Top pro-Israel TPUSA donor terminated support for Kirk in days before death, sources say

By Max Blumenthal

Ultra-Zionist billionaire Robert Shillman was one of Charlie Kirk’s most committed donors. But as Kirk fell under attack for his increasingly critical Israel views during his final weeks, sources say Shillman ended funding for TPUSA.

As his campus tour approached, Kirk was subjected to an “almost daily” lobbying campaign from Netanyahu’s allies.

The Turning Point USA campus in Phoenix, Arizona is the house that Charlie Kirk built. Consisting of six sterile, two-floor office buildings, the campus is itself a tribute to the ultra-wealthy donors who placed the 31-year-old Kirk at the helm of a political empire whose combined annual assets exceeded the municipal budget of a typical small American city.

At the front of the TPUSA complex is the Bill and Rebecca Dunn Freedom Center, named for the late commodity trader Bill Dunn. Adjacent buildings feature plaques commemorating the mega-donors who have fueled the rise of the conservative movement, from the Uhline family to the Koch Brothers to evangelical Christian asset manager Foster Friess.

Catty-corner from the Freedom Center is the Pearson Building. According to a TPUSA insider, this structure was to be emblazoned with the name of one of Kirk’s largest and most committed backers, the tech mogul Robert Shillman. A pre-eminent funder of right-wing Zionist and anti-Muslim causes across the Atlantic, Shillman’s millions helped transform Kirk from a young age into one of Israel’s most effective gentile assets.

However, as Kirk drifted from the official, Netanyahu-enforced line on Israel in the past year, expressing frustration with onerous demands from Zionist donors and hosting the leading conservative critics of Israel at his TPUSA events, Shillman apparently grew resentful.

A TPUSA insider has told The Grayzone that Shillman recently cancelled plans to erect the plaque bearing his name inside the conservative organization’s office complex. Those who contribute $1 million or more to TPUSA become eligible for an honorary plaque, but Shillman’s donations were said to be considerably higher.

Few donors have done more than Shillman to fuel the influence of the Zionist movement’s anti-Muslim, pro-Likud wing inside the US. “With this pen, and a checkbook, I provide ammunition!” the billionaire proclaimed during a gala of the right-wing Zionist Organization of America in 2021.

Besides nurturing the career of Kirk, Shillman has sponsored the David Horowitz Freedom Center, named for the neocon operative who Kirk described as his “mentor.” Anti-Islam activists from Frank Gaffney to the English hooligan Tommy Robinson, to Dutch politician Geert Wilders and Canada’s Rebel Media have benefitted from Shillman’s support as well.

Shillman has also invested substantially in the career of Laura Loomer, a former Rebel Media personality and fanatically anti-Palestinian provocateur who enjoys direct access to Trump and members of his inner circle, shaping personnel and policy decisions while lashing out at insufficiently pro-Israel staffers.

Weeks before the TPUSA founder’s killing, Loomer blasted Kirk for his inconsistent support for Israel. She was especially piqued by Kirk’s platforming of Tucker Carlson, whom she branded “an uppity Waspy snob” who serves as a “mouthpiece for Iran and Qatar.”

“Charlie speaks out of both sides of his mouth… [his] messaging is all over the place and some of us just want to know where he stands,” Loomer tweeted on July 12, 2025. She went on to call Kirk “a political opportunist” and a “charlatan” who “stab[bed] Trump in the back” by hosting Dave Smith, an anti-Zionist podcaster and comedian, at a TPUSA summit.

Loomer did not deny Shillman had cut off funding to TPUSA, pleading ignorance in response to a direct question from this reporter about her longtime benefactor’s decision.

The Grayzone was informed that Shillman announced his termination of contributions to TPUSA during a private dinner of another organization he funds, the American Freedom Alliance (AFA). According to an attendee of the event, which was held in Los Angeles on September 6, Shillman stated that he would be ending his donations to Kirk, diverting them instead to reliably pro-Likud, anti-Islam groups like AFA.

The AFA’s homepage is currently promoting a $250,000 matching fund donation from an unnamed donor directly below a tribute to Kirk. A photo shows Kirk speaking from the dais of a past AFA event. The tribute links to a eulogy which blames “The Left’s consistent drumbeat of hate, of misrepresentation, of fomenting violence against us” for the TPUSA founder’s death.

Reached by phone, Shillman hung up as soon as this reporter asked him about his alleged statement announcing his termination of support for TPUSA.

The Grayzone also contacted AFA President Karen Siegemund by phone and asked her about Shillman’s alleged comments regarding Kirk during her organization’s gala. “The only part I remember is about his generosity to us,” a seemingly irritated Siegemund commented before hanging up abruptly.

Bill Whittle, a conservative pundit who emceed the September 6 AFA dinner, told The Grayzone he could “neither confirm nor deny” that Shillman had declared his intention to cut off funding to Kirk’s organization. “It was a private event,” he emphasized.

AFA has published several videos on its YouTube channel containing speeches from the gala, but Shillman’s address is absent.

Andrew Kolvet, the executive producer and spokesman for TPUSA, did not respond to a request for comment delivered by direct message to his personal Twitter/X account, where he follows this reporter.

Mike Cernovich, a conservative activist and longtime ally of Kirk, may have been alluding to the break-up allegedly initiated by Shillman when he tweeted on September 13, 2025, “Charlie was about to lose his last major donor because he refused to ban Tucker Carlson from events. There are A LOT of people shedding crocodile tears. The billionaires must be exposed for the cretins that they are.”

Along with the apparent rift between Shillman and Kirk, The Grayzone has learned that Netanyahu’s US allies intensified their campaign to manage the late TPUSA founder as his fateful first campus tour date approached.

Netanyahu’s functionaries managed Kirk “on an almost daily basis”

Shillman’s apparent break with Kirk capped a months-long pressure campaign from Zionist bigwigs, media operatives, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu himself to bring the late conservative activist back into line with the self-proclaimed Jewish state’s agenda. As The Grayzone reported, citing one of Kirk’s longtime friends, the TPUSA founder refused an offer by Netanyahu to arrange a new infusion of funding into his organization from his stable of Zionist millionaires and billionaires in the US.

This reporter also revealed that Kirk and pro-Israel billionaire Bill Ackman convened a secretive Hamptons retreat in August where Kirk faced sustained cajoling and a bout of angry hectoring from Zionist attendees for his perceived disobedience.

An attendee of the covert Hamptons gathering told The Grayzone that each of the influencers on hand were invited on an all-expenses paid propaganda tour of Israel. The trip took place later that August under the auspices of Newsmax, a right-wing outlet which now receives funding from the Israeli Foreign Ministry.

Back at TPUSA, the mounting pressure from Zionist bigwigs left Kirk angry and perturbed in the weeks leading up to his death. The day after the Hamptons summit, he publicly vented about Jewish “stakeholders” seeking to control his message. Among the demands Kirk received in his final days was to rescind an invitation to Tucker Carlson, an outspoken critic of Netanyahu, to deliver the keynote address at TPUSA’s upcoming America Fest. Kirk not only resisted the demand, he invited the leading Republican critic of Israel in Congress, Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene, to appear at the event as well.

The Grayzone has since learned of a series of Zoom calls between Kirk and Zionist operatives seeking to prevent him from going off-message. The calls illustrate the mounting pressure the late conservative activist had been subjected to in the weeks before his death.

One call, held just 24 hours before Kirk’s killing, included Joshua Hammer, a Newsweek editor-at-large who is a leading Israel lobbyist within the US media. “We were kind of talking him through talking points, and strategy and how to deal with these expected hostile questions,” Hammer recounted.

Another participant in a recent Zoom call with Kirk, ultra-Zionist venture capitalist Shaun Maguire of Sequoia Capital, took to Twitter/X to rebuke podcaster and former TPUSA communications director Candace Owens for her claim that Ackman had subjected Kirk to unwanted lobbying over his shifting views on Israel.

“I was in a 10 person chat with @BillAckman and Charlie on this topic. We did a few zooms over the last quarter talking about Israel, antisemitism, and how the West wins… Your story is off,” Maguire protested.

Minutes after publishing his tweet, Maguire deleted it for unknown reasons. The Grayzone has managed to preserve a portion of the post.

Pesach Wolicki, a right-wing Israel-based rabbi who oversees Israeli propaganda tours for American youth through his Israel365 Action organization, had positioned himself as Kirk’s personal Zionist handler in the months leading up to his death.

The Grayzone has obtained a private email from Wolicki’s Israel356 Action to a conservative activist offering to junket them to Israel this October. Reaching out on behalf of “the anti-woke movement,” Israel 365 offered to take the activist on a delegation to “explore more about Israel’s biblical history, visit the October 7 sites, and…check out some operations from the Gaza border.”

Wolikci’s board of advisors includes Tila Falic Levy, heiress to the Duty Free America fortune she and her family have channeled into Israel’s illegal settlement enterprise in the occupied West Bank, and into the political campaigns of both Netanyahu and Donald Trump. Frank Gaffney, a prolific anti-Muslim activist who has been supported by Shillman, is also on Israel365’s board.

In a September 17 interview with Israel’s ILTV, Wolicki said he was “in touch with Charlie on an almost daily basis for months,” leveraging his access to counteract Kirk’s “disagreements with Israeli policy.”

“He sometimes believed things, like a lot of people do, that are out there in the media. And that was really the substance of our relationship, was checking on things, and finding out the truth.”

Wolicki complained that “there were a lot of people around [Kirk] in the America First movement, who were actively working to try to get him to turn on Israel.”

Anxiety was building within the Zionist movement about Kirk’s upcoming campus tour in September. As his first date approached at Utah Valley University, Wolicki said that Kirk had “ended up in a position where he was defending Israel all the time, and it drove him crazy because he wanted to talk about America.”

Wolicki told the New York Post that Kirk “was in a combative mood” during the final discussion, just hours before his death. The rabbi said Kirk had agreed to join a Whatsapp group where he would apparently receive a constant stream of pro-Israel talking points throughout his campus tour.

But the Whatsapp exchanges were never to be. Moments after his Utah Valley University event was underway on September 10, Kirk was killed by what appeared to be an assassin’s single bullet.

On September 17, Benjamin Netanyahu released a video from the social media account of the Israeli Prime Minister’s office fervently denying that he played any role in the assassination of Charlie Kirk. It was the second time he had denied responsibility for the shooting since Kirk’s death.