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

24:56Dave Aronberg: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 deflate things like this. Maybe Michigan, Brandon Walker, but this on a global scale. The crying, the Euro tears, the sheer whippery of Europe regarding this decision. Everything from Belgium is loering up. Belgium shouldn't play. UEFA, this is illegal. You can't do this. And it all stems from one thing and one thing only. And people say, oh, you don't like Trump and this and that. No, no, no, no. They don't like that we're getting good at soccer, boys.

25:42The Europe is petrified because if we'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.

26:01Dave Aronberg: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 the Europeans, but they are a bunch of whiners. 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 laughingstock 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. is playing. And it's football there, right? They laugh at our American football. Football, everywhere else except North America, is soccer.

26:38Again, with Donald Trump, and I wrote this down, I mean, he said, the red card equaling a 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 it's a first.

27:05Dave Aronberg:See, I like, 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. Um, so our guy received a straight red car from referee Raphael 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. Right. Now, here's the post on Klaus and his previous controversies.

27:39Dave Aronberg: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 Botafogo, 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 faced 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.

28:22Guilty. 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 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.

29:01Why 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. 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, you'll never get asked back. But you have to be really good to get to that point.

29:34It absolutely should be the same way. It goes back to the corruption with FIFA that has been rampant for years. Why they allowed him in, 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.

29:54Dave Aronberg: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 well we didn't any team we didn't we didn't i'm pretty sure team usa um didn't say hey get the white house on the line maybe he can help us out like no trump 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? 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.

30:34You can be mad at our commander in chief and maybe mad at FIFA 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 done differently by the Americans. If it were reversed, I would be upset.

31:03Dave Aronberg:I think Argentina's one of the ones favored to possibly win. Yep, again. Spain, right, is another one. 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. But they might. 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. They said that game also had an asterisk because did that last goal go in before the buzzer or not?

31:40Dave Aronberg:So none of this is fair, right? But we don't care. We don't care. 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. advantage and he was wrongfully punished. I'm praying that Belgium 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 where I'm 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 it's use or misuse.

32:17The only thing that's missing that Megan, the only thing that's missing is an F bomb from you. Like I've been waiting. Come on.

32:24Dave Aronberg:I I'm doing better at stage. I'm trying. No, I'm not really. I mean, I'm mildly trying to cut back mildly. Wait, I want to give you one more day. Portnoy. 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 uh 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 for and this is united a nation i'll also say and i know t bob you're not trump guy and i don't know people's politics if you are against this and you're a United States citizen, deported.

33:08I 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 don't like Trump placed a phone call and you think this is wrong, deported. I want you on the first bus, plane, train. See ya. Go live somewhere else. This is about winning soccer.

33:29you know what i think there's a few people that i'd like on the list ahead of those of us maybe 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 um yeah i it's it's hysterical portney like that's why dave portney is a genius too he just comes on and he and he tells it like it is you know the last thing i'll say is that 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.

34:03And this controversy wouldn't even be a thing.

34:05Dave Aronberg:Oh, I mean, it's in the Wall Street Journal today, all the backstory about how Harold Lutnik and Rudy Giuliani's 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 that. 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 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.

34:34I just made clear that was a the rent stays like before.

34:42Dave Aronberg: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 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 turned 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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38:07Dave Aronberg: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.

38:58Raise your hand if it matters a lot to you. Raise your hand. So every hand of 7 ,000 people.

39:04Dave Aronberg: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.

39:51And he specifically said to me at that event behind the scenes, like, you have to do it.

39:58Dave Aronberg: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, 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.

40:44Dave Aronberg: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.

41:33And I was a witness to Charlie saying to Tucker

41:36Dave Aronberg: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.

41:54Dave Aronberg:And it was taped that we just happened to capture my team. as we were 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 like something out of a horror film, only it was real.

42:41Dave Aronberg:You know, we saw our friend's 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 Megan Basham, we had Allie Beth Stuckey, we had Heather McDonald and we talked about crime and how this was getting buried, this 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.

43:24Dave Aronberg: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? Cause 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.

44:11Dave Aronberg: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 want to hear it from us.

44:59Dave Aronberg: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 and 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.

46:01Dave Aronberg:And I screamed out in the studio when 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 Glenn Beck Rich Lowry Mark Halpern came on among others and we got through it together and then indeed we had the confirmation in 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.

46:49Dave Aronberg: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 you know 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.

47:33Dave Aronberg:Obviously, questions about whether somebody else had something to do with it. 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, worked to cover it up. And that's a very, very wide web. We saw texts from the trans TIFA community, this 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.

48:22Dave Aronberg: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 its 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.

49:21Dave Aronberg:If you don't like Megyn Kelly, does it make you anti-Catholic bullshit? What is that?

49:31Dave Aronberg: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.

50:12Dave Aronberg: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 where we begin today. Do we have time to run this setup package, Steve? I've been talking for longer. We did a setup 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 he murdered Charlie Cook.

50:57Could you state your name? Tyler James Robinson.

51:00Dave Aronberg: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 Twiggs. and a letter prosecutors say Robinson left behind for Twiggs. We first got our hands on it back in the spring.

51:39Dave Aronberg: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 Z-er. 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.

52:33Dave Aronberg: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 on autopsy and a firearm.

53:10You don't actually even need the bullet, of course, to find someone guilty of having fired the bullet.

53:15Dave Aronberg: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.

53:39Dave Aronberg:I forgive him. If you could say something to him, if you could say something to his parents, like, what would it be? Would it be anger? Would it be sympathy? What would it be? That'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.

54:26Dave Aronberg: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, nonstop 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.

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56:01Dave Aronberg:Sage Steele is still on the soccer case forwarding to me just now the following headline. And Belgium's appeal over for Lauren Bologian 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 Falar and Balogin.

56:54Dave Aronberg: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 must 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.

57:28Dave Aronberg: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 law is what protects the integrity of our competitions and the credibility of FIFA at all times.

58:06Dave Aronberg: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 Kier Starmer, you heard Sage make reference to it, interfered in England's game against Mexico to make sure against somebody in Mexico. Maybe it was Mexico, I don't know.

58:45Dave Aronberg: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 one 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.

59:25Dave Aronberg: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?

1:00:05Yes. What was that? Everybody kind of got up. They all said, a lot of people were screaming, standing 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 that's 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.

1:00:35Dave Aronberg:And 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 Frye. He's former litigator and Rumble creator. And Dave Aronberg and Ashley Merchant. They are two of the hosts of our MK True Crime show on the MK Media Podcast Network, which you can find. Just go to any podcast app and type in MK True Crime. It'll come up. or you can go to mktruecrime.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.

1:01:14Dave Aronberg: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.

1:01:58It 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. Instead, he's going to be on video. Robinson's boyfriend. Correct. Correct. Now, Lance Twigs is named, but the defense, interestingly, the defense refers to him as Luna Twigs because I guess he has transitioned already. So both sides, the prosecution of the judge calls him Lance Twigs and the defense calls him Luna Twigs. So you can see where they're going. They're going to try to discredit Twiggs and try to point the finger at him as much as possible. But as far as the prosecution, they're just going to show the evidence.

1:02:33I 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.

1:02:47Dave Aronberg: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.

1:03:22But this is something the defense wants, not the prosecution.

1:03:26Dave Aronberg: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 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.

1:03:54That's true. They could definitely avoid this and go to a grand jury. My understanding in Utah is that's not the local custom. They typically afford these preliminary hearings, but they definitely don't have to.

1:04:05Dave Aronberg:But as a defense lawyer, I can. What 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 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.

1:04:43And 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 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 for really a bite of the apple. I mean, they can lock in certain testimony, cross examination, things like that. They get their first bite at the apple at these witnesses, and they could try and poke holes in the case.

1:05:14They 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.

1:05:30Dave Aronberg:It doesn't take much to convince a judge, that and it's a judge decision here that there is 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 um 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.

1:06:13They 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 case is, to try to somehow influence people who are talking about the case and show how strong the case is.

1:06:43But 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

1:06:59Dave Aronberg: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 in 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.

1:07:42Dave Aronberg: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. But 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 wasn't actually that was OK 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.

1:08:17Dave Aronberg: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.

1:09:03Dave Aronberg: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 generic, it's generic. I mean, he shouldn't have done it at TMZ. Maybe, you know, in court is one thing and then just don't say anything out of court.

1:09:36But 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 Twiggs, you know, 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.

1:10:11And the hardest and most concrete evidence of that, I'm having a back and forth now with Candace Owens, who 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 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 and 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 dunk like everyone says, how it's going to take five days, I don't know.

1:10:45But 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.

1:10:57Dave Aronberg: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 the 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 gonna 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 of things we expect them to introduce. Drone 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 in 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 box, photo of rifle in box, medical examiner report, doorbell camera surveillance from 9, 10, 2025, written statement of C.

1:12:08Dave Aronberg:Noble of Mike Mitchell, um, recorded statement of Lance Twiggs text messages between Tyler Robinson and Lance Twiggs. There it is. That's an important one. Discord chats, photograph of no. Okay. I could be here all day. Like they're going to be introducing a lot of physical evidence, but, but let's just start with the, the big one, which is recorded video of Lance Twiggs. This is the guy. I thought it was remarkable in the setup package. Jake Whitman, our producer, found these pictures of Lance Twiggs looking like a man. Like, I don't want to say a regular normal man, but like a guy, like your typical guy.

1:12:45Dave Aronberg: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 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.

1:13:35And he did it for love of Lance Twiggs. And Lance Twiggs, by all accounts, 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.

1:14:13Yeah, 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.

1:14:26Dave Aronberg:Yeah, he 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 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.

1:15:06It 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.

1:15:41Dave Aronberg: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.

1:16:10So I thought this was a really interesting 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.

1:16:41So 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.

1:16:59Dave Aronberg: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. I'm we will be able to call him. We will be able to authenticate. We will be getting all these documents in through him.

1:17:40Dave Aronberg: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 purely strategic reason to show the world that they have Lance Twiggs and that he hasn't absconded like was the rumor back in the day, whether or not it's just to quell certain conspiracy theories and to show the evidence just to the folks out there who say 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 and 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.

1:18:53Dave Aronberg: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-court 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.

1:19:33But 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 percent 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.

1:19:53Dave Aronberg: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 Megyn 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 Megyn 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.

1:20:27Dave Aronberg: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 Twiggs, 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?

1:21:24Dave Aronberg: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 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 to 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? Well, I do think they are calling Lance Twiggs for the purpose of making sure you see it all in context and that even though he's not gonna be there in person, that you're gonna see that, yes, he can fill in the gaps.

1:22:09You had the handwritten notes, the note that said, I had the opportunity to take out Charlie. You're gonna read that. And then he had the text message to Twiggs 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?

1:22:41Dave Aronberg:OK, just FYI, this is just breaking. Erica and Charlie's parents left the courtroom when a police officer. this is via Matt Finn of Fox, when 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 soundbite 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're, we're told, going to be protecting themselves from hearing any of that.

1:23:21Dave Aronberg:They don't want to see the video. They don't want to hear the details. Who on earth could blame them? I don't know how you could look at that video. As somebody who really deeply cared about Charlie Kirk and was genuinely a friend of his, he of mine, it's been hard enough. I wish I had never seen it. I really do. I wish I had never laid eyes on that. 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.

1:24:07Dave Aronberg: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 um and one of the things i think that the prosecution needs to establish through through lance twigs is show us some other text exchanges between the two of you because i want to know if this is how you 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.

1:24:53Dave Aronberg:It's very strange though 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. Um, on September 10th, 2022, the roommate not not 2022 it would have been 2025 um 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.

1:25:39Dave Aronberg:The roommate responded, what? With multiple question marks. You're joking, right? Robinson, I am still okay, my love, but I'm stuck in Orem 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 flair, 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. Um, as we go through this, we've got to talk about what people are feeling and how they're reacting.

1:26:19Dave Aronberg: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?

1:26:55Dave Aronberg:Roommate, yeah. Robinson. I had enough of his hatred. Some hate can't be negotiated out.

1:27:05I just had like, this is the piece of this.

1:27:09Dave Aronberg:It always gets me because if the, 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 it. 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.

1:27:55Dave Aronberg:And he said, can you, 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, um, 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.

1:28:28And I can't help but feel some sort of like responsibility in getting Charlie talking about

1:28:35Dave Aronberg: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.

1:29:18Dave Aronberg: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.

1:29:51Dave Aronberg: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 News is what he writes, I might have a stroke, all right? I'm gonna have to leave it. That really fucking sucks that he's not gonna 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?

1:30:41Dave Aronberg:Like, I want a picture of you with it right now because I'm seeing a photo of what I think is grandpa's gun 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 feds 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 gonna 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 reiterating things about Charlie Kirk had the opportunity to take out Charlie Cook and I took it this is beforehand though saying I I could be dead if you're reading this or facing a long prison sentence and then allegedly went on discord and said more.

1:31:35Dave Aronberg: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? Problem 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 still, despite that, refused to take the death penalty off the table. He could have done that.

1:32:13We 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.

1:32:25Dave Aronberg:Yeah, they asked for that. The defense said that the punishment should be that the death penalty gets removed for the prosecutor making those statements to TMZ. And the judge said, no, that 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 OK, 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 exchanges between these two to show that this was the way they spoke to one another?

1:33:11Well, 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.

1:33:22Dave Aronberg:Okay, pictures or it didn't happen, Viva. That box has long been burned. But 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, etc. 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.

1:34:00That 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 this demographic.

1:34:32But 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.

1:34:39Dave Aronberg:You know, that the metadata around those text messages actually 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 those tech advances doomed him. 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.

1:35:28Dave Aronberg: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 phone and doing that. No, definitely. And I think we will get some testimony probably from 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.

1:36:00This is not a whodunit. 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 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.

1:36:34It 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.

1:37:05And 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.

1:37:20Dave Aronberg: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. Um, 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.

1:38:08Dave Aronberg:This is Erica Kirk's fear, um, that you 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.

1:38:42You'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 apply fit in with like they did with the Menendez brothers or the murder at Marjory 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.

1:39:14Dave Aronberg: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 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, or I should say, who's in some weird relationship.

1:39:58Dave Aronberg:Watch. Hello, my love. You have no doubt heard of the shooting, and I must admit, t 'was I. I had hoped to keep this 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, t 'was 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.

1:40:42Also, I shall now misquote my own meme. Ooh-woo, oh-woe. Probably makes no difference.

1:40:50Dave Aronberg:I apologize to involve you and for this text to be so short, but I am on the lam. 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 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 pact type love affair.

1:41:26I could 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 Skylar and 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.

1:42:03Right.

1:42:04Dave Aronberg:Like Lance Twig's 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 listening. 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 in a prone position. I'm going to stop you right there. You ran to the edge. What direction and what edge? Running west and southwest of the Losi building. So ran towards the tent where Charlie Kirk was.

1:42:46So 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. You mentioned that this individual on the video dropped off, off the edge. Did you get that for me? I haven't mentioned that. What happened? What else was described to you? Then, well, at that moment, so I knew that there was possibly a shooter on the run. Your Honor, can we just have a...

1:43:18Dave Aronberg:So, Ashley, what we can hear him setting up. They're going to say 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.

1:43:58The 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.

1:44:16Dave Aronberg:Yeah. Yeah. I mean, everybody's got some some tricky strategy to unleash as they navigate through this. Guys, thank you very much. DeViva is going to stay with us. Dave and Ashley have 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 getting in your wallet. which you know, and now they're messing with your credit card too.

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1:47:03Dave Aronberg: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 Megyn Kelly Channel, and it is where you will hear the truth, unfiltered, with no agenda, and no apologies. Along with the Megyn Kelly Show, you're going to hear from people like Mark Halperin, Link Lauren, Maureen Callahan, Emily Jashinsky, Jesse Kelly, Real Clear Politics, and many more. It's bold, no BS news. Only on the Megyn Kelly Channel, Sirius XM 111, and on the Sirius XM app.

1:47:38Dave Aronberg:Viva stays with us as we monitor day one of the Tyler Robinson preliminary hearing, but we're also going to bring in Mark Garagos 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 podcasts. 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 and loss of a parent ridiculous.

1:48:38Dave Aronberg:In any event, she didn't get that wife off Corey origins, but now she's hoping that she can get Tyler Robinson off. Um, she was cross-examining here on, well, let's just play the first sound by Satzik's. Um, the machines you walk through a TSA and the airport where it checks to see if you're carrying any 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 drones that were flying above campus that day not enough and did anyone ever talk to you about covering anything near or on top of or in the low c building were you ever signed that area before the shooting?

1:49:30No. 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? No. Nobody on the stairway? No. Nobody on the walkway? No. Okay.

1:49:54and in the state of utah is a campus a gun-free zone are students allowed to have guns on campus it's an open terry state so yes

1:50:07Dave Aronberg:interesting uh guys thanks for being here where where's she going with that uh mark garagos there 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 used as kind of a cutout or a proxy. So that would be my guess as to where she's going.

1:50:53She 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 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.

1:51:32Dave Aronberg:That makes a lot of sense, Matt, that that's what she's doing. Like, 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.

1:52:14Dave Aronberg: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, I'm going to take a position here that I'm going to probably contradict myself on numerous times during the penalty 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 prosecutorial misconduct. And they will accuse the defense of what is known as IAC or ineffective assistance of counsel.

1:53:00So 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.

1:53:45And I listened to the last segment. Dave Ehrenberg, my friend, was was exactly right on that. You know, that 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 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 cause hearing. And by the end of today, there's probably going to be enough probable cause to bind him over, which is which is going to happen.

1:54:17Dave Aronberg:Here's something else that was asked moments ago just to set it up, Viva. There was 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 tied to protests and political events.

1:55:03Dave Aronberg:Prosecutors describe 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 bombings in 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 guy's 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.

1:55:46Dave Aronberg:After his detention, he pleaded guilty to two counts of sexual exploitation of a minor. All this is very bad for this guy, George Zen. 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.

1:56:23You fucking bitch! No! I can't! I can't! I can't! Yes!

1:56:33Dave Aronberg:For listening audiences, 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 Nestor 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. Is that right? Yep. But it didn't occur to you that, well, that's not where I heard the shock come from. They must have the wrong person. I should talk to somebody. During the chaos moment, no. They said they had a person in custody.

1:57:10I figured those guys saw something I didn't see. They took the person in custody, and I thought that was him.

1:57:14Dave Aronberg:Okay. OK, 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 for that. What I don't understand is people who think of other theories like the exploding mic theory.

1:57:53And 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.

1:58:02Dave Aronberg:Just hold that thought for one second so I can tell people what you're talking about. There is a theory on the internet that Charlie wasn't shot by this.30-06 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 then, I guess, residual shrapnel injured his neck, but that this was a planned assassination in which the mic exploded and killed him as opposed to this gun. Go ahead. Correct, yes. I presume everybody was familiar with that, but the people who want to say Tyler Robinson couldn't have done it because a.30-06 doesn't behave like that, whatever that means, and that they have to find some other conspiracy theory.

1:58:53What I think the defense is doing right now is just get them to say more that would allow the people out there promoting these ideas to pick holes in 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 contradict the preliminary here. 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 flesh one thing out also. So 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.

1:59:36And 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.

2:00:11I 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.

2:00:36Dave Aronberg:That's very fair because the Discord messages, I read that some of the text messages between Tyler and Lance Twiggs 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.

2:01:10Dave Aronberg: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's shooting Wednesday before the news broke that Robinson was allegedly involved. The group had about 30 people and somebody wrote Charlie Kirk got shot.

2:01:44Dave Aronberg: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, Kash Patel. That's one friend. They said no one responded to Robinson that night.

2:02:23Dave Aronberg:But 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.

2:03:07Dave Aronberg: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 UnitedHealthcare CEO. The UnitedHealthcare 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 Twiggs, which I believe we'll hear Lance Twiggs testify about in his video statement.

2:04:01Dave Aronberg: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.

2:05:01It 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 held 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.

2:05:47And 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, too, because anybody who is sentient would have known that was coming.

2:06:36Dave Aronberg: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 post Butler and the Trump assassination attempt that he he 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.

2:07:20Dave Aronberg: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 six. 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 match and they they don't.

2:07:58Yeah. 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 those things that's been driving me crazy Megan this this whole time the defense filed a brief where they basically suggested to the world that the bullet didn't match okay and they and I've got the quote written down but they they write that that's something the defense can do whatever and the prosecution came out and they got in trouble because they they not only said it was inconclusive but they went on TMZ with Mark's buddy, Harvey Levin, who got him in trouble.

2:08:53And 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, we're not going to dump the death penalty on that. The best way, I think, to think about this bullet, 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 30-06 varmint round, but they must exist.

2:09:27And 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 fingerprint off shattered glass. What nobody's really been talking about is that there's more than one way to ballistically match a firearm.

2:10:03And one of them is with expended shell casings. And he cycled the casing. The casing found at the scene matched the rifle. OK, so there's it's not just the bullet. And that rifle has his DNA on the trigger. So there's plenty of forensic evidence. And Megan, you're exactly right. One of these experts is going to say exactly that. I examined it and that wasn't the bullet and it couldn't have been you couldn't have been fired from that gun. We're going to see something like that either in this phase or in the trial. The defense is going to come right back and they're going to say, of course, his DNA is on that gun.

2:10:41He 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 threw the casings there. If you've got 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.

2:11:27And that is that's a significant, significant doubt. If if you get that, by the way, as you know, if you've got a battle of the experts, what do 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. So, yeah, it's exactly right.

2:11:48Dave Aronberg:I mean, it'd be a lot 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 Twiggs, 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 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 Six for the past 20 plus years prior to his retirement.

2:12:32Dave Aronberg: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. Do we not guard rooftops anymore? There's been assassinations, assassination attempts all over the world. Why aren't we looking at rooftops? And then when I was sent, 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 wound that we saw.

2:13:08We saw an exit wound. So where'd that bullet come from? You don't bleed like and I've shot guys closer than the camera was. And an exit, an entry wound doesn't look like that. An exit wound does.

2:13:18Dave Aronberg: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 watched that video. That's an arterial bleed from a from an entry wound. They recovered the entire bullet on the inside. Just it's heavily fragmented and damaged. So love him. I think he's an American hero. He's dead wrong on that one. And he's never he's never tried or presented this in this type of evidence in front of a jury or slogged through. I'm glad to hear you disagree. That's what that's what we're here for. But what what about, Matt, you've heard, you know, many people believe that a 30 odd six and that that gun and that that level bullet would never have not had an entry, an exit wound.

2:14:03Dave Aronberg: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 bones 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.30-06. And that's the thing. They never released what kind of ammunition it was.

2:14:43But 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 shatter and stay inside. Sometimes it's a little around, spin around, bank all over the place inside a human body. You know, part of our needs to go watch the autopsies on our homicides. And you'd be amazed the things that different bullets will do. And there we go.

2:15:23That's a Mauser, I believe it's a Mauser 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 a simple design and it works. But ammunition, depending on the ammunition, they design certain rounds to break apart, to shoot coyotes. It's literally called vermin 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. was dead instantly or or um very close to it thank god but um but yeah this is the kind of stuff that the conspiracy theories and these are a bunch of people who um who haven't haven't witnessed autopsies haven't seen him bullets pulled out of human bodies before and uh the only person who might have seen more of them than me is probably my friend mark garrett goes right there at the bottom.

2:16:21Dave Aronberg:And do you agree with him, Mark? Yeah, the math, as usual, is spot on. 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 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 and utter 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.

2:17:23I mean, 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.

2:18:15Dave Aronberg:What do you mean doing stuff like what? This is not a primer on a really good investigation, number one. And I 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 30-06 would always leave an exit wound.

2:18:55It's impossible, inconceivable that it wouldn't. And then I say Martin Luther King Jr. And then people are like, well, I don't believe that report either because you're believing FedSelop 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 30-06 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.

2:19:26OK, so a jawbone can stop it, but not a spine or a spine. Well, not the spinal cord, but not the spine bones. And then you say, well, I don't believe the Martin Luther King got shot in the face with the 30-06 either. So therefore, I stand by my it could never have been a 30-06. Anybody saying that, and I'm not a gun expert, I'm not an ammunitions 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.

2:19:59And I think, I don't know if we all know Chris Martinson. He's done great work on COVID. 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 the spine and goes down. It's conceivable. We're talking about, you know, what are the odds?

2:20:31Until 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.

2:20:50Dave Aronberg:That's right. I mean, personally, I like I can't get past the fact that if you're from 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 trans furry 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 that 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 Twig's phone and try to convince us that absolutely it was those two.

2:21:46Dave Aronberg:And then on top of that, there's a note that Tyler allegedly left for Lance underneath the keyboard that also 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, um, this is from the criminal information that basically the the charging document against him.

2:22:29Dave Aronberg: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.

2:23:01Dave Aronberg: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. In one convo before the shooting, Robinson mentioned Charlie Kirk would be holding an event at UVU, which Robinson said was a stupid venue.

2:23:35Dave Aronberg:Robinson accused Kirk of spreading hate. That's the exact term allegedly used by Robinson to the transferrie 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 on 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 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.

2:24:15Dave Aronberg:As a result, the father can 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.

2:24:50Dave Aronberg: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.

2:25:25Dave Aronberg: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.

2:26:06Dave Aronberg: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, Megan.

2:26:52This is overwhelming. I think and I'm interested in Mark's thoughts on this and Viva's too. The 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.

2:27:30Because when a jury goes through the evidence and you've stood up and if you lean too hard into kind of 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, unlike 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.

2:28:22The 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.

2:28:35Dave Aronberg:Mark, how would you see it? If you 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 how 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, adages 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.

2:29:27The first cousin of that is the worst thing that you can. One of the reasons you don't want to call your client is because the jury's focus goes immediately to what did the client say? It doesn't matter what Matt put on. It's what did the 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.

2:30:09The most devastating piece of evidence that you're going to have to deal with in this case is what you and Matt both 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.

2:31:07in 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.

2:31:19Dave Aronberg:Oh, that's so tricky. Go ahead, Viva. No, I was going to say that 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 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.

2:32:01His 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 identifying their son were false. But barring something outrageous during the trial, like it comes up that the feds somehow concocted the text messages to frame a guilty man, 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.

2:32:35And I'm not comfortable sending Tyler to a death penalty or to jail for life.

2:32:40Dave Aronberg:So well said. That is very, very good framing there. The you know, we we haven't addressed all of the messages online from what I'm calling trans Tifa. You know, like there 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.

2:33:24Dave Aronberg:Like that was widespread most people will remember that as i say it so what how do you handle that as a prosecutor well number one i it is it's disturbing and some of that stuff uh that came out right at the very beginning and it is odd and and in the way of a caveat um you know good for lance twigs for cooperating um he doesn't appear to have been a part of any of that so um good for Lance Twiggs. 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 Wozniak 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 frame the guy he'd already murdered so that everybody will be chasing after him.

2:34:20It was absolutely diabolical. But that was really the claim of the defense was that Daniel Wozniak's fiance, 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, you stand up and you go, OK, 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.

2:34:53They 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 theories 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.

2:35:28Dave Aronberg:And and I know you've you've done some coverage on this to your thoughts on it. I'm sorry, 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 posts that said something big is going to happen at Utah. Pay attention. And you go to Grok 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.

2:36:03And the question is, it happened. And now, and 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 way back machine, what we call the Wayback Machine has preserved a way through subpoenas to get the pre-existing talk about something big is going to happen.

2:36:43It 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.

2:37:26Dave Aronberg: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, or this is not Megyn Kelly's opinion. This is, you know, that she, right, that she's going to get up there and say like, they're, they have a reason to, to mislead because they blame themselves and they should, that's what she's going to say.

2:38:07Dave Aronberg:Um, I do want to refresh the audience with the following. This is just a piece of what we know on the, about the online communications around Charlie's death and online friend of Lance twigs, the, the furry boyfriend who goes by Sherbum 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 Twiggs, the transferi lover of Charlie Kirk, 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.

2:38:49Dave Aronberg: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. Emoji giving a wink. Then on Wednesday at 4.52 p.m. after the murder, well, that's that. Another chud bites the dust. An ex-account called Mushy. The ex-handle is TallyHalAlbum. 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.

2:39:41Dave Aronberg: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 Twiggs, Matt, and reevaluate the thinking as maybe Lance Twiggs 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 three 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.

2:40:37Dave Aronberg:I'm not really into it. 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 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 he would be a horrible criminal if it was a horrible co-conspirator on this because remember the note underneath the keyboard came from him.

2:41:18He didn't follow Tyler Robinson's instructions to delete the tax 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 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.

2:41:51I mean, you see that so many times that, I mean, it seems like Lance Twiggs had the opportunity to do it. That would be my response. That's somebody that even given my background that I could defend in a 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. I there were a couple of really vicious murder cases in Orange County that we dealt with out of the furry community. And it's it's it's a whole sideshow of of weirdness. But I think.

2:42:26Dave Aronberg:But but but but the weird thing about I mean, the tricky thing about Lance Twiggs being a furry is normally be the defense attorney who would raise that like you're into the furry community, aren't you, Mr. Twiggs? 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 Twiggs? Because Tyler Robinson was his lover. I mean, just as weird as Lance Twiggs 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.

2:43:08But 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 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 Twiggs 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.

2:44:09I 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 death 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?

2:44:43Dave Aronberg:Infective assistance of counsel. 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 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.

2:45:17in the penalty phase on this. And Mark's right. They 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, they 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?

2:45:58If 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.

2:46:20Dave Aronberg:Yeah, if I can just go on the record real quick. Sorry, Diva. The defense is calling Lance Twiggs Luna. Yeah. The defense is doing that. So they're not shying away from that. Viva, quick last word. 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 the defense, it's like, oh, why are you etching the bullets? And was was Lance enticing him to etch these bullets?

2:46:53And did they have a plan that Lance lured him in? That's what you do as a defense. But bottom line, for a conspiracy, what the hell did Lance Twiggs think he was etching death threats into bullets for a week before the assassination?

2:47:04Dave Aronberg: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 exploring 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 Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda and no fear.

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