been burned. But no, the, when you say it's bizarre, it is bizarre, but you're talking about a boy who's larping as a, girl and a furry animal. I don't know what normal would look like among these people. But the bottom line, I appreciate people think it's self-serving. It's like the orgy of evidence that they had in the movie Minority Report. Oh, you got him describing the gun, what he did, et cetera. It's going to

come down to the metadata on those text messages and whether or not they are authentic. People online suggesting that the text messages were sent when Tyler Robinson was already in custody. That will get fleshed out at trial. And the metadata, the time sent, the time received, the devices from which they were sent and received is the evidence that you're going to see at trial, not at the preliminary hearing. And if it turns out that the metadata doesn't jive with the timeline, then people will reassess them. But bottom line, these are a bunch of, you know, everyone's the hero in their own story. These are young people, mentally ill, you know, revolutionaries in their own mind. They're going to sound like pretentious revolutionaries than text messages. And I have no

difficulty believing that that's how they'd be written among, you know, this demographic. But it'll come down to metadata and actual evidence that these messages, were sent and received by the people who allegedly sent and received them. You know, the metadata around those text messages, Ashley, honestly, could be hugely important in this case. I'm thinking of Alex Murdoch, you know, Alec Murdoch, and all the data that came from his car that just proved how he sped up between going to visit his mother to make sure he got there and back in time to kill his family, but make it look like he had done this longer visit than he had. And all of those tech advances doomed him. Right. You know, and in today's

day and age, there should be no doubt in this judge's mind at the end of this week or ultimately in the jury's mind about who sent those text messages. Like, it actually is knowable, at least. the device from which those text messages came. I mean, I suppose you can't ever disprove there wasn't somebody lurking over the shoulder. Sitting there, taking his, taking his phone and doing that. No, definitely. And I think we will get some testimony probably for Mr. Twiggs that this is a way that they talked. You know, this was sort of a romance language or something like that that they were engaging in. But I think these texts are really important because this is a death penalty case. And so everything we're talking about, I think, is relevant to the fact that this is a death penalty case.

This is not a whodontit. I don't believe that this is a case where the defense even thinks that they've got a shot at walking him, at an acquittal. I mean, I don't think that's where we're at. I think all of the things that they're doing right now is because of the death penalty. They want Utah, the state, wants the death penalty, and the defense doesn't want the death penalty. That's what this is about. And all of this overkill with this, you know, preliminary hearing, all this extra evidence and stuff,

I think it's really to try to sway the potential jury pool on a very powerful issue. that we're facing in death penalty litigation, and that is residual doubt. You know, it used to be that people didn't want to impose the death penalty for various reasons. Now what we're seeing is really they don't want to impose it because of what's called residual doubt, meaning that they found the person guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, but they had a little residual doubt, a little what if, what if that fingerprint didn't match? What if that wasn't him, you know, sending those text messages? What if that bullet fragment that didn't match? What if that meant someone else actually did the shooting? That little what if, that residual doubt, that is what saves people's lives in these death penalty cases.

And I think the prosecution is trying to get out in front of that and get rid of all those what ifs. And I think that's why they're sort of going overkill. And I think that's why the texts are so important because it goes to motive. And they just want to just oversell it at this point so that they're not facing that issue with that residual doubt. Mm-hmm. But I think they are definitely going for full acquittal, Dave. I actually think that they're banking much in the same way. There was speculation about the Carmelo Anthony case and had one of those jurors made it on who was saying, like, I just couldn't find against a brother. You know, like, there was at least one black juror who got dismissed for saying exactly that. It was like, okay, thank you for your honesty. If you can get one juror onto this eventual jury who doesn't believe Tyler Robinson had anything to do with it, thinks it was Israel.

or it was some group of trans Tifa, you know, without actual evidence, but there's been enough in the ether. This is Erica Kirk's fear, that you're going for jury nullification, basically. Right, but that would be a hung jury if you had one. You need everyone to get a full acquittal, and it's hard, you know, you can have one Trojan horse, someone who lies, someone who's there with an agenda to get on that jury, but it's hard to convince the rest of the jury there. I mean, you have 12 jurors, and that's going to take a lot to convince all 12, especially with the evidence so strong. So I understand why Erica Kirk would feel that way. It's the prosecution's greatest fear that you'd have jury nullification.

You're not supposed to nullify a verdict. You're supposed to follow the evidence in the law, but there's nothing to stop a juror from deciding that, nope, I'm not going to send this poor young man who looks so sweet and wholesome in his sweater and oversized glasses will probably fit him with like they did with the men. Nendez brothers or the murder at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas that perhaps that person will keep a guilty verdict from happening and then keep the death penalty from happening. That's possible. But I don't see any situation where there would be a full acquittal. Here, again, this is like, I'm not making light. Believe me, I'm not making light of Charlie's death. But here's the Renaissance woman, because it does bring home what to me sounds like the absurdity around the way they speak. And I personally can't even, I can't read the text message

anymore without thinking of this woman's rendition. Because if you go online for two minutes, you will find just thousands of people who feel as she does, that it's too theatrical, that it's nonsensical, that it sounds like something like a chat GPT would have written up for, you know, give me confession from, you know, whatever, Gen X or Gen Z. I should say, who's in some weird relationship. Watch. Hello, my love. You have no doubt heard of the shooting, and I must admit, twas I. I had hoped to keep the secret to the grave, but alas, I have not lasted the better part of an hour. Why have I committed this act? T'was the hate of the man. Reason had no purchase in the

poor soil of his soul. You have not asked, but in case you were wondering where I hid the rifle, my love, twas over yonder by that lingering squad car. My old man shall surely be missing it presently. Do you remember how I was engraving bullets the other day in front of you?

Well, it was just to do a big meme. Look no further into that. Also, I shall now misquote my own meme. O-woo? Oh, well? Probably makes no difference. I apologize to involve you, and for this text to be so short, but I am on the lamb.

In conclusion, I beg you keep this from the prying eyes of the fuzz. Pretty good, Viva, right? I mean, it captures sort of what a lot of us are like looking at like, what? What do you mean? I'd hope to keep, he says, I'd hope this to take this to the grave. And yet here he is the same day of the murder confessing it in multiple forms. I still think, I mean, if you are a revolutionary in your own mind and you think of yourself as a hero and you're in some sort of Shakespearean, you know, suicide-packed-type love affair.

I can see you writing it like that. The other element, I forget who it was. I think it might have been Matt Walsh, who said at the time that this could have been drafted as sort of like, ask chat GPT how to draft a text thread to exonerate or not inculpate my friend in this, sort of like they did in Breaking Bad when Walter White called up his wife, Skyler, and, you know, called her a bitch and did that because he knew that people were listening. So maybe this is self-serving to get Lance Twiggs out of this. But no, I still don't have difficulty believing that these kids would would talk like that among themselves and think of themselves as heroes while murdering a man who truly was a hero.

Right. Like Lance Twigs, like, it was not you, was it? It was. Indeed. It was I. Let's just check back in on the preliminary hearing. This just was testified to by Officer Badgley, Bagley, again, apologies, who remains on the stand. Listen, in. There was a male individual on top of the roof that was there at the time of the shooting.

Did they describe what his movements were? They did. They stated that he ran to the edge, dropped down, crawled, got on a prone position. I'm going to stop you right there. Ran to the edge. What direction and what edge? Running west and southwest of the Lossie building. So ran towards the tent where Charlie Kirk was.

So they could get a line of sight. and then the individual stood up after the shooting and ran northeast on top of the low seat building okay um you mentioned that this individual on the video dropped off off the edge did you did you what happened what what else was described to you um then well at that moment so i knew that there was possibly a shear on on the run honor can we just have a So Ashley, what we can hear him setting up. They're going to say, and this is Tyler Robinson and so on and so forth. But what, so what does the defense do with that?

Do they try to pick it apart or does the fence know we're going to trial? So we're not going to show any of our cards here. It's like, no questions. Or do they realize this is a fight for public opinion too? And they do have to do something. I think the best move for the defense is to try to lock in some testimony that they think that they can use at trial. So this is sort of a pretrial chance to lock in this officer's testimony and also plant some seeds if they are going for that residual doubt, plant some seeds, you know, and kind of pick around the corners. The problem is that this is a pretty solid case. I mean, not the problem, but that's a problem for the defense, obviously.

You know, it's a pretty solid case. And so I think they're going to have a hard time actually coming at this officer with anything difficult. They're just going to need to pick around the corners and hope that they can get something that they can use later on. Yeah. I mean, everybody's got some tricky strategy to unleash as they navigate through this. Guys, thank you very much. DeViva's going to stay with us. Dave and Ashley, you've got to go. But we are back with Mark Garagos and Matt Murphy on their thoughts on what we've been seeing so far. As I said, we've got the best in the business right here. You won't hear them. And these are actual trial lawyers in the criminal law anywhere else. Our sponsor, the Electronic Payments Coalition, says Washington politicians are always,

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whole situation at guard your card.com and consider telling Congress to guard your card. Hey everyone, it's me, Megan Kelly. I've got some exciting news. I now have my very own channel on Sirius XM. It's called the Megan Kelly Channel, and it is where you will hear the truth, unfiltered, with no agenda, and no apologies. Along with the Megan Kelly show, you're going to hear from people like Mark Halperin, Link Lauren, Moran Callahan, Emily Jashinsky, Jesse Kelly, Real Clear Politics, and many more. It's bold, no BS news, only on the Megan Kelly channel, SiriusXM 11, and on the Sirius XM app. Viva stays with us as we monitor day one of the Tyler Robinson preliminary hearing, but we're We're also going to bring in Mark Garigos and Matt Murphy now.

They're attorneys and hosts of the In the Well podcast. That's on our MK Media Podcast Network, which you can find at mKTruecrime.com. And wherever you get your podcast, if you just type in In The Well, it will come up or MK True Crime, multiple ways of finding them. Guys, great to see you. Thanks for being here, Viva. Welcome back to you. So they've just broken for lunch in the hearing, but just prior to doing that, they were

finishing up with this officer on the stand, and he was being cross-examined by Catherine Nestor, who represented Corey Richens, the woman who killed her husband with fentanyl in his drink, and then did a world tour, not really, but a media tour, trying to promote her children's book, trying to teach children how to grieve well in the loss of a parent, ridiculous in any event. She didn't get that wife off, Corey Ridgions. But now she's hoping that she can get Tyler Robinson off. She was cross-examining here on, well, let's just play the first soundbite SOTS. The machines you walk through at TSA in the airport where it checks to see if you're carrying anything metal,

what we all had to go through to get in the courtroom, were there any machines like that set up or being used on campus that day? No. And as far as you know, were there any drawing? drones that were flying above campus that day? Not that I know of. And did anyone ever talk to you about covering anything near or on top of or in the low sea building? Were you ever signed that area before the shooting? No.

Do you know who was? I don't. And when you got up to the roof that afternoon, was anybody around that was law enforcement? No. Nobody on the roof. Nope. Nobody on the stairway. No.

Nobody on the walkway. No. Okay. And in the state of Utah, is a campus a gun-free zone? Are students allowed to have guns on campus? It's an open state, so yes. Interesting. Guys, thanks for being here.

Where's she going with that, Mark Garagos? No mags, no drones, no cops on the roof. Inadequate protection is really what she's. arguing. Correct. And by the way, for those who are conspiracy theorists, it fits exactly into what many of the conspiracy theories are. And if you're in a criminal case, all you need is one person and one person to start asking those questions. I don't understand why this wasn't here. I don't understand why that wasn't here unless somebody use as kind of a cutout or proxy. So that would be my guess as to where she's going. She's certainly, this is not a civil

case, so to speak, where you would be talking about liability for failure to provide security. So the kind of logical, if you will, if I were a prosecutor, and I'll leave that for Matt, because God forbid that's the last thing I'd ever want to be, is the prosecutor generally would be jumping up and down, objecting to this, saying this is completely irrelevant. This is a fishing expedition. And where are they going with this? This isn't discovery. It's a probable cause hearing. How many times I've heard guys like Matt tell me that? That makes a lot of sense, Matt, that that's what she's doing. Because if you believe that Tyler Robinson was being used as a tool by some other nefarious actor to pull the

trigger or that he may not have been the trigger man and that this whole thing was done in a different way. Maybe you do want to establish, oh, security was conveniently missing from the scene that day, right? Because like the whole, you can call it conspiracy theories, whatever, but the whole business of conspiracy theory is you know better. There's an inside job. There's something happening that you don't understand unless you're one of the smart ones. and one of the things that's been done is to remove security apparatus from this, from the roof, from the whatever, such that the plan can unfold as, as expected. And so, yeah, why else would this defense lawyer be going to that place? Well, yeah, I'm going to take a position here that I'm going to probably contradict myself on numerous times during the penancy of this case.

You know, there are three main areas of attack in the appellate process, Megan. They accuse the judge of improper instruction. They accuse the prosecutor of misconduct. And they will accuse the defense of what is known as IAC or ineffective assistance in counsel. So I think that some of this is just checking the boxes. You know, and I think we're going to see more of that by her. I think that's the generous interpretation of it. There's a thing known as the Dunning Kruger effect that I know you're familiar with.

And that is basically if you're really stupid, how would you know it? And the most interesting thing to me about watching this preliminary hearing this morning are the comments because it is shocking how many people are buying into the conspiracy theories and how could it be this? And Mark's exactly right. It's like the dream. the home run is one of those loons gets on the jury and somehow hangs it up. And I listened to the last segment, Dave Aaronberg, my friend, was exactly right on that. You know, they would love to hang it or

establish some sort of lingering doubt that's going to carry over into the penalty phase. And remember, this is only a preliminary hearing. The judge only has to make a call as a magistrate. That's the role he's playing today, although he is going to be the trial judge as well. It's just a probable cost hearing. And by the end of today, there's probably going to be enough probable cause to bind him over, which is going to happen. Here's something else that was asked moments ago, just to set it up, Viva. There was, when we made reference to it earlier, there was a man who was initially detained by police as the suspect in this case, who we were later told has nothing to do with this case. His name is George Zinn. And here's just a little bit about

George Zinn that we now know. He has a lengthy criminal record in Utah dating back decades. The better documented prior cases include in the 80s to the 20s, numerous arrests and convictions too for criminal trespass, disorderly conduct, disrupting public meetings and other misdemeanor offenses to tied to protests and political events. Prosecutors described him as a frequent repeat offender rather than someone known for violent felonies. 2013, Salt Lake City Marathon Bomb Threat, days after the Boston Marathon Bombing, Zinn asked race organizers whether they needed help setting up bombs at the Marathon finish line. They treated it as a threat. He was convicted, served a year in prison. Mental health concerns,

court records show the guys got some issues there. September, he falsely confessed to shooting Charlie, resulting in an obstruction of justice charge after he admitted that he was just trying to divert investigators. In 2025, child sexual abuse material was found more than 20 images on his cell phone after his detention. He pleaded guilty to two counts

of sexual exploitation of a minor. All this is very bad for this guy, George Zinn. One does wonder what he was doing at the Charlie Kirk event in the first place, but you may recall this videotape of him moments after the shooting. Watch. For listening audience, it's police pulling him away and putting him in a squad car and people screaming. And he confessed and he said like he did it. That's George Zinn. Watch what happened when

Catherine Nester raised the issue of George Zinn and this arrest with Officer Chris Bagley moments ago. It was your understanding. The person they took into custody was close by Mr. Kirk. that right? Yep. But it didn't occur to you that, well, that's not where I heard the shot come from. They must have the wrong person. I should talk to somebody. During the chaos moment, no. That's that they said they had a person in custody. I figured those guys saw something I didn't see. They took the person in custody and I thought that was him. Okay. Okay. So that now we're getting more on point, Viva, of trying to make the cops look like idiots. You can't trust anything they said or did around this case. Do you agree? That's where she's going.

Well, I think she's just going with more is more for the defense. Let them say something that they can then argue in the court of public opinion that they can then use to have whoever is promoting theories that Tyler Robinson is innocent. You know, you can have that fight in the court of public opinion and potentially poison the jury pool. What I don't have no patience, but what I don't understand is people who think of other theories like the exploding mic theory. And they actually claim to sincerely believe this despite any sort of. evidence. I can appreciate people saying Tyler Robinson is a patsy and they'll attack the evidence. Just hold that thought for one second so I can tell me what you're talking about. There is a theory on the internet that Charlie wasn't shot by this 30-a-six or any other gun that the people who believe this was a planned assassination by some other nefarious group had put a mic on Charlie that exploded and it made his shirt puff out and his necklace puff out. And the And then, I guess, residual shrapnel injured his neck.

But that this was a planned assassination in which the Mike exploded and killed him as opposed to this gun. Go ahead. Correct. Yes. I presume everybody was familiar with that. But, you know, the people who want to say Tyler Robinson couldn't have done it because a 30-0-6 doesn't behave like that, whatever that means.

And that they have to find some other conspiracy theory. What I think the defense is doing right now is just get them to say more. that would allow, you know, the people out there promoting these ideas to pick holes and it find contradictions. Oh, you said there were no drones, but yet Charlie's team flew a drone early on in the event. So if they were forbidden, how did the team fly these drones? This is all not to, you know, contradict the preliminary hearing. There will be probable cause, period, full stop. I think they're just getting as much as they can out there to muddy the waters between now and the trial. And I just want to, you know, I want to flesh one thing out also. George Zinn, people need to

understand just how wild a coincidence, if it's unrelated, that you have an old man with child sexual abuse material on his phone, causing a distraction so that the shooter can get away, and people want to entertain what I think are untenable conspiracy theories? How about just ask some legitimate questions? I put it out on Twitter a while back. Who was on these discord chats? Did George Zinn know something was going to happen there? There were people who posted in advance that something big was going to happen at the event. We still don't have answers to those questions. whether or not the defense is going to say he was a patsy who did it, but he was, you know, brainwashed by people online. We'll see.

There are legitimate questions that have not yet been answered. George Zinn being there, taking credit for it so that the shooter could get away, then getting caught with CSAM on his phone. I would love to know if George Zinn had anything to do with any of the Discord chats in advance. He's an old man in, you know, with child sexual abuse material. He might be somehow anonymously involved in Discord chats involving the furry community. And these are the questions that have not yet been answered that don't exonerate Tyler Robinson, but might be indicative of a broader conspiracy implicating others who were told for the time being no one else was involved. It was just Tyler Robinson. That's very fair because the discord messages, I read that some of the text messages between Tyler and Lance Twigs alleged earlier. Here's some of the discord messages. Again, it's like this gamer website where they both participated.

This is from a Washington Post article from September 15th of 25. The 22-year-old suspect appears to have confessed to friends in an online chat shortly before turning himself into law enforcement. Hey, guys, I have bad news for you all. Read a message from an account belonging to the suspect, Tyler Robinson, on Discord. It was me at UVU yesterday. I'm sorry for all of this. It was sent Thursday night about two hours before officials said Robinson was taken into custody. Charlie was killed on a Wednesday.

A member of the group chat shared an image of the conversation with the post. Discord provided a copy of the message with the confession to authorities. The message was sent from Robinson's account to a small private group of online friends. The Discord conversation shared with the post shows members of the group chat reacting to Kirk shooting Wednesday before the news broke that Robinson was allegedly involved. The group had about 30 people and somebody wrote Charlie Kirk got shot. I just saw the video. Holy shit. Roe did not deserve to go out like that.

Sad. The only response from Robinson's account came the next day, Thursday, with a message announcing, quote, bad news that I just read. It goes on to say, to read, I'm surrendering through a sheriff friend in a few moments. That was posted at 7.57 p.m. local time on Thursday in Utah. It continued, thanks for all the good times and laughs. You've all been so amazing. Thank you all for everything. Robinson was taken into custody two hours later at 10 p.m. that night, per the FBI director

Cash Patel. That's the one friend, they said no one responded to Robinson that night, but the next day one friend wrote that the apparent confession seemed to be true. The friend asked group members to quote, pray for Tyler and his repentance. The New York Times reported on a conversation

in a different discord chat group earlier the same day. In that conversation, Robinson joked that a doppelganger was trying to get him in trouble after law enforcement released images of the shooting suspect who resembled Robinson. Utah Governor Spencer Cox confirmed the existence of that conversation later saying that Robinson's friends did not believe it was actually him. CBS News added at least three friends asked Robinson if he was the shooter, saying the photos

released by the FBI sure did look a lot like him. He did not seem to refute it. And then in one exchange, the sources said a friend appeared to tease. Robinson, joking he should avoid McDonald's. That's where Luigi Mangione was arrested after he killed, allegedly the United Healthcare CEO. And then the account appearing to belong to Robinson responded, better also get rid of this manifesto and exact copy rifle I have lying around. So all of that is going to come in, the Discord messages. And, you know, Mark, you tell me as a defense lawyer, when you've got that, you got that in writing on discord in addition to the text messages,

weird though they may sound, to the lover, Lance Twiggs, and the alleged letter that he left for Lance Twigs, which I believe will hear Lance Twigs testify about in his video statement. How you deal with that? Well, you know, I always, I say it somewhat jokingly, but on the square, that probable cause hearings are basically, is my client breathing. I say that with coming on the heels last week of doing a murder prelim and the judge actually special circumstance dismissed two of the defendants. So kudos to her and caveat to my usual glib line. What you deal with here is precisely what our other guests just detailed. The fact that there just so happens to be somebody

who obviously has issues, mental health challenges, to say the very least, who happens to be there at the exact same time, who then gets arrested, who then confesses. It would be, to Matt's point, about ineffective assistance of counsel. If you're the defense lawyer and you do not plumb that area and flesh that out and do everything possible, you're going to get an ineffective assistance of counsel. That is more than just a coincidence. Questions have to be asked about that and rightfully so, even if you think they've got everything that they need to tie this up in a bow.

And certainly there's no question that he's going to be helped. to answer in a probable cause proceeding. At the same time, the standard for a conviction is beyond a reasonable doubt. It's worlds and universes away from probable cause. And there are some serious questions as to what happened here. When you ask an officer like she did, that was a perfectly legitimate line of questioning. Here you guys thought, nobody thought that they arrested a guy in an area where the sound didn't come from. They, by the way, when you arrest somebody, guess what your standard is? Your standard is something akin to probable cause.

So that is a perfectly viable and legitimate area of inquiry for her to be investigating. Frankly, I'm a little surprised that the officer didn't have more of a fulsome response to that. to because anybody who is sentient would have known that was coming. So, Matt, in other words, what we're seeing the defense set up here, perhaps, though not explicitly, is Charlie was a sitting duck. There was not a drone in the sky to look after him. There was not a cop on the roof to make sure that the roof was secure. And everybody knows that that's a thing because when Charlie was killed, it was 14 months.

post-butler and the Trump assassination attempt, that there were no magnetometers, that he was exposed, entirely exposed. And then when shots rang out, you found it entirely plausible as law enforcement that they came from the front of the arena, not the back, not a rooftop. You believe this guy, George Zinn and his confession and had no problem arresting him for the crime. and it is sort of quietly setting up, you know, the possibility of somebody else was behind this whole thing, because we're going to get to. They have three forensic experts, the defense does, that they plan on calling. And I'm sure one of them is going to be talking about how that bullet was not able to be conclusively matched to the gun of Tyler Robinson that 30-odd-6.

I know, I know. We talked in the last hour about how that doesn't mean it wasn't, but it would be certainly better for the prosecution if they had a gun. match and they don't. Yeah, two things on that, Megan. Number one, I really like Viva's comments about the idea of other people being involved. You know, you can, we see that all the time. You can have 20 other people involved in this case, and it might even be true. But the question is, does that ameliorate or does that somehow mitigate Tyler Robinson's involvement? The answer to that is almost certainly no, at least in the guilt phase. Maybe that comes out in the penalty phase. But, you know, going back to the bullet, this is one of the,

those things that's been driving me crazy, Megan, this whole time. The defense filed a brief where they basically suggested to the world that the bullet didn't match. Okay. And I've got the quote written down, but they write that. That's something the defense can do, whatever. And the prosecution came out and they got in trouble because they not only said it was inconclusive, but they went on TMZ with Mark's buddy, Harvey Levin, who got him in trouble. And he said, we are very confident in the rest of our evidence and the judge said that that violated the, you know, the bounds of the court order. And he kind of slapped him on the wrist. And he said, well, we're not going to dump the death penalty on that. The best way, I think, to think about this bullet, this was a, this was a large

bullet that fragmented upon entry. Okay. And I don't know if this was a frangible round. They haven't made that public yet. But there are certain bullets that are designed to disintegrate. Some are used for hunting. They call them varmint rounds. I've never heard of a 30-odd Sixth Farm around, but that must exist. And that's never been made public. The best way to think of it, Megan, is like if you have a murder scene and you have the killer who picked up like a wine glass, for example, and you know that there's a fingerprint on the wine glass and then the wine glass shatters into a million pieces, you're going to get an inconclusive result for that too. And a bullet is similar. The way they do, the ballistic comparisons, that's kind of how that works. You can't get a

a fingerprint off shattered glass. What nobody's really been talking about is that there are more than one way, there's more than one way to ballistically match a firearm. And one of them is with expended shell casings. And he cycled, he cycled the casing. The casing found at the scene matched the rifle. Okay. So there's, it's not just the bull of it.

And that rifle has his DNA on the trigger. So there's plenty of forensic evidence. And Megan, you're exactly right. of these experts is going to say exactly that. I examined it. And that wasn't the bullet, and it couldn't have been, it couldn't have been fired from that gun. We're going to see something like that, either at this phase or in the actual trial. The defense is going to come right back and they're going to say, of course his DNA is on that gun. He used that gun before. That was a gun from his house. And of course, there are casings that match it because he wasn't the one who planted the

casings. Somebody else through the casings there. If you've got to, George Zen who's over there confessing and at the front, just coincidentally, you think it's a long stretch to have somebody throw some casings. I mean, none of that. I get the fact that the inconclusive bullet is something that people have run with, but I promise you that the prosecution, and you know this, Matt, that's why he went on to TMZ. He was worried, he is worried that the public has taken that and run with it. And that is, that's a significant, significant doubt. If you get, by the way, as you know, if you've got a battle of the experts, what did jurors do with that? I can't tell you how many times they tell me how we discounted the experts and we didn't come to that conclusion.

Yeah, it's exactly right. I mean, it'd be a lot more helpful for the defense if they didn't have the alleged confessions, you know, the text messages to Lance Twigs, the discord messages, and whatever he may or may not have said to police. Be a lot more helpful if they just had a bullet that couldn't be conclusively matched, but they have more than that. I will show you this soundbite from Rob O'Neill, who I adore. And he is, of course, a former Navy SEAL sniper who not all. only shot Osama bin Laden in the face, but has been on some of our most daring and dangerous missions as part of SEAL Team 6 for the past 20 plus years prior to his retirement. And here's what he said. This is not, he has no dog in this hunt. And this is what he said about this, this wound on Charlie and this gun. Just for me, I mean, it was off it right from the beginning for me.

from, do we not guard rooftops anymore? There's been assassinations, assassination attempts all over the world. Why aren't me looking at rooftops? And then when I was sent the video at the same message where they said Charlie Kirk was just shot. When I watched that horrific video, he was obviously dead before he hit the ground.

But the questions immediately started to come to me. That was not an entry ruin that we saw. We saw an exit wound. So where'd that bullet come from? You don't bleed light. And I've shot guys closer than the camera was. And an entry wound doesn't look like that. An exit wound doesn't.

I could play you 20 videos like that from gun experts. Yeah, I love that guy too, Megan. I can tell you right now he's wrong. I watch that video. That's an arterial bleed from an entry wound. They recovered the entire bullet on the inside. It's heavily fragmented and damage. So love him.

I think he's an American hero. He's dead wrong on that one. And he's never tried or presented this type of evidence in front of a jury or slog through expert testimony. I'm glad to hear you disagree. That's what we're here for. But what about, Matt, you've heard, you know, many people believe that a 30-od-6 and that gun and that level bullet would never have not had an entry, an exit wound, that the fact that, you know, there was this alleged surgeon who said, oh, Charlie's got like a Superman-like spine, you know, he was so strong that his bone stopped it. That's why there wasn't an

exit wound. And many people just said immediately that's utter bullshit that we don't believe that. Mark Garagos, my friend, has seen probably more autopsies than I have after 17 years in homicide. Bullets do weird things. And this thing fragmented. They recovered the whole thing. And when you hit bones, bullets break apart. And I don't care if it's a 30 out six. And that's the thing. they'd never released what kind of ammunition it was, but this was an antique rifle. If this was antique ammo to boot, you know, who knows? But there is no mystery here other than speculation and kind of nonsense.

I mean, you see this all the time in homicide cases, Megan, where sometimes the bullets go right through, and it looks like they're pristine. Sometimes they will hit a bone and shadow and stay inside. Sometimes little rounds, spin around, bank all over the place inside a human body. You know, we part of our used to go watch the autopsies on our homicides. And it's, it is, you'd be amazed the things that different bullets will do.

And there we go. That's a, that's a Mouser, I believe it's a Mouser 98. That is a rifle that was designed well over 100 years ago. It's still that, and that's a really old one, but they still make those because it's, it's a simple design and it works. But ammunition, depending on the ammunition, They designed certain rounds to break apart. To shoot coyotes, it's literally called varmin ammunition. And there's no, you know, it's not like they got in there and didn't, you know, couldn't

account for the weight or the grains. Apparently it's all inside his body. It hit his spine. Viva's right. He was dead instantly or very close to it. Thank God. But, but yeah, this is the kind of stuff that the conspiracy theories and these are a bunch of people who, who have haven't witnessed autopsies, haven't seen him.

Bullets pulled out of human bodies before. And the only person who might have seen more of them than me is probably my friend Mark Garragher goes right there at the bottom. Do you agree with him, Mark? Yeah, the, Matt's as usual is spot on. You know, the issue of what a bullet will do. In fact, I have cross-examined. I can't tell you how many ballistics experts.

And when they talk about, you know, they shoot bullets into water. They shoot bullets. You should see how they testify as to how they test guns and how they test casings and things of that nature. And I have used exactly what Matt has said as a, as fodder for cross-examination saying, by the way, lay the foundation. Have you ever been to an autopsy? Have you seen what bullets do for you to say that you can. try to recreate it by shooting it into a long trough of water or something else is just complete nut or nonsense because they it's almost as if I've actually had ballistics experts admit to me that

bullets have a mind of their own. I mean, they they, they, I've actually had that statement repeated back to me on cross-examination. That doesn't mean, however, that the defense is going to not run with that. The defense has an obligation to run with that. The defense has an absolute duty, zealous advocacy to kind of plumb the depths of that because God only knows what is going on here. I mean, this has not been, I think Matt would probably admit if this were, he wouldn't admit that he's ever had this situation down in Orange County, but he probably, if I was out with him at CrimeCon in Vegas would admit that he has chastised investigators for doing stuff like this before, because this is not, you're not.

What do you mean? Doing stuff like what? This is not a primer on a really good investigation number one. And I don't want to be the armchair quarterback second guessing. But this, this once again has all the earmarks of some people in over. their head, at least initially. There's a lot of things that were done here that I think are going to come out during this preliminary hearing and the defense is going to bring out as to what investigators did or didn't do.

Megan, I want to hear more on that, but Viva, I want you to weigh in. Well, when I hear people say this, you know, a 30-0.6 would always leave an exit wound. It's impossible, inconceivable that it wouldn't. And then I say Martin Luther King, Jr. And then you people, then be like, well, I don't believe that report either because you're believing Fed Slop if you believe that that bullet actually killed Martin Luther King. So you're having an argument with people who basically push unfalsifiable theories where if you say it always leaves an exit wound, there's probably a few soldiers from World War II that can testify that a 30-odd-6 doesn't always leave an exit wound. Then you say Martin Luther King got shot in the face. And if they

believe it, they say, oh, well, that hit his jawbone. Okay, so a jawbone can stop it, but not a spine, or a spine, well, not the spinal cord, but not the spine bones. And, and, and, and, you know, And then you say, well, I don't believe the Martin Luther King got shot in the face with the 30-0-6 either. So therefore, I stand by my, it could never have been a 30-0-6. Anybody's saying that? And I'm not a gun expert. I'm not an ammunition's expert by any means. I was a lawyer for 13 years.

My question has always been, do you know the condition of the ammo? If you don't know the condition of the ammo, you are not in a position to definitively say how the ideal ammo would perform and what it would do to a human body. And I think, I don't know if we all know Chris Martinson. He's done great work on COVID. but he's looking into this quite a bit. I had him on the channel, and I say, you know, hypothetically, if that projectile is tumbling when it hits the body,

who knows what it does? At a lower angle, it dives down. And, you know, Chris, in all honesty, said, yeah, I guess if it's a fouled bore, if the rifle hasn't been maintained, if it's old ammunition, you know, it's conceivable that the round is tumbling by the time it hits Charlie in the neck

and hits a spine and goes down. It's conceivable. We're talking about, you know, what are the odds? until there's evidence to support anything other than this. It takes a great deal of audacity to write this off and say, this is not how a bullet behaves. When it's behaved like this in the past, Martin Luther King,

if you don't believe that, fine. But you don't know the condition of the ammo. You're not in any position to say definitively what the bullet would or would not have done to a human body. That's right. I mean, personally, I can't get past the fact that if I'm the defense, I can poke a lot of holes into the, this wasn't the gun, that this was the gun.

I can poke holes into that. Maybe I can convince a jury this was not the gun, or they can't prove it beyond a reasonable doubt that this was the gun and this was Tyler Robinson's ammo. But then I get to the written confession in the text messages to the transferee lover. Okay, those sound weird. Maybe you find a jury that's like,

it doesn't sound like normal Gen Zers. Like, I don't buy that. But you're going to have the metadata. You're going to have an expert. the prosecution is going to know that there are doubts about those text messages, and they are going to shore up any doubts about them coming from anything other than Tyler Robinson's phone and Lance Twiggs' phone and try to convince us that absolutely was those two. And then on top of that, there's a note that Tyler allegedly left for Lance underneath the keyboard, that also,

it was in advance of the shooting saying, if you're reading this, I'm either dead or I'm facing a long prison sentence. I'm sorry, but I had to do it. And then on top of that, the night that Tyler Robinson was arrested, Matt, you have him speaking to his parents, allegedly saying, I just, I'm going to end it all, like allegedly confessing to the parents and saying, I'm going to end it all. And then the parents, here's how it was reported, okay, at the time. This is from the criminal information, that basically the charging document. against him. They say on the evening of September 11th, this is Thursday, the day after the murder, as law enforcement continued their investigation, Robinson went to the Washington County Sheriff's

Office with his parents and a family friend who's going to become relevant to turn himself in. His mother stated the following to cops on September 11th, the day after the shooting. She saw a photo of the shooter in the news. She thought it looked like her son. She called her son, asked him where he was. He said homesick, and that he'd also been homesick the day before the day of the shooting. The mom expressed concern to her husband that the suspected shooter looked like Robinson. The father agreed. First of all, that's all admissible. All of that is admissible and will likely come in. His mother explained that over the last year or so, Robinson had become much more political and started to lean more to the left, becoming more pro-gay, more trans-rights oriented. She said that

Robinson began to date his roommate, a biological male who was transitioning genders. This resulted in several discussions with family members, especially between Robinson and his father who have very different political views. And one convoy before the shooting, Robinson mentioned Charlie Kirk would be holding an event at UVU, which Robinson said was a stupid venue. Robinson accused Kirk of spreading hate. That's the exact term allegedly used by Robinson to the transferee lover. Some hate can't be negotiated out. Robinson's father reported that when his wife showed him the surveillance image of the suspected shooter in the news, he agreed it looked like their son. So that in and of itself is evidence. Both parents, Matt, are looking at the now as of now unidentified picture of the shooter, just the shooter.

That's all we know. And both are like, holy shit, that's our boy. So that's all admissible. And then we get to, he also believed the dad that the rifle, the police suspected the shooter used, matched a rifle that was given to his son as a gift. As a result, the father contacted his son and asked him to send a photo of the rifle. This is him saying, do you have it on you right now? because I'm seeing the cops have one that looks an awful lot like the one I gave you from grandpa. Robinson did not respond. However, Robinson's father spoke on the phone with Robinson. Robinson

implied that he planned to take his own life. His parents were able to convince him to meet at their home. As they discussed the situation, Robinson implied he was the shooter and stated that he could not go to jail. He just wanted to end it. When asked why he did it, Robinson explained there's too much evil. And that guy, Charlie Kirk, spreads too much hate. They talked about Robinson turning himself in and convinced Robinson to speak with a family friend who is a retired deputy sheriff. At Robinson's father's request, the family friend met with Robinson and his parents and convinced Robinson to turn himself in. The family friend spoke to police, reported telling Robinson that it would be best if he brought all evidence with him to the sheriff's office to avoid police having to search his parents home. That family friend also asked Robinson if he had any clothes that were related to what he did.

Robinson replied that he had disposed of the clothes in different areas. So they don't use the word confession in here, Matt. But my God, that's a lot of circumstantial evidence. I don't know how you describe that, but that's a lot of very, very good evidence for the prosecution that the family knew it was him. He didn't deny it. He talked about wanting to kill himself. He didn't say, what evidence would I have when turning myself in? I didn't do it, friend of family, former deputy sheriff.

In fact, instead he said, I got rid of it. This guy and the two parents can absolutely be called. They're not on the witness list for preliminary hearing, but they're coming to trial to show this jury. He confessed or didn't deny and came right up close to a confession to virtually everyone. Well, every murder case is like a collage, Megan. every murder trial, it's a bunch, it's as many different pieces as you can put together as a prosecutor, and then having the jury take a step back and consider every piece of evidence in light of everything else.

And you're absolutely right. I know Mark is listening to that. Oftentimes, the best evidence that you have as a homicide prosecutor is statements from the defendant to friends, to family. Now we have the whole world of text messages. And when you add it all up on this, you're absolutely right, Meg. And this is overwhelming. I think, and I'm interested in Mark's thoughts on this. And Vivas, too, this case, really, in my view, is all about the penalty phase.

It's important to remember that in Utah, it's just like California, every trial like this is bifurcated. You have the guilt phase where all this evidence is going to be presented. And then you have the penalty phase where the jury is going to be tasked with considering the aggravating versus. mitigating factors. And one of the challenges for really good defense lawyers like Mark Garagos in the guilt phase is how much of your credibility you want to risk by arguing fanciful conspiracy theories or all that because when a jury goes through the evidence and you've stood up and if you lean too hard into kind of the some of the crazy stuff, you tend to blow a lot of credibility in the penalty phase when it really matters. And in Utah, they have an actual death penalty.

California where it's basically symbolic or other states. Utah and this guy, they go to the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeal, I think, Mark, if I'm not mistaken. Tenth Circuit, which is not the Ninth Circuit. This guy, he is actually facing the death penalty on this. And I think that that's one of the interesting things about this tactically, because if you go too hard on nonsense, that jury may not believe you when you get up and you argue mitigating factors, you know, mental illness, love for this other guy, whatever's going on in his head. The jury's going to get to consider that, whether that carries the day or not. That's really the way I see this whole case.

Is this, are they going to, are they going to vote death or not? I think that's the ultimate question. Mark, how would you see it? If you're looking at the discord messages, the text messages, again, alleged, the alleged letter left under the keyboard in advance, the alleged conversations with Tyler Robinson and his parents, the alleged conversations between Tyler Robinson and this family friend who's a retired former sheriff. How hard do you go on this is not the guy? This is why, as much as I love him, I hated going up against Matt because he understood

the kinds of tactical decisions. One of the, let me give you just a little bit, one of the things that added you, is it's a rare case for the defense that gets better after the prosecution rests, which means you don't want to ever call your client. The first cousin of that is the worst thing that you came. One of the reasons you don't want to call your client is because the jury's focus goes immediately to what did the clients say. It doesn't matter what Matt put on.

It's what is the client say. That is what they're laser focused on. If you don't put the client on, then you've got to deal with the text messages, all of the items that lead up to and that are basically portrayed by the prosecution as the client's statements. If you can deal with that, if there's a way to thread that needle and say, well, he was implication or he thought he had a doppelganger, whatever that might be, the most devastating piece of evidence that you're going to have to deal with in this case is what you and Matt both were. referred to, which is the close family relatives. Now, I will say with a caveat that in Luigi's case, for instance, the parents have come out and publicly said what law enforcement is saying we said the parents, we being Luigi's parents, is false. We never said that. I haven't seen that here in this case. But if you've got the parents testifying against their son, that is about as heavy

a lift as a defense lawyer as you're ever going to have. And to Matt's point, you do not, absolutely do not want to squander whatever goodwill, whatever credibility or authenticity you have with the jury, trying to run away from that and then have to stand up in the penalty phase and say, oh, by the way, just kidding in that guilt phase, you should, he did have remorse. He wanted to kill himself, blah, blah, blah. You got to believe that. I was just. joking before, that never plays out, that never ends well. Oh, that's so tricky. Go ahead, Viva. No, I was just going to say, like, people don't see, the people who are saying Tyler Robinson's innocent or there's a lack of evidence don't seem to be appreciating what's out there. And it's not

just, you know, the parents, the text messages, the video of him running across the roof and jumping off. The day of, I remember watching live streams where immediately after the shot occurred, the person with the camera panned over to the area where they thought the shot came from. Not to say he's dead to rights. He'll have a trial. If it comes out at trial that the text messages were falsified or altered, that the discord chat was manufactured, then you can say, well, now I question everything and anything in this case by way of the other evidence. His parents have not come out and said he's innocent. Why are you prosecuting my boy? I mean, that is what you'd think a parent would say if the reports of them turning their son in or identified their son were false. But barring something,

outrageous during the trial, like it comes up that the fed somehow concocted the text messages to frame a guilty man, you know, this trial is going to go the exact way we all think it's going to go. And then the only question is going to be, are you going to get one individual out there who says, not necessarily, I believe Israel did it with an exploding lapel mic, but it could have been someone else and I'm not comfortable sending Tyler to a death penalty or to jail for life. So well said. That is very, very good framing there. You know, we haven't addressed all of the messages online from what I'm calling trans Tifa.

You know, like there were messages from people online saying something terrible is going to happen to Charlie Kirk on September 10th. Wait until you see. And then after he was killed, the equivalent of told you multiple. We've never heard a follow up from the FBI on that, Matt. They've never. I asked Cash Patel about that myself. and said it was under investigation. And then we never heard anything.

And I just feel like that has got to be answered in some way, shape, or form. Like, that was widespread. Most people will remember that, as I say it. So how do you handle that as a prosecutor? Well, number one, it is. It's disturbing. And some of that stuff, that came out right at the very beginning,

and it is odd. And we have a caveat, you know, good for Lance Twigs for cooperating. He doesn't appear to have been a part of any of that. So good for Lance Twigs. Okay. That said, this is something that you do encounter as a prosecutor. You'll have one defendant sitting there.

This is like my Daniel Wazniak case, for example, where this guy murdered his neighbor, his war hero neighbor to get at his combat pay and then murdered a young woman named Julie Kibuishi in the dead guy's apartment because he murdered him someplace else in order to, to frame the guy he'd already murdered so that everybody will be chasing after him. It was absolutely diabolical. But that was really the claim of the defense was that Daniel Walsack's fiancee, Rachel Buffett, had to have been involved. She had to know. She had to know.

And as a prosecutor eventually, and that was a death penalty case, and you stand up and you go, okay, great. Let's say everything he just said is right. Let's say she was up to her eyeballs and there wasn't evidence supporting that. But let's say she was up to her eyeballs in it. All that means is she should be sitting at. counsel table right next to him. That doesn't lessen his guilt or his involvement in any way. And all of those people could have been involved. They could have been helping. There's no

evidence to support that right now. There's certainly evidence that came out that indicates that people knew about it. Maybe he was bragging about it. Maybe he was telling people ahead of time. But great. So we could line up 25 chairs next to his. It doesn't lessen his individual guilt. And that's the way you handle it. It's like awesome. Conspiracy theory. series run amok. Super. Let's take all of that. Let's let's say every bit of it is true. How does that lessen his moral culpability or his legal culpability for what the evidence shows he did? That's how you deal with it. And, and I- I know you've done some coverage on this, too. Your thoughts on it.

You've been sorry me. I was just looking up online because it is, it's to the point where like I'm questioning my own sanity and my own memory. I remember at the time, there were post that said something big is going to happen at Utah, pay attention. And you go to Grock now and you ask that question and it gives you a wishy-washy answer. And I put that question out there publicly to the FBI as well, not that they listen to me or follow me. But like, if it didn't happen, then the public memory should be corrected. But it happened. And the question is it happened. And now the question is this, what's going on with that? People say, well, they can't comment on an ongoing investigation to which I say hogwash, you don't wait for every individual

involved in a scheme to be convicted before you investigate others' involvement in that scheme. I was just going to say, what a cop out to say, you know, it's an ongoing investigation, because if you don't think that the defense has already hired a wayback machine, what we call the way back machine, has preserved a way through subpoenas to get the preexisting, talk about something big is going to happen. It would be malpractice per se, ineffective assistance, for the fence not to show that. And by the way, if you can show that and if you can show also to your point that the fact that there's been some kind of concerted effort somewhere to erase those things, boy, doesn't that play

right into the idea that if you can't trust what you what you saw with your own eyes, how are you now going to trust what the prosecution is presenting to you and telling you to just believe kind of unfailingly in terms of text messages or anything else? It's a version of garbage in, garbage out. To that point, I just want to say that the cross-examination, the bit of it we saw of her with Officer Bagley talking about how there were no mags, There was no drone to patrol the sky and there was no one on the roof. I mean, I do think she's also laying the foundation for when Charlie's security team takes the stand, if not at the preliminary hearing at the trial, to say these guys were utter failures and you can't believe one word they say. This is not Megan Kelly's opinion.

This is, you know, that she, right, that she's going to get up there and say, like, they have a reason to mislead because they blame them. and they should. That's what she's going to say. I do want to refresh the audience with the following. This is just a piece of what we know about the online communications around Charlie's death. An online friend of Lance Twiggs, the furry boyfriend, who goes by Cherubham 75, wrote after Charlie was killed. Charlie Kirk deserved that shit. Let it die. Let it die. And then we fucking did it. All right. So that is a friend of Lance Twigs, the trans furry, lover of Charlie Kirk of, forgive me, of Tyler Robinson, saying, we fucking did it. We fucking did it. Another account, a person who goes by Osamu bin Tezuka, five days before the shooting, September 5th.

You guys, I have something big in all caps coming soon. Just be sure to check the news. You will know it when you see it. Emogy giving a wink. Then on Wednesday at 4.52 p.m. after the murder. Well, that's that. Another chud. the dust. An ex-account called mushy. The ex-handle is Talley Hal album. It has since been deleted. But the first Kirk tweet was September 3rd, seven days before the murder. It'd be funny if someone like Charlie Kirk got shot on September 10th laughing my ass off, followed up by another one on September 11th. Did it. So, okay, you know, you can dismiss this, but it's very strange. that there's so many predicting doom and gloom, then claiming credit for it, and at least one of them

is directly connected to the lover of the accused shooter. And, you know, back to the theory of the text messages are not some nefarious third party or the FBI making up fake text exchange confessions, it's actually two co-conspirators to take the credit away from Lance Twigs, Matt, and reevaluate the thinking as maybe Lance Twigs was a co-conspirator and is just saving his own ass in talking with and dealing with police now because he was in on it. Some of the people in this discord group were in on it, knew it was going to happen, celebrated it. It's possible they knew George Zinn, the 72 or 3 year old guy who said he did it and distracted the cops. Like, we don't know how wide this goes, but it does disturb me. I'm not really into, I, as the

audience knows, I got my criticisms of Israel. And I know that Charlie was under a lot of pressure from his Jewish donors at Turning Point because he told me that. And it's written down in his own text messages. But I am much more focused on this trans Tifa group when it comes to this crime, because I do believe that Tyler Robinson pulled the trigger. And my only real question is who else, if anyone knew about it and said nothing? Who wants to take that? Well, Lance Twiggs, he would be a horrible criminal or a horrible co-conspirator on this. Because remember, the note underneath the keyboard came from him.

He didn't follow Tyler Robinson's instructions to delete the text messages. And he could have done all that and didn't. So that's where I'm coming from on that. And like Mark, and I'm sure Viva, too. We've seen so many cases where somebody who is involved in something like this will destroy evidence. And even if they're not involved ahead of time as accessories after the fact, especially for people that they're in love with or that have they have some sort of a romantic bond,

you see that all the time, case after case after case, the girlfriend who's trying to cover for the guy or the parent burying the body. I mean, you see that so many times that, I mean, it seems like Lance Twiggs had the opportunity to do it. would be my response. That's somebody that even given my background that I could defend any case like this. The furry world, Megan,

and I know Mark has seen this, I don't know if Viva's ever dealt with it before. It is one of the most bizarre communities. There were a couple of really vicious murder cases in Orange County that we dealt with out of the furry community. And it's a whole

sideshow of weirdness. But I think... But, but the, but the, But the weird thing about, I mean, the tricky thing about Lance Twigs being a furry is normally it'd be the defense attorney who would raise that. Like, you're into the furry community. Aren't you, Mr. Twigs? Like, that's your thing.

It's not enough to be a so-called transgender, but you also think you're this whatever kind of animal, half human, whatever floats your boat. But how does that help them, Mark, to do that to Lance Twigs? Because Tyler Robinson was his lover. I mean, just as weird as Lance Twigs in, it all inures to Tyler Robinson, too. That's what he was into. So I have no special knowledge or anything else that's being reported. But based on what's being reported, if I would bet you a couple of donuts that the defense has explored the idea that he was lured into this, that they have to, as he.

a theory pursue whether or not Tyler Robinson was used. And if he was used or set up, and you have enough to at least credibly pursue it with an investigation. If there are people who are connected to Lance Twigs, who are predicting things, and if this is a fairly recent phenomena where Tyler Robinson is drawn into this world or drawn into the relationship. That is not something that is unheard of or extremely rare when it comes to cases where somebody ends up kind of doing somebody else's dirty work. I would venture to say that the defense is or has explored this. And we will see either in this preliminary hearing or in trial, whether they think there's any traction to it.

But certainly the last thing you'd want to do is have him get convicted and get the debt penalty and have ignored this whole area of investigation because that'll buy you an IAC and a 2255 petition in the 10th Circuit faster than you can say hide the gun. Can I just jump on that real quick, Megan? Ineffective assistance of counsel. Yeah, what's interesting about that point. I think Mark's exactly right. one of the factors the jury is going to be asked to consider is, was the person under the substantial domination of another at the time they committed the murder?

And that's a, I hadn't even thought about that angle until Mark was just saying it. But they may really be able to lean into that where a conspiracy situation might really help the defense, not in the guilt phase, but in the penalty phase. Because if he is lured into this or there's somebody that's, there's some guru that they're listening to or whatever the defense can find, that could help them theoretically. in the penalty phase on this. And Mark's right, they've got to explore it no matter what, or that IAC claim is going to land on their heads in the process. To Matt's point, they have already, are developing mitigation. One of the things you have to do as a capital defense lawyer

is you have to both walk and chew gum at the same time. You're defending the guilt phase, but you're also robustly developing mitigation. If this is viable, you're starting it with mitigation, meaning were you under the influence of some other person? Is there some kind of mental coercion or something along those lines? If it turns out that somebody makes the game time decision that, hey, this actually could go towards guilt, so be it. But right now, I would be shocked if they weren't investigating this. and you may see this during the preliminary hearing

or at least kind of nibbling around the edges. One thing I think is going to know that the defense is calling is calling Lance Twiggs Luna. Yeah. The defense is doing that. So they're not shying away from that. Viva, quick last word. I have a second left.

Two things. We need to find out who radicalized Tyler Robinson online and whether or not there are other players involved and whether or not, you know, there might have been other elements involved. But when Tyler messages his boyfriend and says, remember when I was etching the bullets, I mean, if I'm in defense, it's like, oh, why are you etching the bullets? And was Lance enticing him to etch these bullets?

And did they have a plan that Lance lured him in? That's what you do is a defense. But bottom line, for a conspiracy, what the hell did Lance Twigs think he was etching death threats into bullets for a week before the assassination? Yeah, that's not something we all sit around with our partners and see every day. It's a good question. One of many that we're going to be explained. over the following week. Thank you all for tuning in. Thank you to my panel for being here.

And we will see you all again tomorrow. Thanks for listening to The Megan Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.