Rittenhouse expands on why he fired Lin Wood: ‘He was going on with all this QAnon and election fraud stuff’

In a Tuesday interview, Kyle Rittenhouse explained that he fired L. Lin Wood, one of his first attorneys, because he embraced “insane” political conspiracy theories related to former President Donald Trump’s 2020 election loss.

In addition, he told interviewers on Fox News and NewsNation that he also fired Wood and co-attorney John Pierce because he believed they were using him to raise money and were not focused on his defense.

“That’s part of the reason why I fired them,” he told NewsNation’s Ashleigh Banfield.

He also said the two wanted to use a false militia argument in order to defend him and that they “didn’t respect my wishes.”

She went on to ask Rittenhouse, who was acquitted of five charges including two murder counts in Kenosha on Friday, when he had realized the two attorneys managed to raise enough money to post his $2 million bail but “still weren’t posting it.”

The teen responded that it happened just ahead of his mother firing Wood in December 2020.

“Did she fire him because she found out that the money was in the pot but wasn’t being put towards bail?” Banfield asked.

“We fired him because he was, like, going on with all this QAnon and election fraud stuff and just stuff we don’t agree with,” Rittenhouse said.

“And so it was his political views that led to you firing Lin Wood,” Banfield goaded.

“A mixture of a little bit of that,” Rittenhouse responded.

“And what else was in the mix?” Banfield pressed.

“Just how he is as a person,” Rittenhouse said.

“He’s insane… How he thinks he’s God and he just says all these weird things. Like, ‘we’re going to keep that boy in jail because there’s not gonna be any… civil or criminal cases come the election,’ which is just complete insanity,” Rittenhouse added.

He said he could have been freed as early as mid-September last year, but that Wood and Pierce wanted to keep him in jail until the November elections to continue raising money.

Rittenhouse explained further in an interview with Fox News’s Tucker Carlson.

“I was in jail for 87 days,” Rittenhouse said. “Lin Wood was raising money on my behalf, and he held me in jail for 87 days, disrespecting my wishes, put me on media interviews which I should never have done, which he said, ‘Oh, you’re going to go talk to The Washington Post,’ which was not a good idea, along with John Pierce. They said I was safer in jail instead of at home with my family.”

“Your lawyer said that?” Carlson asked.

“My lawyers said that,” Rittenhouse responded.

“Eighty-seven days is a long time to be in jail,” said Carlson.

“It was very long,” the teen replied. “I lost a lot of weight in there.”

Rittenhouse would go on to hire Mark Richards and Corey Chirafisi, the former of whom said after the acquittal that Wood and Pierce wanted to use Rittenhouse for “a cause.”

“They wanted to use Kyle for a cause, and something that I think was inappropriate,” Richards said in an interview with reporters following the verdict. “The only thing that mattered to me was whether he was found not guilty or not. I don’t represent causes, I represent clients.”

He said when he first met Rittenhouse, he told him he wasn’t interested in focusing on anything but the teen’s defense.

“If he was looking for someone to go off on a crusade, I wasn’t his lawyer,” Richards said he told Rittenhouse.

“We’re happy that the jury took the time, put in an incredible amount of effort,” Richards added. “There were times we doubted the case, there were times we were confident. To say that we were relieved would be a gross mis-understatement.”

Full interview below:

Missy Halsey

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