Candace Owens responds to a lawsuit filed by Charlie Kirk's security chief Brian Harpole
Solo episode of the Candace podcast in which Candace Owens breaks down a lawsuit filed against her by Brian Harpole, head of Charlie Kirk's security team.
Summary
Candace Owens opens episode 331 by announcing that Brian Harpole, a member of Charlie Kirk's security team, has filed a 69-page lawsuit against her — sent without any prior retraction demand, which she describes as an unusual and suspicious legal strategy. She walks through the lawsuit's specific claims, arguing that several misrepresent or fabricate what she actually said, and that Harpole's attempt to classify himself as a private citizen rather than a public figure will be difficult to sustain given his appearance on one of the world's top podcasts, the Sean Ryan Show. A significant portion of the lawsuit analysis covers Harpole's failure to respond to four text messages Owens sent him before she hosted Mitch Snow, and his stated justification in the lawsuit — that he did not want to give Owens exclusive content — which she finds implausible. She also details her argument that Harpole misled viewers on the Sean Ryan Show by presenting a text chain with UVU police chief Long as his own, when the lawsuit itself later confirms those messages were Dan Flood's. She also reveals that Mikey McCoy — a Turning Point USA insider — privately directed her to investigate Andrew Kolvet, a disclosure she frames as her reason for suspecting a cover-up within TPUSA. The episode also addresses a US House resolution naming her alongside Hassan for antisemitism, which she argues is part of a broader coordinated effort to pass speech laws using antisemitism as a pretext. Throughout, she connects these simultaneous attacks — the lawsuit, the congressional resolution, Erika Kirk's public mischaracterization of her statements — as a coordinated campaign timed to her birthday.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Opening: Multiple simultaneous attacks on Owens's birthday
Candace Owens: Man oh man, so much to unpack today. First and foremost, I woke up this morning highly upset. I had a bit of a yesterday news hangover. I realized that I'm actually so not okay with what Erika Kirk did. She essentially put a target on my back by wrongly asserting that I accused her of murdering her husband. I don't think we can let that fly. Her punishment is going to be more truth. I always say she is sentenced to more truth, and I have been keeping a little secret and it's time for me to reveal it. Also, I am getting the sense that there is something happening — something big happening. It feels like people are upping the crazy a little bit. Something is coming undone in the background. And on that note, the big news of the day is: guess who crawled from under his rock and sent me a full-blown lawsuit? Yes — Brian Harpole. Ladies and gentlemen, I believe that would grant me, your girl, the power of subpoena. Let's get started.
Brian Harpole's lawsuit: background and unusual strategy
So let me back up. I was standing in Charlotte airport about to board my flight to Italy last week when I received an email. Me and my lawyers received an email. It was randomly sent to us — something like a retraction demand, but it wasn't actually a retraction demand, because Brian Harpole's lawyer asserted at the top right away that they were already going to file the lawsuit no matter what in four days. This was kind of just a nice heads-up: these are our claims that we will be making.
What? How curious. You never communicated with me. You never spoke. You never issued any sort of retraction demand. You never answered me when I reached out. This is not at all how it normally goes. I'm pretty accustomed to how lawsuits work. In fact, I can tell you it's never gone like this for me. You send a message saying, "Hey, that's what you said is not right — retract it, or else I am going to sue you." Brian Harpole did no such thing.
So before I tell you why I believe he is doing this — and again, this is my opinion, because this is a very curious strategy — I'm going to first take you through some of the highlights of the demand, which was poorly organized but really just kind of summarizes the actual lawsuit, which he has now filed. In other words, I want you to understand he had the lawsuit prepared first before he sent me this notification-type demand.
I also want to mention, because it feels important, that Brian Harpole is using the same lawyer the Daily Wire used to sue me in arbitration for two years straight. I'm not going to name the firm, even though the lawyer is publicly tweeting and also has a YouTube channel, so it's not hard to find. But I will just say that's another coincidence. I'm very tired of this guy altogether, mostly because he speaks like he's consumed helium. Anyway, let's get into Brian Harpole's stated grievances.
Claim one: the ambulance criticism
First up, he wants to sue me for maligning him when I stated that not having an ambulance on standby is inappropriate and wrong. I am not kidding. This is what was written. It reads: "In your podcast episode titled 'Why Is Everyone Crashing Out Over the Charlie Kirk Investigation?' you maligned Kirk's security team, including Mr. Harpole, by stating, quote, 'In real life, when you spend millions of dollars on security, on your security detail, they don't have you sitting like a duck and forget to have an ambulance behind you.' This statement not only incorrectly calls into question the competence of Mr. Harpole and his team, but it defames Mr. Harpole by falsely accusing him and his team of criminal negligence by failing to render aid to Kirk after he was shot."
Okay. Competence is a matter of opinion, Brian. I don't believe you can sue people for thinking that you're stupid or that you're ugly or that you're fat. I don't believe I can sue Trump for thinking Breijit is the most beautiful woman in the world. I don't think I can sue Trump for making the repeated claim that he views me as someone who is low IQ. So I don't know that competence is really a claim.
Also, I would argue that it is almost a matter of fact that a security team paid many millions of dollars annually should have had an ambulance on standby at an event — especially when it was a part of their normal repertoire to do so. Is everybody forgetting? I used to work at Turning Point USA. I'm fairly certain that at almost each and every one of my many events with Turning Point USA, during a time period when Brian Harpole was always a member of the security team, we had an ambulance on standby. So that actually felt exceptional to me. It is my opinion that not having one on standby — especially when the person you are providing executive protection to texts you the night before and says, "I think I'm going to be killed" — demonstrates professional incompetence. Sorry, Brian.
I most certainly did not accuse you of criminal negligence. That term did not come from this podcast. In fact, I hadn't even thought of that term until you put it all over a lawsuit. So we should just look that up and see what the definition is. I did. It says: "Definition of criminal negligence is a reckless disregard for human life or a gross deviation from the standard of care that a reasonable person would observe, resulting in serious harm or death. Unlike civil negligence, it is a crime prosecuted by the state, often leading to imprisonment, involuntary manslaughter charges, or major felonies." Thank you for introducing us to that legal term, Brian.
Claim two: the assassination foreknowledge allegation Owens never made
Now, I would argue that the next point actually demonstrates incompetence, because Brian wants to sue me for something that I literally never said about him. Mind you, this was actually the very first point of the letter. It was dizzying.
It reads: "In your podcast episode titled 'Charlie's Angels Are Demons,' you implied that Charlie Kirk's security team, including Mr. Harpole, had insider knowledge about Kirk's assassination. Specifically, you questioned how the security team knew that Charlie Kirk was dead before official confirmation. The false and defamatory nature of the statement is obvious, as it implies that Mr. Harpole and his security team not only had foreknowledge of the assassination, but were also complicit in it."
Want to know the truth? In that particular episode, we never mentioned Brian Harpole or referred to him even once. The episode, as it implies, is about specifically Charlie's chief of staff and Terrell Farnsworth, the head of the AV team. The specific quotation to which he's referring is about Terrell Farnsworth, because it was Terrell Farnsworth who notoriously announced in a selfie video that Charlie Kirk was dead — like two minutes after Charlie went down — when no one could have possibly known Charlie was dead.
My full quotation, which for some reason is not included, was: "What were Charlie's closest friends and allies and the people that were going to carry on the torch at Turning Point USA doing? Oh, they were picking up phone calls like Mikey McCoy. They were already filming themselves prematurely announcing Charlie is dead when not a single person could have known that Charlie Kirk was dead." That is a factual quotation referring to the immediate actions taken by Mikey McCoy and Terrell Farnsworth. Thank you, Brian. I hope that clears that matter up.
Claim three: the medical bag description and the drone contradiction
What else do you have? It looks like this next one is a bit of a double punch. He wants to sue me for describing his outfit, foremost — you'll see — and then he wants to sue me for having ears and a general sense of comprehension. I'm able to comprehend the words that are coming out of people's mouths. I took notice, as many people did, that there were conflicting statements made by Turning Point USA on that day. Now, there may be a valid excuse for those discrepancies in messaging. However, you cannot punish the public for noticing them.
This claim reads: "In your podcast episode entitled 'The Great Exodus from Utah,' you again falsely claimed that Mr. Harpole failed to render aid to Kirk after he was shot, but this time you incorrectly claimed that Harpole failed to render effective aid to Kirk with his supposed-to-be medical bag. Later in the episode, you falsely accused Mr. Harpole of lying about drone availability, asking, 'Is that how these assassinations happen?' Together, these statements defame Mr. Harpole by accusing him of being a direct cause of Kirk's assassination. Mr. Harpole did not play a role in Kirk's assassination and did everything he could to render aid and assist Kirk after he was shot."
To address that obscure medical bag claim: the full quotation from my episode is just a mere description of Brian Harpole and his medical bag. I said, exactly: "Brian is the one who then runs over to Charlie. And again, you recognize him because he kind of has that small supposed-to-be medical bag over him." I'm completely confused as to how that description is in any way defamatory. I just wanted to alert viewers to the fact that he was not just wearing a man purse and it was supposed to be a medical bag. That's it.
Now, regarding the drones — Brian Harpole's statement flew in direct contradiction to the statement given by Frank Turek. That's confusing for the public. Take a listen.
Frank Turek: "I spent thousands of dollars on drones last year and got the guy's license. But if the area lies in the Provo, Utah airspace, I can't fly it. That's a 107B. We can't break the rules, right? And then you had secondary restrictions probably due to heavy foot traffic for the school. But I can't go in and break the rules. Anyway, on our way in, we had drone footage of the crowd building and Charlie had it on his phone. And I said, 'Charlie, I don't like this place. There are too many buildings.' Charlie just kind of brushed it off because look, we have a security team and he wasn't going to cancel an event. So we're driving in — Megan and his team has drones up looking at the crowd from above, and they text him some video, and there's thousands of people there an hour before the start. And I said, 'Charlie, I don't like this place. There's too many buildings.'"
Candace Owens: There very much could be a clear reason as to why these statements are conflicting. But you can't be mad at the public for noticing that the statements are conflicting. Also, did anybody actually fact-check Brian Harpole's earlier point? Because I did. He says, "Well, I can't break the rules. You can't fly drones in Provo airspace." I actually spoke to someone regarding that who has good knowledge of the rules regarding Provo airspace. And he said, "Yeah, you can't fly in Provo airspace meaning around airports — you would have to get clearance, can't fly near hangars — but you can fly drones in Provo." So his whole excuse for why he didn't even bring drones, we should probably take a second glance at. Again, this is according to a pilot I know who is in charge of drone training. A lot doesn't seem to be adding up there. You can clarify that, but you can't pretend that someone tried to defame you — unless you're going to go after Frank Turek.
The lawsuit itself: 69 pages, Israel preamble, and the private-citizen argument
Anyway, let's pivot to the lawsuit, because it is remarkable. The lawsuit itself is 69 pages. And for some unknown reason, he begins the lawsuit — I'm talking like the first few pages — with strong support for Israel. I guess that's mandatory. Candace is antisemitic. Just — even though Brian Harpole's not Jewish, I am not Jewish, Charlie was not Jewish — he mentions this just kind of sporadically in a paragraph where he's painting this picture that I'm a conspiracy theorist. They also mention, on point 19, that I don't believe the moon landing. Guilty as charged. Guilty as charged. I think the moon landing was fake. I'm not sure what this has to do with anything. If I'm required to believe the moon landing is real — but he just kind of mentions that, and then you've got to have that random strong support for Israel right at the top. Which is why also embedded is the mandatory picture of Bibi Netanyahu — got to let these people know where you stand on Israel before you even get into the substance of a lawsuit. So I appreciate that preamble. That's just called our standard constitutional preamble. He's with Israel. Okay, cool. I'm going to do that when I respond. I'll say, I just want you to know I love Israel. Just saying that.
Now I want to draw your attention to the obscure argument that he is making. Pages and pages of him just kind of painting a picture of who I am, but he comes out and makes this obscure argument that he is a private citizen. That's point 29. He's trying to assert that he is a private citizen. Let's take a look at this: "Despite two podcast appearances, Harpole remains a private individual and not a limited purpose public figure. He has social media accounts that he does not use for posting content. He has no public platforms to effectively rebut or counteract statements, and his involvement in the controversy is limited to two defensive appearances. He did not seek publicity or attempt to influence public debate."
Huh. I'm sorry. First and foremost, why is he doing that? That's very important. That's because he doesn't want to have to meet the actual malice standard. If you're a public figure, you have to meet the actual malice standard — meaning you have to prove that I knowingly published something that was false and that I acted in total disregard to the truth. I knew what the truth was and I said, "I don't care, I'm going to publish this." It's a hard standard to meet. In my view, for Brian to assert that he's not a public figure here would be hard, because Brian did actually go and pursue not just any podcast — one of the top podcasts in the world, the Sean Ryan podcast — and he opened himself up.
What is the law on the books when you do that? The rule is that private citizens can indeed become limited purpose public figures when they voluntarily thrust themselves into the forefront of a particular public controversy to influence its outcome. In such cases, they are considered public figures only for the context of that specific issue and for a limited time. That's exactly what Brian Harpole did. He went on — and he's going to argue, "Well, I did it defensively." You went on a public platform and you gave information about what the security did, all these questions that were being asked. And then — this is wild — he is saying that the reason he went on Sean Ryan was because of me. Let's look at point 28: "On November 17th, after Owens and other conspiracy theorists had already implicated Harpole and his team in the assassination, Harpole appeared on the Sean Ryan Show solely to respond to and to rebut the defamatory statements."
I'm sorry, what? That's going to be a tricky one to prove in court, considering I never once mentioned Brian Harpole on my show until after he went on Sean Ryan. Literally, not once did I mention Brian Harpole's name on my podcast. I mentioned his name two days after he went on Sean Ryan, and it was in direct response to his disastrous appearance on Sean Ryan. His appearance was on November 17th. The first time I mentioned him on this show was on November 19th. In other words, you elected yourself as a spokesperson for the security team, thereby making yourself a public figure, and I responded to it.
Owens's prior defense of Harpole and the text messages he ignored
Here's where it gets even crazier. Him pretending that I was a part of the early conspiracies against him — I did not believe the early conspiracies against Brian Harpole. Not only that, I went through great lengths to defend both Brian Harpole and Dan Flood without mentioning their names, because I didn't want the public to find them when all the early conspiracies started flying. Specifically, the conspiracies were about hand signals. Frank Turek's doing hand signals. It looks like Dan Flood's doing hand signals. It looks like Brian Harpole is doing hand signals behind his back and they're all looped in. I didn't believe it. I genuinely didn't believe it. I didn't believe any of these people had anything to do with anything because I knew Turning Point. And so I spoke to Andrew Kolvet on the phone about how I did not believe any of that. Andrew asked me if I would be willing to say something publicly on my podcast to that effect because they were getting hammered. And I said, "Of course I will. These are good guys."
Here is the text message that I sent to Andrew Kolvet following that discussion on the phone. I said: "Also, yes, I will say something about the security. I know them well, which is why I never bought into people saying that he was making signals." And guess what I did, guys? On that very same day in September, on this podcast, I defended the security team and Dan Flood and said that they were good people. Here are my words: "I know there's a lot of conspiracy theories floating around about the security guard and people thinking he was making gestures. I know that security person. He's a good guy. It would shock me. I usually get a vibe about somebody. Not that guy. Not the guy that they say — he tends to roll up his sleeves. I don't buy that one."
Wow. You're saying you went on Sean Ryan because of things that I was saying — and that's what I was saying? Again, it was because of his behavior and what he said on Sean Ryan's show, which I found to be unconvincing, which is what he's suing me for saying — that that interview was unconvincing — which made me feel weird and take a second look. This has been a very natural process for me. I did not come into this guns blazing against Turning Point USA.
This really feels to me like one big PR move. It feels like he's kind of trying to pull the Blake Lively. He wants to make the claim that he's not a public figure, and that's specifically because a large chunk of his claims are pertaining to Mitch Snow, who he is also suing, by the way. And what is not helpful to his claims to sue me and Mitch Snow is the fact that I reached out to Brian Harpole personally before I featured Mitch Snow on this podcast.
The story goes that on November 8th, I first mentioned that there was someone who thought that they saw Brian Harpole at Fort Wuka — I examined the person's documents, found him to be credible, as in I believed he was where he said he was when he said he was. It was a solo episode on December 9th, and if you recall, it caused mass panic. So I was intending to interview Mitch Snow, and then craziness started. Erika Kirk did her "stop, just stop" tour. She's out there saying, "Stop, stop." Privately, I was effectively being threatened behind the scenes not to speak to Mitch Snow. They knew I wanted to interview him. Someone reached out to me — this was coming through Paramount Tactical and the Valhalla guy — and they were saying, "If you do this, if you interview Mitch — Mitch wasn't even in the military, he's a complete fraud, he's never been to Fort Wuka — and if you actually interview Mitch, Brian Harpole is going to sue you." That's what came down the pipeline to me. So before I even got to do the interview, Brian Harpole was telling people to say that if I interview this guy, he's going to sue me. And I thought that was completely deranged. I said, "Well, this is crazy. Brian Harpole has my number. Why is he sending out these random YouTubers? He knows who I am. I've defended him."
So I reached out to him before we hosted Mitch Snow, to get his fuller story and to say, "Hey, you're welcome to tell me that you just weren't there. Like, what's up? We don't have to — I don't want to host this guy. Why are you being all weird?" I asked him if he wanted to clarify anything. I sent Brian Harpole I think a total of four messages. And I also sent Dan Flood a message — from the day before I interviewed Mitch Snow through to January — trying to get him to just say yes or no. And he actually, remarkably, embeds these many messages to him in the lawsuit, at points 54 to 55.
"Hi, Brian. This is Candace Owens. A lot of people are telling me that you're planting seeds regarding a lawsuit. I wanted to see if you wanted to have an off-record discussion with me about anything, or if you'd like to simply clarify something that you think I got wrong." You can see I followed up on December 19th: "Hi Brian. Just again reaching out in case you want to clarify your whereabouts on the morning of September 9th. I'm only interested in the truth. So I would be happy to debunk Mitch if he perhaps is misremembering the faces that he saw." No response.
And then another: "Hey, Brian, reaching out again to see if you'd be willing to speak about the morning of the night. I'm obviously not trying to do anything other than debunk Mitch so I can pivot and refocus the investigation, but I oddly cannot get you to confirm or deny if you were there." He's acknowledging he received these messages and he chose not to respond. Why?
Harpole's stated reason for not responding — and why Owens finds it implausible
Well, lucky for us, he's going to explain it in the lawsuit. And this is the wildest point of all. It's actually insane. It's an insane reason, in my view, to assert as the reason you did not respond to my three messages to you and one message to Dan Flood. This is his point number 59. Ready?
"Owens soon texted Harpole a third time, asking again if he would like to speak about the events that transpired on the morning of September 9th. Owens concluded her text message by stating that she found it odd that she could not get Harpole to confirm or deny his location on the morning of September 9th. Owens already knew why Harpole didn't respond. Her repeated texts to Harpole to get him to respond to the defamatory conspiracy theories that she had been promoting present a cynical attempt to profit from a situation that she had manufactured. By spreading defamatory lies about Harpole and then cajoling him to give her the exclusive content of a response, she stood to profit from increased attention and viewership to her platform at Harpole's expense."
So he didn't reply with a yes or no because he didn't want to give me an exclusive yes or no, because then I would have made money on my platform. I didn't ask you for an exclusive. It would have put an end to me covering the story. So actually, by not responding before I hosted Mitch, it didn't stop me from hosting Mitch. You also could have told Sean Ryan — you could have said, "Hey, Sean Ryan, I'm going to come on your platform because I don't want Candace to make any money saying yes or no. I don't want to give her this exclusive content." We're supposed to believe that's the reason — that you were so stressed out you said, "I'm just going to say nothing to her." This is in December. And then in April you say, "I'm just filing a lawsuit." That doesn't ring true. That does not ring very true.
The text chain deception: Dan Flood's messages presented as Harpole's own
Now, another interesting point of the lawsuit is he repeatedly claims that he's upset that I described him as having lied. Well, you certainly lied by severe omission by not letting the viewers know that the text messages you were presenting on Sean Ryan were not between you and the UVU police chief. When people were going, "Why didn't you secure the rooftops?" you presented this text chain as if it was yours. In fact, you explicitly say "I" — the implication being that this is the reason you did not secure the rooftops. This text message is the reason. Take a listen to what he said.
Brian Harpole: "Before this correspondence went to Chief Long — 'Hello, Chief Long. We received this message today from the student group. There is a student roof access pretty close to where CK will be set up at the Utah Valley. The Sorenson Center has a couple of staircases that go up to walkways on the roofs.' He comes back — and the Sorenson Center was the building in front of the Lucy Center — and he says, 'You want access to the roof?' And I pinned back and said, 'I was told students have access above us. If this is true, it would be nice to either have it controlled access or allow one of my guys to be there as well if possible.' He comes back and his last correspondence was, 'I got you covered.' What else am I to do when a command-level person from an accredited police department says, 'I've got this area'? What else am I to do?"
Candace Owens: He is heavily implying that he did what he had to do — I texted him, he said he had it covered, what else am I supposed to do? And then we revealed on this show that those aren't even his messages. Those are Dan Flood's messages. And he admits that finally in this lawsuit — that those are Dan Flood's messages. That was not an honest presentation to say "what else am I supposed to do" if you were not even on that text chain. So yeah, I view that to be a lie by severe omission. I think the average person, a jury pool, will say, "Yeah, no, that sounds like you were involved in this text chain and your excuse for why you did not secure the rooftops was because of this text chain. You never said Dan got these messages. Here's what Dan said back."
And what is so shocking about this is that throughout this lawsuit, the lawyer explicitly lies in this filing by claiming that I asserted over and over again that Mitch Snow was telling the truth about Harpole, when in fact I went through great many pains to repeatedly assert publicly that I could not confirm that he saw Harpole. Here is just one of many examples on my podcast — this is actually when I interviewed Mitch Snow — where I said I can't confirm who you saw. Take a listen.
"And I want to be clear — I can confirm on this podcast, live, every step of your story in terms of where you went, what time you were there, that there was this big meeting that happened. I've confirmed a location with other people that are on Fort Wuka currently. I can confirm everything with metadata. I obviously can't confirm that you saw who you say you saw."
I said it repeatedly. And even in this filing, in his own legal filing, Brian's lawyer accuses me of confirming Mitch's claim while in the very next paragraph presenting proof that I didn't confirm Mitch's claim. This is point 63. This lawsuit is a dizzying read. He says: "On December 23rd, Owens posted to X: 'Fort Wuka confirmed.' The body of the post claimed that she had proof that Snow was telling the truth about Harpole and contained a screenshot of what Owens claims to be the incident report from Snow's visit to Fort Wuka."
Did he read my post? My post says: "Find your favorite podcaster who joined the psychological operation to convince you that Mitch was lying about having been at Fort Wuka. Remember, Mitch said he was at first taken outside by Captain Nef and questioned for a long time." I then recap what happened. I said: "I always believed Mitch's story of what happened on that morning because he supplied overwhelming evidence with metadata and timestamps. Now we have the incident report. What we cannot confirm as of yet is his memory of who he is convinced he saw coming out of that early morning meeting. We cannot confirm Matt Sorrow. We cannot confirm." What is this? What are we to make of this filing?
The lawsuit as PR strategy — and the power of subpoena
What do you think is the purpose of this filing? I'll give you my thoughts — my questions, rather. I can't know what is going on behind the scenes. The timing of this is strange. The strategy here — to never actually ask me to retract, to never present any evidence to the contrary. Hey, Candace, here's my receipt. I was getting a Starbucks at 9:00 a.m. I was therefore not at Fort Wuka when you said the meeting was happening. Could any of that — never did this.
I can tell you via my experience with defamation that there are a lot of lawsuits filed because people don't understand that what you put in a lawsuit filing is not always true — as I just demonstrated to you. You can write whatever you want, and people tend to take everything that's filed as a fact. Case in point: someone said I was a dual citizen of the UK. Suddenly people start saying I'm a dual citizen of the UK. That's not a fact. You can just put stuff in a lawsuit.
I have seen over and over again examples of people filing lawsuits as PR strategies. I lived that with the Kim Klacik lawsuit. She said she was a former stripper — blah blah blah — she said she was not. So she files this lawsuit and then says, "This is proof that it's not true, because I'm filing a lawsuit." And people then go, "Oh, well, it must be true — she's filing a lawsuit." And then what ended up happening was she took it to discovery and then she folded. She wanted to sign an agreement and say, "Let's walk away and not talk about it." When we started presenting the evidence of the strippers that worked with her and knew her, it was like, "Okay, actually, this was just meant to be a PR thing so I could keep claiming that this wasn't true." I've seen that happen before.
Is this that? Is this someone going, "I just want to be able to get people to think that by filing this lawsuit, I'm telling the truth — that I wasn't at Fort Wuka"? Why else would I file a lawsuit? Does that mean everybody can just let the Fort Wuka story go because I said it? Like I said, this lawsuit says things that she didn't say. I asserted that Candace was a part of the early conspiracies when actually the exact opposite thing is true. I'm just going to put stuff in here and then hand it to journalists — which is what they do. And journalists are going to publish this and say, "Ah, proof. Proof that he wasn't at Fort Wuka, because why else would he file a lawsuit?" But maybe there's an expectation that it's never going to make it through the court system, that you're never actually going to have to present any proof of anything, because a judge is going to look at this and go, "No, she asked you multiple times. I'm going to throw this away." Is that the expectation? Again, I'm asking questions here. This feels weird to me.
The strategy here feels weird to me. You're dealing with a lawyer that has full access to my lawyers in the state of Tennessee, has been in communication with them for two years. He never raises a single issue until the end of April, and then says, "Doesn't matter — we're filing a lawsuit." Is this a PR move? And if it is, how do we respond to it?
Well, I obviously just received a lawsuit a couple of hours ago and I am not therefore at liberty to assert what we will or will not do, because I have to speak with my husband and I haven't had the time to formally plead my case with him, so to speak. But what I will say is: how many opportunities are we going to have — or are we ever going to have another opportunity — to force depositions? Are we ever going to have an opportunity to have the power of subpoena?
He is making claims that he rendered first aid. This would give us the opportunity to say, "Oh, Terrell Farnsworth actually has footage that the public has never seen from every angle. We can now take a look. We want to see this footage and subpoena this footage so that we can see what happened on the ground." If you are asserting that you did provide critical aid, will we ever have an opportunity to do this ever again? Can we look at this situation where you're saying, "Oh, this conspiracy, all these people are involved" — you're bringing up Terrell Farnsworth, Mikey McCoy, you're bringing up these episodes where we discussed Erika — can we now sit these people for a deposition? Can we now demand these text messages?
He's saying there's no conspiracy here. Can we now say, "Okay, well, we'd like to discover that. We'd like to actually look at all of the evidence and be able to come up with an argument"? We're going to need access to everybody's text messages. If you are asserting that I have defamed you and you are a part of the Turning Point USA brand, you're mentioning Erika Kirk — is this the only plausible path that we will have before us to get Erika Kirk for a deposition, to answer basic questions that we've been asking for actually a very long time? If that's the claim you are making regarding there being no conspiracy, is the power of subpoena actually going to be our only way?
I'd like to hear your guys' positions on this. I have never been doing this for fun. Charlie Kirk is dead. We have been told a lot of lies, a lot of inconsistent stories from the people around him. They are — I would say, especially in this last month — there seems to be a sort of ramped-up effort to attack people who have been asking for the truth in a reasonable fashion, over and over again extending messages to Brian: "Hey, come on the show if you'd like to." I actually didn't even ask him to come on the show. I said, "You could just tell me what the truth is and I'll report on that." And they don't want to do that. You don't jump and skip and then file a lawsuit. That's not normal. That is abnormal. People who genuinely want to not have the wrong information out there ask you to retract the statements that you are making. Something's not right here.
I get a sense that this feels like: well, we tried to answer about Fort Wuka. Defamation's hard — that's what Kim Klacik said. Defamation's hard. So that's why the lawsuit failed. But as you can see, I'm telling the truth because I filed the lawsuit. I think we have to think on this. I have to talk to my husband. I do think this really may be the only opportunity that anybody who deeply cares about this case and genuinely wants truth will have to be able to subpoena that information. The power of subpoena is — well, it's a power. It is a tool. And I've only ever been interested in getting to the truth of what happened to Charlie Kirk on September 10th.
Erika Kirk's false claim and Baron Coleman's response
All right, I had said at the top that I sort of slept on this — first off, do you get the sense that it was all plotted and planned for my birthday? Is this a weird thing? So much was happening in the universe. It feels like everyone was like, "That's our date — April 29th. Go for her. Go for her."
I also want to let you guys know a little loophole: my priest does not watch this show. He is in London. So I might be able to get away with not chilling today a little bit. And I'm not chilling, actually, because it was unacceptable yesterday. I'm going to show you more of what happened. But of course, the big news was Erika Kirk just coming out there and saying something that was so obviously untrue. Baron Coleman recapped this perfectly on his show last night. Take a listen.
Baron Coleman: "So we have a series of questions. If Erika wants to remain at the helm, I think she has to be able to answer some questions. Number one: why did you claim Candace said that Erika killed Charlie? She's never said it that I've seen. Oh, but didn't you see the text message where she said — yeah, I saw a text message where she was joking around with a friend and she even put a laughy face on it. I saw that. But no one assumed that's what you were talking about, Erika. Not a single person assumed that's what you were talking about. It sounded very clear to me, and I think it did to everyone else, because everybody had the exact same reaction — that what you were trying to say in that moment is that Candace goes on her podcast or goes to speeches and she says, 'I believe Erika did it.' I'll be the first to say I don't think Erika did it. I don't think Erika killed her husband. Nor do I know a single human being that does. I've never talked to anyone who does. Talked to Candace — I've never heard her say that. Talked to a lot of these other podcasters — I've never heard anyone say that. No one who's ever been on this show has ever said that. I've never said that on this show. I don't know a single person who believes Erika killed Charlie. Not one. So what a weird thing to say. Why would you even bother saying that?"
Candace Owens: That's a good question, Baron. Why would she bother saying that? It was just like an attack from every angle yesterday. And thankfully, the internet just instantly rebounded and hit her in the face. The ball just hit her right back in the face — boomeranged, so to speak. Thankfully, everyone clocked her on that.
And then you had Andrew with this ridiculous excuse. Has he yet released the full conversation? The full conversation? The context of that mocking of Ben Shapiro and Bari Weiss? This is when you said this joke of a private conversation about what you were going to say, leaning into what everyone was claiming — if you ask a single question, this is obviously you thinking Erika killed her husband. Now, let me also state unequivocally that I do not believe that Erika Kirk murdered her husband. I've never made that claim in public. Sincerely, I have never made that claim.
What I have said, and what I stand by today, is that her documented lies appeared to me to be rising to a level of conspiracy and that she should be questioned. Her lack of interest in exploring possible other options — instantly forgiving him, was there foreign influence? She doesn't care. Not only that, but her team is attacking Joe Kent for asking that question. Her lying about Dr. Lee Troder's words — that is significant. You are never going to remove that from the story. Colluding with Andrew Kolvet on an absurd "man of steel" statement and then flatly denying to my face that she did that. Throwing Andrew Kolvet and Dr. Lee Troder under the bus. That's not normal. You're never going to make that normal.
Donors literally telling me that she is lying about the audio clip that she presented at AmFest — the one that they now assert they are never going to show us the video component of — regarding Charlie Kirk saying, "Erika Kirk, I appoint my wife Erika to become the CEO." A donor saying that actually never went down. He never said that. It is plainly unacceptable that we have not yet received a response. They have not yet released the video to answer the claims being made by the donors that were in attendance. Release the video that you claim to have of Charlie naming you CEO. Don't be shy now. People won't believe it? You took us into the casket. You had no concerns about what people believed or didn't believe. Now all of a sudden everyone's shy about a Charlie Kirk video. You're afraid people are going to think it's AI. Does that make sense to anybody? No, it doesn't. Of course it doesn't make any sense. That's why they're angry.
The Mikey McCoy revelation about Andrew Kolvet
Now, on that note — Andrew then shifting feet immediately and pretending that that little private correspondence where we mocked Bari Weiss's insinuations somehow accounted to me making a statement. No, no, no, no. Doesn't fly with me. Release the entire chat. You have my full permission. And it must be met with the sentencing. You guys agree? I must sentence him to more truth. I must sentence Andrew and Erika to more truth. That is always the sentencing in this court.
What would be the appropriate level of truth to sentence you to? I've got it. Since what you are attempting to falsely insinuate is that I went into that conversation with Erika on December 15th already convinced of her guilt — which is patently untrue — I am now going to prove to audiences just how untrue that insinuation is. With a private revelation that I made to Erika Kirk. Information that I gave her that I would not have given to her had I immediately suspected her of guilt. I would have given her no information regarding this. And it was a private revelation made about you, Andrew Kolvet. I don't know if they told you this. This is a really bad way to find out. But since you tried to surprise me yesterday — bam, surprise, surprise, as they say.
You see, what I told Erika Kirk was that part of the reason why I suspected Turning Point USA, and why I thought she should be looking into other people, is because someone at Turning Point USA got a message out to me. And that message was that I need to look further into Andrew Kolvet. Wow. Turning Point USA people telling me to look further into Andrew Kolvet. Was it Aubrey, as he tries to insinuate? No. It was Mikey McCoy. Mikey McCoy got a message out to me via a third-party person that I should look more into Andrew Kolvet. Why would he do that, Andrew? Why would Mikey McCoy say that I should look more into — I did look, and things got very shady, and that's when I started going, "Who the hell is Andrew Kolvet?" He's obviously not a very good PR agent — everybody can see that. He's a bit of a blubbering idiot. Who is Andrew Kolvet? What are his ties? What are his family ties here? And the more I looked, I did start to see more things.
So as you pretend like we're all just conspiracy theorists and nobody had any good information — as you, a bunch of employees — like I said, you still cannot produce the information that you are claiming that Aubrey gave to me that I shared on this platform. You were my number one source, Andrew, in the beginning. You just forgot the things that you told me. And that's when I started realizing things were weird. And then I got Mikey McCoy telling me to look more into you after watching this show. I would say that I had a damn good reason to suspect Turning Point USA was complicit in a cover-up of what happened. Anyway, good luck, Andrew. I hope you're having a good day. Have fun. Drop more messages. Explain that one to the press cycle. I think that's going to catch a couple of headlines. Why would he say that?
The US House resolution naming Owens for antisemitism
Switching gears, because it does appear that they are really just throwing everything at me — particularly yesterday. I didn't even know which way to look. Happy birthday to me. Good thing I'm built for it. I'm just built differently.
Erika didn't just name me and put a target on my back and lie about what I said. She wasn't the only one. We also had congressmen in the House presenting a bipartisan resolution name-checking me. This is the headline in the Times of Israel, literally April 29th. I couldn't believe this. The US House is considering a resolution condemning Hassan — I've never spoken to that person in my entire life — and Candace Owens for, you got it guys, antisemitism. Who's bringing this forward? We've got Reps. Mike Lawler and Josh Gottheimer, and it's a bipartisan bill to denounce antisemitic hate-filled rhetoric.
The resolution begins by condemning antisemitic hate-filled rhetoric and content that is disseminated by prominent online personalities, blah blah blah. It tells us that whereas the rise of digital media platforms has enabled individuals with large audiences to disseminate disinformation, commentary, and political viewpoints to millions of viewers worldwide, such influence carries a heightened responsibility to avoid rhetoric that promotes hatred, violence, or discrimination against any group, including Jewish individuals and communities.
All on the same day, everyone is just suddenly signaling that speech is violence. Speech is now violence. They name-check me and say: "Whereas Candace Owens has employed rhetoric that has included conspiracy theories accusing Israel of controlling the United States government" — by the way, ironically, both of the people who brought this forward take more than a million dollars from AIPAC — "promoting false claims that Jews are taught by ancient religious texts to hate non-Jews, and casting doubt on the truth of Holocaust survivors." I mean, this goes on and on. Of course, I can't defend myself. They can just put whatever they want. It's a resolution.
"She made the antisemitic claim that the United States is controlled by satanic pedophiles who work for Israel." That's not an antisemitic claim. Okay — satanic pedophiles working for Israel. We're talking about Epstein and everyone who has defended the Epstein class. That is not explicitly Jewish. In fact, I have been name-checking Christian Zionist pastor after Christian Zionist pastor. So do not put this on — "this means you're talking about all Jews." When Donald Trump said, "What are we still talking about Jeffrey Epstein?" — that is when he lost me entirely. To my knowledge, President Trump is not Jewish. That pedophilia is satanic, that a satanic pedophile like Jeffrey Epstein — these are abundantly true. This is not a conspiracy. The fact that you are passing a resolution about me and not the people that protect Jeffrey Epstein says more about you.
Then it goes on and says that I repeated false claims that Jews are killing Christian children. Where did I say this? Where did I say that Jews are killing Christian children? Where did I say that? Nope. Doesn't matter. You can just say whatever you want. It's Congress. This is like filing a lawsuit. You can just put things in there. I don't have to respond to it. This is going to be a part of the record, a part of US history record, as they bring this forth. And I have no opportunity to defend myself or to respond to any of these points.
Beyond that, they then bring up — never, never, ever forget that in July 2024, I did not mention Joseph Mengele. And then they erupted. I guess "I never forgot" was appropriate to say there. Even the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum, which has a podcast, asserted that there were lies told about Joseph Mengele. Not me asserting that — they did an official Holocaust memorial podcast where they discussed where some of the lies and exaggerations came from. Is it a threat to Jewish people to acknowledge that some people lie? That some people misunderstand? I'm going to play it for you. This is the official Holocaust memorial podcast discussing Joseph Mengele. Is the Auschwitz memorial podcast antisemitic? I don't know. But take a listen.
Holocaust Memorial Podcast: "I want to note that many myths arose around Mengele in the camp, such as the alleged sewing together of twins, which did not happen — simply because Mengele saw himself as a scientist, a theoretician, a man conducting research. Sewing twins together, as Vera Alexander mentioned, wouldn't make sense from a medical point of view, because Mengele had sufficient medical knowledge and the medical understanding of the time allowed him to know that it would lead nowhere. So where did this legend come from? It likely originated from the fact that Mengele performed transfusions on twins without prior crossing tests. This meant if the donor's blood didn't match the recipient's, it led to death. To perform a transfusion, people had to be connected — not sewn together, but connected with needles and tubes so that the blood could flow. Therefore, this legend about Mengele as someone who sewed children together probably came from this."
The push for speech laws — and why Owens opposes them
Candace Owens: I want to be clear why this is important to you guys, and specifically I want to speak to Jewish Americans, because it is just so reminiscent to me of how they wanted to pass hate speech laws in the fog of George Floyd, using race and black people to try to do this. This is the threat to all of us. Jewish Americans, pay attention, because they are using you to push through tyranny. You are now the person they are using to push through tyranny. I think that you are too stupid — I think that there's an underlying assumption that you're too weak to deal with people who don't like you. Who cares if people don't like me because I'm black? I don't actually care. If that is your underlying thought process — that every time you see a black person you're like, "I hate that n-word" — how is that going to impact my day? Why do we care so much about what other people think about us? Is that not a little ridiculous?
There's just this underlying weakness that allows people who are actually tyrannical, people who are actually doing despicable things, people who actually support the Epstein files and want to protect that network of human traffickers — they pretend they're the good guys. They find people who are weak, who can't take being called names. You can do it. Black people, you can do it. Jews, you can do it. Spanish people, you can do it. Asian people, you can do it. You can handle being called a name as long as you get to remain free. That's more important. They are trying to flip that on its head so they can usher in tyranny. They want what's already happening in Europe — police showing up on your door asking you if you sent a tweet. Did you criticize Candace Owens today? She's black. Did you know she's black? It's racist.
Hey, call me the n-word every second of every day. Go on X. I don't care. Doesn't impact my day. I don't know who these people are on the internet. I don't feel threatened by that. You have a right to think racist thoughts. And I happen to genuinely not be a racist. But if people were racist, I understand the importance of making sure that we don't pass speech laws. And that is what is coming next, because they have been signaling it for a week straight, full fire.
Karoline Leavitt, Melania Trump, and the speech-as-violence framing
Not just Erika Kirk — also Karoline Leavitt came out and is now trying to equate speech to violence. Take a listen.
Karoline Leavitt: "This political violence stems from a systemic demonization of him and his supporters by commentators, yes, by elected members of the Democrat party, and even some in the media. The deranged lies and smears against the president, his family, his supporters have led crazy people to believe crazy things. Everyone who has a voice and a platform across this country — whether you're on television, a podcast host — people listen, and when you have mentally disturbed individuals across the country who are listening to this crazed rhetoric about the president day after day after day, it inspires them to do crazy things."
Candace Owens: Laura Loomer is his top adviser. Like, it's so crazy that they really come out here and say this unflinchingly after the things that come out of Trump's Truth Social posts. Who is smearing and calling people names and dehumanizing people — posting photos of me when I'm sick — more than Donald Trump? Does that now mean that if an act of violence happens, every threat that happens, I get to now say that this is Trump's fault?
And again, like I said, it's being echoed everywhere. Melania Trump tweeted about Jimmy Kimmel's joke that happened before the shooting, saying it was hateful and violent rhetoric intended to divide our country. Meanwhile, Karoline Leavitt is talking left versus right — is that not divisive? Melania said: "His monologue about my family is not comedy. His words are corrosive and deepen the political sickness within America. People like Kimmel shouldn't have the opportunity to enter our homes each evening to spread hate."
This is laying the ground, ladies and gentlemen, for speech laws. "They shouldn't have the opportunity." She's pretending it's about Jimmy Kimmel. You start with Jimmy Kimmel. If we don't defend Jimmy Kimmel — which makes me physically sick, I don't want to defend Jimmy Kimmel — but I know how it goes. You start outward, you pretend it's legitimate. Then they come inward. Then they come inward. Then they come inward. And then it's like grandma tweeted that this person was ugly and suddenly you've got people knocking on your door.
We can't have that. You know who was very opposed to that? Charlie Kirk was. I tweeted this and I'm glad to see that it's trending. Here is his tweet about alleged hate speech, hateful rhetoric. He wrote on May 2nd, 2024: "Hate speech does not exist legally in America. There's ugly speech. There's gross speech. There's evil speech. And all of it is protected by the First Amendment. Keep America free." That was his voice. I echo that sentiment. Charlie laughed at people when they made jokes about him. He notoriously laughed when South Park dedicated an entire episode referring to him as the master debater. He cared deeply about allowing people to critique him, allowing people to come and debate him, and winning those debates. And if he lost those debates, which I think never happened, he knew that meant he didn't have the stronger argument. So yeah, I agree. Keep America free.
Why independent media is being targeted — and the bigger picture
So why are they doing this? Why do they want to come for our speech? Because they view us — independent media, people that have kept the Epstein story alive, people that said, "We're not accepting this fed-slop narrative regarding Charlie Kirk" — he's trending every day on Twitter. We are almost eight months into this thing and Charlie Kirk is still trending on Twitter. And they wanted this to go away. At the moment that Erika said, "I forgive him" — referring to Tyler Robinson — they wanted us to forgive him and move on.
To them, we are the storied barbarians at the gate. How do we control this? We have built ourselves a mini empire. We control the media apparatus. We control the schools. And now we've got people pulling their kids out of school, talking about homeschooling, understanding how we lie for the first time. Not looking left or right, but looking up and down, realizing how despicable these people are. That yes, of course, we are morally above them. Not falling for their tricks about racism, sexism, antisemitism. Locking arms and realizing we actually don't hate each other. What we hate is this corruption, and it exists on the left, on the right, all across the western hemisphere. There is nothing but corruption, and America might be the last stand for freedom in the west. If they get what they want and they begin passing speech laws, it's over. I mean that. So wake up, understand what's happening, reject it, write to your congressman — the rare ones that perhaps are not bought and paid for. And if you have an opportunity to subpoena people for truth, maybe take it. Maybe take it.
Viewer comments and closing reflections
How many more lawsuits can these people possibly throw at me? A surprise lawsuit — it's just never been done. I mean, never been done in my life, I should say.
Anyway, let's get to the top comment from last episode. Wednesday Coffee writes: "The fact that they gave you the most vile person of the year, but not Epstein says it all and then some." Oh, are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein? Yeah, we are. We kind of are. I'm sorry, Mr. President. Yeah, maybe he should have won that. I do have to say that I think being a pedophile ranks higher for being vile, but I don't know. What do I know? I'm just out here trying to use rich white men, as you said.
Brock Jordan writes: "Imagine believing a lady on the internet is the most vile person and not the people dropping bombs on schools." Yeah, that was pretty vile, Trump, when you guys just randomly dropped a bomb on 150 school girls in Iran and then lied to us about it. Ranks up there. That's what I would say. I don't know. What do I know? Nothing. That's why we have to squash the independent media. They're so stupid and low IQ, but for some reason they're effective at making people see us through the correct lens. I would say people are seeing things for the first time. The scales are falling off of all of our eyes.
Michael Jester writes: "Lawyer here. Your attorneys and clients suing her over opinions and free speech should beware of a malicious prosecution suit once a defense verdict is rendered. You deserve it and we should make examples to deter this BS." Yeah. I even think part of the coordination was — this was like Laura Loomer hiding money in a trust. She said I was hiding money in a trust. Completely untrue. Hiding money from Breijit. Here is what's happening — they were trying to basically get out this narrative that I was duping my podcast followers, and they kept bringing up lawsuits strangely. So I'm feeling like a lot of this may have been choreographed, because this lawyer — the one who speaks like he's just ingested some helium — definitively was retweeting Laura Loomer. So that feels weird. That feels like everyone was kind of in a weird way anticipating this lawsuit and knew that it may have been coming. And Trump was signaling, "You should sue people," to Erika. Anyways.
Two Cent writes: "Why is everyone suing and not helping with the investigation? All of them had direct access with Charlie Kirk. Instead of helping, they are suing. Who and what information are they protecting? Go Max." Yeah. Well, thinking clearly through what "going max" means — maybe that's how we do it. We can just start actually selling that Go Max gear, a hat or whatever it is now. And yeah, I know what my husband's gonna say: "This is very expensive. These lawsuits to get to that phase — hundreds of thousands of dollars, no questions asked." But truth matters. And I have found that when you don't overthink, when people really want money, money, money, they tend to lose a lot of it. And when you are focused on truth and doing the right thing — like, no, genocide is always wrong — it actually opens the door, and you get rewarded in the end. I think that's kind of been my lesson of my last few years. This show has been tremendously successful and I did the right thing, the harder thing, but the right thing. And I feel like I am again being faced with that right now, that decision. I have to speak to my husband because everything has to be done together. So we'll see what we come up with and I will keep you guys in the loop. I think you can see where my heart is on this, though.
Keeping the Faith with Father Joseph writes: "The truth is like a lion. You don't have to defend it. Just let it out and it will defend itself." That is very true. We are seeing that, and the truth has been very powerful, and that's what they're angry about — they don't know how to deal with the truth being out there.
Jen Common writes: "UVU just requires you to fill out a form which is titled 'Request for Authorization to Operate a Drone' with the Office of Risk Management. So did Brian fill out this form and UVU denied it? If so, he can show us the form and the denial." Yeah, like I said, he could have just disputed the stuff. I'm not trying to get the exclusive Brian Harpole. You're out here like, "Candace needs the clicks to talk about Brian Harpole." What are you talking about? Why would you say these things? It's not true. We want to be accurate. It does not benefit me to be on a platform telling lies. You will lose. Your audience will no longer trust you when you do that. It will be the girl who cried wolf. I want to be accurate. I'm open to being wrong. This is an open investigation. So you're sometimes going to come up against the wrong information, but I have thus far not been given an alibi for the morning of September 9th, despite you asserting that in a lawsuit. Again, she had his flights — the flights were for 2:19, 1:19, 1:39 in the afternoon from Dallas. Mitch says the meeting concluded at 7:30 a.m. There were flights that left Fort Wuka and got back into Dallas by 10:00 a.m. So no, you have not. But I'm open. Give me the alibi. Give it to me. Give me the text message, the Starbucks receipt at the airport or wherever you were. Or I guess not at the airport, because that was an afternoon flight. The coffee receipt from that morning — like I texted you. I aimed to be accurate and I was sympathetic to you, and I was wrong about you is what I will say. I was deeply wrong about you. My instincts were wrong. And I probably shouldn't have immediately defended you in the beginning, only for you to throw it in my face and pretend that I didn't.
Goops writes: "Happy birthday, Candace. You inspire me so much. Stay strong in God's strength. There is a purpose in everything. Just rest in his providence." I feel like there is some providence to me having received my confirmation and hearing that message — that homily about how what it means is you then really have to toughen up. You become a soldier for truth, a soldier for Jesus. And that happens. And I come back and it is like full-blown attacks coming from every direction. But I was fashioned for this. I really do believe that. I believe that everything that's happened to me happened for a reason, because I feel battle-ready, battle-hardened from 2023 and 2024, the things that happened. They pulled the carpet under my feet. They smeared me, tried to stop me from being able to travel to Australia. And so to go through all of that, it just makes you go, "Okay, I can deal with this. I know how to fight this. We have the right players in place and I have the support of the people." And that matters too — to know that people have my back in the way that you guys do here in the comments.
Breeze writes: "Fight for Charlie. Thank you for keeping the story as alive as you have." Thank you guys for caring about the story. I've got to think that he is watching, actually, and helping in any way that he can.