Charlie Kirk shooting
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The Charlie Kirk shooting is the killing of activist Charlie Kirk, whose official investigation John Kiriakou has publicly questioned. He points to a court filing, reported by the Daily Mail, stating the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives was unable to match the bullet recovered at Kirk's autopsy to the rifle allegedly tied to suspect Tyler Robinson. He also questions why the FBI became so heavily involved in the case despite no evident state-line crossing, the shooting, planning, and confession all occurred in Utah, with no state line ever crossed, noting that Kash Patel, asked about it early on, described the bureau's role only as "offering the FBI's expertise" to Utah State Police, even though Kiriakou says nothing in the case as described would make it federal absent a broader conspiracy. Kiriakou speculates the case may involve a wider conspiracy than officially acknowledged, suggesting Robinson may have been "duped or tricked or recruited," and notes that Robinson's lawyers have said nothing publicly, a silence he contrasts with his own whistleblower case, in which his side leaked to the media specifically to combat Justice Department leaks against him.

Kiriakou also calls it suspicious that Benjamin Netanyahu publicly denied any Israeli involvement before anyone had accused Israel, and that Israel is erecting a statue of Kirk in Tel Aviv despite his having recently come out against Israel.

Kiriakou connects the case to Joe Kent, who he says was quietly removed from the investigation because superiors believed he could not conduct adequate research into whether a foreign asset was involved, without Kent accusing any specific country, Kent was reportedly examining clandestinely collected information that did not neatly fit the official narrative that Tyler Robinson shot Kirk.

In the immediate aftermath, Kiriakou said the governor of Utah was the only official who made any sense, despite having the least responsibility for the investigation, while FBI Director Kash Patel announced a suspect was in custody and then released him, twice. He also faulted campus police at Utah Valley University for failing to check the roof of the closed, renovation-shuttered building the shooter used, calling the overall response amateur hour. He said the shooting suspect was ultimately turned in by a family member or family friend.

Kiriakou has also weighed in on the public reaction to the killing. He noted that a Stanford University Center for the Study of Extremism poll found 34% of American college students believe using violence is justified when they disagree with someone's speech, and said some of his own friends were on social media unequivocally endorsing Kirk's killing. He noted that Laura Loomer called for rounding up, arresting, and investigating all leftist organizations in America after the assassination, with Trump echoing similar language the night of the killing, and separately called Loomer's demand to ban the Democratic Party a claim no U.S. court would uphold. He also said conservatives outraged over reactions to Kirk's killing were the same people who had mocked the attack on Paul Pelosi and spread a rumor it was a "lover's quarrel" between secretly gay men.

Kiriakou's position on Israeli involvement

Asked directly whether Israel was behind the killing, Kiriakou answered that he had always said no, but that there are many people he respects, "people far more important than I could ever be", who say there is enough there that it should at least be investigated.

He distinguishes that from the specific claims in circulation, rejecting outright the assertion that the Egyptian Air Force was responsible.

His stated reason for wanting an inquiry is Kirk's independence rather than any particular theory: Kirk "was kind of cutting an independent path, and there are a lot of interests out there that don't want people to take independent paths." On that basis he says an investigation is owed to Kirk's family and, more broadly, to the American people.

The jurisdiction question

The objection Kiriakou says he most wants answered is not ballistic but procedural: "I'd like to know why in the world the FBI is involved in this case."

He lays out the geography to make the point. The alleged shooter left his home in Utah to go to northern Utah, shot Kirk in Utah, drove back to his home in Utah and told his friends in Utah. "There's literally no federal aspect to this to this crime at all. None." On his reading it should be an investigation headed by the Utah State Police and the Utah Attorney General's Office, "So, why in the world is the FBI involved? Unless they know something that we don't know. And if that's the case, they need to come out with it."

He frames his own scepticism carefully. "I've said in interviews that I am the least conspiracy-oriented person that I know. I really am." The qualification he adds is empirical: over the last six, eight, ten years some conspiracy theories "have actually proven to be true", he names the COVID lab leak, where "you were a crazy person if you believed it," and Jeffrey Epstein. What he draws from that is a rule about timing rather than a theory: "we should not make any judgments until all the facts are out." The details he says do not yet sit right include how quickly the weapon was broken down, "it's impossible to break down that gun so quickly", and how the shooter got away.

Why a federal agency is in a state case

Kiriakou has repeatedly said he holds no inside information on the killing and is working from the same public record as everyone else. On that record, "it seems like Tyler Robinson was the person who killed Charlie Kirk", he told friends in advance that he intended to, and afterwards texted his girlfriend to say he had.

His standing objection is jurisdictional. "I said from the very beginning that I just simply did not understand why the FBI was involved in the investigation. The alleged shooter is from Utah. The crime took place in Utah. The shooter began the crime in Utah, driving from the south to the north to carry out the shooting. This is a state crime. It has nothing to do with the FBI." He took the bureau''s public confirmation that it was in a supporting role as the explanation for the silence since: "I think that''s why we''re not getting any more information ... it''s a state case, and the state just has chosen not to release any information."

What he does find odd is the opposite of what most commentators find odd, not that the investigation has gone quiet, but that it is continuing at all. "I can tell you that in my own case, once I was charged with a crime, the FBI just stopped. They just stopped and they moved on to the next person. Why they are continuing to investigate when there doesn''t seem to be any evidence that others were involved is interesting to me."

Why the answer is not believed

Kiriakou declines to treat public disbelief as irrational, and grounds it historically: "in the old days, let''s say around the days of the Kennedy assassination, people believed their government. People wanted to believe that the government was telling the truth. And now in 2025 people don''t believe that the government is telling the truth. They always believe that there''s more to the story, because in fact, over the years, that has proven to be the case. And so I can understand why people are just not accepting this notion that Tyler Robinson was acting alone."

The ballistics, and the rifle in the woods

In October 2025 Kiriakou set out the physical objections in sequence, prefacing them as he usually does, "I am not a conspiracy theorist. I am the least conspiratorial of anybody I know", and adding that conspiracy theories are generally "stories that people come up with to fill gaps that they either investigatively or intellectually can't cover." With that stated, he endorsed the reading of former CIA officer Larry Johnson: "I think Larry Johnson's right. We're not getting the story here."

The weapon was a .30-06 with iron sights rather than a scope. Kiriakou allows that the shot itself was makeable, "it's possible", but not the wound: "with a .30-06 there's no possible way it's going to lodge in the neck. It should have blown the left half of his head off, by going through the neck, coming out the backside and taking out everything that it hit. But it didn't."

The escape carries the same problem twice over: how the shooter reached the roof of a closed, under-renovation student centre undetected, and how he did it while carrying a full-length rifle. Kiriakou notes that the disassembly story he and others had repeated has since collapsed, "we heard a lot after the killing that he took it apart quickly. Now we know that he didn't take it apart. It was found intact in the woods." Which leaves the question of how he got off the roof and away "and had nobody see him carrying a rifle as he was running away."

His jurisdictional objection is unchanged and put more bluntly here: there was no crossing of state lines and "literally nothing to federalize this case. So why in the world did the FBI run to Utah to take over the case?", "it just makes me think that there's some sort of cover up afoot." And the standard he applies to the investigators: "if podcasters like me can poke holes in the state and the FBI's investigation, then they should be ashamed of themselves. Then we know that the official story is not what really happened."

Cui bono

Asked who benefits, Kiriakou answers that factions on both sides do. The right gets a martyr, and he points to what followed within weeks: congressional bills sponsored to strike a commemorative Charlie Kirk coin at the National Mint, and to build a Kirk memorial statue on the campus of every state university in America. "It's insanity."

A silent Kirk benefits the left, on his reading, because Kirk was bringing large numbers of young people into the conservative movement and the Republican party, "and if you're a Democratic party that doesn't really have a program or a policy or strategy, then that's a very dangerous thing."

He closes the passage with a hedge rather than a conclusion: "I want to believe that it's not possible for somebody in my government to be so evil as to assassinate a private citizen, or any citizen, for the purpose of squelching political debate. But we've seen what's happened in the United States over the years. Of course there are people that are willing to do that. I just hope that it's not. I hope we're wrong about this."

See also

- Joe Kent
- John Kiriakou
