Influencer Candace Owens has suggested she could depose Turning Point USA CEO Erika Kirk and unearth new footage of her husband’s assassination in response to the defamation lawsuit filed by Brian Harpole, whose company provided security services to Charlie Kirk.
Owens spent most of the Thursday episode of her eponymous podcast responding to Harpole’s lawsuit, denying its assertion that she falsely presented as factual the claims made by her podcast guest and co-defendant, Mitchell Snow, who said he saw three people attending a meeting at a military installation in Arizona on the day before Charlie Kirk was assassinated. Snow told Owens he was very confident these individuals were Harpole, Erika Kirk, and U.S. Representative Mark Amodei (R-NV-02).
As part of her response to his litigation, Owens questioned why Harpole did not reply to her four text messages last year, all of which were sent after she acknowledged receiving his flight information during her December 15, 2025, meeting with Erika Kirk. Owens also questioned Harpole’s decision to file the lawsuit without first contacting her attorneys.
Ultimately, Owens suggested Harpole may have filed the lawsuit as a “PR move.”
“I can tell you, though, via my experience with defamation, that there are a lot of lawsuits that are filed because people don’t understand that what you put in a lawsuit filing is not always true,” said Owens. “You can write whatever you want, and people tend to take everything that’s filed as a fact.”
Citing her previous experience being sued for defamation by Kimberly Klacik, the former Republican candidate for Congress in Maryland, and Brigitte Macron, the First Lady of France, Owens questioned, “Is this someone going, I just want to be able to get people to think that by filing this lawsuit means I’m telling the truth? I’m saying in this lawsuit that I wasn’t at Fort Huachuca. Why else would I file a lawsuit?”
While Snow notably told Owens he was highly confident he saw Harpole and Erika Kirk near Fort Huachuca on September 8, then again on September 9, when they were joined by Amodei at the Arizona military installation, Harpole alleges in his lawsuit that the flight records provided to Owens by Erika Kirk on December 15 definitively prove he was in Dallas, Texas, during the period Snow describes.
Similarly, Amodei was in Washington, D.C. for official business, and has highlighted a congressional video showing him inside the U.S. House of Representatives when Snow claims the Fort Huachuca meeting occurred.
Despite predicting Harpole’s lawsuit may not “make it through the court system,” Owens then appeared to preview her legal strategy, indicating she could use the lawsuit to further her self-styled investigation into the assassination of Charlie Kirk, while hedging that she had yet to discuss options with her husband, George Farmer.
“What I will say is, how many opportunities are we gonna have? Are we ever going to have another opportunity to force depositions? Are we ever going to have an opportunity to have the power of subpoena?” Owens said, adding that she could use Harpole’s claims in the lawsuit to justify accessing video of Charlie Kirk’s assassination not previously released to the public.
She stated, “We can now take a look. We want to see this footage and subpoena this footage so that we can see what happened on the ground,” and added that her discovery efforts would include internal text messages and depositions for TPUSA employees, executives, and contractors mentioned in his filing.
“Can we now sit these people for a deposition? Can we now demand these text messages? He’s saying there’s no conspiracy here,” said Owens. “Can we now say, okay, well, we’d like to discover that. We’d like to actually look at all of the evidence and be able to come up with an argument, and we’re going to need access.”
Owens then again mentioned the possibility of her lawyers deposing Erika Kirk, calling it potentially the only opportunity to conduct such questioning.
“Is this the only plausible path that we will have before us to get Erika Kirk to sit for deposition, to answer basic questions that we’ve been asking for, actually, a very long time?” Owens questioned, “If that’s the claim that you are making regarding there being no conspiracy, is the power of subpoena actually going to be our only way?”
Later in her podcast, Owens appeared to add context for her goals regarding a deposition for Erika Kirk, and stated “unequivocally” that she was not accusing the widow of murdering Charlie Kirk.
“I’ve never made that claim in public. Sincerely, I’ve never made that claim,” claimed Owens. “What I have said and what I stand by today is that her documented lies appear to me to be rising to a level of conspiracy and that she should be questioned.”
Among other complaints with the widow’s behavior since her husband’s death, Owens also cited Erika Kirk’s “lack of interest in exploring possible options,” including the possibility of “a foreign influence,” TPUSA’s refusal to release a video that shows Charlie Kirk declaring his wife should become CEO in the event of his death, as well as her decision to forgive Tyler Robinson, who the FBI and Utah authorities have accused of killing Charlie Kirk, during her husband’s public memorial service.
Harpole has asked for a jury trial and is seeking an award “well into the millions of dollars.”
The lawsuit has been assigned to U.S. District Judge William Lynn Campbell, who was appointed to the federal bench by President Donald Trump in 2017.
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Tom Pappert is a 2025 recipient of the Dao Prize and the lead reporter for The Tennessee Star. He also reports for the Star News Network. Follow Tom on X. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Candace Owens” by Gage Skidmore. CC BY-SA 2.0.
