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Kyle Rittenhouse and his attorney set sights on first mammoth target: ‘Going to make the media pay’

June 7, 2022 | | Print Article

(Video: Fox News)

Kyle Rittenhouse admitted it has been hard for him to “live a normal life” despite being found not guilty of murder and he is planning to “make the media pay” for defaming him.

Speaking with Fox News host Tucker Carlson, the 19-year-old revealed how he can not get around without security in the wake of the trial in which he was found to have acted in self-defense in the shooting deaths of two men during rioting in Kenosha, Wisconsin in 2020.

Long before the jury’s verdict, the teen was being called a murderer and a white supremacist, among other things, by many in the public, the media and even in government. Last week’s dramatic end to the Johnny Depp/Amber Heard trial seemed to spark a reaction from Rittenhouse who tweeted his congratulations to Depp and teased a “new announcement” about his forthcoming defamation cases.

“What action are you taking against the tech companies that made this defamation possible?” Carlson asked on “Tucker Carlson Tonight” on Monday.

“We are going to make the media pay for what they did to me. They made it hard for me to live a normal life,” Rittenhouse, who was joined by his attorney Todd McMurtry replied.

“I can’t go out into public. I can’t go to the store. It’s hard for me to go anywhere without security. Doing basic things like taking my dog to the dog park is difficult. They made it really difficult to be normal, and they affected future job opportunities to me. I don’t think I will ever be able to work or get a job because I’m afraid an employer may not hire me,” Rittenhouse continued.

“I think that’s entirely fair because of the lies repeated for over a year by the tech platforms that are not journalists, they are soldiers in some sort of weird partisan war they are fighting. What are you doing to rectify this?”Carlson asked.

McMurtry, who represented Covington Catholic student Nicholas Sandmann in successful defamation suits, explained the plan, beginning with Facebook.

“Mark Zuckerberg announced in a videotape that what Kyle was involved in was ‘mass murder,’ and that’s clearly defamatory as well,” he said of the social media platform’s founder and CEO.

“That is not protected by section 230 in the Communications Decency Act. In my opinion section 230 allows you to take down violent things or things that people don’t want to hear, but telling the truth about Kyle is not something that section 230 enabled Facebook to take down,” the lawyer said. “That’s an example of what we plan to do with tech and also plan to do in the defamation arena.”

He later noted specifically that Facebook “suppressed the truth by taking down truthful posts and they did that in violation of section 230. That does not provide protection.”

Looking specifically at the media’s role, McMurtry went on to highlight “actionable” incidents in which the leftist media made up things about the teen “out of thin air.”

“Certainly, Kyle was charged with a crime. News organizations are allowed to report on that. But calling somebody a murderer in certain circumstances can be actionable,” he told Carlson.

“Other things that media personalities, people on social media said were clearly defamatory. I think your comment about calling Kyle a white supremacist is made up out of thin air. I don’t know how the media can claim that they didn’t make a statement made up out of thin air without engaging in actual malice or most certainly negligence,” he said. “So I think that we have some strong grounds to proceed. We are looking at… We’re starting to look at all those. We’re going to evaluate them and look for opportunities to hold the media and to hold tech accountable as Kyle’s promised.”

Carlson then asked Rittenhouse, “When you go into public, do people repeat to you things they saw on social media or on say, NBC News or CNN?”

“There’s been a few people,” he replied. “I have received some harassment, and thank goodness for my security… for helping me not have to get harassed, to make sure that they keep me safe and if somebody does come up to me, they make sure they’re not gonna harm me. Thank God for them.”

Frieda Powers
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