Conspiracy theorist and content creator Candace Owens said she’s nearly finished with her multipart investigation into Turning Point USA CEO Erika Kirk, following the killing of her husband, Charlie Kirk.
Owens has a lot of alternative theories about how and why Charlie Kirk was killed. They mostly fall outside of federal and state authorities’ case against Tyler Robinson, who stands accused of murdering the prominent conservative activist. Recently, Owens trained her investigation on Erika Kirk with a multipart series on her podcast titled “Bride of Charlie.” In the series’ first episode, Owens raised general suspicion around the widow and her life leading up to her husband’s killing in September.
This week, as she began to wind down her Erika Kirk series, Owens turned to an old conspiratorial standby: Jeffrey Epstein and the Jewish cabal.
“I have a hunch, a growing hunch, that Erika and Jeffrey Epstein may have crossed paths,” she told her audience Tuesday.
By Wednesday, she said she was sure of it. The most recent episode, titled “EXPLOSIVE! What Erika Kirk Was Doing In Epstein’s Orbit,” wasn’t explosive. Owens failed not only to explain what Erika Kirk was doing in Epstein’s orbit, but also establishing that she was in his orbit at all.
The claims rested, Owens said, on someone telling her that Erika Kirk had worked with Next Model Management — which was co-founded by a friend of Epstein’s. A TPUSA spokesperson told MS NOW that Erika Kirk never worked for the company.
Owens provided no evidence to suggest that Erika Kirk had anything to do with the notorious sex offender. But she hasn’t produced substantial evidence to back up any of the hundreds of other wild claims made in recent weeks and months since her friend and former employer’s shooting death gave her a new conspiratorial focus for her daily podcast.
To try and make sense of Owens’ show — a one-hour fever dream of innuendo and accusation — is, I’ve found, generally futile. But a couple million people watch every episode, and the Erika Kirk series is its biggest production yet. So here, again, as a public service, I’ll attempt to summarize the claims made in the “Bride of Charlie” episodes thus far, in a style that reflects the feeling of consuming the content.
Owens launched “Bride of Charlie” to 5.2 million viewers in late February, opening the first video with scary violin music and a promise to uncover what was “not right” with Erika Kirk. The first allegations were vague and nonsensical; something about MK Ultra, Sigmund Freud and “German mystical Jews” who practiced the occult.
These claims, which I have not verified, are very likely untrue, and the historical details included as support for her conspiracy theories are very often incorrect or tangential to the argument. This is not a fact checking enterprise. But here are some of the allegations that make up Owens’ case against Erika Kirk:
- Erika Kirk’s great-grandmother, Owens said, was arrested for running illegal slot machines nearly a century ago in Pennsylvania, while her great-grandfather was in a high-speed chase once.
- Erika Kirk’s mother has been married multiple times. Her parents’ divorce records listed her birthday as Nov. 22, not Nov. 20. She was born in a hospital where they experimented on brains.
- A friend of a friend to Erika Kirk created the Center for Jewish Studies at Utah Valley University, where Charlie Kirk was killed.
- Erika Kirk allegedly told an ex-boyfriend that his dead grandfather visited her in a dream.
- The military made us watch Charlie Kirk’s death to manufacture support for Erika Kirk.
- Erika Kirk cried about her mother.
- Erika Kirk’s father’s first wife had a baby at a young age and became a social worker in Indiana in the 1970s (Owens has said this suggests ties to the CIA’s illegal MK Ultra human experiment program). She also worked at Quaker Oats, which once fed radioactive oatmeal to institutionalized boys with the Atomic Energy Commission. Was that also MK Ultra? “We’re never going to know,” Owens said. The woman also helped design the elementary school Erika Kirk attended, whose board included a Stanford drug counselor (again: MK Ultra).
- Erika Kirk’s mother, Lori, and Turning Point Action’s COO Tyler Boyer are “in cahoots” — both are on the board of a tech company, and separately, maybe something shady happened with TPUSA’s money. Lori’s many LLCs could indicate money laundering. “The vibes are not vibing.” A notary Lori used for decades was connected to a family that defrauded banks and spawned a hitman-for-hire plot targeting a federal judge. “Fraud surrounds” Erika Kirk’s mother.
- Erika Kirk got a college scholarship, befriended a woman married to a pastor who was close with another pastor accused of covering up his father’s pedophilia and may have had to vomit into a bag to expel evil spirits.
- In 2009, Erika Kirk placed third runner-up in Miss USA Colorado. She calls a guy “uncle” who works at Universal, which co-owned Miss USA with President Donald Trump in 2012.
- Erika Kirk disappeared in 2008. Maybe she had a secret baby?
- Erika Kirk probably didn’t read the whole Bible when she said she did.
- The father of the principal of Erika Kirk’s elementary school was a military man and a freemason.
- Erika Kirk acted in a movie about corporate espionage spies, but the movie was never released.
- Charlie Kirk’s podcast co-host might be Jewish.
- Erika Kirk did charity work in Romania, in partnership with the U.S. Marines.
- Turning Point Action’s COO and Erika Kirk were enrolled at Arizona University at the same time.
- Some soldiers in the war in Afghanistan guarded poppy fields, and the Sackler family engineered the opioid crisis. The Sacklers were Jewish and Erika Kirk’s cousin served in Afghanistan. The brother of a PR rep for TPUSA also served in Afghanistan.
- Erika Kirk started a streetwear company and got a real estate license and embellished the success of her businesses.
- Erika Kirk got millions of money in personal donations after her husband’s death. I
- Erika Kirk visited China, dated a basketball player, and auditioned for reality TV.
- Charlie Kirk was sacrificed and something to do with satanism.
For readers unfamiliar with the experience of consuming this kind of content, it is, to borrow a concept from Owens, a bit like being fed radioactive oatmeal. Owens said she’s almost done with her series. One can only hope.
Brandy Zadrozny is a senior enterprise reporter for MS NOW. She was a previously a senior enterprise reporter for NBC News, based in New York.