Austin Graff

This afternoon @RealCandaceO slandered me by accusing me of 'staging an intervention' with Charlie Kirk in which 'threats were made' with respect to his supposed 'evolving stance' on Israel at an event I hosted in the Hamptons. Candace also intimated that I 'blackmail[ed]' Charlie. On the show, Candace said that she 'would be very happy for me to dispute this narrative.' While it pains me to drive more traffic to her program, I am responding here to clear my name. It saddens me that we live in a society where social media influencers seek to monetize the tragic death of Charlie Kirk. 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. I have never offered Charlie or Turning Point any money in an attempt to influence Charlie's opinion on anything. In fact, my interactions with Charlie Kirk have been extremely cordial, albeit limited, regretfully so, as I was very impressed by him and his work and I will sadly never see him again. In an effort to clear the record, I share the following: I have followed @charliekirk11 on @X for some time and greatly admired him. While I didn't agree with Charlie on every issue, I had enormous respect for his intelligence, vast knowledge about religion, and his willingness to take on all comers in open mic sessions on campus and otherwise. Periodically, I would repost some of his posts and video clips. I connected with Charlie when he DM'd me in late May of this year and expressed interest in meeting me. In light of our respective schedules, we were unable to find a time to meet in person so we scheduled a zoom on June 11th. On the zoom, he explained to me that conservatives, in particular, young conservatives were getting tired of defending Israel, and this was very concerning to him. I asked him how I could learn more, and he suggested that it might be useful to convene a group of young conservative influencers on a host of topics that could include Israel to get a better sense of how the conservative community was thinking about Israel and other relevant issues of concern to young people. On the zoom, Charlie also said that his open mic conversations on campus were very effective in addressing issues on the minds of students, but he was only one person with limited bandwidth. He suggested that recruiting a group of junior Charlie Kirk's who could host open mic sessions on college campuses would be an effective way to encourage debate on a host of issues, an approach he believed to be worthy of consideration, and better enable students to get to the truth. I expressed interest in learning more and we thereafter scheduled a series of conference calls and zooms with Charlie, Turning Point staff and members of my team in an effort to assemble a diverse group of influencers who we could convene for a day and a half session. In addition to getting a better sense of what and where young conservatives were on various issues, Charlie thought doing so might enable him to identify potential candidates who could launch their own campus tours and carry forth his approach to dialogue. We chose the afternoon of August 4th to the afternoon of the 5th for the convening, and Charlie and members of my team worked to put together an invitation list. I offered to host the sessions in Bridgehampton (and cover the costs) so that I could attend some of the sessions as I was working from there at that time. Charlie sent out the invitations and about 35 or so influencers accepted. Charlie estimated that the influencers who attended collectively had more than 100 million followers. Charlie and Turning Point put together the agenda for the meeting and the topics were: The Economic Future of America The Cultural Landscape of Dating and Marriage The Convergence of East and West Mamdani, the New Threat to America Charlie asked me to moderate the Economic Future discussion which I did, and I thereafter hosted a Q&A session with the participants. The Convergence of East and West included a discussion of immigration, value systems, the U.S. approach to foreign policy and Israel. While I had wanted to attend the Convergence panel, I had a board meeting that conflicted with this session. Those that attended this session said that the Israel discussion was similar to the other sessions with the attendees expressing varying points of view as well as explaining the views of their followers. Some participants were critical of Israel and U.S. support for Israel, and others were supportive. The sessions were punctuated by meals. I attended one group lunch and a group dinner where I sat with Charlie and others. I found the sessions I attended interesting and I really enjoyed meeting the influencers. It gave me considerable perspective on what is on the mind of young Americans on a wide range of issues. At the end of the event, I sat with Charlie and members of my team and we discussed the events of the convening. Charlie believed that he had identified a number of potential Turning Point ambassadors who could launch open mic events on campus and that he would follow up with them. We agreed to keep in touch thereafter. We corresponded by text thereafter over the next few weeks on a range of topics that did not include Israel, and the next thing I knew, he was gone. In short, this was not an 'intervention' to 'blackmail' Charlie Kirk into adopting certain views on Israel. It was nothing of the sort.