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The Charlie Kirk Conspiracists Are INSIDE the House
Plus: The groypers’ latest contribution to the English lexicon.
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Welcome back to False Flag! Get out your magnifying glass, because right-wing media has amateur-detective fever.
First: Country music sensation Alexis Wilkins, perhaps better known as FBI Director Kash Patel’s girlfriend, is bothered that so many Republicans think she’s a Mossad asset. The result: a thirteen-tweet thread arguing that everyone from Candace Owens to Michael Flynn to Tucker Carlson is part of a foreign influence operation, with Wilkins herself as one of their main targets.
Wilkins’s thread is interesting not because she actually found anything but because it suggests the MAGA civil war has descended to a place where everyone is accusing one another of being a foreign intelligence asset. If only Wilkins knew a senior law enforcement official who could investigate her claims.
Meanwhile, the Blaze isn’t giving up its hunt for the January 6th pipe bomber, even after an actual suspect was arrested (and, according to prosecutors, confessed) and the Glenn Beck–founded outlet retracted its prior claim that a Capitol Police officer planted the bombs. The site is out this week with another round of “gait analysis”—drawing grand conclusions based on how the bomber walked in surveillance videos.
This time they have a new theory: Brian J. Cole, the suspect arrested in December, is simply too autistic to match the bomber’s gait.
Speaking of crimes many on the right see as unsolved mysteries despite mountains of evidence, in today’s newsletter we’re talking about the murder of Charlie Kirk. The effort to find Kirk’s “real” killer has won over former Trump administration official Joe Kent, whose musings about the real culprit could end up complicating the prosecution. What a mess.
Plus: The groypers have a new word. Who else is going to keep track of the groypers for you? Sign up for a Bulwark+ membership now!
–Will
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Joe Kent Bolsters Defense for Alleged Kirk Killer
WHEN JOE KENT, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, resigned from the Trump administration last week over the Iran war, it stirred up no shortage of debate among conservatives over how the war was going. But Kent wasn’t done. Since then, he has sparked an additional, more explosive feud over an even hotter issue in the MAGA civil war: the killing of Charlie Kirk.
Kent kicked things off with an interview on Tucker Carlson’s show, saying he was prevented while in the government from completing an investigation into whether there was a “foreign nexus” behind Kirk’s assassination.
But things really got going on Tuesday when Kent told conservative writer (and two-time failed California gubernatorial candidate) Michael Shellenberger he’d be willing to testify in accused Kirk murderer Tyler Robinson’s defense that the FBI botched the investigation. Kent told Shellenberger he was warned his own inquiry into Kirk’s murder—which he operated from his government post, separately from the FBI—could hurt the prosecution against Robinson.¹
“I was definitely warned of that over and over again,” said Kent. “If I end up having to [be called as a witness], then I’ll do it. It’s not something I’m seeking.”
When Shellenberger asked Kent if he was fine with the prospect of aiding Robinson’s case, Kent told him “so be it.”
The idea that a major Trump administration official would not only publicly push alternative explanations for Kirk’s assassination but undermine Robinson’s prosecution has stunned Turning Point USA officials, who have already been besieged by conspiracy theories about Kirk’s death pushed by Candace Owens and her acolytes.
Minutes after Shellenberger published his interview with Kent on Tuesday, the next episode of Kirk’s former show came out. The TPUSA staffers who now host the show, Blake Neff and Andrew Kolvet, were visibly angry at the prospect of Kent helping Robinson.
“They care more about their conspiracy theories than about the person who murdered my friend facing justice,” Neff said. “I am fed up with it.”
Kolvet said Kent’s offer crossed a “giant red line,” warning that even if Robinson isn’t acquitted outright, it could taint the jury pool or prompt prosecutors to drop the death penalty.
“The level of betrayal that I currently feel is dramatic and extreme,” he said.
KENT IS NOW A PUBLIC PLAYER in the Kirk debate. But for months as a government employee, he quietly looked into Kirk’s assassination on his own—so much so that the New York Times reported in October that Kent’s parallel case had alarmed FBI Director Kash Patel.
Kent’s recent theorizing about the case has raised questions about how Owens got her hands on group-chat messages Kirk sent just a few days before his death. Speculation that Kent was her source is now rampant. Those text messages, which Owens published last October, featured Kirk complaining to friends that Jewish donors were pressing him to support Israel in various ways, including banning Tucker Carlson from a TPUSA conference. They provided Owens with evidence for her earliest allegations that Kirk was killed by Israel.
According to Kolvet, he gave those text messages to Kent soon after the assassina