The REAL Reason We're Seeing Very RARE Preliminary Hearing For Tyler Robinson

Officer Chris Bagley is on the stand. He's with Spanish Fork Utah Police Department now. He was previously with Utah Valley University Police on the day that Charlie was killed. So far, the prosecution has been establishing his knowledge of the location of various buildings on campus. And he just said this about what he heard when Charlie was shot. You mentioned, so you mentioned you heard something. What did you hear again? I heard a gunshot. Okay. And can you describe the, you described Mr. Kirk's reaction. Was that simultaneous to hearing the gunshot? Yes, it was. When he fell to the left? Yes. Did you see the reaction from the crowd? Yes. What was that? Everybody kind of got up. They all said a lot of people were screaming, standing up and starting to run in all different directions away from the center of the tent. People running up, people were laying down on the steps. I'm trying to jump over people to get to the bottom of the stairs so I can help stop an individual that's probably shooting. What happened next? By the time I got to the bottom of the stairs, I was informed on the radio that we had a shooter in custody. That, of course, would not be the actual shooter. It was another man who injected himself into the melee. Joining me now to react to all of this are Viva Frye. He's former litigator and Rumble creator, and Dave Ehrenberg and Ashley Merchant. They are two of the hosts of our MK True Crime show on the MK Media podcast network, which you can find. Just go to any podcast app and type in MK True Crime. It'll come up, or you can go to mktruecrime.com and find links to all the multiple platforms. Great to see you all. Dave, let me start with you as former prosecutor, former state's attorney for Palm Beach County. What do you see as the goals for the prosecution here and the challenges for them as they try to convince this court that they do have probable cause to hold Tyler Robinson over for trial? Megan, good to be back with you and my fellow Florida men and women, Ashley and Viva Frye. Ashley actually is from Florida. She lives in Georgia now, so we're all Florida people. So the prosecution here has a slam dunk, I mean, as far as this hearing. This is not beyond a reasonable doubt. They just need to show some probable cause. They've got plenty of that. This is really for the defense. The defense wants to use this as a way to get as much information out there to cross-examine as many people as they can to try to help their defense. It was a loss for them when they couldn't get Twiggs to appear in person. They wanted to cross-examine him. They wanted to lock him down and said he's going to be on video. Robinson's boyfriend. Correct, correct. Now, Lance Twiggs is his name, but the defense, interestingly, the defense refers to him as Luna Twiggs because I guess he has transitioned already. So both sides, the prosecution and the judge call him Lance Twiggs and the defense calls him Luna Twiggs. So you can see where they're going. They're gonna try to discredit Twiggs and try to point the finger at him as much as possible. But as far as the prosecution, they're just gonna show the evidence. I would say a win for them would be if they can just show as little as possible to not turn over all their cards unless they absolutely have to because I think they've got Tyler Robinson dead to rights. Why are they doing it this way, Dave, with a preliminary hearing as opposed to going in front of a grand jury? Oh, the defense wants this. The defense wants this. So this is something that in Utah happens. And although I'm not an expert in Utah law, the defense can push for this because they want the prosecution to put up all the evidence so they have a chance to cross examine it. And so that's what happens. But yeah, it would be much easier just to get an indictment before the grand jury move forward. But here, I guess in Utah, they want the evidence so the judge could officially find probable cause and then move forward. But this is something the defense wants, not the prosecution. But is it like who is it up to? Because our information was that, I mean, of course, the defense wants it. They always want it. But our information was that the grand jury proceedings are actually much more rare in Utah, that they do happen, but they're much more rare. Ashley, do you have any thoughts on it? No. I mean, it's all of the things that both you and Dave were talking about. I have a lot of thoughts on it. It is very rare to have this type of proceeding. Typically, they would just go in front of a grand jury. And the grand jury, I mean, there's an old adage that it would indict a ham sandwich. That's true. They could definitely avoid this and go to a grand jury. My understanding in Utah is that's not the local custom. They typically afford these preliminary hearings, but they definitely don't have to. But as a defense lawyer, I can- What I was told by my team is Utah does have grand juries, but they're used much less often than preliminary hearings in Utah. I don't know why. It seems like it might just be a local custom. But it's an odd local custom, given the fact that prosecutors typically not wanna do this because it's really showing your cards to the defense in a way that will better enable them to potentially defeat the charges at trial. It is. And one of the reasons that they do it, I mean, one of the only reasons is to buy more time if they're not ready to indict. So sometimes, because you have to have a preliminary hearing if a person is being held in custody without a bond. And so they wanna have a preliminary hearing so they can prolong the time before they have to go in front of a grand jury. This happens a lot of times when there's like DNA that's outstanding and maybe they want that result back before they go in front of a grand jury, things like that. But in this case, it doesn't make sense why they would want to avoid a grand jury. There's nothing really outstanding at this point. And it really does just give the defense for really a bite of the apple. I mean, they can lock in certain testimony, cross-examination, things like that. They get their first bite at the apple at these witnesses, and they could try and poke holes in the case. They lock these folks into testimony. So it's kind of surprising that they're putting all of this up. I'm like Dave, I think that they should put as little up as possible just to get this ruling that there's probable cause so that they can move on and go to the grand jury. It doesn't take much to convince a judge, and it's a judge decision here, that there's probable cause to hold him over for trial. I mean, Ashley, the alleged confession alone should do it, should it not? I mean, there's an alleged confession on Discord, which is a gaming site where you also have chats, and that's gonna be introduced. There are text messages alleged from Tyler Robinson to Lance Twiggs with an alleged confession. And then there is something with Tyler Robinson turning himself in to police, though I don't know what exactly was said, if anything, by Tyler Robinson in that setting to the cops. They could take all of this evidence and have a police officer, the lead investigator, testify for less than 30 minutes and summarize all of this and get over probable cause. They could do that. They don't have to play all these interviews. They don't have to put forth all of this evidence. I mean, some of the people that they have on their witness list, it sounds like they're actually gonna walk through some scientific testimony. They don't need to do that. That's not anything they need to do. So I can only imagine that the reason they're doing this is to try to show the world how strong their case is, to try to somehow influence people who are talking about the case and show how strong the case is. But I don't think they need to do it. So it's very surprising to me that they're actually going through this process when they really could get probable cause found within, I mean, honestly, less than 30 minutes. There's no need for more than that. And they could have a summary witness who testifies about all this stuff. That is hugely interesting. Viva, the prosecutor in this case, the prosecutor's office and the prosecutor was just found in contempt because he got out there after that Daily Mail piece hit that I referenced in the setup package saying the bullet didn't match the gun, right? That was kind of the headline that the bullet retrieved from Charlie's body in the autopsy did not match the gun of this shooter. And he got out there and said, that is not correct. The Daily Mail's headline was wrong. And the takeaway that people are going with is wrong. It's that there was no conclusive proof that it did match. And as Andrew Branca pointed out in that segment we aired in part there, that's not unusual that the bullet would be so destroyed that it's just not capable of being matched up to the gun. But his point was that doesn't mean it wasn't the bullet from that gun. It just means there was so little left of it that we couldn't make the comparison to affirmatively say one way or the other. So the courts found that wasn't actually that was okay for him to come out and say because that report went everywhere from the Daily Mail. But he went beyond that and said, and we think we're going to easily be able to prove that Tyler Robinson committed this crime beyond a reasonable doubt. We have overwhelming evidence against him. And the court said, now you went too far and found him in contempt because he had issued a gag order. The reason I'm raising this with you is because clearly this prosecutor is feeling, forgive the phrase, under the gun. And he is paying attention to the public narratives around Charlie's murder. And he obviously is very concerned about the public being swayed away from thinking Tyler Robinson did it. Do you think that's why he's doing what Ashley accurately describes as very unusual with a kitchen sink approach here with a witness list that is gonna take us an entire week to get through instead of the 30 minute cop on the stand saying, he confessed, here are the text messages, bye. Well, it's interesting. People need to understand that distinction that the contempt ruling was not because of what the prosecutor said to correct the record on the misrepresentation of that forensic report. It was that he went on TMZ afterwards and said, we have a strong case, which I don't understand how that's contempt. I mean, I appreciate there's a gag order, a prosecutor saying we have a good case. I would expect them to believe that if they're prosecuting it. But one thing that's so generic, it's generic. I mean, he shouldn't have done it TMZ. Maybe in court is one thing and then just don't say anything out of court, but he had to correct the record on the misrepresentation of that Daily Mail article. What's clear is that both parties, prosecution and defense are trying to wage a war in the court of public opinion. And I wouldn't be surprised if the defense is insisting on this and happy to make it as robust as possible to confuse the general public into saying, look how unfair this prosecution is. We didn't get to have Lance Twiggs testify in person so we could cross examine him because people don't understand the distinction between a preliminary hearing and the trial on the merits and the burden of proof for probable cause versus a criminal conviction. And the hardest and most concrete evidence of that, I'm having a back and forth now with Candace Owens, who has already declared this to be a show trial. And I'm like, it's not even a trial yet. This is a preliminary hearing when it's probable cause and hearsay evidence is admissible. You don't get to necessarily cross examine the individual who made the statement. That is where you go to probable cause. Say, okay, hearsay evidence is admissible. And so you don't get to cross examine. Now you'll pick apart the evidence when it's time to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt right now, probable cause slam dunk. Like everyone says how it's going to take five days. I don't know, but you know that the defense is going to try to confuse the general public into thinking this preliminary hearing is somehow something of a trial on the subjects to beyond a reasonable doubt when it's the exact opposite. Mm-hmm. The witness list goes on and on Dave. It's I'm looking at it here. I know you guys have seen it too. There's officer Bagley. Like we just said, he's on the stand. Now someone from Utah Bureau of Investigation, agent Bricker Mortenson, who's also from the state Bureau of Investigation, agent Davis, same thing. Lance twigs via recorded video. We're going to come my gosh. It's we'll be here all day if I, if I listed all, but here's just a couple of things we expect them to introduce drone images from Utah Valley university, a photo of a screwdriver, which they allegedly found on the roof. Daytime photo of sniper perch, photo of sniper perch, photo of sniper perch, video of mother with children in crowd because they need to show that somebody was scared that he, what he did that day, scared women and children written statement of a period, right? Videos of shooting from behind questioner written statement of T Phillips video of shooting from behind Charlie written statement from turning point video of shooting from behind booth photo of rifle in bushes, photo of rifle in bushes, photo of rifle in box, photo of rifle in box, medical examiner report, doorbell camera surveillance from nine, 10, 2025 written statement of C Noble of Mike Mitchell, recorded statement of Lance twigs, text messages between Tyler Robinson and Lance twigs. There it is. That's an important one. Discord chats, photograph of note. Okay. I could be here all day. Like they're going to be introducing a lot of physical evidence. No BS, no agenda, no fear for the first time since world war two, our national debt has exceeded the gross domestic product. America's reckless government spending keeps catching up with us higher inflation, higher prices, higher cost of living expenses, and higher interest payments on the national debt. 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