Wis. shooter’s lawyers call him ‘American patriot’
The way lawyers for Kyle Rittenhouse tell it, he wasn’t just a scared teenager acting in self-defense when he shot to death two Kenosha, Wis., protesters. He was a courageous defender of liberty, a patriot exercising his right to bear arms amid rioting in the streets.
“A 17-year-old citizen is being sacrificed by politicians, but it’s not Kyle Rittenhouse they are after. Their end game is to strip away the constitutional right of all citizens to defend our communities,” says the voice-over at the end of a video released this week by a group tied to Rittenhouse’s legal team.
“Kyle Rittenhouse will go down in American history alongside that brave unknown patriot ... who fired ‘The Shot Heard Round the World,’ ’’ lead attorney John Pierce wrote this month in a tweet he later deleted. “A Second American
Revolution against Tyranny has begun.”
But such dramatic rhetoric that has helped raise nearly $2 million for Rittenhouse’s defense may not work with a jury considering charges that could put the teen in prison for life. Legal experts say there could be big risks in turning a fairly straightforward self-defense case into a fight for freedom that mirrors the law-and-order reelection theme President Donald Trump has struck amid a wave of protests over racial injustice.
“They’re playing to his most negative characteristics and stereotypes, what his critics want to perceive him as — a crazy militia member out to cause harm and start a revolution,” said Robert Barnes, a prominent Los Angeles defense attorney.
Los Angeles-based Pierce and Atlanta attorney Lin Wood in a TV appearance and a blizzard of social media posts have doubled down on the hero theme.