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Less than 36 hours after Charlie Kirk was shot and killed during a speaking engagement in Utah, his alleged assassin was arrested.

And while the case against Tyler Robinson seems fairly open-and-shut, many remain convinced that there’s more to the story.

Some believe Robinson had accomplices, while others are convinced he was a pawn in a vast conspiracy.

The discourse surrounding Kirk’s death has now been further complicated by shocking claims from conservative pundit Candace Owens.

Owens has made a career out of courting controversy, and now, she’s positioned herself at the center of the year’s biggest news story.

To be fair, Owens and Kirk were close friends, so her motives in all of this might be pure.

But that doesn’t make her recent remarks any less incendiary.

Candace Owen says Charlie Kirk faced ‘threats,’ bribes over Israel

On Monday, Owens posted an hour-long episode of her podcast that has already been viewed nearly six million times.

In it, she alleges that Kirk faced pressure from powerful individuals within the conservative sphere, particularly billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman and Seth Dillon, CEO of the satirical news site The Babylon Bee.

“Last week was not a dream. Charlie Kirk, my friend, is dead. He was publicly executed. And as we’re all searching for answers, a lot of the ones that are being supplied to us are not making sense,” Owens said at the start of the episode.

From there, Owens alleged that during a “tense” lunch meeting in the Hamptons over the summer, Dillon and Ackman tried to coerce Kirk into showing his support for Israel by visiting the county.

Owens says that Kirk had been experiencing a change of heart regarding his support for Israel’s war against Palestine, and that he had previously been contacted by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

According to Owens, “threats were made” as part of a high-pressure “intervention” to get Kirk to double down on his pro-Israel stance.

She also alleges that some of the interested parties resorted to bribery.

“I know that Charlie was offered a significant amount of money during that time — a ton of money,” Owens said.

Who is Seth Dillon?

In 2018, Dillon purchased The Babylon Bee — a conservative, Christian alternative to news satire sites like The Onion — from its founder, Adam Ford.

Seth and brother Dan Dillon have been primarily in charge of the site and its content ever since.

He and Ackman have both responded on X to the claims Owens made about their meeting with Kirk.

Dillon stated that he was invited to a Hamptons retreat by Kirk, but “if there were any private meetings, I wasn’t in them.”

Ackman accused Owens of “slander,” writing, “For the record, at no time have I ever threatened Charlie Kirk, Turning Point or anyone associated with him. I have never blackmailed anyone, let alone Charlie Kirk.”

We will have further updates on this developing story as new information becomes available.