Kyle Rittenhouse tells Tucker Carlson that Trump lawyer left him to languish in jail to fundraise off his name
Rittenhouse and his former attorney are also having a feud over who will receive $2m bail money
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Kyle Rittenhouse has accused his former attorneys of leaving him in jail for 87 days to fundraise the bail money “so they can take it for their own benefit”.
Speaking with Fox News’ Tucker Carlson, Mr Rittenhouse said that his lawyers — Lin Wood and John Pierce — could have bailed him out of jail in September “but they wanted to keep me in jail until November 20” and instead told him that he “was safer” there than at his home.
“I was in jail for 87 days,” said Mr Rittenhouse, hitting out at former President Donald Trump’s attorney Lin Wood and conservative pro-Trump lawyer John Pierce who originally represented him in the case.
Mr Rittenhouse was cleared on Friday of all charges by a jury in the deaths of two men and the wounding of a third with a military-style rifle during anti-fascist protests in Kenosha last year.
“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,” he said.
The 18-year-old said that 87 days was a “very long” time.
“I lost a lot of weight in there,” he said.
“But 87 days of not being with my family for defending myself and being taken advantage to, being used for a cause by these–by John Pierce and Lin Wood … trying to raise money so they can take it for their own benefit, not trying to set me free,” he said.
“So you think they could have raised the money for bail faster, but they didn’t?” asked Carlson.
“I believe – sometime in September, September 5, I want to say – they had over a million dollars, and bail was set and able to be posted in September. So they could’ve had me sign the waiver for extradition and had me back in Wisconsin, and I could have been bailed out by mid-September. But they wanted to keep me in jail until November 20.”
Mr Rittenhouse added that Mr Pierce called him a militia after he was released on bail.
“...Once I am bailed out John Pierce said I was in an unorganised militia, which was just blatantly false,” he told Fox News.
“I didn’t know what militia was until after the fact, until November 25, when I was watching some of the interviews he did. I’m like, I’m not in a militia. I don’t know what that is.”
While Mr Pierce declined to comment, Mr Wood told the Associated Press that his Fightback Foundation raised money for Mr Rittenhouse‘s bail and publicly said the case was a Second Amendment issue.
"I was not an attorney pushing for a cause," Mr Wood said. "Fightback has a mission that includes the right to bear arms and self-defence."
Mr Rittenhouse and his former attorney are also having a feud over who will receive $2m bail money. Immediately after the jury in Kenosha cleared Mr Rittenhouse of all the charges, his defence team moved an application to receive the bail money on his behalf. However, Mr Wood also filed a motion seeking a claim over the money with Mr Rittenhouse’s attorney saying “there’s going to be a fight over that”.
Mr Wood is also receiving heat for advising Mr Rittenhouse to speak with the Washington Post while under the charges of murder, with the teen’s attorney Mark Richards calling Mr Wood an “idiot”.
Slamming Mr Wood, Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene called him “absolutely evil”.
She tweeted: “ I’ve told everyone what a horrible person Lin Wood is and if you watched [Tucker Carlson] tonight then you heard from Kyle Rittenhouse one of the reasons why I think so.”
“Lin keeping Kyle in jail instead of bailing him out with ALL that money donated FOR Kyle is absolutely evil,” she said.
She added that Mr Wood “should go to jail for what he did to Kyle”.