A few months after being acquitted of 1st degree murder, Kyle Rittenhouse has decided to take aim at everyone who criticized him. This includes “politicians, celebrities, [and] athletes.”
Rittenhouse, a darling of far-right pundits and politicians, announced a “Media Accountability Project” which aims to sue people who called him a murderer.
The announcement came Monday, during an interview with the teen.
Rittenhouse was charged with multiple crimes after shooting and killing two men and injuring another during the 2020 Kenosha protests.
After news of the shooting, Rittenhouse became the flashpoint of another culture war battle, with those on the right seeing him as a hero protecting a city. However, others criticized his actions, as he was protecting a car dealership he wasn't asked to, in a city he didn’t live in and ended the lives of two men over it.
The jury acquitted Rittenhouse of 1st degree murder. In most jurisdictions in the United States there is a hierarchy of homicidal acts, of which first-degree murder and felony murder are the most serious, followed by second-degree murder, in a few states third-degree murder, then voluntary manslaughter and involuntary manslaughter.
Legal experts posited the charge of 1st degree murder was a mistake unlikely to garner a conviction while 2nd degree murder or manslaughter were far more likely to.
During an interview on Tucker Carlson’s show, Rittenhouse announced plans to “hold the media accountable for the lies they said and deal with them in court.” Of course, he said this on Carlson’s show, a media program where Carlson regularly lies.
No one took the announcement seriously.
The main targets of Rittenhouse’s plans included Whoopi Goldberg, who referred to him as a murderer after he was acquitted of 1st degree murder, and LeBron James who made fun of the fake crying Rittenhouse displayed while on the stand during the trial.
Many felt the case was also tainted by a judge overly friendly to Rittenhouse during the trial. This included criticizing a prosecutor for going into a line of questioning about a video of Rittenhouse expressing a desire to shoot looters.
Because of all this as well as video footage of the night he killed two men, there are many people still calling Rittenhouse a murderer.
Rittenhouse is seeking to use the project to fundraise. Nothing else has been defined besides fundraising and promises to sue.
Despite these claims, legal experts don’t believe the lawsuits would go anywhere.
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