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Rittenhouse trial

The Rittenhouse trial was an absolute clown show, but with just one clown.

Using the latest advanced photography technology, the prosecutor's legal strategy in the Rittenhouse case was captured here on film. // photo by Christian Diokno

Kyle Rittenhouse was 17 when he was going around the streets in Kenosha, armed with a rifle and a medkit. The city was being rocked by Black Lives Matter riots following a police shooting of Jacob Blake, a black man. Dozens of businesses, buildings, and homes were destroyed as protesters engaged in mass looting and arson.

While this incident has been covered seemingly ad nauseam, it seems like almost nobody knows the actual facts of what happened that night. I will go through a brief recap, but this video has been indispensable, showing the video evidence taken that night in the rawest form. It doesn't include the latest video evidence revealed in the trial, but it ran circles around anything the corporate media has put out.

According to the court proceedings and plethora of video recordings of the incidents, Rittenhouse was recruited by some friends to assist with protecting the local businesses of Kenosha and helping treat wounded people from the riots. At one point, he was separated from his group and was eventually confronted by rioters.

Joseph Rosenbaum, who had earlier made death threats toward the groups Rittenhouse was in, was among them and chased Rittenhouse across the parking lot. Rittenhouse paused and pointed his rifle at Rosenbaum, thinking it would deter his chaser. But Rosenbaum didn't let up and Rittenhouse continued to flee. Joshua Ziminski, who had rioted with Rosenbaum, had fired a shot into the air as a warning shot. Rittenhouse, not knowing who had fired the shot or where the shot was aimed, turned, saw Rosenbaum nearly on top of him, and fired four times, with the last bullet eventually killing Rosenbaum.

Rittenhouse circled around to look at Rosenbaum, lying on the ground. Richie McGinniss, a reporter, was tending to him. Rittenhouse made a phone call to a friend before rioters started running toward him so he decided to flee again. As he ran off, rioters could be heard yelling things like "cranium that boy!" 

As he ran toward the police barricade, he was struck in the head from behind by someone. As he fell a few steps later, one person came up to kick him. Rittenhouse fired a shot, missing him, but made him run off. Anthony Huber, immediately afterward, struck him with a skateboard and grabbed the gun. On the ground, Rittenhouse fired while the gun was being held, killing Huber.

Still on the ground, a third person, Gaige Grosskreutz, charged him, stopped and ducked when Rittenhouse's gun fired, killing Huber. He hesitated with his hands up and Rittenhouse holds fire then slightly averts the aim of his rifle. Grosskreutz decides to lunge at Rittenhouse with a Glock in his hand at which point Rittenhouse shoots him in the arm.

In the trial, there was no objection that Kyle had shot those three people. I mean, there is no way to make that claim. His claim was that all the shooting was done in self-defense.

It was pretty shocking to me that this actually went to trial, given the video evidence.


From the beginning of the trial, the prosecutor, Thomas Binger, just chalked up a string of losses that the winless 2008 Washington Husky football team would be proud of. 

His star witness, Gaige Grosskreutz, who was shot in the arm by Rittenhouse, took the stand and admitted he pointed the gun at Rittenhouse and advanced on him before Rittenhouse pulled the trigger. The next video angle showed the prosecution table executing an epic facepalm, the defining image of the entire trial.

In another hilarious, if not so serious moment, Binger was questioning reporter Richie McGinniss, who was an eyewitness, regarding the first person Rittenhouse shot, Joseph Rosenbaum. As another witness testified, Rosenbaum was being "hyper-aggressive" and earlier that night exclaimed, while Rittenhouse was present, "If I catch any of you guys alone tonight, I'm going to fucking kill you." McGinniss testified that just prior to the shooting incident, Rosenbaum yelled "Fuck you!" and lunged for Rittenhouse's gun. Binger, presumably looking to minimize the aggressive motives of Rosenbaum, tried to imply that McGinniss couldn't have known what was in Rosenbaum's head. To which McGinniss replied, "Well, he said 'fuck you' and then he reached for the weapon."

The state also tried to levy a gun charge against Rittenhouse, saying it was illegal for a 17-year old to carry the weapon, but the defense argued that the law excepts long guns, which includes Rittenhouse's gun. Many have argued that the law was poorly written, which, as judge Schroeder said, makes it tough for an ordinary person to understand what the law is. Nevertheless, it's a good thing Rittenhouse had his gun, otherwise, he very well may be six feet under with someone else on trial. To anyone that doesn't conflate law with morality, this says more about a law that would prevent a nonviolent action than it does about the action itself.

The prosecutor was also severely admonished by the judge for bringing up an argument during his questioning of Rittenhouse with propensity evidence which was denied in pre-trial findings. Binger tried to use an off-the-cuff remark by Rittenhouse to show murderous intent, which is rather ridiculous, considering what people say in conversation versus the situation in the case, which was Rittenhouse under duress. Irate, the judge yelled at Binger, "Don't get brazen with me!" in another summary snapshot of the prosecution's case.

Earlier in the trial, Binger, in an underhanded means, tried to imply guilt by commenting on Rittenhouse's silence before the trial. I mean, come on. Anyone with a cursory understanding of the Constitution would know this is an inadmissible argument.

In a weird moment, Binger seemed to not understand the difference between a video game and real-life as he grilled Rittenhouse on why he bought an AR-15, insinuating that violent video games may have been a factor. There's no way Binger is that stupid. The only reason I could see is that he was trying to trip up Rittenhouse into saying something he could use as trivial admission of some kind of motive.

Despite all this buffoonery, the most cringe-worthy aspects of the prosecution were perhaps in the closing arguments.


Binger really hammered home that Rittenhouse lied about being an EMT like it was all he had. He used it to call into question Rittenhouse's character and on the same slide, he asked the jury to contrast it with someone like Anthony Huber, but somehow managed to neglect to mention that Anthony Huber was a repeat domestic violence offender (4:03). Binger then went on a tirade about how a bunch of people there had AR-15s with group confrontations, and no one shot and killed anyone (did he just inadvertently make the case against gun control?) except Rittenhouse, who was a single person being threatened and chased by a mob (6:32). The connection between is so tenuous, I seriously doubt even Binger believed it when he said it. Later, despite claiming that a lot of people there were armed, did a 180 and blamed Rittenhouse for "bringing a gun to a fistfight". He actually made the claim that you lose your right to self-defense when you've brought a gun (27:57). Did someone write the first part of his statement and someone else write the second part, without talking to each other? He then made the claim that the "only way" to argue self-defense is if one believes Rosenbaum was going after the gun, rip the gun away, and use the gun to kill Rittenhouse (31:01). As if a person should just accept that someone else beat them to within an inch of their life. It's as if Binger has never heard of anyone dying from getting pummeled by another person.

And all of those fallacies were just an inexhaustive rebuttal on Binger's arguments on only the shooting of Rosenbaum. One could write an entire volume on his poor arguments throughout the closing statements.

Many conservatives thought the prosecution was a unique evil here, setting up a petition to disbar Binger for prosecutorial misconduct, but that's really not the case (Kamala Harris, anyone?). This is how the system is set up to run. This is the logical outcome of how the system works. Prosecutors are supposed to aim at getting the truth, but they are evaluated by the number of wins they rack up to impress their superiors or dazzle voters for when they run for political office. In highly politicized cases like this, they consider that not bringing charges, no matter how ludicrous, would run poorly in the eyes of potential voters so they have to bring it to trial, even if they think it's against an innocent person. Once it gets to trial, especially if the evidence is flimsy like this one, they have to use some underhanded tactics to try to notch that win on their belt to get to the ballot box bowl game.


The evidence to me was overwhelmingly in support of self-defense, but I had very little confidence that the verdict would return not guilty, given the intense political pressure around the case. The four-day deliberations did not give me confidence, as I figured the evidence was so overwhelming that it wouldn't take longer than a day.

Despite my misgivings, the jury did their job and returned a not guilty verdict on all counts, causing Kyle Rittenhouse to collapse with emotion.

This verdict was extremely important to emphasize that people have the right to defend themselves. If Rittenhouse had lost, it would have set a (non-binding) precedent of an impossibly high standard to cross to defend oneself with a firearm. This would be disastrous to innocent would-be victims and particularly catastrophic to people, like women, looking to neutralize size and strength disadvantages with a firearm. By Binger's standards for self-defense, it sets the margins for error so razor-thin that only a robot teleported in from the future could possibly get the timing down right.


Following the verdict, a light smattering of riots and protests across the country sprang up, but not to the degree I thought it would be. Kenosha remained at peace.

As bad as the prosecution was, it paled in comparison in rhetoric compared to the bile pundits and political leaders spewed.

Prior to the trial and just after the incident, the corporate press clamored all over themselves to see who can win gold in the woke Olympics, calling Rittenhouse every name in the book without ever bothering to look at any of the video evidence, of which plenty was available for the general public to see.

In the above collage of clips, so many words were thrown around and almost all of it was false information.

One of the only "facts" they continued to present was that he crossed state lines. Well, one of them said he crossed state lines with his gun, which was false, but there were so many talking heads that mentioned crossing state lines. However, no one seemed to stop and talk about why they say this. Why is "crossing state lines" such a popular talking point? Are they saying it's illegal to do this? It's not like he drove from Los Angeles to Portland. He drove from Antioch, Illinois to Kenosha, Wisconsin, which, according to Google Maps, is about a half-hour drive. That's just slightly farther than my daily commute. Perhaps we're all just listening to a self-reinforcing hive mind that has no ability to self-examine.

Another persistent narrative that has completely no merit, with no one providing any evidence whatsoever, is calling Kyle Rittenhouse a racist and white supremacist. Blue checkmark Twitter personalities including both journalists and politicians went wild with the narrative and even Joe Biden got into the mix, claiming he had ties to white supremacist groups. There seemed to be no head-scratching over the fact that Rittenhouse shot three white people (worst white supremacist ever?), one of whom (Rosenbaum) was on video yelling anti-black racial slurs. These talking heads seem to be more inclined to defend Rosenbaum over Rittenhouse, which says a lot. 

Numerous high-profile people including people like Joy Reid and LeBron James criticized Rittenhouse for breaking down on the stand, calling it "crocodile tears". Really. What's easier to believe: a teenager who just killed three people is traumatized at having to recall the event or that his acting game is so good that he ran circles around Academy Award winning actors? Have you ever seen Robert DeNiro try to cry on stage? He's got nothing on Rittenhouse. If the blue checkmarks had the intellectual curiosity to do some actual journalism, they would have discovered Rittenhouse was routinely having episodes while in jail, crying and vomiting over the incident, and was in therapy to treat PTSD. 

Certain people who have fought hard for criminal justice reform like Hakeem Jefferies have done a complete 180, tweeting to lock Rittenhouse up and throw away the key. The ACLU, which has done good work in protecting civil liberties, continued their slide away from protecting civil liberties, the original purpose of their organization, in complaining about the outcome of the case, focusing on irrelevancies than any substantive criminal act.

Indeed, many on the CRT left like the SPLC have decried the verdict, with many calling it systemic racism for the jury to arrive at such an obviously correct verdict. A bunch of idiotic ASU students campaigned to expel Rittenhouse from campus, even though he was only taking online classes, calling him a racist and murderer. Some have lamented that if Rittenhouse was black, the verdict would have been different. But fast forward a few weeks and the same people seem to really not care about the Ahmaud Arbery verdict where the three white men were found guilty of murdering Arbery, a black man, presumably because this verdict doesn't confirm their priors. Nor did any national corporate media outlet report on Andrew Coffee IV's innocent verdict on murder charges the police drummed up after the police killed his girlfriend in a raid. There is still much more disgust to go around here, as he was charged with illegal possession of a firearm due to a criminal record, which could carry up to an outrageous thirty years of jail time. Is their silence because it doesn't fit into the narrative of systemic racism?

There have been some better arguments questioning the judge's fairness, but Slate published a pretty good rebuttal to all of these claims before retreating into a disclaimer that falls more into the category of the preceding paragraphs to appease the base of their readers. On the positive side, Ana Kasparian from the far left outlet The Young Turks, said as the trial went on, that she was wrong about key details in the Rittenhouse case. She went on to say that she thought Rittenhouse chased Rosenbaum when in reality it was the other way around. While she deserves credit for eating crow, at the same time, it is kind of her job to know this before reporting on it and offering her opinions on it. How is it that she didn't know this fundamental detail during the trial when the rest of the world knew since the day after the incident itself over a year ago?

It is my hope that this kid is able to find some peace where he can in his life. He has been through enough for several lifetimes over. And on his way, sue the crap out of the corporate media for slander.

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