A Virginia police officer who was fired earlier this year for donating to Kyle Rittenhouse’s online defense fund is now demanding that he be given his old job back after the teenager’s acquittal on all charges, as reported by Breitbart.
Lieutenant William Kelly, who served with the Norfolk Police Department, was just ten months away from being eligible to receive his pension when he was fired in April of this year. Kelly, who had served on the force for 19 years, had anonymously donated a mere $25 to pay for Rittenhouse’s legal fees as the heavily-anticipated trial was getting underway.
In a statement to the Daily Mail, Lieutenant Kelly recalled his outlook on the situation when he made the donation. Emphasizing that everything he said was his “personal opinion,” he said that as “a homicide detective, a violent crimes investigator for years,” he believed the video footage of the confrontation between Rittenhouse and multiple rioters “painted a pretty clear picture that Mr. Rittenhouse had a very strong claim for self-defense.”
Although Kelly’s donation was anonymous, his name and email address were ultimately stolen by left-wing hackers who gave his information, as well as the information of other law enforcement officials who donated, to The Guardian to be run as a hit piece. Kelly was subsequently fired after the article’s publication.
Kelly mentioned that the primary public outcry against his donation did not even come from Norfolk, but from “people from all around the country who read an article and sent a nasty tweet.” Had it not been for the online outrage, Kelly said, “there would not have been any kind of disciplinary action against me, I’m confident.” He also pointed out a blatant double-standard between his firing, and the fact that Norfolk’s chief of police, Larry Boone, kept his job even after attending a Black Lives Matter protest in his full service uniform.
“If I had a different opinion and I donated to a fund for the victims and made comments about how Mr. Rittenhouse was a murderer,” Kelly added, “nobody would have cared or tried to get me fired.”
Kelly currently has a hearing date set for late January to review the circumstances of his termination.
On Friday, the 18-year-old Rittenhouse was acquitted on all five charges against him, including the most severe charge of intentional first-degree homicide, all of which together would have seen him face a lifetime in prison. His acquittal has proven to be a vindication for those who supported the teenager early on, describing his actions on the night of August 25th, 2020 as self-defense against violent rioters and domestic terrorists.