A death threat was communicated to Charlie Kirk, assassinated on Sept. 10 in Utah, and his response to the threat is on record: “Are they going to murder, or try to murder Steve Bannon or Tucker Carlson, or myself? None of us are Putin puppets or Russian propagandists, but the New York Times calls us that, Twitter calls us that. And that person, who is funded by the U.S. Treasury, says: we are gonna come murder you.” That was two years ago.
“That person” is Las Vegas resident, transgender activist Sarah Ashton-Cirillo. On Sept. 13, 2023, speaking as the head of Ukraine’s Territorial Defense’s English-language outreach program, she vowed that “Russia’s war criminal propagandists will all be hunted down, and justice will be served.” Further, she intimated inside knowledge on her part, saying that a “favorite Kremlin propagandist will pay for their crimes.” Within a week, she issued a second video, explaining that the “Russian propagandists and war criminals who are spreading lies and pushing false narratives are not journalists, they are information agents and an extension of the Putin-Prigozhin effort to spread chaos and wreak havoc across the globe.” She was echoing the 2022 line from Kiev’s Center for Countering Disinformation, that journalists who dissent from Kiev’s narrative are “information terrorists,” to be hunted down as terrorists. Charlie Kirk had been identified by the CCD as such an information terrorist.
Then Senator J.D. Vance, on Sept. 18, 2023, wrote to several Biden administration officials, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken, inquiring whether Ashton-Cirillo was being employed by the Ukrainian military and if she was being “compensated using American resources.” Kirk’s citation of “that person, who is funded by the U.S. Treasury” is based upon the investigation launched by Vance, his longtime collaborator—who had received similar treatment by the CCD. Vance and Kirk were friends for the last eight years, and Vance, as Vice President, appeared with Kirk on his show in May 2025.
