JUSTICE FOR CHARLIE KIRK | SPECIAL COVERAGE

Summary

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Podcast Summary

Podcast: Real America’s Voice
Episode: Justice for Charlie Kirk | Special Coverage
Date: July 7, 2026
Host: Blake Neff (with regulars Joe Bob and guests Graham Allen, Andrea Burkhart)

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Episode Overview

This special hour-long episode offers comprehensive coverage and analysis of the first day of the Utah v. Tyler Robinson preliminary hearing, concerning the fatal shooting of conservative commentator Charlie Kirk. The episode blends legal breakdowns, emotional reflections from those present in court, and responses to viral social media narratives. Legal expert Andrea Burkhart joins for the latter half to demystify courtroom procedures.

The tone is candid, emotional, and committed to transparency, emphasizing both the legal complexity and the very personal toll of the proceedings on Kirk’s loved ones and the extended Turning Point community.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Emotional Weight of the Case (00:39–04:14)

• Personal Impact:
  • Blake Neff and Joe Bob open by describing the “excruciating” weight of reliving the tragedy during the hearing.
  • Joe Bob [02:09]: “This is uncharted territory for everybody… it was just this sinking feeling… the gravity of Erica and Charlie’s parents being in the room and what they were going to have to see during this whole process… necessary to get justice, but...still terrible.”
• Long Road Ahead:
  • The trial might not begin until 2028, with possible years of appeals expected.

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2. Courtroom Scene & Key Attendees (04:14–12:41)

• Family & Friends Present:
  • Charlie’s wife Erica and parents sat together, supporting one another emotionally.
  • Other notables: Don Jr. (friend), Jack Posobiec, Brandon Tatum, Graham Allen (guest), and extended family.
• Hearing's Purpose:
  • This is a preliminary hearing—not a trial. No jury is present, and the standard is probable cause (not guilt beyond reasonable doubt). Credible hearsay is admissible.

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3. Legal and Procedural Breakdown (06:15–12:41)

• Judge & Process:
  • Judge Graff described as “balls and strikes,” methodical, careful not to make missteps.
  • The defense objected to nearly every exhibit—their strategy seemingly to “blur the focus” and delay, frequently raising hearsay concerns.
  • Main evidence from day one:
    • Surveillance video showing Robinson on campus four different times.
    • Medical examiner’s report: cause of death, gunshot wound to the neck.
    • Officer testimony about physical evidence (screwdriver, prone marks) on rooftop.

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4. In-Court Experience: Firsthand Observations

Guest: Graham Allen (in the courtroom) [12:44–16:44]

• Defendant's Conduct:
  • Graham, seated near Robinson, reports he “was very active in wanting to see evidence,” and that the defense attorney appeared “giggling and laughing”—which he found disturbing.
• Family Unity:
  • Graham emphatically refutes internet rumors about any rift between Erica and Charlie’s parents: “Total lunacy. Total garbage.”
• Media Narratives vs. Reality:
  • Graham urges listeners to disregard out-of-context social media clips and “watch as much of the trial as they can.”
  • Graham Allen [13:42]: “A lot of bad actors are taking clips...but then the very next piece...is an even better picture showing obvious indentations...”
• Defense Tactics:
  • It is the defense—not prosecution—most aggressively seeking to limit what evidence is shown and to whom.

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5. Evidentiary Disputes and Viral Clips (19:19–22:43)

• Compilation Video Controversy:
  • The state’s video compilation (showing Robinson on campus) was not admitted, as the person who prepared the edits hadn’t authenticated them.
  • Judge Graff sustains the objection but allows that raw and edited versions will likely be (re)submitted.
  • Blake Neff [21:29]: “They used a John Madden style… freeze frame and circle… to spotlight different things… It will be resubmitted as evidence.”
  • Aim: Not about fabricated content, but about proper authentication of demonstratives.

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6. Witnessing Graphic Evidence [23:10–27:24]

• Explicit Videos:
  • Court and parties agreed graphic 4K footage of the shooting would not be publicly displayed; only those present in the courtroom watched.
  • Graham Allen [25:24]: “...on that video specifically, I was looking right at the judge when that happened. And yeah, it's tough. His reaction is a real reaction.”
  • Victim’s family was allowed to leave the courtroom before the explicit footage was played.
• Support Presence:
  • Don Jr. and others in attendance “simply there for Charlie and Erica.”

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7. Public & Media Response (27:31–32:24)

• Outside the Courtroom:
  • Security tight; no protestors observed; mostly media outside.
  • Some online chatter misinterprets events (such as a family member leaving following a nosebleed, not a dramatic protest).
• Media Coverage:
  • Media and camera attention primarily focused on the families.

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8. Legal Analysis with Andrea Burkhart (34:59–54:57)

• Objection Tactics:

  • The defense’s “object to everything” approach is common in high-stakes (potential death penalty) cases, partly to preserve appellate claims.
  • This strategy risks diluting important substantive objections and potentially frustrating Judge Graff.
  • Andrea [37:59]: “If you simply flood the judge’s attention… you run the risk that...something really strong...is going to be lost in the fog.”

• Video Evidence Rejection:

  • Not unusual; problem was lack of authenticating witness, not suspicion of fabrication.
  • Plan: Resubmit both raw and enhanced (annotated) video versions for the record.

• Case Structure:

  • State presenting a “chronological story” of the investigation.
  • Forensic and DNA evidence, as well as the video statement from Robinson’s boyfriend, expected in upcoming days.

• Procedural Timeline:

  • The state may take up most of the week; forensics and additional witnesses scheduled next.
  • Defense will present their forensics experts; state did not object to their inclusion.

• Defense Strategy Evaluation:

  • No indication (yet) of a strong factual innocence argument—defense appears focused on procedural points and obstruction.
  • No major discovery disputes raised at this stage.

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• Joe Bob [02:09]: “...this sinking feeling...the gravity of Erica and Charlie’s parents being in the room...necessary to get justice, but...still terrible.”
• Graham Allen [13:42]: “All this garbage that Erica and Charlie’s parents not being on the same page...total, total lunacy. Total garbage.”
• Blake Neff [16:44]: “This is one of the most methodical criminal justice proceedings any of us ever have ever seen.”
• Andrea Burkhart [37:59]: “If you simply flood the judge’s attention...you run the risk that there’s something really good and strong...lost in the fog.”
• Graham Allen [25:24]: “...I looked around...everybody kind of had their hand clenched because we all knew exactly when the moment happened...I was looking right at the judge...his reaction is a real reaction.”
• Graham Allen [32:39]: “When all this is said and done...my biggest hope and prayer is that Charlie’s legacy is the life he lived—not how he died.”
• Blake Neff [33:26]: “Sunlight’s the best disinfectant. We want full transparency. Not the graphic stuff...but full transparency.”

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Important Timestamps

• 00:39–04:14 — Hosts express emotional impact of Day 1.
• 04:14–12:41 — Scene-setting, key attendees, family/friend presence.
• 12:44–19:19 — Graham Allen’s courtroom observations and emotional recounting.
• 19:19–22:43 — Video evidence dispute and plans for resubmission.
• 23:10–27:24 — Viewing of graphic evidence and family accommodations.
• 27:31–32:24 — Description of public and media outside the courtroom.
• 34:59–54:57 — Legal commentary by Andrea Burkhart; procedural and strategic analysis.

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Closing Thoughts

The episode is both a factual breakdown and an emotional chronicle of a harrowing first day in the high-profile Charlie Kirk shooting case. It distinguishes itself by its insistence on correcting viral misinformation, its transparency regarding courtroom procedures, and by foregrounding the very real human cost for the families involved. The expectation is for continued exhaustive, daily coverage as the hearing progresses, with transparency and accuracy prioritized.

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For listeners seeking trustworthy, nuanced updates on this case, Real America’s Voice’s blend of emotional honesty and procedural clarity—augmented by legal experts—offers a reliable daily touchstone.

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Transcript

[Blake Neff]

This is an I heart podcast, Guaranteed human.

[Joel Osteen]

What God started in my life, he's

going to finish the Joel Osteen Daily Podcast.

Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life. What was meant for my harm? Lord, I want to thank you. Right now, you're turning to my advantage.

Your daily source of hope and encouragement.

Your second wind is on its way. God is about to breathe on your life in a new way.

Listen to the Joel Osteen Daily podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, and wherever you get your favorite podcasts.

[Blake Neff]

Special edition Preliminary Hearing Recap. We're going to be doing every day to break down what happened in the preliminary hearing of Utah, State of Utah versus Tyler Robinson. And we've got myself, Blake Neff here. And now we have Joe Bob, which is fantastic. Joe Bob, welcome. There you are. And we've also got Joe Bob does amazing work for us. He's got a great show. Amazing Joe Bob, just for the audience. You've been on the show before, but just in case people don't realize, you've been with Turning Point for years. You opened for Charlie, you traveled with Charlie at all the campus events, and you do a great show on Real America's Voice. So God bless you, man. Thank you for joining us today. It's been a heavy day, and I think that's where I'm just going to quickly start. I have a whole breakdown of all the facts. And we have Graham Allen joining us, and then we have Andrea Burkhart, who's a legal commentator. She's going to join us for the second half of the hour. So. But I just want to start there. I can't stress to you enough of how much this day has affected me, has affected Joe Bob, Blake, everybody in this office, everybody at Turning Point. It's so, so excruciating, actually, to have to be reliving all of this and to have it, like, up front and in our faces again. So, Joe Bob, maybe just tell, tell what it's like for you, my friend.

[Joe Bob]

You know, I actually appreciate you starting it off like that because coming into this, this is uncharted territory for everybody. Like, I don't know, are we, you know, supposed to break it down like, you know, these super sophisticated legal minds that, of course we all are, or are we supposed to be vulnerable about the fact that was a tough day. I was walking around the house earlier this morning, and my wife's like, hey, is something wrong? And it's like, yeah, there is. And it just was one of Those days where she could tell something was wrong, but it wasn't, you know, it was just this sinking feeling that you had. And I was there last week at hq and we're talking with some people around there about what this was going to be, and same sinking feeling when I, you know, kind of realized the gravity of Erica and Charlie's parents being in the room and what they were going to have to see during this whole process that is, of course, necessary to get justice. But the very fact that you have to endure it doesn't make it better, doesn't make it good. It's still terrible. And so, you know, while there's the kind of. The progression of this, the proceeding of all of this is encouraging in the quest for justice again, I'm glad you started off like that, because it is a sinking, like, heavy feeling is around here all day.

[Blake Neff]

It's so heavy sinking in just.

This was a heavy day. But with the knowledge this is day one of a preliminary hearing that we talked to various people. They said they think it'll go at least three days. It could go all five. And then that's the preliminary hearing. We'll talk to Andrea again and see what she thinks, but she says the trial might not hit until 2028, and then who knows how long that will go. And we might have to sit through appeals for this. This is. We were getting a lot of well wishes. I know you were. I was. And what I was telling everyone, telling people who emailed is this is. It's going to be a long process and we are here to see it through all the way to the end.

Let's get into this. I just want to. It's a brief primer. Keep it on all three of us so we can all chime in intermittently as we go through. I'm just going to go through a couple facts since this is day one. I just want to reiterate. So Erica was in court today. She was seated next to Charlie's father, Rob, and his mother, Kathy Kathryn. I call her Katherine. They sat together. They did enter through different entrances for security purposes, but inside they sat together. And all the news reporting that I've read is that they were comforting each other, crying on each other's shoulders. There was also Erica's sister, Erica's niece and nephew, representing the full extended family on both sides, including many relatives that couldn't be there, but they're there in spirit with them. Don Jr. Was there, obviously a close friend of Charlie's, his wife, Bettina. You also had Jack Posobec, Brandon Tatum, and Graham Allen, who's gonna be joining us in just a second. But to reiterate, this is day one of the preliminary hearing, not the trial. As Blake said, there's no jury. The purpose is for the state to present enough evidence to the judge, Tony Graf, to meet the probable cause threshold. And if that threshold is met, then it will go to a trial. Okay. So during the hearing, you see the state call witnesses, and the defense may cross examine them. We saw that today. The defense may also call witnesses, and the state may cross examine them, too. And there's a lot of. You'll hear a lot of mention of hearsay. Well, the evidence governing a preliminary hearing is different in this case than a trial. Right. So the standard of proof is lower. The purpose is you can. You can admit what they call credible hearsay. Okay. Blake's not a lawyer, but he does play one from time to time on. On tv. Do you. Do you have any, like. It's just clarifying.

There's. Usually in a normal criminal trial, you have the right to confront your accusers. And so a long established principle in our legal system, I don't know about those around the world, but certainly in ours is you generally can't go, oh, this office. You know, a police officer will say, this person told me that. And in reality, you could bring that person in, and instead you just have this secondary hearsay. You can't have someone testify that they heard something from someone while that guy's denying it and say, well, we just believe this officer is telling the truth. And so the example here where it's coming up, for example, is they asked one of the. The second witness today what was in the medical examiner's report. And he's just saying, well, I saw this in the medical examiner's report, and that's a credible hearsay in the sense this is a police officer who's describing a document that he read while they were preparing this case. In the actual trial, we will be having the actual medical examiner on.

Yeah, exactly.

As a witness who will say, I performed this autopsy. This is what I found. They can be cross examined. But for the case of. For this sort of probable cause thing, it's totally acceptable for them to have a police officer say, we have this, and we generally trust this person, unless there's an obvious reason.

And Judge Graff has been very disciplined. He's sort of balls and strikes kind of guy. I think he's very cognizant of the fact that he doesn't want to Make a misstep that could make it appealable or whatever. Right. The defense has fought very hard to prevent cameras in the courtroom. Okay. They previously filed a standing objection to the state's preliminary hearing exhibits. Today, they stated additional objections as each exhibit was introduced. And that was one of the big storylines today, every single exhibit they would object to. So that's why we saw a whole lot of, I would say, theater, trial theater from the defense today regarding those objections. The judge has been very straightforward. Balls and strikes, like I said. And it seems like the defense's strategy has been to blur the focus. Right. They're delaying. They want to kind of slow things down, which is not surprising given everything that we've seen from this far. But, you know, at least that's my view, right? This blurring of the focus so they can't lay out the details. So as you as a watcher and Joe Bob, I'd be curious your perspective. Just watching this preliminary hearing, trying to sort of keep track of the details is difficult because it's bogged down in so much procedural back and forth.

[Joe Bob]

So last week on the Turning Point Tonight show, we broke down to the best of my ability.

[Graham Allen]

Right.

[Joe Bob]

I'm not an attorney, but the procedural process, kind of like what Blake had laid out, kind of what you guys have been talking about on the show pretty consistently in that there are different procedural rules for the pretrial and the actual trial. Hearsay can be admitted, all of these things. The defense seem to be trying to add the pre or had the actual trial to the pretrial. Right. They tried to have all of the rights of the defendant that exist in the trial to the pretrial with just the constant objections over and over and over again. And I hope my terminology is correct there, but that's how I understood it. But what I think was really interesting, and I recognize people don't have, you know, the full day to sit here and watch this, but I would encourage people to watch a big chunk of it if they can, because what I saw as an observer was prudence and discernment from the judge. Every single thing he took it in, considered, decided whether or not it was going to get played for the courtroom and for the media, decided if that was, you know, good or bad or, you know, obviously evidence admissible and inadmissible. And you really got to see the process of thought that goes into it. It's not just this haphazard. And again, I don't know why people would assume that it would be, but it was really good to see that Reiter of discernment on the bench to go. Here's what we're considering. Here's all the processes laid out. And again, as more or less a layperson when it comes to the legal system, it was good to see that throughout the entire day. Really.

[Blake Neff]

Yeah. And I'm told that we now have Graham. Graham again. Graham Allen. He's gonna be. We're gonna be letting him in. Graham was actually in the courtroom all day. So I'm gonna. While the studio gets Graham checked in here, I'm going to keep going with some of these breakdown. We prepared a point by point breakdown. Just keeping notes all day. So all in all, the state is going to call four witnesses and admit 40 to 50 exhibits. I believe we do have the images of the exhibits. If we get to throw those up, those are pieces of evidence. They called two of those witnesses today and admitted about a dozen exhibits. So the big, big, big takeaways. And then I'm just going to stop here with the big takeaways and then I'm going to bring Graham in is, I think first, Agent hall testified that Robinson was seen on UVU surveillance video on campus a total of four times. Four times on September 10, before, during, and then after the shooting. That. And so that was a big one. Four times. Now we're going to get into the video issues. I think we'll talk about that with Andrea. The Internet's, I think, tempted to run away with that one, but there's nothing so. And then also that the medical examiner's report listed Charlie's cause of death as homicide by gunshot wound to the neck. So no exploding, Mike, none of that stuff. The medical. The straight medical examiner's report says gunshot wound to the neck. All right. And then the other big takeaway is Officer Bagley confirmed that the roof of UVU's Losey center was accessible by public stairway and testified that he climbed to the rooftop immediately after the shooting. There he saw a red and black screwdriver and a disturbance in the gravel, which he described as markings consistent with someone lying in the prone position with a line of sight to where Charlie was speaking. So I think those, from just an evidence standpoint, those were the big takeaways. Graham Allen joins us now. Graham, so grateful to have you, man. And from the bottom of my heart, thank you for being in that courtroom and supporting Erica and her family, Rob and Kathy. I couldn't do it. If I'm just gonna be honest, I think I would have. I don't know how I would have reacted and it's a weird day.

[Joe Bob]

Yeah.

[Blake Neff]

What was it like?

[Graham Allen]

Well, weird day. Tyler Robinson was maybe 6, 7ft in front of me the, the entire day. You know, I've seen a lot of people recirculating and you know, an old clip on the Internet of him laughing and things like that. Well, what I can confirm, what I did see that all of us saw, that was on that front row especially, is Tyler Robinson was very, very active in wanting to see evidence. But when he would speak to I, I saw the back of his head when he would speak to his lawyer. I could see his lawyer side profile and she was giggling and she was laughing. And so that, that was hard to see in the courtroom. A couple things I can put to bed. All this crap about Erica and Charlie's parents not being on the same page or they don't like each other. It was complete garbage. I was on the same row. It was, it was Erica, Charlie's parents, it was Jack Posobec, me, Don Jr. All in the front row the entire time. When, when we all got went on recess and we're in the holding room, Erica was with Charlie's parents the entire time. Charlie's parents were speaking to all of us and they were talking to all of us. So all this garbage that Erica and the, the wife of Charlie Kirk and his parents, that they are not on the same page with each other, that's. That's total, total lunacy. Total garbage. I've also seen a couple things, again, that, you know, they took her phones from us. So I'm, I'm catching up to what the Internet is saying. I would encourage everybody to watch as much of the trial as they can, because what a lot of bad actors are doing is they're taking clips of them introducing one piece of evidence. For example, the gravel at the top of the building where the shot was taken. There's this, there's one picture that they put into evidence and they're like, it's kind of hard to see the impressions that you saw that day, is it not? And the officer says, yes, it's kind of hard to see the impressions I saw. Well, people were just clipping that and they're like, oh, this is a, this is a clown show. Like, like, oh, just trust me, bro, all this. But then the very next piece of evidence that they introduce is an even better picture showing obvious indentations of, of, of a grown male that was in a prone position to take a sniper style shot with a rifle. Like, so I encourage as many People as possible to watch as much of the trial as they can. I would also say that if you're watching this and you're on a side that. That believes. And I said this on my show today, this is about getting justice for Charlie. But if you're on this friend side, it's all about these conspiracies and things. It appears to be the defense that doesn't want any evidence seen by anyone in any way, shape, form, or fashion. It seems to be the defense that is against anything being admitted as evidence, being shown as evidence, all of those things. And so that was pretty shocking to me. I expected.

[Joe Bob]

Anyway.

[Blake Neff]

You can't underscore that point enough, though, Graham, is that I saw the same thing on social media where people were like, they don't want to show any evidence. And it's like, that's the defense. The defense is the one pushing not to show evidence. The state has been consistent. Like, we want cameras. We want to show all the evidence. And every time the defense has come in with an objection about, oh, it can't be on that monitor or it can't be published, which I guess means visible in the courthouse, because it hasn't been submitted as evidence, they're finding technicalities to sort of limit the publishing or exposure of said evidence.

And it just should be said. You know who someone was saying that today was the start of a show trial. And the real truth is, is everything about today has indicated this is one of the most methodical criminal justice proceedings any of us ever have ever seen. It took us 10 months to get to this point of a preliminary hearing, something that is waived in a very large number of murder trials. Something that happens within a handful of days in plenty of other. Not just robberies, but murders. Big cases like this one here, they've taken ages to get here. They have litigated every single point about evidence, about cameras, about timing, about representation, and they will continue to do so. And I think it was very telling that other than those claims for a lot of these people, they weren't even engaged today. They were picking other fights.

Well, and I had. I had a. Somebody who's not connected with Turning Point and not connected, like, at all with the trial. But he was just watching. He sent me a text. He said the defense's hearsay objections were legally ridiculous and summarily overruled by Judge Graff. The court was fully briefed on the matter in advance of the hearings and ruled. But the defense continues to raise this objection anyway. So that was some. That's Like a third part, completely unrelated. But this is a guy that's a prosecutor, and that he was just, like, filling me in, and I thought, okay, that's interesting. And go ahead.

[Graham Allen]

Go ahead.

[Blake Neff]

No, no, no, please.

[Graham Allen]

Well, there were definitely conversations about that. How long is the judge going to allow, you know, you know, code 1102, section 12, to be, you know, repeated

[Blake Neff]

over and over, invoked to block the publishing of evidence? Yeah, correct.

[Graham Allen]

And there were a couple of, you know, prior defense attorneys in there that. That, you know, we were able to have. Not in the court, obviously, when we were, you know, in recess or whatnot. You know, that would say that that's, you know, it's. It's not a good sign. You know, obviously, everyone's innocent until proven guilty. Obviously, that's the way our court system is done.

[Joe Bob]

But.

[Graham Allen]

But it's never a good sign when the defense is just stalling like that over and over. If I can talk about the video, if you would call it any type of, you know, small bump in the road. I want to put away any type of things, because we were also briefed on this as well. The video is not dead. That they wanted to submit into evidence that the judge said, well, you know, it's been enhanced or whatever it is, like, zoomed or circled around.

[Blake Neff]

Yeah. I want to get to actually. Graham. Graham, watch this. So we have this clip, and just. It helps to kind of bring some of this home. This is the clip. So this is when Judge Graff rejects the admittance of the state's compilation of videos. Now, again, we're referencing when the state presented was, I think, questioning the witness. And they said four times, and they had a compilation where they put together those four videos. This is that clip, sat 55.

[G]

This is a compilation video that was put together from a bunch of different sources by the county attorney's office. This individual did not create this compilation, can't testify to the accuracy of the actual materials that it was taken from. And furthermore, Mr. Olson himself is just referred to by Agent Hall. He specifically says people have altered these recordings. They've zoomed in when the. When the actual recording isn't zoomed. They've added little circles to people they want you to pay attention to. They've blurred people's faces out. So, I mean, it's been clearly altered, and it's not. I mean, they admit it's been altered. So we have real concern about authenticity of it.

[Graham Allen]

I'm gonna go ahead, and I'm sustaining the objection.

[Blake Neff]

All right, so, Graham, go ahead now. Now that the audience all caught up.

[Graham Allen]

Yeah. So, so what the judge actually like said okay to. In. That was not this grand slam dunk. Like, oh, the, you know, the, the, the state didn't get their evidence. That's not what's happening. Well, the judge, what he did in that was he didn't have. From the person on the state side who actually zoomed in in certain areas or put red circles around to make it more easy. What you were seeing, it's kind of like telling John Madden back in the day that he, he manipulated the footage that he's replaying, showing.

[Blake Neff]

That's a perfect, that's a perfect analogy that this. So it wasn't all altered. It wasn't like AI. What they did is they, to. They used a John Madden style exactly right. Where, you know, he'd freeze frame the NFL clip and he'd circle like, look what the ball's doing here. And it's going to shoot this way and watch, they're going to move this way. So they were trying to spotlight different things they wanted to draw attention to.

[Graham Allen]

Correct.

[Blake Neff]

And the video will be resubmitted as evidence. The only question is, and it will make it into evidence. It's only a matter of question of in what form will it be the raw original form, or will they. Because they're going to resubmit this, this video as evidence when the court's back in session tomorrow morning. However, we just don't know what the judge is going to rule if it has to be the rob. Either way, the evidence is what the evidence is that they saw him four times on campus.

[Graham Allen]

Correct. From my understanding is it was someone inside the state, you know, the prosecution's team that did it, but they just didn't have a signed. I think they called it 1102 or something like that. Yes, I did it.

[Joel Osteen]

I,

[Graham Allen]

Yeah, I didn't, I didn't, you know, edit or redact anything.

[Blake Neff]

Sure.

[Graham Allen]

So I, from my understanding, the plan is they're going to submit both. They're going to submit the unenhanced version along with the version they wanted to yesterday. And from the way it sounded with the judge, he's going to watch both of them then at that point. But you're right, it's going to be submitted tomorrow. Tomorrow, officially in as evidence.

[Blake Neff]

Joe. Bob, you have something you want to talk?

[Joe Bob]

Graham? So one of the big social media clips that moving, I don't know is the right word, but got a lot of attention, was Judge Graff watching the explicit video and his reaction, which in probably is way more tame than most people would react. One, were you in the courtroom for that? And two, what can you describe what that was like watching those videos?

[Blake Neff]

We have that clip here, Graham, if you want me to show it. Yeah, yeah, it's got the mute. It's the same one you posted, Graham, on. On X. So it's got a music bed to it, but 50. Yeah, yeah. It's wild to watch. It really is.

[Graham Allen]

I was there. We all were there. And so every one of the, the videos that were graphic in nature were. Were. Were admitted as evidence. But both the, the state and the defense did not want it to be seen publicly due to the graphic nature of it because we've all. Well, the vast majority of people saw the, the horrific social media, you know, iPhone images of what happened to Charlie. But, but especially when the, you know, the 4K videos were. Were. Were put in there. That was. Yeah, that, that was a tough moment. That was a really tough moment.

[Blake Neff]

To be clear, though, Graham, these were the videos that were rolling like, of the event. These are. Event. These are the 4K cameras that were around Charlie and that were submitted. They were handed over to authorities the, the moments after it happened, I guess. And so they've never been publicly viewed, correct?

[Graham Allen]

Yes. And so, you know, those of us that were in the rows, I mean, you know, the audio is playing and we all know exactly when, when it happens. I mean, you know, we've all heard the moment the question Charlie was asked and his beginning to answer. And so, you know, I looked around, you know, kind of my left and my right, and everybody kind of had their hand kind of clenched because we all knew exactly when the moment happened. But, but, but on that video specifically, I was looking right at the judge when that happened. And so, yeah, it was. Yeah, I mean, it's tough. It's tough to look at. And so his reaction is a real reaction.

[Blake Neff]

You mentioned you were looking around to people to your left and your right. Who did I know that Erica and her family got the opportunity to leave during the. Yeah, I guess demonstration of certain exhibits. Were they able to leave during that or were they still there? Because the judge was just. How did that work?

[Graham Allen]

Yeah, so. So, so they briefed us on that when we were in a recess that. Because obviously Erica and Charlie's. Charlie's family, they did not, they did not want to see. See that. And so, so we knew that they were going to let us know when that moment was going to happen. And so, yes, Char, or excuse me, Charlie. Goodness, Erica and Charlie's family left. And so the only people left on the very front row was Jack Posobic was on my left and Don Jr and his wife were on my right. And that's all that was left on the front row when Erica and Charlie's family left. And then Brandon, Tatum and others were, were behind us on the next row. So yes, they did get an opportunity to leave, but, but it was kind of a, a known leave because they, they didn't, they didn't want to see that. Nor, nor, nor should they have to.

[Blake Neff]

No. And even the, even just being able to hear it.

[Graham Allen]

Correct. Right.

[Blake Neff]

Yeah, I, I, like I said so I'm just so glad you were in there.

Something I didn't see people talking about. And I wonder if you saw it. Did you see people outside the courthouse? May either protesters, people trolling them, you know, making it, trying to make fun of it the way we saw at our women's event, or even maybe what's the scene? Fringe youtubers.

[Joel Osteen]

Yeah.

[Blake Neff]

What's it, what's it like in the vicinity?

[Graham Allen]

Yeah, so, so where they have us all entering in at, it's, it's pretty, it's pretty locked down that there is a little bit of what looks like a parking structure up on top and you have some news crews that are like, you know, pointing down and things like that. It was mainly just media when we were walking in. I mean, there's, there's a lot of videos on the Internet of us walking in to, to the courtroom and things like that. I didn't see any protesters per se in that exact moment. There were some people that were trying to get Don Jr. Like to, to comment and things. And he respectfully said, no, I'm here for, I'm here to support a friend. I'm not, I'm not doing any on the record stuff and things like that, which I thought was very classy of him. You know, he's simply there for Charlie and for Erica. And so I thought that that was a, a really big thing because it's not easy to sit in that courtroom all day and listen and, and just the mundane of all of it. You know, there was another moment where that I saw some people chattering about online where, you know, Charlie's. Either Erica and Charlie's parents or Charlie's parents got up abruptly and left or something like that. From what I understand, Charlie's mom got a nosebleed. You know, it's dry weather here. I don't think it was anything serious. And she was fine the rest of the Day, like I said, Charlie's parents were great. They were talking to all of us in the recess rooms with Erica right there. And so again, when I see all these things, and again, I was playing catch up with my phone, it's just. It shows shocking how many people have no idea what they're talking about.

[Blake Neff]

Well, and that's. That's been my whole experience of the last 10 months. Graham is, you know, it's like, totally out of the loop. The disconnect between real life and, like, where the Internet will go for it. That's one of the reasons we're doing this daily recap, because I want people to have somewhere where they can just get the actual facts from the case. Graham and Joe, Bob, I want to work you in here, too. And then we've got Andrea Burkhart. She's actually standing by already, which is great. But, Graham, what about Tyler Robinson's family? Did you see them and did you know which ones they were? Kind of.

[Graham Allen]

I didn't know who they were initially, but they were pointed out to me. So the way that we were lined up is. It's not. It's not like the courtroom like you see on tv, you know, like, where there's, like, two distinct sides and there's, like, this side and then that side. It was four rows horizontal to the actual courtroom that most people saw, you know, from the camera position. So the front row, like I said, was. Was Erica and Charlie's family. And then it was Jack Posobic, me, Don Jr. His wife. The next row, Stacey Sheridan was in there. Brandon Tatum, several other people were on the back row. And then the. I believe Tyler Robinson's family was on the third row. And then that fourth row was for just some random public people that got, you know, a seat in there, apparently.

[Blake Neff]

How many people are we talking about, Graham? All in.

[Graham Allen]

I think that we're viewing it or in total. Like, just like every total.

[Blake Neff]

Like, how many people were guests in that courtroom? I'm just curious.

[Graham Allen]

Oh, yes. Maybe. Maybe 40, maybe 50 people. When it's all said. Yeah, yeah. And that's including the media. And the media was sitting where normally the jury would sit, I would imagine.

[Blake Neff]

Got it.

[Joe Bob]

Graham, could you get a feel for what the media might have been talking about, chattering about, prepared to put out? Was there any sense of that? Did you get or did you not really interact with the media? That was there too much.

[Graham Allen]

You guys know me. I'm not a big fan of the media. So. So. So I didn't. I didn't have it on my radar to, to, like, talk to them specifically. I did note that a lot of them were looking our direction. A lot of the time it seemed like maybe that was toward Erica or Charlie's parents, maybe that was towards Tyler Robinson's parents. I don't know. But. But I did. But I did note that they were looking our direction an awful lot.

[Blake Neff]

Graham, final thoughts here, please. Any. Any final, you know, things that you noticed or want to make sure that we hear from you. And then we're going to take a quick 2 minute reset break and bring Andrea Burkhart in next. So, Graham, any final thoughts?

[Graham Allen]

Just. Just continue to pray for Erica, for Charlie's parents, for. For. For the family. This is day one, right? And so. So it's just getting started. Forensics and all that stuff haven't even been introduced. I mean, I mean, there's so much more to do. Just continue to pray. And then I, I said this on the show this morning. When all this is said and done and, and justice has been served and all this, my biggest hope and prayer is that Charlie's legacy is what, you know, is. Is the life he lived and not how he died is. Is my biggest hope and everything. And so we just want the truth. And this is actually how you get it and how you actually get actual justice.

[Blake Neff]

So. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Sunlight's the best disinfectant. We want full transparency. We want everything to be visible and viewable for the, I mean, not the graphic stuff. Candidly, I don't know. I mean, I don't think anybody needs to see Charlie being, you know, in 4K. I don't. I don't need to see that. But either way, Graham, I just want to finish with this and say thank you again. Means a lot to us on a very personal level. Right. Like, everybody's, you know, you got your show, we got ours, and influencer, blah, blah, blah, all that stuff. No, like, on a very personal level, it means the world to us that you were in there supporting Erica and Rob and Kathy and the whole family. So thank you, man.

[Graham Allen]

Least I could do.

[Blake Neff]

All right, we're going to take a quick break here. Three. I'm told it's three minutes, so three minutes. We're going to do a quick reset, bring in Andrea Burkhart, and we'll be right back.

[Joel Osteen]

What God started in my life, he's

going to finish the Joel Osteen daily podcast.

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Your daily source of hope and encouragement.

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[Blake Neff]

All right, welcome back. Here we are at the preliminary trial Day one recap episode here. Got Blake Neff, myself, Joe Bob is. Looks like we lost Joe Bob, actually. But we have Andrea Burkhart, legal commentator. She's a trial and appellate litigator. You can find her substack andrea burkhart.substack Andrea, welcome and thank you for making the time. You have been covering this trial. Really. You've been a source of information for me, too. You have a way of looking at things and insight because you've done this before. Big picture. What do you make of this? And then I want to get in of day one, and then I want to get into what we can expect expect tomorrow morning. And coming up next, based on the exhibit list that has been made public.

[Joe Bob]

Yeah.

[Andrea Burkhart]

So so far, there's nothing that's happened that has struck me as particularly surprising. Every jurisdiction has their own rules and their own ways of doing things. And so there can be a lot of variation in kind of the specifics of how things happen. But by and large, just in terms of what's being presented, how they're presenting it, the volume and nature of the objections that we're getting from the defense, as these are all things that, to my view, as somebody who's handled these in similar kind of hearings before, appears to be going largely according to script, consistent with the expectations that that the parties would have had for how a hearing like this is expected to go.

[Blake Neff]

My I think the big question that a lot of people have, and Blake and I were debating it and we were talking to some other people trying to figure out why. I think I texted you about it and I think you had a great answer. So I want you to share it here. Why is the defense basically trying to object to every single exhibit? Right. What is the tactic here? Is there anything to read into it?

[Andrea Burkhart]

Well, I think that is it is normal, as always, in a death penalty case. You just do expect to see a little bit more vigorous of a defense than you might in cases that don't have quite as much at stake. That said, it's also always a bit of a strategy call and maybe to some extent a style issue as well. How attorneys decide to manage things like objections in a case. What we saw today was just repeated objections. There's already a standing objection on the record that was filed in writing. But the defense is taking the opportunity to reiterate that objection, explain it multiple times. And so it can perhaps come across as a bit repetitive to be hearing the same.

[Blake Neff]

Yeah, but can't that eventually sort of backfire if you start frustrating the judge, if you start sort of, I don't know, just becoming, coming off like obstructionist?

[Andrea Burkhart]

It can, I mean, that is the trade off. It is a style choice to be aggressive like that. That can be off putting. The risk is that if you simply flood the judge's attention with everything possible that you could raise as an objection, then you run the risk that there's something really good and really, really strong. It's going to be lost in the fog of everything that you've already thrown at him and he's not going to realize, you know, oh, this time, you know, they really mean it. And there's, there's really something substantive here. So it is a little bit of a risky play. But just given their position and the fact that they do have an obligation to make the best record they can looking down the road and anticipating future appeals and future post conviction processes to make sure that they're not waiving any objection that he could make at any point of this process, that's going to be a big driving factor for why they are behaving the way they are.

[Blake Neff]

Really fascinating and I do think it's interesting, especially if they try that strategy in a trial, which I know you've warned us, could be as late as 2028, which I'm still like smarting from, to be perfectly honest. But if they try that in a jury trial, I can imagine that would be very frustrating for a jury. That would be very frustrating for the entire legal process, probably Judge Graff. So that's, I think that's important to kind of keep in mind. So we mentioned this in the first part of the hour and I want to ask you this one question. Then we'll get into the exhibit list and what we can expect next. I think the big bombshell today, if there was one, I certainly took note, is that they, the state is claiming that they have evidence of him of Tyler Robinson being on campus four times the day of September 10th, two times in the morning, one time during the actual shooting, and then one time in the wee hours of the night that even bled into September 11th. But then there was this controversy about the video and judge actually did Sustain that objection. Because the video had been altered. Please explain how you perceive that. I know that the evidence is going to be resubmitted tomorrow morning. They're gonna submit, apparently, both the raw and the edited. It's not AI Edited, it's not enhanced, it's not changed. They just John Madden style, zoomed in, drew circles around certain things to draw your attention to what they wanted you to pay attention to. But how did you perceive that?

[Andrea Burkhart]

Well, I perceived a lot of this as a little bit of a feeling out by everybody to get a sense of what the parties are going to try, what types of limits, rules they're going to try to impose, and then what the judge's tolerance is going to be within that playing ground. So what the prosecution was trying to do is really not unusual. It's trying to prepare an exhibit in a way that maximizes its helpfulness. It's very common, particularly with things like video evidence, that there's a lot of dead time and you don't necessarily want to watch the whole thing. It's just wasteful.

[Blake Neff]

Yeah. And you're not even sure where your eye is supposed to be looking sometimes, if it's grainy or whatever, those little aids can help, like, be like, hey, look here. Because this is where the suspect walks through the frame. You know, that, to me, makes a lot of sense. And. But they're saying it. It adds bias or something. Is that their argument?

[Andrea Burkhart]

Oh, no. The only. The sole issue that came up really, with this is that because they didn't have the person who actually prepared those edits available to testify or, you know, submit a statement that explains what they did and exactly what the alterations were, that they weren't sufficiently authenticated for purposes of ADM in court. They are basically resolving that problem by, as you said, their intention is now to just present the unedited compilation of the different video clips that they collected. And so then they'll be able to show the judge that, and that will enable him to then see when he looks at the edited version, what exactly they did to revise it and to draw it to his attention. So there won't be any confusion about what was the raw video and what was added by somebody for editorial purposes.

[Blake Neff]

Okay, now that makes a lot of sense. Okay, so I want to. Yeah. Okay, so we do have that clip. All right, 54, just to underscore your point here, Andrea, SOT 54, we're going

to resume with Mr. Hall tomorrow morning.

[Unknown]

And let me explain to. And I was going to explain this, but let Me explain why, Judge? Our intent is to prepare an original version of the video that has been in dispute today without the circles, without the blur and without the zooming in. And our intent is to introduce that tomorrow as a different exhibit. And we just can't prepare that in the next hour or so for today.

[Blake Neff]

Agent hall, you may step down.

And we'll resume with your testimony tomorrow morning.

All right. So that just to sort of bring it home, I want to take our attention to the exhibit list that's been made public. And if I'm reading this right, so we got four witnesses that they're planning to bring up. The first two we've now met. We're halfway through with the first. With the second, it seems like we're about to enter the phase of the preliminary hearing where we start getting into forensic. When we start getting into DNA, and probably maybe we might see that video from Lance Twiggs, who's Tyler Robinson's lover. So am I reading that right, or do you think that the defense is slowing things down to the extent that we're not going to get that far

[Andrea Burkhart]

tomorrow, where I expect we're going to go? It appears to me that the state is telling basically a chronological story. They're putting this in order in terms of the timeline. If that's correct, then we won't probably get the forensics until close to the end. And what we wouldn't instead get is leading into the process of. We've started the identification of Tyler Robinson as the suspect. We've introduced the topic of his surrender, but we haven't tied those pieces together. How Tyler Robinson became known to the police, how he came to be in custody, how some of these pieces of evidence were obtained. You know, how they were able to get Tyler's DNA in order to do this comparison in the first place. Those are all gonna follow on the story of the identification, the surrender and then the arrest and taking into custody, seizure of additional evidence.

[Blake Neff]

I think it's just looking at this, it's exhibit 16 is the recorded statement from Lance Twiggs, which, if you remember, there was that back and forth whether or not he was gonna be subpoenaed to come in. The judge said he did not need to be subpoenaed, that the video would suffice. But if you're taught, if you're talking chronological order, then we probably would get 16. It's right. I mean, I would think maybe that could be tomorrow. But that really makes sense to me, what you just said.

Although they seem to have followed this Significantly, through chronological order, almost of practically the order they got the information in, because they started with, you're at the scene, these are videos that we obtained at the scene, and then here's the video we obtained from uvu. And then eventually, maybe I'm totally off the.

That's actually an interesting wrinkle there. When you say chronological order, Andrew, do you mean the order by which they got the evidence, or is it the. As the events took place that day on the 11th and so forth?

[Andrea Burkhart]

Yeah, no, I think that's a good correction by Blake. That's a very good point. It's the story of the investigation, because that's really what the probable cause hearing is focused on, is did the investigation produce reasonable suspicion to believe that this person likely committed this crime? And so the story of the investigation is kind of a common way to frame that particular issue for the court to understand what police learned, when they learned it, how it fit into their investigation, and then from that, what are the reasonable inferences that you can draw at each step along the way? So, because this is kind of a check on the police and the prosecutors reasoning in how they conducted the investigation, the chronological story of how they conducted that investigation just tends to be an easy way to follow that.

[Blake Neff]

We asked Jay Towne this earlier, but I wonder if you're gonna give the same answer as him. I just asked. So we have the statement, this interview they did with Twigs, it's videotaped. They're going to obviously introduce it. Is it likely you think that we will hear the whole thing played for us tomorrow? Will they merely maybe show a screenshot of it, that it exists, introduce a transcript? How much are we likely to get of new information? Because right now we essentially only have that. This. That this recording exists.

[Andrea Burkhart]

Well, that's the million dollar question. If I were going to, you know, go. Go to the prediction markets on this one, just based on what we've seen from Judge Graff so far, I would expect that we are going to at least hear it, possibly see it as well. But the reason I say that is because while he has certainly shielded some of the exhibits from public view so far, those have largely been grounded in concerns about the dignity of the victim and just kind of the common sense. There are certain things that don't need to be on tv, blasted everywhere for, you know, everybody to see for all eternity. This is not that. That said, the defense is going to have extremely strong objections to this. They're going to argue this is highly prejudicial to the defense. It's the kind of thing that is going to. People are going to form opinions of guilt based off of it. And so because of the potential to prejudice the jury pool, it should not be made public. So far, that argument has had really only limited success with Judge Graff. His view has been that. But number one, there are other mechanisms that exist to deal with pretrial publicity. We call in large jury pools. We do big jury questionnaires, we do a lot of individual questioning and things like that to root out people that have either too firm opinions about the case or just know too much about it and can't put that aside. But also because, you know, this is, I guess, the upside of the trial potentially being so far down the road is that the prejudice has time to mitigate. You know, it's not like we're having this hearing and then we're going to go have trial tomorrow. So everything that happened is going to be fresh in everybody's mind. There's a lot of time for new information, for memories to fade and things like that. So if I were going to predict it, I would predict that we are going to be able to see that one. And that's certainly the outcome I'm hoping for.

[Blake Neff]

So the way this works, just to bring everybody back into sort of a procedural mind set, the state goes first. They've allotted five days for this, but this could end by it's like four and a half because Wednesday is scheduled to be a half day. So if you're just looking at how much progress we're making, do you see the state going up until taking up all that time until Wednesday and then the defense taking Thursday, Friday, or are you getting a read of how this is gonna work? Because again, the state presents, the defense is going to cross examine, then the. Then the defense gets to call their witnesses and the state will cross examine. So just want to make sure everybody's still tracking with us on the actual TikTok here. Thoughts?

[Andrea Burkhart]

Yeah, I think that's probably in about the ballpark that I would expect the state to be done at this rate probably by the end of Wednesday or maybe partway into the day on Thursday. Just depends on some of the details of how these things flesh out. We are expecting the three forensic experts that the defense wants to call. The state did not object to them doing that. So these are going to be analysts, likely from the FBI or the atf. And so I'm not really expecting that to be extensive. They're not going to offer the same kind of like long background testimony that we're getting from these witnesses, like Officer Bagley and an Agent Hull, who participated, you know, extensively in different parts of the investigation. So there's just a lot of time and material for them to cover. The forensics tend to be much more discreet, and so they do tend to go a little bit faster for that reason.

[Blake Neff]

Okay, so we've got. I'm trying to make sure. We dealt with all of the things I saw online. Erica was actually sitting next to Charlie's parents. We dealt with that. Graham did that. The issue of the defense. It was actually the defense that was trying to block the presentation of the evidence, not the state, not the prosecution. And just to be expressly clear, we are in favor of max transparency. Here we are. And then, you know, the online chatter about the compilation video that's gonna be resubmitted tomorrow if you're. Now, I had. There's a. I have all these lawyers in my life that I didn't realize that are, like, texting me out of the blue. I'm like, oh, hi, nice. You know, I forgot about you from high school. And, you know, like. But I had another one of these guys text me. And he was basically saying that he. His basic understanding of the defense's tactic here is sort of the dog that didn't bark. Right. It's almost like a tell that they don't have a better defense strategy, that they're going straight obstruction. I mean, am I reading too much into that, or is this person who gave me that take, tell me if I'm wrong. All right. You're the bearer of good and bad news. You call balls and strikes.

[Andrea Burkhart]

Sure. Well, look, I did this job for almost 20 years, so everybody has a little bit of a different style and a little bit of a different approach. But there are some pretty common grounds, particularly. Particularly with the folks that I relate to, which is the professional public defenders here on this defense team. And so there are certain things that I expect to be the case given that I expect that if there is a strong case for factual innocence, the defense is going to be asserting that they are going to assert it early, they are going to assert it often. And that's because it's just kind of routine. It's normal that anytime somebody is charged with a crime, there's a high volume of information from the state side, from the prosecution side, about why the charges are being laid. But the defense side, you know, often doesn't get heard. And so you have something that corrects some of that information, you're going to bring that out early. You're going to bring that out often to try to correct some of that just public opinion, public impression about the case. Make sure that they understand there's more to the story here. Also, just seeing what has been focused on in the litigation that's happened in the trial so far. Some things stand out to me. One is the absence of discovery disputes, one of the online chatter things that. That happens periodically. There have been some complaints, some statements made about the record, about what the defense has or has not received through the discovery process. The defense has, by their own account, received a massive volume of information, hundreds and hundreds of terabytes of information, raw video data, raw cell phone data, digital data, a lot of this type of information. And so there may be, you know, things around the edges that the defense is unhappy with, but so far none of that has risen to the level of actually moving for a court order to compel that it be produced to you. There may be reasons for that. It may be because they're just waiting till this preliminary hearing is over. It may be because they don't actually have a strong right to get what it is that. That they're. That they're asking for.

[Blake Neff]

It may be that some of this

[Andrea Burkhart]

stuff has been able to be resol.

[Blake Neff]

That's a really good point. So just because. So because I'm just always predicting where the Internet is going to go next. So they're going to hear the defense go, we asked for this information and they're not giving it. And basically there are a lot of explanations of why that. Why they may not want to rush to give said intel. Right. Maybe they believe the prosecution believes that they're not entitled to such and such. Right. Or that they are planning on doing it. But you know, and what would be the be conflict resolution there? Would the judge rule what they're entitled? It's kind of case by case.

[Andrea Burkhart]

Yeah, it really depends on what it is that they're asking for. As far as what is mandatory discovery in Utah, it's very specifically defined.

[Blake Neff]

We're losing Rav. And I just want to say thank you, real America's voice, for taking us. We're going to run.