cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/43161
Another gaping hole has opened up in the supposedly ‘open and shut’ case against Tyler Robinson, the alleged killer of murdered US far-right activist Charlie Kirk.
Tyler Robinson
Kirk, who had begun to turn against Israel and refused approaches from Israel lobbyists just before his death, was murdered as he answered public questions in Utah. Footage from the FBI claims to show Tyler Robinson escaping shows an unrecognisable figure on a rooftop – with no gun. Robinson was then supposedly arrested in the woods with the gun. Court filings at the end of March 2026 then stated that the bullet does not even match the gun Robinson supposedly used.
The issues with the gun and with video and other evidence have led to huge speculation that Robinson is just an Oswald-type patsy. But the FBI claimed to have found a note under Robinson’s keyboard in the flat he shared with his lover, written in very atypical language for someone of Robinson’s age. And Robinson, under the handle “zealous_monkey_55095”, allegedly sent messages to friends on a ‘Discord’ chat server, confessing to Kirk’s murder. He had “bad news”, he wrote. Then he continued:
it was me at UVU yesterday. Im sorry for all of this. im surrendering through a sheriff friend in a few moments. thanks for all the good times and laughs, you’ve all been so amazing. thank you all for everything.
But the FBI’s timeline has fallen apart.
The timeline
In the public official narrative, Tyler Robinson turned himself in – after his father called a police officer friend – just before 9pm local time on 11 September 2025, a day after Kirk died. At the same time, 8.57pm, as he then supposedly sat for 2-2.5 hours in a custody suite waiting to be seen he wrote the Discord confession messages.
But documents released as part of attempts by Robinson’s lawyers to have cameras excluded from Robinson’s trial, completely overturn that narrative. One particular document, tagged as “Discovery Bates 000007”, shows that Robinson was already in custody and being reminded of his ‘Miranda’ rights at 6.25pm – more than two and a half hours earlier than the FBI has claimed:
In other words, Tyler Robinson’s phone would already have been taken away from him. So who sent the Discord messages?
As the Prospect notes, law enforcement officials have tried to claim that the interrogation was actually happening a day later, at 6.25pm on 12 September and that this explains away the time discrepancy. But this doesn’t fit with the evidence of the note itself. Robinson told officers that the lawyer he wanted to speak to was “closed for the night”. Friday 12 September 2025 was a Friday night, which would mean the office would have been closed for the weekend, but on 11 September would have been closed just until the morning.
What is going on?
The Washington County sheriff’s department repeatedly blocked public records requests filed by Salt Lake media for surveillance camera footage of Tyler Robinson entering and/or being held inside county police headquarters, which would have shown exactly when he was taken into custody. At first it claimed that Robinson had arrived at the building via a different entrance than the one mentioned in the request, then said the footage had been destroyed.
A former Utah prosecutor told the Prospect the timeline discrepancies are “a big problem for the prosecution”, particularly when combined with the missing footage and the recent resignation of the county sheriff over:
allegations that he had interfered in the investigation of another deputy who was charged in November on four counts of “unlawfully accessing, using, disclosing or disseminating criminal investigation records [in a different case].”
A bigger problem still if the bullet ballistics don’t match. Indeed, a huge problem.
Featured image via the Canary
By Skwawkbox
From Canary via This RSS Feed.
I think Warl was asking you to address the claims of misreporting and decontextualization unrelated to (anti-)Zionism, as your main argument is that The Canary was accused mostly just because of its anti-Zionist stance.
For one, when they heard the Defense secretary say (paraphrased) "We have evidence Assad used sarin attacks last year and five years ago. We also have reports from soldiers that sarin is being used again; we don't have evidence for that, but we're not refuting them.", The Canary published an article saying US officials confessed "that sarin is being used again, we don't have evidence for that". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_335#c-CowHouse-2021-02-28T00:18:00.000Z-G-13114-2021-02-27T18:30:00.000Z
The comment I linked in my comment at the top of this chain is another examples with nothing to do with (anti-)Zionism. In the two most recent articles at the time, there's repeated false balance where they say "well some experts criticized NHS restructuring"^[who?]^ when little have, "concerns have been brought that the UK spread COVID to Kenya"^[by whom?]^ when absolutely nobody said that. The Canary never mentions that supermajority opinion is supportive of the opposite of their claims. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_335#c-Bondegezou-2021-02-17T10:32:00.000Z-Newslinger-2021-02-17T04:39:00.000Z
Here's a plethora of quotes from sociology academia, and peer-reviewed sociology academia is fairly pro-Gaza: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_335#c-Bobfrombrockley-2021-02-18T15:44:00.000Z-Newslinger-2021-02-17T04:39:00.000Z
Mother Jones has the same if not stronger politics that Canary does. Everyone on Wikipedia agrees Mother Jones is generally reliable (with attribution). It is completely possible to have those nice political stances without committing to tabloid distortion.