 "Were bodyguards involved in Charlie Kirk’s shooting? The many conspiracies surrounding the killing")
The Charlie Kirk assassination follows a script that we have all become familiar with. After his killing, the confusion began almost instantaneously — some claimed they had identified the shooter, others purported that a transwoman was behind the killing. Many suggested the killer was liberal; others floated the prospect that it was a targeted killing by a foreign actor.
And on and on it went.
The death of Charlie Kirk, the famous right-wing activist and close aide of US President Donald Trump, has spawned a barrage of deliberate falsehoods, honest mistakes and a flood of conspiracies. As Vox wrote in one report, “Social media is the worst place to be right now.”
As authorities try to sift fact from fiction and continue their manhunt for the killer, here’s a look at just some of the conspiracies and misinformation that spread in the aftermath of Kirk’s death.
Hand signals given by Kirk’s bodyguards
Shortly after Kirk was killed, many theories abound about the shooting, with people trying to make sense of the tragedy. One of the theories that has garnered a lot of attention is that Kirk’s bodyguards made hand signals right before he was shot, indicating they might have been in on the killing.
Footage from Wednesday’s event at Utah Valley University, which drew about 3,000 people, shows members of Kirk’s small private security team shifting their positions behind him as he spoke. One appears to adjust his cap while holding a phone, while another moves his arms and scans the crowd.
Soon after, the close ally of Trump was struck in the neck by a single rifle round fired from a rooftop roughly 200 yards away. He collapsed beneath a tent as horrified supporters screamed and fled.
Social media users quickly started speculating about the gestures.
UPDATE: Charlie Kirk
— MJTruthUltra (@MJTruthUltra) September 11, 2025
Guy in the black shirt also makes hand signals right before Charlie was shot.
Now this could just be totally normal if this is his security team… but everyone needs to be questioned immediately and confiscate all of their devices.
Leave no stone unturned… https://t.co/41SSRgupRb pic.twitter.com/yWw3gOLsuh
However, many scoffed at the theories, calling them reckless. Stan Kephart, an 85-year-old former California police chief and veteran security consultant, told the Daily Mail, “I can tell you from experience — those were definitely hand signals. The way they were done was not casual. It was more than one signal. My suspicion is that he’s checking off with somebody else, perhaps a supervisor, saying everything is okay. It doesn’t arouse my suspicions.”
Kirk dies at the hand of the ‘deep state’
Another series of claims stated that Kirk’s killing was similar to the assassinations of other American political figures such as JFK.
“Everyone knows who killed Charlie Kirk,” reads a post on X by a supposedly Irish account that was shared more than 1,400 times. “They call it the Deep State, but they are the same ones who killed JFK, carried out 9/11, or bombed countries without any consequences.”
Mossad behind Kirk killing
No shooter has yet been identified in the assassination of Kirk. But there are many who have claimed that Jews and Israel are behind the killing. “Charlie Kirk was assassinated by Jews,” tweeted an account called Greatest Noticer.
“At this point does anyone not thi[nk] Charlie Kirk was assassinated by Mossad?” tweeted Ryan Matta, a podcast host with more than 200,000 followers, referring to the Israeli spy agency.
These speculations came as a result of past allegations of anti-Semitism against Kirk, his recent comments tying Mossad to the Jeffrey Epstein case, and the rapid response to his death by Israeli politicians.
A post from last month by Harrison Smith, a Texan who posts on the far-right conspiracy site Infowars, was shared widely. “I’m not gonna name names, but I was told by someone close to Charlie Kirk that Charlie thinks Israel will kill him if he turns against them,” Smith posted on August 13. He stood by the comments on Wednesday.
Another influential political commentator on X alleged, without evidence, that Kirk, who was consistently pro-Israel, had said that Israeli officials had threatened to kill him. The post was viewed more than 3.5 million times on X.
Charlie Kirk and the squib rumour
While some speculated on the Kirk’s killer’s identity, there were some who called the entire incident a hoax. They discussed and debated on social media that the right-wing activist wasn’t killed at all.
The root of this conspiracy: a black mark on Kirk’s right upper chest and shoulder area, which they speculate is a squib — a Hollywood method for faking a gunshot wound.
They claimed online that the black patch was, in fact, a blood pack that Hollywood uses to depict a shooting scene.
However, previous videos of Kirk show him wearing that black patch, which indicates that it is actually a microphone.
The ring and Kirk hoax
Another theory suggested the shooting was a hoax based on Kirk’s ring. In one X post, a user points that prior to being shot, Kirk was wearing a ring on his ring finger, but following the shot it had switched to his pinkie finger.
Some users seized on this as evidence that his death was faked with computer graphics and that everyone has been fooled. Some suggested it was the result of AI used to upscale the blurry images.
Misinformation spreads like wildfire
Apart from the many conspiracy theories that are gaining traction, Charlie Kirk’s death also resulted in a barrage of misinformation. Even Utah Governor Spencer Cox spoke of the misinformation that was being spread in the wake of the death.
“When things get bad, we should put our phones down and spend a little time with our families. There is a tremendous amount of disinformation we are tracking,” Cox said.
Suspects that weren’t: One such instance of misinformation was misidentified suspects. Several people found themselves unwillingly thrusted into the centre of this firestorm as they have been falsely linked to Kirk’s shooting.
One such individual was Michael Mallinson, a 77-year-old retired banker living in Toronto. He recounts to CBC News that he received a frantic call from his daughter on Wednesday, instructing him to delete his social media because his name and photo were being spread online by an account claiming he was the suspect in the shooting.
The shocking part of it all, however, was that he had never stepped foot in Utah — where Charlie Kirk was killed.
The trouble began for Mallinson when an account posing as a Nevada news channel, Fox Reno 11, shared a photo of him next to one of a suspect being detained by police after Kirk’s shooting.
But Mallinson wasn’t alone in this conundrum. In another series of posts on X, a 29-year-old Washington state resident was identified to be the shooter. She told Reuters in a message the picture had been lifted from her X account without her knowledge, adding that she was in Seattle at the time of the shooting. She wrote earlier on Instagram, after her image circulated widely online, that she is not the shooter.
AI chatbots add to the mix: Bombarded by information from all sides, many people turned to AI chatbots for reliable updates — only to encounter inaccurate responses, further fuelling online confusion.
The X account of AI chatbot Perplexity falsely stated that the activist was never shot and was “still alive,” according to the watchdog NewsGuard. Meanwhile, the X account of Grok — Elon Musk’s AI chatbot — stated that it was a satirical clip. “The video is a meme edit — Charlie Kirk is debating, and effects make it look like he’s ‘shot’ mid-sentence for comedic effect. No actual harm; he’s fine and active as ever,” Grok wrote.
A spokesperson for Perplexity later told Reuters, “Because we take the topic so seriously, Perplexity never claims to be 100 per cent accurate. But we do claim to be the only AI company working on it relentlessly as our core focus.”
With inputs from agencies
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