Exclusive / A Texas plastic surgeon was patient zero for the right’s Charlie Kirk conspiracy fever

In the hours after Charlie Kirk’s assassination on Sept. 10, his executive producer Andrew Kolvet took a call in the hospital where Kirk’s body still lay.

On the other end of the line was an occasional guest on the Charlie Kirk Show, Keith Rose, a Texas plastic surgeon and former military doctor who doubles as a geopolitical and intelligence commentator on conservative podcasts.

At that point, Kirk’s killer was unknown and at large. Rose told Kolvet he had picked up information that two other conservative media figures, Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens, had been the killer’s original targets — and could be next, according to Owens and two other people familiar with the content of the conversations.

Kolvet took the warning seriously; he passed it on to Owens that night and Carlson the next day, according to people familiar with both calls.

“I passed along the information to her because who wouldn’t, given the extraordinary circumstances and everything that had happened that day,” Kolvet said in a statement to Semafor.

The succession of events that followed — full of paranoia and finger-pointing — has consumed the American right. A death that, for a moment, seemed to unite the right instead cut rifts in the movement that have deepened since the Iran war began.

And Rose’s call to a still-grieving Kolvet may be the match that lit a still-burning pyre of conspiracy theories and unfounded charges of an Israeli plot against the murdered conservative icon.

Within a matter of weeks, Owens began amplifying claims about a potential Israeli government role in Kirk’s assassination, suggesting without evidence that Tyler Robinson — who prosecutors say has confessed to the killing and faces aggravated murder charges — didn’t act alone. She later began suggesting that she might face threats to her life, tracing them back to Kolvet’s call during an episode of her own podcast last month.

Kolvet “called me from the hospital and said it was supposed to be me, and I was on his list, and so was Tucker Carlson,” Owens told Semafor. She said Kolvet didn’t tell her where he’d gotten the information.

Kolvet later told people he met Rose in DC and saw a written dossier further detailing Rose’s allegations, a document that Rose indicated would be passed on to President Donald Trump’s aides.

“I confirmed it was being given to the authorities for them to chase down, but was later told they couldn’t corroborate any of it,” Kolvet said in his statement.

An administration source told Semafor: “The allegations made by this individual were handed to the administration, and every actionable lead was run down and could not be proven.”

In response to a detailed text inquiry about his role in spreading claims that other conservative media figures might be targets, Rose replied that “I have no idea what you are talking about” and later declined to comment further.

But his previously unreported warning was the first of a torrent of claims and counterclaims shared by conservative commentators after Kirk’s death. The conspiracy theories got louder after Kolvet shared text messages in which Kirk had complained about pro-Israel donors with Joe Kent, who resigned as Trump’s counterterrorism adviser over Iran, and other fellow conservatives.

On Sept. 18, just eight days after the shooting, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was forced to publicly deny what he called “insane” claims of an Israeli connection to the Kirk assassination, which law enforcement concluded was the sole act of Robinson.