An investigative journalist with a history of being right when the rest of the media isn’t told Sean Hannity on Wednesday night that there were “a couple of hot leads” and “a little bit of foreign intelligence” regarding the individual who shot and killed conservative activist Charlie Kirk at a Utah campus earlier in the day.
Kirk, 31, was shot by a single assassin’s bullet while speaking at Utah Valley University; it was the first stop on Turning Point USA’s latest campus tour, titled “American Comeback.” The husband and father of two was pronounced dead at a hospital hours later.
Two individuals were taken into custody by authorities, one at the scene. Both were eventually released.
Appearing on Sean Hannity’s show hours after the shootings, John Solomon — the investigative journalist who was the first to break the link between Joe and Hunter Biden and a fired prosecutor looking into Burisma, the Ukrainian company whose board Hunter sat on — said his information indicated that foreign governments may have some involvement in either the shooting or the shooters capture.
“The case goes on, the investigation goes on,” Solomon said during his appearance on Hannity’s show. “There’s a lot of piecing of evidence together.
“We don’t have shooter tonight. We have a couple leads,” he added. “A couple of people that were released that probably aren’t the shooter.
“We have a couple of hot leads. A little bit of foreign intelligence,” he continued. “I think over the next couple of days we’ll learn a lot more, and hopefully we will bring to justice the evil person who did what they did to Charlie today.”
Hannity added that he’d heard from law enforcement that there were several leads they were working on, but the key here was “foreign intelligence” — which drove responses on social media.
John Solomon report – A couple of hot leads foreign intelligence, we may know something in the next couple of days pic.twitter.com/vU5XD1kC57
— Karli Bonne’ ???????? (@KarluskaP) September 11, 2025
Many seemed to believe — seemingly without evidence — that, of course, this had to be Israel.
Sounds like Mossad killed Charlie Kirk because he was turning on Israel and now they’re going to give us a patsy.
— gxcolumbia (@gxcolumbia20) September 11, 2025
Did Mossad kill Charlie Kirk ?
— Ds stock (@seger_dave) September 11, 2025
This ridiculousness can be dismissed as quickly as it’s invoked.
Aside from the fact that the antisemitic “blame the Jews” attitude never seems to actually work off of evidence but instead derive its fuel from already-existing hatreds, there’s also the idea that shooting and killing an American conservative would very much not work out in Israel’s favor — especially with the Trump administration and U.S. evangelicals.
(Watch, though: The antisemites will shift their rhetoric to, “Well, that’s just what they want you to think.” Antisemitism, now as ever, not only spreads its noxious tendrils in spite of a lack of real evidence, but because of it.)
What about the less-dismissible idea that this was some sort of attack by a military or quasi-military organization?
That was a military grade black op.
— PunkKia (@AinSophAur1313) September 11, 2025
It was obviously a trained sniper. One shot, one kill.
If they’re getting leads from foreign intelligence, it sounds like it could be a gov’t. operation. Under the circumstances, I won’t be surprised if that’s the case.— radulover (@radulover) September 11, 2025
This is somewhat more plausible — but only somewhat, to hear those acquainted with how military sniper teams work tell it.
Sgt. Nicholas Ranstad, an elite U.S. Air Force sniper, told the U.K. Daily Mail that “the amphitheater-like site was a ‘fish bowl’ for any shooter, pointing out how much easier it is to hit a target when shooting down from a roof,” and that there was a slight, telling mistake in how shooter ended up killing Kirk.
“Any bloke can go to the range three or four times and make that shot. I would start looking at range time if I was police,” he said, adding that the security at Utah Valley University appeared to be limited.
“The security was super light, no crime at that school. So I guess the threat was low apparently,” Ranstad said. “That’s a buffet for someone who wanted to kill someone. It looked like a fishbowl, like an amphitheater, and high ground is money for shooters. Shooting down is easy.”
However, Ranstad viewed the horrific video of Kirk’s death and concluded the sniper “didn’t take into consideration the drop or angle by the looks.
“Him getting shot in the neck means I think he went for the head, but his adrenaline would have been going crazy, probably got a trigger pull,” he said. “I think he was right handed from the videos, so probably had a bad trigger pull.”
So, who does that leave? It’s only a guess right now, but a small amount of training combined with the involvement of foreign powers might lead one to guess that it’s a terrorist organization, particularly an Islamist one. Kirk wasn’t shy about the dangers of Islamism, either at the beginning of his career or the end of his life:
— America_MUST_Unite | AccountabilityIsComing???????? (@KaneraChad) September 11, 2025
Obviously, however, everything at this point is conjecture, and a heaping shovelful of it. This is what, alas, we are left to do in the absence of any concrete reporting.
That being said, Solomon is generally reliable — as evinced by his reporting on the Bidens and Ukraine, as well as several other huge stories. If he believes that there’s a foreign link to this, that could complicate the investigation into the Kirk shooting in any number of ways. Stay tuned.
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