Editors Note: The views and opinions expressed below are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the MMAPressRoom.com or its affiliates.

“I want to talk about discernment, okay? Being able to separate truth from lies, reality from unreality. A 22-year old man named Tyler Robinson has been arrested and charged for the murder of your husband. And yet there are a huge number of conspiracy theories, you might call them brain rot that are spreading right now online about the actual story behind the reality,” explains CBS News’ editor-in-chief Bari Weiss in their December 14, 2025 YouTube video titled, “Extended: A Town Hall with Erika Kirk.” According to the report, “One, people say that Tyler Robinson was actually a MAGA republican. Or two, some people say you’re actually a Mossad agent sitting in front of me and you were Charlie’s handler and Israel killed Charlie. Other people say that a number of men in the crowd were wearing maroon t-shirts and this signifies that his killing was an elite airborne operation, whatever that means.”

Information worth sitting on which in retrospect seems to suggest CBS knew more than they were initially letting on, these conspiracy theories as proposed by a mainstream media outlet fit perfectly within the unanswered questions checklist surrounding the Charlie Kirk assassination. Likely forever existing within the bounds of speculation, as we are about to discover once viewed through the lens of their proper context the open source information that is available helps to explain exactly what happened to Charlie Kirk without going too far down the rabbit hole surrounding the governments ridiculous Tyler Robinson transsexual furry narrative.

“On September 30, 2011, a hunting party of US drones found its quarry while flying over the desert in Yemen. They fired Hellfire missiles at the vehicle carrying Anwar al-Awlaki, a New Mexico-born, firebrand cleric, whom the Barack Obama administration accused of being an operational leader of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. The killing of al-Awlaki was the result of a multiyear operation involving the CIA, Joint Special Operations Command, and allied foreign intelligence services,” explains a September 27, 2021 West Point article by Christopher M. Faulkner and Jeff Rogg titled, “Ten Years After the Al-Awlaki Killing: A Reckoning for the United States’ Drone Wars Awaits.” According to the report, “In the years following al-Awlaki’s killing, a chorus of legal scholars and journalists discussed and debated the circumstances surrounding the strike. The case was unprecedented in many respects. The president of the United States had personally overseen a secret executive branch process leveraging the massive capabilities of the US intelligence community and military to extrajudicially kill an American citizen.”

Echoing the conspiracy theories proposed by CBS News’ Bari Weiss surrounding the involvement of an elite airborne operation in the Charlie Kirk assassination, the precedent set by the Obama administration in the extrajudicial killing an American citizen by virtue of a joint task force consisting of the CIA, Joint Special Operations Command and allied foreign intelligence services does the FBI investigation no favors when attempting to explore the alternative theories as originally cited by CBS during their Town Hall interview with Erika Kirk.

“In April 2010, U.S. officials announced that Anwar Al-Aulaqi, a Muslim cleric and dual U.S.-Yemeni citizen, was added with the approval of the White House to a list of suspected terrorists that the CIA is authorized to kill,” explains a January 1, 2011 University of Pennsylvania article by John C. Dehn and Kevin Jon Heller titled, “Targeted Killing: The Case of Anwar Al-Aulaqi.” According to the report, “West Point Professor John C. Dehn argues that while the addition of Al-Aulaqi to the CIA’s kill list may be controversial, it is not presumptively unlawful or unconstitutional and thus Bates’s disposition was correct. Dehn goes on to contend that Judge Bates’s discussion of the political question doctrine was unnecessary given his standing decision and vague in its application. Dehn posits that Supreme Court precedent clearly allows for judicial review of executive war measures, and suggests that a ‘probable cause’ standard for targeted killing is the most prudent and workable one available.”

Sources which immediately came to mind when initially attempting to decipher the fog of war associated with the Charlie Kirk assassination, with Kirk having reportedly talked the president out of additional U.S. involvement in the Israeli 12-Day War with Iran in 2025 it is interesting to speculate on what role Turning Point USA may have played in the national narrative today had Kirk not been assassinated as the U.S. has now moved to take direct military action against the Iranian regime in early 2026. With the Supreme Court’s precedent on the judicial review of executive war measures cited by a West Point professor as ‘probable cause standard for targeted killing,’ more questions than answers arise in the Charlie Kirk assassination probe.

“You did say some things on Tucker that obviously caught my attention around Charlie Kirk,” explains conservative talk show host Megyn Kelly in her March 20, 2026 YouTube video titled, “Why Joe Kent Believes There’s MUCH More To Investigate Related To The Charlie Kirk Assassination.” According to the report, “You suggested that there are viable leads that might suggest government involvement somehow around his assassination. You’re not saying that there was proof, but that there were leads that you would have liked to have pursued that were left dangling and that you were shutdown from pursuing. And I wonder if you could expand on that?”

“Yeah, absolutely,” explains the former director of the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) Joe Kent. “I mean, look. I’m not saying that there was like smoking gun evidence of a government involvement. NCTC’s role was to look to see if there was any foreign involvement. Now that could be government or that could be foreigners themselves. And all I can really truly say is that there were additional leads that we needed to run down and fully investigate. And that just simply was not done. Basically from the time Tyler Robinson turned himself in and was arrested and his fingerprints were found on the rifle, they basically, they being the FBI said, ‘Hey, this is now going over to the Utah law enforcement and we are not investigating anything further.’ And there was a lot of back and forth about that because there were still, and again; not just in my opinion,” explains Kent. “In the opinion of the National Counterterrorism Center there were other leads for us to run down. And I even spoke with members of the FBI or kind of at the ground level and they agreed with me – and we wanted to continue to investigate. And so all I can say with authority right now is that there were additional leads for us to run down.

“And I think it’s very, very simple. Like right now we’re hearing that, hey, it’s a slam dunk case. And I don’t doubt that it might be a slam dunk case against Robinson, that’s going to play out in a court of law. However, we do know that there were people who were posting about Charlie Kirk being killed before Charlie Kirk was killed. So we do know that there are other people here who had some prior knowledge, I find it hard to believe that multiple people predicted Charlie’s death at UVU that day. I mean, if it was just one or two maybe that’s a coincidence? Maybe they’re someone who always posts something similar to that? But that to me is just one of the biggest gaps that remains. And maybe the FBI is out looking at that right now? It’s been several months now and we just don’t see it happening,” explains Kent. “I know that the scope that we had on foreign involvement, we did not get an opportunity to run down all of those potential leads. And I think Charlie Kirk deserves justice and I think people deserve the truth about what happened on that day. And I’m not alluding and saying, ‘I know what the truth is.’ I’m not trying to be cryptic, what I’m saying is that there were things that we still needed to investigate that were not investigated.”

“Would that have been your job, Joe? To consider that piece or Kash Patel’s?” asks Kelly later during the interview. “A combination,” explains Kent. “If there is foreign involvement that’s where the National Counterterrorism Center comes in because we have more robust and broad authorities to investigate the foreign angle, the FBI has the more broad and robust authorities to investigate the domestic angle.”

“So who has the ability to shut you down from that?” asks Kelly with the million-dollar follow-up question. “So, really the way it happened was initially it was just the FBI was like, ‘Hey, you guys can’t look into the case file.’ And the case file is kind of where all the data is. ‘And you’re done. You guys can’t work here anymore. You guys can’t work on this case anymore.’ We argued that we should still be involved in that case and we won the argument. We kind of got put back on the case but then after awhile the government has a great way of making things just die in the process. And so essentially all of our requests; our ability to investigate were cut off. Our requests to investigate were kind of taken away and sort of died in the process. I’m sure someone at some point in the government will come out and say, ‘No, no. We’re still looking into all leads in the Charlie Kirk case.’ But this is how you kill things in the government; you just let them die in this never ending coordination process. Or requests that go unanswered,” explains Kent. “That’s kind of where we’re at, the DOJ and the FBI were instrumental in saying, ‘Hey, we’re done investigating Charlie Kirk.’ And they’ll tell you, ‘Hey, everything is with Utah now because there is this ongoing trial against Tyler Robinson.’”

Reviewing what we’ve learned thus far, the existence of a CIA kill list which includes American citizens is all but confirmed as the precedent to extrajudicially murder Americans was set long ago with Anwar al-Awlaki‘s assassination at the hands of a joint task force consisting of the CIA, U.S. military and foreign intelligence assets by direct order of the president of the United States. The justification of which is explained away by Supreme Court precedent surrounding the judicial review of executive war time powers as probable cause standard for targeted killings. This information becomes increasingly more problematic as we discover the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, Joe Kent, was prevented from investigating the Charlie Kirk assassination further by the FBI and Department of Justice.

“And, you know, he’s being investigated and he’s sitting with Tucker Carlson who is also being investigated and it’s because they are against the war in Iran,” explains conservative talk show host Kim Iversen in her March 20, 2026 YouTube video titled, “Joe Kent Tried To Investigate Charlie Kirk’s Death, Kash Shut Him Down.” According to the report, “And Charlie Kirk, the other person who was very much having the president’s ear is dead and cannot say anything more about the war in Iran right now – conveniently killed in September. And what we now know about this war that we’re in is that it wasn’t actually a surprise. They had been planning it for quite some time, we have reports now of the CIA arming the Kurds on the border of Iran for months and months. So this is something they had been planning for a long time, ramping up, getting ready to do,” explains Iversen. “The 12-Day War might have just been the, you know, ‘Let’s just kind of do a test run, do a little test run and see what we can figure out.’ And they knew that they would end up with some people who were going to be be very, very against this war, Charlie Kirk being one of them and now he cannot be against the war because he is not alive.

“And Tucker Carlson, they got rid of from Fox News and now they’re trying to silence him with smears and accusations of being a Putin agent and then a Qatar, you know paid by Qatar. And now he’s paid by Iran, I mean they can’t seem to get their stories straight. And now they’re going after Joe Kent, this Green Beret, 11-time combat, 11 tours of combat. This is according to the New York Times; they say here, ‘The head of the National Counterterrorism Center examined the FBI files in the last several weeks to investigate whether the man charged with assassinating Charlie Kirk had support from someone else, a foreign power or another entity, according to multiple people with knowledge of the matter. The inquiry by Joe Kent, the director of the counterterrorism center, alarmed Kash Patel, the director of the FBI. Mr. Patel and other senior officials believed Mr. Kent was overstepping, treading on FBI responsibilities and potentially interfering with the investigation and prosecution of the suspect, Tyler Robinson. But supporters of Mr. Kent say he was doing his job, running down leads and making sure no foreign or domestic groups were linked to Mr. Kirk’s death,’” explains Iversen. “Yeah, it’s called doing an investigation.”

One of the original golden children of the Bush administrations Axis of Evil, discovering that plans to go to war in Iran have long been in the works makes the assassination of Charlie Kirk all the more significant once we consider his role in both preventing further U.S. involvement in the Israeli 12-day War with Iran in 2025 and Turning Point USA’s burgeoning influence in the political sphere and its potential role in souring the American public on a full scale invasion of Iran they knew would not be popular from the start. The Supreme Court precedent on the judicial review of executive war time powers as probable cause standard in the targeted killing of American citizens mind blowing in scope once the Trump FBI and DOJ’s efforts to shut down the National Counterterrorism Centers investigation into the Charlie Kirk assassination is viewed through the lens of its proper context. Which is why, “I want to talk about discernment, okay? Being able to separate truth from lies, reality from unreality. A 22-year old man named Tyler Robinson has been arrested and charged for the murder of your husband. And yet there are a huge number of conspiracy theories, you might call them brain rot that are spreading right now online about the actual story behind the reality.”