Kyle Rittenhouse hinted in an interview with Fox News’ Tucker Carlson that he has plans to hold the individuals and media outlets who misrepresented his case accountable.
Rittenhouse was acquitted on all charges in a multiple homicide trial in Kenosha, Wisconsin, last week. The teen has always maintained that he was acting in self-defense when he killed two people and injured one other during a violent riot on the night of August 25, 2020.
Rittenhouse suggested that he will take legal action against those in the media who characterized him as a white supremacist.
“I have really good lawyers who are taking care of that right now,” Rittenhouse said. ”So, I’m hoping one day there will be some, there will be accountability for the actions that they did.”
Carlson replied, “You’re intent you’re not going to let that go?”
“Like I said, I have really good lawyers handling that,” Rittenhouse said.
Nicholas Sandmann, the Covington Catholic student who was defamed in the media in January of 2019 following an viral incident with a native American activist, tweeted on Sunday that he had spoken to Rittenhouse by phone, and that Kyle was in “good spirits.”
Just got off the phone with Kyle. He’s in great spirits!
— Nicholas Sandmann (@N1ckSandmann) November 21, 2021
Sandmann ended up suing multiple media outlets for defamation and has won undisclosed settlements from the Washington Post and CNN.
During the interview with Carlson that aired Monday night, Rittenhouse said that he would like to ease back into anonymity as an Arizona State University student, but noted that he still receives lots of threats and feels like his life has been “extremely defamed” by the case.
When asked if he felt the federal government would protect him, the teen was appropriately skeptical.
“I hope so, but we all know how the FBI works,” Rittenhouse replied.
Rittenhouse also told Carlson that after he turned himself into the police in Antioch, Illinois, he didn’t expect charges to be filed against him, because it seemed clear that he had acted in self defense.
The 18-year-old said the charges against him seemed like the same “a mob mentality” that led several antifa agitators to attack him on that fateful night.
“I didn’t know I was gonna be arrested for defending myself because everything was on video,” he claimed. “But part of the reason I think I was arrested is because of the mob mentality. And they were like, ‘oh yeah we’re just gonna arrest him’ even though there was videos already out showing I was attacked and having to defend myself.”
He added: “And apparently, to a lot of people on the left, it’s criminal to want to protect your community.”
Rittenhouse said that when he told his mother what had happened, she “was in shock.”
“She wanted to go into hiding and I said no the right thing to do would be to turn myself in, I didn’t do anything wrong,” Rittenhouse said.
He said he dropped his original legal team after they cynically exploited him while he was in jail so they could raise money for his release.
Rittenhouse said lawyers L. Lynn Wood and John Pierce told him that jail was the safest place for him, and that they raised money for their own benefit, “not so they could set me free.”
The teen said the pair had raised the million dollars they needed to bail him out in mid September, but allowed him to stay in jail until November.
Rittenhouse said jail was scary at first because a lot of people had the wrong idea about him and thought he was a bad guy, but he was eventually able to win some of them over.
The teen also blasted Pierce for claiming in media interviews that he was in an unorganized militia, a claim he denied.
“I’m not in a militia—I don’t know what that is!” Rittenhouse exclaimed.
The teen told Carlson that his case never had anything to do with race, but was strictly about the right to self defense.
“I’m not a racist person, I support the BLM movement,” he insisted. “I support peacefully demonstrating and I believe there needs to be change. I believe there’s a lot of prosecutorial misconduct not just in my case but in other cases.”
“It’s just amazing to see how much a prosecutor can take advantage of somebody,” he added. “Like if they did this to me, imagine what they could have done to a person of color who maybe doesn’t have the resources I do or is not widely publicized like my case.”
Rittenhouse also said that he felt that Joe Biden had “defamed” him when he tweeted out a video in 2020 implying that he was a white supremacist.
“It’s actual malice—defaming my character for him to say something like that,” he said.