Jennica Pounds, also known as DataRepublican, is a data analyst and self-described algorithm geek. In the Weekend Punch interview, she speaks with The Daily Wire about debunking wild conspiratorial claims surrounding Charlie Kirk’s assassination, widespread skepticism about information, and what it means to pursue the truth. The following quote is Pound’s X response to Candace Owens and her conspiracy theories in light of the evidence presented at Tyler Robinson’s preliminary hearing, which concluded this week.
Hello Mrs. Owens,
You told millions of people that Tyler Robinson “wasn’t even there.” That you felt “confident stating that Tyler Robinson did not kill murder Charlie Kirk.”
He was on camera. Prone on the Losi rooftop at 12:22. Shot at 12:23:28. DNA on the screwdriver at 30 quintillion to one. DNA on the rifle at 1.7 octillion to one. He told his family what he did. His parents helped him surrender. He texted his roommate: “I am, I’m sorry.” He engraved “Hey Fascist! Catch!” on the ammunition a month before he used it.
You said police “didn’t even question” Lance Twiggs. He was interviewed twice. FBI the morning after. Joint state-federal team seven months later. His own attorney. Voluntary phone surrender. You laughed when you said it.
You told Shawn Ryan a shaped charge killed Charlie. That PETN was in his microphone. The medical examiner says gunshot wound. Bullet fragments were recovered from his body. A .30-06 Mauser with Robinson’s DNA was found in the woods. Neither side — not prosecution, not defense — has mentioned explosives. Not once in four days.
You said the shot came from below. The Losi building is above the amphitheater.
You called Erika Kirk a “clinical psychopath” to an audience of millions. You said the assassination was “an occult ritual.” You said Charlie was “sitting in a pentagram.” You told people Israel killed him because he refused Netanyahu.
You made over a hundred episodes. You built a franchise on a dead man’s name.
And the hardest fact of all: Tyler Robinson’s own defense lawyers — the people whose entire career is on the line to get him acquitted — have refused to make a single one of your arguments. Not one. They’re challenging DNA methodology. They are doing their jobs. You were doing something else entirely.
Charlie Kirk changed my life. He platformed my work when nobody knew who I was. He had my back when I was doxxed. I was the ten-thousandth most important person in his world and I will never be able to repay him.
So I did what I know how to do. I read every transcript. I watched every hour of testimony. I cataloged your claims and I held them up against what was said under oath.
Every single one failed.
I don’t know why you did this. I’m not going to speculate on your motives, because that would make me exactly the kind of analyst I’ve spent my career refusing to be. But I know what you did. You told people confident lies about a dead man’s murder, and millions of them believed you, and some of them turned that belief into threats against his widow.
The trial continues. And every day of sworn testimony is another day your words get tested against reality… under oath, on the record, where it counts.
I’ll be here for all of it… because just as Charlie defended me, I will do what little I can to defend his legacy and @TPUSA and @MrsErikaKirk from evil.
Ben Domenech: You’ve done extensive research on the details surrounding the shooting of Charlie Kirk, particularly regarding the conspiracy theories that have spread online like wildfire. What topline details have you found that you think are most important for people to know?
Jennica Pounds: After a week, all of the conspiracy claims have been thoroughly demolished in court. [Tyler] Robinson’s own defense team isn’t making any of the claims circulating online.
They’re making procedural challenges to not show evidence. The people who have the most to gain from a conspiracy being real won’t even touch any of Candace [Owens]’s claims.
Data analysis is a skill. The hardest part isn’t connecting dots; anyone can do that, as Candace and her fans have proven. It’s knowing when not to connect them. When you find yourself pulling more and more people into your theory as villains to make the story hold together, that’s when it crosses into fan fiction territory. Except in this case, fan fiction is posing a very real threat to Erika Kirk’s life.
BD: We live in an era of heightened skepticism after a cascade of media scandals that destroyed public trust. It’s reiterated constantly – consider Graham Platner the most recent example. How do you go about breaking through that skeptical assumption – that everyone is lying – with the truth?
JP: The skepticism is earned. People have been lied to by institutions for years, and they’re right to demand receipts. So I give them receipts. Now, I’ve made mistakes and been wrong. But I’ve never gone wrong by letting the receipts talk as much as possible.
Also, most people in this space try to destroy the person they disagree with. I’m not interested in that. What I do is show people the story they’ve been told, and then show them what the evidence actually says, and let the distance between those two things do the work.
The trick is that you don’t have to convince anyone of anything. You just have to make the evidence accessible and let people be honest with themselves.
BD: Candace isn’t alone. Her conspiracy theories – too many to count – have been echoed and defended by Ian Carroll, Tucker Carlson, and Megyn Kelly. What’s your interpretation of why people would entertain these theories as legitimate, given the evidence?
JP: I’m not going to speculate on anyone’s motives; that would make me exactly the kind of analyst I just warned you about.
What I can tell you is what I see in the data. None of these people have gone line by line through three days of sworn testimony. None of them have spent hours cataloging their own claims to track how far the theories have drifted from anything falsifiable. They built a narrative before the evidence was available, and the narrative is more important than anything.
And I’d be remiss not to mention Joel Finkelstein at The Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI), a good friend, who has done more work than anyone studying the assassination culture that took Charlie’s life… and that may take more lives if it isn’t confronted. We need to learn the difference between data and narrative, and fast.
BD: There are clearly a lot of people obsessed with the idea that Candace and her supporters have uncovered some vast political conspiracy. If you were sitting next to someone who thought that way at a local bar, what would you say to them?
JP: I’d tell them that Charlie Kirk changed my life. He gave me a platform when nobody knew who I was. He stood behind me when I was doxxed by Rolling Stone. I owe him more than I’ll ever be able to repay.
Then I’d buy them a drink and tell them I get it. We’ve all been lied to by people in power, and the instinct to distrust official narratives is earned.
But finding the truth isn’t making a conscious decision to follow a different narrative to the prevailing one. It’s about following the data, the actual data, no matter where it goes. The data shows that many institutions are failing us and are taking escalating actions to maintain their legitimacy by coercion. That’s true. But the data also shows that Tyler Robinson killed Charlie Kirk, and that’s becoming more obvious every day the court proceedings are televised.
BD: The effort that goes into heavy research these days seems harder than in the past, but also more accessible. What approaches and tools do you wish young journalists would use to pursue information and data rather than just chasing after everyone else?
JP: AI is a double-edged sword for sure. Most people use AI to replace their thinking – that’s why those stories of lawyers using AI-hallucinated citations are becoming more common.
For me, agentic AI has been a godsend in analyzing gigabytes of video transcripts, books, documents, website mirrors – and connecting them all together. It’s not unusual to burn 100+ subtasks to compile a 12-post thread. If AI is making your job easier rather than challenging you to meet a 100x productivity increase, you’re probably using it wrong.
BD: I have bottle 887 of Distilled Data in my bar. It is nearly empty. Can we get a rerelease?
JP: Glad you enjoyed it! I’ll petition my husband.
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