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cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/43161

Tyler Robinson

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.

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[–] ArcaneSlime@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

Robinson was then supposedly arrested in the woods with the gun.

No no, he was supposedly able to ditch the gun in the woods where they found it fully assembled and placed in a box??!!? Yet in the roof footage you can see no such gun nor would it fit in a backpack assembled, we're expected to believe that he climbed to the roof with it disassembled in his bag, assembled it on the roof, shot Kirk, disassembled it and stashed it in his bag in the seconds after the shot and before he runs, (reportedly left the screwdriver needed for this on the roof), then we get the roof footage, he gets to the woods and reassembles the rifle with the screwdriver he left on the roof, leaves it in the woods in a box, and dips, all within like 30sec. Then they arrested him a bit later.

And also a 30-06 bullet got caught in soft tissue at ~150yd because "Charlie Kirk is Superman actually." Mmhmm.

[–] Aatube@lemmy.dbzer0.com 14 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

The Canary is usually not considered a reliable source.

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”. 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.

They're usually logical, though. Could someone explain where the discrepancy is supposed to be as shown in the last sentence? The officials claim he was interrogated on the 12th, and in the interrogation he said the lawyer was closed for the night, so that is consistent (and it wouldn't have been consistent if the interrogation happened on the 11th as initially believed).

A bigger problem still if the bullet ballistics don’t match.

Forensic ballistics analysis have been extensively criticized for uncertain accuracy for just 5 less years than the polygraph, IIRC.

[–] MrNobody@quokk.au 1 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

Oh wow great sources…

“Pro-Corbyn website The Canary denies it is antisemitic, then blames 'political Zionists' for forcing it to downsize” - The Jewish Chronicle

Gee there’s a real agenda being pushed by a few of the voters in there, I wonder what it could be.

Looking at the voting, it’s pretty evenly split between it being reliable or needing a bit of context and it being unreliable. Sadly not every site can be a pro-Israel biased “factual” conservative rag like the BBC.

[–] Warl0k3@lemmy.world 4 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago) (1 children)

So... the four other examples of The Canary publishing fake stories given in that same post - do you want to comment on those, or just keep yelling about the jews...?

[–] MrNobody@quokk.au 0 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago) (1 children)

“The Jews” oh fuck off, the angle is clearly antizionism being portray as antisemitism. Exactly what you’re doing now.

Why don’t we look at the reply comment to that list of “fake” stories, of which all relate to right wing or BBC attacks on Corbyn as being antisemitic when he never was.

Thanks for assembling this list. Of the points listed there, only the claim that Kuenssburg was to give an invited speech at the Tory conference involves a specific false claim and the Canary did retract that

Or this one

The Jewish Chronicle is itself an extremely opinionated source when it comes to matters relating to the Labour Party, and has a strong pro-Conservative bias. And the article you link does not show any objective reason to doubt the Canary as an RS. The opinion piece by Helen Lewis is again written by a strongly anti-Corbyn writer, and though the Canary has definitely been highly critical of Kuenssberg, she is a journalist whose work displays strong political biases in a position of great importance in the UK media. We might remember her immediate acceptance of the "attack" on a tory staffer, and her intervention to stop an angry father asking questions to Boris Johnson. I don't see anything in those links to disqualify the Canary a priori.

[–] Warl0k3@lemmy.world 3 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago) (1 children)

"Oh fuck off" is a great way to start a rebuttal, wheeeeeee.

Anyways my point was that you didn't actually move to address anything else in that thread, you locked in on Israel being involved and used that to reinforce your dismissal of the claims. You also dismiss the other arguments in a hugely biased way, painting it as 50% wishy-washy reasons and 50% people who agree with you. You're even still trying to use the assumed existence of a jewish conspiracy (that people are seeking to misrepresent antizionism) as justification for the retention of an, at very best, deeply flawed news source.

I don't think you're an antisemite or w/e, to be clear - but I do think that you're so biased against Israel (and fair enough, fuck Israel) that you're willing to defend things that you really shouldn't be defending just because they stand in opposition to the Israeli sphere. If you dont believe me, look at how you presented the voters - a source being viewed by 50% of people as untrustworthy is horrendously terrible but that's the entirely hypothetical threshold you used to defend your use of a canary link.

[–] MrNobody@quokk.au 1 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago) (2 children)

It’s exactly the opening response an anti-Semite deserves for trying to pretend it was about “the Jews”.

Because it was a large volume of what I read. It really paints the picture of what sort of complaint was being levelled against The Canary.

“Jewish conspiracy”??? Once again you are doing the antisemitic thing where you conflate antizionism with antisemitism. If this is how you act, there is no point in engaging further.

[–] Aatube@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 hour ago

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.

[–] Warl0k3@lemmy.world 2 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago)

Once again you are doing the antisemitic thing where you conflate antizionism with antisemitism.

No, that one was just a pun.

But it being a hypothetical zionist conspiracy doesn't change anything about your zeal to dismiss this on shaky grounds, or that you are in fact getting very heated about a literal jewish conspiracy. Like that's just what's happening here. They may be zionist jews, but you're still leveling the accusation that those voters were intentionally pushing a pro-israel narrative and using that as justification for your own position being right. The "jew" part is really secondary to the "conspiracy" bit.

Canary is still a bad source - and even setting that aside, this is just a bad article (for the reasons already given). There are many other groups reporting on this story with much less vaguery and spin - even the secret zionist BBC coverage is somehow far better than what the canary has presented here.

[–] Mulligrubs@lemmy.world 27 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago) (1 children)

"the footage has been destroyed"

It's so weird how cameras just spontaneously stop working at key, vital moments, and then if they do work, the footage explodes

what are the odds?

¯\(ツ)

[–] Gammelfisch@lemmy.world 7 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

Similar to voting machines in the swing states that received a "minor update."

[–] Tinidril@midwest.social 5 points 13 hours ago

Let's not start sounding like MAGA. We should need more to question election integrity than some software updates and shit-for-brains getting elected again.

It does raise the question of why we are getting our voting machines from the private sector without open standards and open source code. Even if it's perfectly legit, it invites a lot of really good questions.

[–] caboose2006@lemmy.world 18 points 1 day ago (1 children)

If Candice Owens is right again so help me god I'm moving to Saint Helena.

[–] buddascrayon@lemmy.world 4 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

Okay I'm a little out of the loop, what was she right about before and how is she possibly right about this?

[–] marxismtomorrow@lemmy.today 4 points 15 hours ago

She believes Charlie Kirk was assassinated by Israel for breaking with Israel's propaganda regarding their ongoing genocides and imperialist wars for territory. This has some evidence, Israel has done the same thing to American citizens before; and Israel invested heavily in TPUsa so they likely had some behind the scenes agreements. Given none of the evidence in this case matches, or even plausibly could match to the arrested person, this lines up even more. (Robinson was spotted, on camera, at a restaurant literally ten miles away at the time of the shooting.)

As to what she could've been right about before; there's the Iran war being a bad idea -- but to be clear every single analyst on every single possible side of the conflict knew it was a bad idea; also the fact Erika Kirk has close ties to, or is explicitly a part of the Israeli Intelligence community.

Outside that she's pretty insane and has been since she got embarrassed her doxx site failed and she went full far right. But she's likely right about this; and given her relationship with Kirk it's likely she has information she's basing some of this on.

[–] BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today 7 points 22 hours ago

Hm, sounds like reasonable doubt to me.

[–] MithranArkanere@lemmy.world 5 points 22 hours ago

We'll probably never know the truth, so I'm going to guess whatever I want because I am not a reporter, so I can editorialize as much as I want.

Chances are, he was being manipulated into doing it by someone who had watched one too many soap operas and thinks it's possible to get away with this kind of stuff.
The kid failed or chickened out; they had a backup plan to complete the job anyway, and he still worked as a fall guy.

[–] eletes@sh.itjust.works 9 points 1 day ago

Starting to believe the supposed Iranian hacker that Kirk had a small explosive charge hidden in some mic under his shirt, à la pager operation.

[–] quick_snail@feddit.nl 57 points 1 day ago (5 children)

I'm disappointed to see this compared to the Kennedy assassination.

Kirk was just some fascist jerk. He wasn't important, except for his assassination.

Kennedy was actually important outside of his assassination.

[–] sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 12 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

It is comparable in the comparisons of the actual mechanics of the the shooting, and the subsequent government actions.

They're both assasination stories with dubious 'official stories' that have tons of problems and holes with them, as well as significant evidence of the government doing a coverup.

And also, while you might not like to hear this, and trust me I don't like saying it:

Charlie Kirk was really important to a lot of people.

He's basically a canonized Saint/Martyr of the MAGA religion... millions of people really did, and still do, hold him in high regard.

We can think he was a shitty person who said and did shitty things... that doesn't negate that a lot of similarly shitty people thought/think very highly of him.

They're making monuments of him, naming streets after him.

[–] youcantreadthis@quokk.au 1 points 13 hours ago

Okay, we gotta find the zio that offed him now. It would be so funny to watch different divisions if nazi tear each other apartm

[–] BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today 8 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

He's basically a canonized Saint/Martyr of the MAGA religion... millions of people really did, and still do, hold him in high regard.

No, he's not, and they are already forgetting him. This last Turning Point conference was almost empty.

MAGAs don't do martyrs. They're all sociopaths, so they only care about themselves. Charlie Kirk was useful when he was alive, and for a short period after his death. That's all faded now, and nobody is motivated to keep his torch lit, because they've moved on.

His wife is about the only one left who cares at all, and that's only because she's trying to squeeze as much money out of his legacy as she can, but it was apparent from her first post- assassination appearance, that she was already past him.

Now that Turning Point is slipping in revenue, she'll be making an announcement soon of a new podcast, or FoxNews show, or some other lame excuse to trade on her MAGA celebrity.

Charlie who?

[–] Aatube@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago)

Their last conference was the last AmericaFest around last Christmas. It was very full.

There was a recent rally where "only about 3,000 people attended — meaning the [mega]church was roughly two-thirds full at best" but 1. that's still a lot 2. it is not uncommon for rallies to only have that much people.

MAGAs don't do martyrs. They're all sociopaths

There were a lot of passionate college red-cap students on the campus field where Kirk died.

Now that Turning Point is slipping in revenue

because only Charlie Kirk had the Charlie Kirk touch, and that did make him very famous and important (he's the reason they had the youth vote) when he was alive.

nobody is motivated to keep his torch lit

I don't see evidence of that. There is still no collegiate ground game comparable to Turning Point.

[–] Railcar8095@lemmy.world 12 points 1 day ago (1 children)

His life was unremarkable, but he did go out with a bang.

[–] PhoenixDog@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago

I'll give him credit. For all his right-wing word salads, at the end he leaned left.

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[–] ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de 44 points 1 day ago (4 children)

So many idiots have been doing this: Ballistics not being able to confirm the bullet was fired from that specific rifle in no way proves that it wasn't fired from that specific rifle.

Matching busted up bullets using scratch marks is like 90% TV crime show bs. They didn't say the bullet wasn't fired from the rifle. They just said they couldn't prove it was fired from that rifle. Massive difference.

[–] buddascrayon@lemmy.world 1 points 15 hours ago

I honestly don't care as long as the doubt this sows and all the conspiracy shit keeps tearing up the fragile coalition of right wingers who don't trust the government yet voted for Trump and the republican assholes who've been using them as their personal internet army.

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[–] DarrinBrunner@lemmy.world 109 points 1 day ago (1 children)

They're so sloppy because they know they'll get away with it.

Odds are this guy will end up "committing suicide", before the trial.

No, it is because they know he is trans.

Wait, his girlfriend is trans.

Shit, his roommate is trans.

Fuck. Is there a trans person nearby?

[–] Skullgrid@lemmy.world 90 points 1 day ago (10 children)

Oh no, the person who killed charlie kirk is out at large right now.

There are so many people that are in danger, Ben Shapiro, Trump, Joe Rogan...

They should act fast before someone else gets hurt while they are spewing technicalities and inciting hatred.

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[–] nutsack@lemmy.dbzer0.com 18 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (3 children)

if the assassination was meant as political activism, then picking this guy as the fall guy makes absolutely no sense.

not being able to confirm a match between a bullet and the gun, especially with no shell casings present, is completely normal.

his phone would not have been taken away from him if he had voluntarily showed up to speak to the police. he would not have been under arrest yet. they would have spent hours being very nice to him in a little room while getting as much information out of him as possible.

this conspiracy theory is brain dead stupid. stop this shit.

[–] PhoenixDog@lemmy.world 6 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

his phone would not have been taken away from him if he had voluntarily showed up to speak to the police. he would not have been under arrest yet.

If they're reading you Miranda Rights, you're being detained in police custody and not allowed to leave. While not necessarily being charged, he isn't leaving that room if he just wants to go home.

He was under at least a custodial interrogation. 100% his phone was removed.

If I just had information knowing a friend killed someone and I went to police to talk to them and interview with them, they're not reading me my rights.

[–] Aatube@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 14 hours ago

The article mentioned that the narrative is that he walked in shortly before nine and was Miranda'd the next day at half past six. That is at least 20 hours (including sleep, though) without Miranda read.

[–] Agent641@lemmy.world 1 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 16 hours ago)

It's not a given that they would take his phone, ether during voluntary interview, investigative detention, or arrest.

Two possible reasons: They either wanted to get a search warrant for the phone before seizing it, AND were waiting for an opportunity to seize it after he had unlocked it in their presence to hasten the search by not having to deal with a locked phone, maybe even waiting for a specialist forensics person to be available, OR they believed that the risk of the suspect having, and deleting incriminating evidence on the phone already was LOWER than the chance of the suspect producing incriminating evidence in their presence under recording.

I've seen plenty of arrest and interrogation videos where the person comes in for questioning, isn't under arrest, gets left in an interrogation room for a long time on purpose, and then calls or texts someone and spills some incriminating details to a friend, family member or otherwise while they are being audio and video recorded.

Even when cops are certain of a person's guilt, they keep the voluntary interview going as long as possible before finally saying "You're under arrest" because it gives them time to build a solid picture of evidence, and maximizes detention and interrogation time where they can play all of their little games, including controlling your food, water, rest, sleep, movement, light levels in the room, psychological manipulation, and so on.

[–] fodor@lemmy.zip 10 points 1 day ago

I'm with you about the bullet casings. However, you don't need a conspiracy in order for the weird timeline discrepancies to exist. All it takes is one or more cops or prosecutors making up information. Once they've done that then there's a massive credibility issue.

We'll see what happens in the future, but obviously the defense is going to be trying to find out if there is a clear timeline. When did he turn himself in? Where was that? Was he being questioned before he was arrested? When was he arrested? Did they question him after he asked for a lawyer? All of those are basic timeline questions, and clearly there is some conflicting information.

Now, it's possible that the information is in conflict because people who were not directly involved guessed at what happened and got it wrong. I think right now it's too early to tell. If that's the case, if it's simply a situation of bad speculation, then he's still just as screwed as he was before. But the reality is that there are a lot of dirty or dishonest prosecutors and cops. If they are involved in this case, then who can say what kind of evidence will be excluded, and who can say what a jury would find convincing.

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[–] 13igTyme@piefed.social 35 points 1 day ago

This article starts out in the best possible way.

Another gaping hole has opened up

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