Charlie Kirk's close friend calls for death penalty for convicted assassins

PROVO, Utah — Charlie Kirk's close friend Jack Posobiec called Friday for convicted assassins to face the death penalty after spending five days in a Utah courtroom watching prosecutors present what he described as "an avalanche of evidence" against the man accused of murdering the Turning Point USA founder last year.

"I think the death penalty should be sought for any assassin," Posobiec, a senior editor at Human Events and former Navy intelligence officer, told reporters outside the Fourth District Courthouse in Provo, Utah, Friday. "I think assassins are a cancer on society itself."

Such a change would require lawmakers to expand the aggravating factors that make murder cases eligible for the death penalty. Under current laws in the federal system and the 27 states that have capital punishment, assassination cases aren't automatically death penalty eligible.

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"Specifically political assassinations, but really any assassination — it's an attack on our rights as free people," Posobiec said. "It's an attack on our rights under the First Amendment. It's an attack on our very way of life as Americans and as Americans, you have to provide the utmost penalty for someone who attacks our very bedrock way of life."

Kirk's murder during an event at Utah Valley University in Orem on Sept. 10, 2025, is one of two major assassination cases making their way through court at present. Months before Kirk's death, UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was gunned down from behind outside a New York City hotel hours before he was supposed to attend a business conference with Wall Street investors.

The suspect in that case, Luigi Mangione, would no longer face the potential death penalty if convicted after his lawyers successfully outmaneuvered federal prosecutors, who could not use the alleged assassination itself as an aggravating factor under current law.

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He is accused of writing anti-insurance industry messages on casings recovered from the crime scene. Robinson is accused of following suit — engraving cartridges with memes and Antifa-inspired phrases.

Mangione has pleaded not guilty to all charges in New York, where there is no death penalty, and at the federal level.

Robinson has not yet entered a plea and isn't expected to do so until at least September, when Judge Tony Graf Jr. rules on whether there's enough evidence to send the case to trial.

Posobiec, who attended all five days of the hearing, agreed with prosecutors who said they had "overwhelming" and "devastating" evidence against the defendant.

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"This isn't just a document that says Tyler Robinson did it," he told reporters.

Prosecutors showed a video interview with Robinson's former lover and roommate, Lance Twiggs, who alleged the suspect made multiple confessions.

They heard testimony about DNA consistent with Robinson's being found on items at the crime scene, including the suspected murder weapon and the ammo inside, which were recovered in the woods near campus — more than 250 miles from his home in southern Utah.

Toolmark evidence allegedly linked an engraved cartridge casing found in Robinson's apartment to the same Dremel tool investigators assert was used to engrave cartridges and a spent casing recovered at the crime scene.

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Investigators testified that a suspect and vehicle on campus surveillance video were Robinson and his Dodge Challenger. The video allegedly showed Robinson following the same path twice — in different outfits. During the second visit, the suspect is shown walking with a distinctive, limp-like gait, as he is alleged to be walking with a rifle concealed down his pant leg.

He allegedly made contact with Turning Point USA members before the shooting and with a Spanish Fork police officer afterward.

And he allegedly claimed responsibility for the crime in text messages and a handwritten note to Twiggs, a conversation with his parents and a Discord chat with multiple people.

Posobiec contrasted the evidence presented against Robinson over the course of a week to the case against Bryan Kohberger, where prosecutors had little more than a touch DNA sample on a Ka-Bar knife sheath the quadruple murderer dropped at the crime scene, along with some circumstantial phone data and the description of a suspect vehicle.

But Kohberger pleaded guilty to avoid the death penalty, Posobiec noted.

"You compare that minimal amount of evidence to this avalanche — and there has been an avalanche of evidence," he said.

Robinson is due back in court on Sept. 1 for oral arguments on whether his case should be bound over — or sent to trial.