Kyle Rittenhouse said during an interview with Tucker Carlson that his former attorneys kept him in jail longer than necessary so they could raise money “for their own benefit.”
SO WHAT
The populist right is still figuring out who are its heroes and who are its villains.
THE INTERVIEW
Fresh off being cleared in the deaths of Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber, Rittenhouse told Carlson that Lin Wood and John Pierce declined to bail him out of jail until Nov. 2020, despite having raised enough money to do so by mid-September of that year.
The “Tucker Carlson Tonight” interview with the 18-teen-year-old teen, who was acquitted of all charges on Friday, aired Monday night.
- “Lin Wood was raising money on my behalf, and he held me in jail for 87 days, disrespected my wishes,” he said. “They said I was safer in jail instead of at home with my family.”
- Rittenhouse eventually replaced Wood and Pierce with the legal team that would successfully secure his acquittal in the Kenosha, Wisconsin jury trial.
- His lawyers have filed to have Rittenhouse receive the $2 million bail paid to get him out of jail in Nov. 2020.
THE RESPONSE
The FightBack Foundation, a non-profit organization run by Lin Wood, maintains that it is entitled to the money.
- Wood told the Daily Beast he personally guaranteed the loan and claimed his group spent $700,000 on attorneys’ fees and litigation expenses in advocating for Rittenhouse.
- “The bail money has to be returned in its entirety to FightBack,” he said, adding that “somebody has fed Kyle misinformation, for whatever reason.”
- “We followed the law,” Wood said. “Other people might be wanting to make money off Kyle, [but] not FightBack.”
LIN WOOD
Wood is a controversial figure, known as much for his erratic behavior and outlandish statements as his fervent advocacy for right-wing causes célèbres, such as Rittenhouse and Nick Sandmann.
As with Rittenhouse, Wood’s relationship with Sandmann, who he represented in a high-profile defamation lawsuit, eventually turned sour.
- Sandmann fired Wood from his legal team in January after the Georgia attorney made incendiary remarks about then-Vice President Mike Pence and the Nov. 2020 presidential election.
- “I have ended my lawyer-client relationship with Mr. Wood and no longer wish to be represented by him,” Sandmann said in a court filing at the time.
- Having been at the center for a media firestorm himself, the former Covington Catholic High School student apparently reached out to Rittenhouse by phone over the weekend.
“Kyle Rittenhouse is brave. He doesn’t have to be a symbol for anybody or represent anything. His trial is over, and he is free to act however he wishes,” Sandmann tweeted on Tuesday.
