Utah prosecutor held in contempt for media comments in Charlie Kirk’s murder case
A Utah judge ruled Friday that a prosecutor in the murder case against Tyler Robinson, the man accused of assassinating conservative activist Charlie Kirk, violated a pretrial publicity order by speaking to the media about the case and will be held in contempt of court.
Robinson’s defense team had asked Judge Tony Graf to hold the Utah County Attorney’s Office in contempt and stop its pursuit of the death penalty, calling that the only sanction proportional to the alleged misconduct.
The allegations stemmed from interviews Deputy Utah County Attorney Christopher Ballard gave to TMZ, USA Today, PolitiFact and Fox News. At a hearing earlier this month, prosecutors said that Ballard was responding to misinformation in the press about the case and that they believed a professional rule allowed them to correct the record.
Judge Graf found Ballard’s statements went beyond what the instructions allowed because he also shared his opinions on Robinson’s guilt and the strength of the state’s case.
The misinformation Ballard was responding to came from a defense filing, which stated that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives had been “unable to identify the bullet recovered at autopsy to the rifle allegedly tied to Mr. Robinson.” Prosecutors argued the filing had omitted the ATF’s inconclusive findings — that the bullet had also not been excluded as coming from the rifle.
Tabloid outlets and conspiracist creators ran with that partial framing. A Daily Mail headline read: “Bullet used to kill Charlie Kirk did NOT match rifle allegedly used by suspect Tyler Robinson, new court filing claims.”
Conspiracy theorists then took it further, citing it as evidence Robinson had been framed.
“The ATF in the Tyler Robinson case cannot connect the gun to him,” conspiracist podcaster Candace Owens told her audience. “It is definitive proof that Tyler Robinson is a patsy.”
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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.
