(Ken Silva, Headline USA) YouTuber Candace Owens has filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s former bodyguard, Brian Harpole, filed against her for implicating him in Kirk’s assassination.
Harpole sued Owens in April after she aired allegations from a man named Mitch Snow that he saw Harpole, Kirk’s widow Erika Kirk, and Army intelligence officers at Fort Huachuca in Arizona before Charlie’s assassination. Snow’s supposed sighting has fueled conspiracy theories that the group was plotting Charlie’s death. Snow is also a party to the lawsuit.
Owens’s motion to dismiss, filed Thursday, says that Harpole’s lawsuit should be tossed because her statements about him were “inactionable opinions, rhetorical hyperbole, and questions incapable of a defamatory meaning.” She also argues that Harpole hasn’t proven “actual malice,” nor has he plausibly alleged that he was damaged by her.
“The most obvious explanation for Plaintiff’s reputational harm is that the person Plaintiff was hired to protect was assassinated on his watch,” her motion says.
Candace fans, like the one below, have been coping that she was only filing a "partial motion to dismiss." But her motion asks the judge to dismiss all 6 counts claimed by Brian Harpole.
It looks like it's a "partial motion to dismiss" because she's leaving Mitch Snow out to dry. https://t.co/kBbryDecV1 pic.twitter.com/XB1aEUxb2N— Ken Silva (@JD_Cashless) August 7, 2026
Owens’s motion only seeks to dismiss the claims against her. Snow, who was served in the lawsuit on July 23, has yet to respond.
Kirk was shot while addressing a crowd at the University of Utah on Sept. 10, 2025. The suspect, Tyler Robinson, has been charged in connection with the killing.
Harpole has previously blamed local police for failing to protect campus rooftops, allowing a gunman to fatally shoot his client.
Owens, for her part, has postured that she wants the lawsuit to reach the discovery phase—bragging on April 30 that the case now gives her subpoena power. For Owens to get her wish, the motion she filed Thursday would have to be unsuccessful.
Ken Silva is the editor of Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/jd_cashless.
