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R. Cort Kirkwood
Kyle Rittenhouse was in Kenosha, Wisconsin, to serve and protect the town’s residents and their property, his attorneys say in a lengthy statement that details the events of the night the 17-year-old killed two attacking thugs and wounded a third.
The attorneys from Pierce Bainbridge, the national law firm that will defend Rittenhouse, offer a much different view of the mayhem on August 25, when the Marxist radicals of Antifa and Black Lives Matter again besieged the city.
Rittenhouse was there to help clean up the mess left by days of revolutionary rioting, as well to provide first aid to “protesters” and protect businesses, the attorneys said.
He Did Nothing Wrong
Friday’s release from Pierce Bainbridge clarifies what Rittenhouse was doing before he stepped forward to protect an auto dealer’s remaining property that had not been destroyed.
For starters, the attorneys’ wrote, the mayor of Kenosha and governor of Wisconsin “failed to provide a basic degree of law and order to protect the citizens and community buildings in Kenosha. The city burned as mobs destroyed buildings and property, and looters stole whatever they wanted. Rioters defaced storefronts, the courthouse, and many other public and private locations across the city.”
Kyle was a community lifeguard in Kenosha and “wanted to help clean up some of the damage, so he and a friend went to the local public high school to remove graffiti by rioters.” But later in the day, Rittenhouse learned that the owner of an auto dealership had called for help because the Red goons had “largely destroyed” his business:
The business owner needed help to protect what he had left of his life’s work, including two nearby mechanic’s shops. Kyle and a friend armed themselves with rifles due to the deadly violence gripping Kenosha and many other American cities, and headed to the business premises. The weapons were in Wisconsin and never crossed state lines.
Upon arrival, Kyle and others stood guard at the mechanic’s shop across from the auto dealership to prevent further damage or destruction. Later that night, substantially after the city’s 8:00 p.m. curfew expired without consequence, the police finally started to attempt to disperse a group of rioters. In doing so, they maneuvered a mass of individuals down the street towards the auto shops. Kyle and others on the premises were verbally threatened and taunted multiple times as the rioters passed by, but Kyle never reacted. His intent was not to incite violence, but simply to deter property damage and use his training to provide first aid to injured community members.
After the mob passed, he went to a nearby filling station with a first aid kit to help the injured or guide them to safety. When he tried to return to the mechanic shop, police had blocked the route, the attorneys wrote, so Rittenhouse returned to the filling station, where he heard that the second mechanic shop was unprotected. That’s when three rioting thugs — sex offender Joseph Rosenbaum, domestic abuser Anthony Huber, and gunman Gaige Grosskreutz, forced him to defend himself:
As Kyle proceeded towards the second mechanic’s shop, he was accosted by multiple rioters who recognized that he had been attempting to protect a business the mob wanted to destroy. This outraged the rioters and created a mob now determined to hurt Kyle. They began chasing him down. Kyle attempted to get away, but he could not do so quickly enough. Upon the sound of a gunshot behind him, Kyle turned and was immediately faced with an attacker lunging towards him and reaching for his rifle. He reacted instantaneously and justifiably with his weapon to protect himself, firing and striking the attacker.
Kyle stopped to ensure care for the wounded attacker but faced a growing mob gesturing towards him. He realized he needed to flee for his safety and his survival. Another attacker struck Kyle from behind as he fled down the street. Kyle turned as the mob pressed in on him and he fell to the ground. One attacker kicked Kyle on the ground while he was on the ground. Yet another bashed him over the head with a skateboard. Several rioters tried to disarm Kyle. In fear for his life and concerned the crowd would either continue to shoot at him or even use his own weapon against him, Kyle had no choice but to fire multiple rounds towards his immediate attackers, striking two, including one armed attacker. The rest of the mob began to disperse upon hearing the additional gunshots.
Rosenbaum and Huber died. Grosskreutz, who brandished a pistol, landed in the hospital with a bullet wound in the arm.
Later, Rittenhouse turned himself into police in his hometown in Antioch.
“Kyle did nothing wrong,” the attorneys argue. “He exercised his God-given, Constitutional, common law and statutory law right to self-defense.”
Rush To Judgement
But that didn’t stop the mob and its media information ministry from declaring Rittenhouse guilty of murder, the attorneys wrote:
[I]n a reactionary rush to appease the divisive, destructive forces currently roiling this country, prosecutors in Kenosha did not engage in any meaningful analysis of the facts, or any in-depth review of available video footage (some of which shows that a critical state’s witness was not even at the area where the shots were fired); this was not a serious investigation. Rather, after learning Kyle may have had conservative political viewpoints, they immediately saw him as a convenient target who they could use as a scapegoat to distract from the Jacob Blake shooting and the government’s abject failure to ensure basic law and order to citizens. Within 24-36 hours, he was charged with multiple homicide counts.
Pierce Bainbridge principal John Pierce observed that a 17-year-old boy should not have to do a job that belongs to state and local governments. But they abdicated their responsibilities, and so “law-abiding citizens have no choice but to protect their own communities as their forefathers did at Lexington and Concord in 1775.”
Kyle is not a racist or a white supremacist. He is a brave, patriotic, compassionate law-abiding American who loves his country and his community. He did nothing wrong. He defended himself, which is a fundamental right of all Americans given by God and protected by law. He is now in the crosshairs of institutional forces that are much more powerful than him. But he will stand up to them and fight not only for himself, but for all Americans and their beloved Constitution. We will never leave his side until he is victorious in that fight.
