BIG NEWS! Erika To File A Wrongful Death Lawsuit. For Charlie Or For PR? | Ep 388

Candace

Candace Owens critiques the timing and authenticity of Erika Kirk's notice of claim against UVU and state officials, suggesting it's a strat

Key takeaways

• The lawsuit filing appears rushed and strategically timed just days before a damning independent review is expected to be released.

Main topics

• Wrongful death lawsuit filing by Erika Kirk
• Timing and motives behind the legal notice

Notable quotes

It feels... a little too on the nose. It's remarkably timely to save a least.

Conclusion

Candace concludes that Erika Kirk's lawsuit appears less like justice-

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) All right, you guys, happy Wednesday. Some news today, some big news today, actually. Turning Point USA just makes me sick, and I have to be honest with you guys, I just know so much of what goes on behind the scenes. When I wake up on a day like today and I see them running another PR game, trying to delude the public into thinking that they want justice for Charlie, it just makes me sick, and that's what they're doing today. In case you missed it, there is basically wall-to-wall coverage regarding a pending wrongful death lawsuit that the Kirk family intends to file against the state of Utah, among others. And they have their typical orbit of influencers attempting to quickly spin this into a narrative that there's an aggrieved widow and her endless fight to find justice for her Charlie. You know, you know how it goes. But your common sense should tell you that something isn't right. Why now? Why a notice to file a lawsuit a year on? And you're going to be extremely offended when I take you through the absurdity of the filing itself, which reads like more narcissistic abuse coming from the Turning Point USA clown show. So let's jump into this. Welcome back to Candace. Speaker 1 (1:27) Got to tell you right at the top here, I am amazed. I am always just amazed of the increasing shamelessness, the never-ending grift, the desperation to try to sell to the public that Erica really cares about justice, when in reality, thus far, what she has demonstrated is that she cares deeply about raising money and deeply about her PR, right? She's willing to partner with just about anyone, no matter how gut or trash they are, in the pursuit of both. So this morning I wake up and I see a trend on X that Charlie Kirk's family has filed a notice of claim against the state of Utah, also Utah Valley University Police Department, and more specifically, UVU Police Chief Jeffrey Long and former president of UVU, Astrid Tuminez, and others that are presently, quote unquote, presently unknown, who were. involved in the death of Charlie Kirk. I don't know how they would be presently unknown, but okay, stick with me. So to at first explain to you why they would file a notice of a claim rather than just filing a claim itself, that's really just because of the law on the books. It's a mandatory prerequisite for this kind of a lawsuit that you first have to assert your intent to sue the government. so that the government has a chance to simply concede and maybe settle it in the background, thus not wasting any unnecessary state resources with a prolonged legal process. They might just concede and say, here's a check, let's settle. We don't need to do this in the courtroom, okay? But you're also, like I said at the top, probably wondering why now? It's been over a year. I'm wondering too. Because foremost, I have known since approximately last December But actually, it was Charlie Kirk's parents who were encouraging Erica to file a wrongful death lawsuit against the state of Utah. And at that time, I was told that it was not something that Erica herself was keen to do. Now, I did not report on it because I tend to stay away from reporting on anything involving Charlie Kirk's parents. Because... They're not public figures. They never have aspired to be public figures. They did not usurp Charlie's very public position as the CEO and chairman of an organization that pulled in a quarter billion last year and therefore opened themselves up to fair criticism. But now that fact is extremely relevant to present to the public that this was Charlie Kirk's parents who wanted Erica to do this. And I'm wondering, why did Erica decide now to file that intent to sue? And why does it look rushed? Why didn't she express a desire to do something like that more immediately if it's been this much time that it's been discussed? And it certainly has been discussed for a long time. Now, we can only surmise, of course, but curiously, I was also informed this week that what is due to be released imminently to the public is the long-awaited independent review regarding the security failures at UVU, which may have contributed to Charlie's death. Now, it was UVU themselves who commissioned this independent review back in September of last year. I want you to check out this article, jogging your memory here. It was published in the Associated Press on September 22nd, 2025, right? So this is 12 days after Charlie lost his life. And it tells us in this article. Utah Valley University is launching an independent external review of the fatal shooting of prominent conservative activist Charlie Kirk on its campus earlier this month. The university announced the move Monday in an effort to improve safety practices amid fallout over security lapses and the shattering of the serene image that the institution had cultivated. Quote, we believe the findings of the comprehensive third party. independent review of this targeted act of violence will offer valuable insights on how college campuses improve response and preparedness moving forward. That was a quote from Astrid Tumunez, the school's president, said in an emailed statement, quote, we will integrate the findings into our efforts to strengthen and improve safety practices for UVU and all of Utah higher education, end quote. Okay, so just 12 days after Charlie is hit, the university sought to examine all of those failures that were, by the way, immediately, and some failures which were eventually noted by the larger public. At long last, that report is due to be released. I was told that its findings were going to be released on Friday. I don't know if that's now going to be bumped. And that the findings were actually going to be devastating to Turning Point USA. to their security apparatus, because obviously they would have been gathering communications. Why didn't this happen? Why didn't that happen? So when I just look at that, that I had this information, that I was expecting this filing on Friday, or I guess this independent review to be released on Friday, and suddenly we're hit on Wednesday with an intent to sue that is sloppy, okay? That feels... A little too on the nose. It's remarkably timely to save a least. Two days before the review gets released, suddenly Turning Point USA is drumming up noise and influencers are blaming the campus for the security failures. Classic preemptive PR strike, in my view. But what is perhaps even more shocking is actually how lackluster the filing itself is. Again, it feels very rushed, especially when you've had a full year. to file this, right? A full year to pull this together and make it look, I don't know, like you might have some reasonable claims. Now, remember, Charlie had a total of 12 security members that he brought with him. 12 security members. That's massive for a college event. I've never seen this in the history of me doing college campuses with Charlie, that 12 security people would have been brought with him for a campus of this size, okay? And these are not police officers. These are highly trained military, former Navy SEALs, former Marines, Army snipers, SWAT commanders who worked for the highest levels of government. Actually, I'm going to show you this clip because when Brian Harpole sat down with Sean Ryan, Sean Ryan went over the remarkable expertise of this security team. Take a listen. Speaker 2 (7:57) We have some statements from your guys here, and I don't know if you want me to read any names, but I will. They said they're fine with the song as just first names. I mean, here's just, you know, Blake, Combat Proven Marine. Speaker 2 (8:17) appears more talent than everyone else. I mean, you have SEALs, world-renowned jiu-jitsu people, 22 years on SWAT, professional athletes with tactical careers. I mean, 22 years as a Navy SEAL, Marine and 30-year cop and SWAT commander. I mean, these guys know what the f*** they're doing and they're no stranger to dangerous work. Speaker 1 (8:49) So Brian is submitting that to Sean Ryan to tell the world just how overqualified his team was going to this campus event, right? Look at their background. Look at their qualifications. 20-year Marine. What are you talking about? This is nothing to these people. And I want you guys to know something. This level of security is extremely expensive. Extremely expensive. You contract that level of security because, well... you are recognizing that the publicly available security apparatus is going to be inefficient, right? They're brought in to assess and to eradicate any threats in advance. In essence, you're bringing in these experts that are assumed to be above the pay grade and expertise of a college campus cop. And to be clear, I'm not guessing here. I worked for Turning Point USA. On every tour that I went on, Thereafter, I brought in my own security team to each and every event. I know how this works. I'm not going, throwing some darts. I'm not just throwing spaghetti at the wall here. I'm telling you how this works. Your security, if you're going to bring, I would never have 13 members, but your security would be liaising with the local police force and telling them what you want and what you need. So you might say, as I did at a recent event, we want bomb dogs, okay? You might say, as they talked about in this interview, we want drones. We're going to need a guy up on the rooftop. We've assessed situation where we want guys up there. And then the local police will then come back at you with potential limitations. They may say, we're not able to meet some of your requests or some of your demands because of this, because of that, which means that you then either need to go source that independently. You got to go source your own bomb dogs, source your own drones. Or you're going to say we're not going to do this event because it's not secure enough. That's why we're bringing you in, experts, to say we can't make this secure. We're prevented from making it secure, so we advise you not do this. Especially if you send a message the night before saying, I think I'm going to be killed. You pull the event. You pull the event if you say that we cannot secure the premises. I'd also like to stress that you send... your highly trained and expensive security team who 20-year Marines days in advance of the event, minimally, minimally, you would send them days ahead to make preparations, right? They're not going to come in blind and never have seen this campus, okay? If Donald Trump, as an example, decides that he wants to speak at UVU, that doesn't suddenly mean that UVU has the means to provide everything that someone at that level is going to need. That's what his Secret Service detail is for, right? They're going to liaise. They're going to get their head. They're going to make assessments. They're going to make sure that the perimeter is secured. That is the entire point of having an outside security apparatus. Just laying the groundwork there. Let's now go through some of the highlights. And by highlights, I mean lowlights of this filing. It's a short one. It's eight pages. It's just meant to be a notice, like I said. And we're going to skip through the preamble where they tell us who Charlie Kirk was because we already know who Charlie Kirk was. And we're instead going to begin with subsection B on with section B on page three, which is entitled UVU Charlie Kirk event. OK, so. Speaker 1 (12:18) They tell us that in 2025, Turning Point USA planned its largest ever campus tour. Immediately caught my eye, just that opening right there, because they're careful not to give a precise date. Now, you may remember that there was a young woman who back in September and October and November of last year was making noise, telling the public that this event came together too quickly. Someone who has toured and gave you examples that normally five months in advance, they begin planning. They begin planning, and that's for a lot of reasons. I worked as a speaker of this organization. I've never seen an event planned like this. This one came together in a couple of weeks. I said the fact that they even got approval for this event is crazy, okay? And usually there's a... long waiting list of all the universities who want to host Charlie, want to host Candace, want to host him for the campus tour. They make that request the semester ahead. And then we assess and look through and see how many of these that we can hit. Remarkably, this one came together in weeks. And I said, this is weird. This is wrong. This is not how it works because usually the administration gives Turning Point USA a hard time. There's so many things they're going to say you need. Insurances, ambulances, this, that, blah, blah, blah, blah. So they need that long runway to prep for these events. But this one, granted immediately, we don't know who filed for it. And suddenly in a couple of weeks, they're going to be promoting this, okay? Now, despite this, they assert that they pulled together this event, but they want to let you know, and this feels again... rather narcissistic because the whole reason that Charlie started Turning Point USA was because there were not conservative ideas expressed on college campuses, and they knew that there was never a warm welcome. There's never a warm welcome. You go to these events to share ideas that you don't typically find on liberal campuses. Yet they write here. Through advocacy by the local chapter of Turning Point USA on UVU's campus, Utah Valley University had the distinct honor of being the first stop on the fall tour. And that honor came against a well-known backdrop of risk. We pulled together this event, we picked you, and you were given a distinct honor that we picked you. That's just, that's a lot of hubris coming from this filing. OK, now then it comes and they tell us what all these risks are. They're like, well, didn't you know that President Trump, there was a rooftop sniper? You should have known and assessed that we were coming and that this could be a possibility. Don't you know that Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi's husband was brutally attacked in their California home? Once we announced and awarded you this distinct honor to host me, us, you should have immediately gone, oh, my. This is this are Nancy Pelosi's husband was in his trunks and somebody came into the house. OK. OK. Page four is where they begin spelling out the negligence that they are claiming took place here. And we're going to go through this point by point. Because I'm amazed by it. OK. So point one is they say that UVU police did not conduct a meaningful risk assessment and UVU parties did not have a security briefing where the risks associated with unsecured rooftops, which you're going to talk about more later, which had been identified and communicated to Chief Long, could be communicated to other officers. Oh, here's my question. You know some of that expertise you were paying for? Did Charlie's team request this security brief? Are they, is UVU required by law to have a written security plan submitted? Okay, if so, why didn't Charlie's extensive security team note that it had not been submitted? What is he paying you for? Clause two, and I think that this is among the craziest clause of all. They're all crazy, but clause two is pretty crazy. They then moved to blame UVU for granting their request, okay? And to be clear, it was not a request. It was a demand. It was a demand, I am told, that was made on August 25th, 2025 for Charlie to be in this amphitheater, okay? On August 25th, 2025, I'm telling you this, this is not in the filing, they had a Microsoft Teams meeting. This was an events committee meeting on Turning Point's side. It was led by Macy Crofts, their employee. And on that call, I am told Macy Crofts insisted that the event take place in the amphitheater. So you have... UVU on the call and they say, no, you shouldn't do it in the amphitheater because there's no traffic control. Another point that I said, she was very strange. Why would you bother having tickets sold if there's no traffic control? That means you don't have to have a ticket. You can just walk up and sit down. And they made it clear that they could not shut down the amphitheater. Okay. That was not something the university could do. Macy insisted that. They wanted the amphitheater. They didn't care about that because Charlie had recently done an event in Tennessee, and he did, by the way, that's fact, in March of 2025, where he loved the amphitheater, and now