The acquitted killer turned gun activist Kyle Rittenhouse took to social media after former President Donald Trump was convicted in a hush-money scandal Thursday.
A New York jury found Trump guilty of 34 felony counts for falsifying records, sending supporters of the presumptive Republican candidate into a frenzy.
Trump, who proclaimed the day before the verdict that even Noble Peace Prize winner Mother Teresa wouldn’t be able to prevail in the case brought before the jury, slammed the outcome as “rigged” and said, on Truth Social, the case was part of a “witch hunt.”
Rittenhouse took to X Thursday to condemn the verdict, calling it “a miscarriage of justice.”
“Donald Trump should NOT of been found guilty,” Rittenhouse added.
During the trial, Trump’s former attorney, Michael Cohen, testified that in the days before the Nov. 8, 2016, presidential election, Trump, who is married, directed him to pay adult film star Stormy Daniels $130,000 to keep his sexual encounter with the woman a secret. Prosecutors allege that Cohen wired $360,000 to Daniels’ attorney, which was meant also to include taxes on the payment, reports show.
They presented handwritten notes that show incremental payments of $35,000 totaling $420,000 to Cohen, which also accounted for a $60,000 bonus for Trump’s attorney. The issue is the payments were labeled as checks issued for “legal expenses” while they were being disbursed to Daniels.
According to New York law, “a person is guilty of falsifying business records in the first degree when a person makes or causes a false entry in the business records of an enterprise.”
Trump’s defense attorneys argued that the former president was not involved in drafting any of the business records in question, and a former aide testified that Trump would sign documents without reading them, according to CNN.
After the verdict was announced in court Thursday, several of Trump’s supporters lashed out in front of the courthouse and online, while critics expressed satisfaction with the conviction, which makes Trump the first former president with a felony.
The criminal conviction does not disqualify him from continuing his presidential campaign. The U.S. Constitution does not exclude people with criminal records from running for commander-in-chief.
Rittenhouse, who was acquitted by a jury of two counts of homicide and reckless endangerment and one count of attempted homicide in 2021, received backlash for his post regarding the verdict in Trump’s case.
“You’re a hypocrite! The same system that found you innocent found him guilty. You can’t have it both ways!” one X user replied to Rittenhouse’s post.
One user triggered a slew of threats of his own after posting on X, “Sit down, you murdering piece of shit. You should have been found guilty.”
Sit down, you murdering piece of shit.
— Ryan Shead (@RyanShead) May 30, 2024
You should have been found guilty.
“So, the verdict that you received was ‘good’ with you. Now that your cult leader is an actual convict, the justice system is wrong?” one asked Rittenhouse. “So now you don’t trust a jury verdict? You were pretty happy with the justice system when they let you off for killing people,” another person wrote.
Others poked fun at Rittenhouse for not giving Trump his formula for securing a not guilty verdict despite their actions. “Where were you when he needed you?,” the user wrote.
Where were you when he needed you?! pic.twitter.com/lo4PBE2zRd
— Brown Eyed Susan (@smc429) May 30, 2024
Rittenhouse admitted to shooting Joseph Rosenbaum, Anthony Huber and Gaige Grosskreutz in self-defense during an August 2020 Black Lives Matter protest against the police shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Rosenbaum and Huber died from their injuries.
The jury accepted his claims, finding him not guilty based on Wisconsin law, which allows a person to “threaten or intentionally use force against another for the purpose of preventing or terminating what the person reasonably believes to be an unlawful interference with his or her person.”
Rittenhouse has since written a book portraying himself as the victim.
“I went to Kenosha to help my community—not become a whipping boy in the national debate. In less than three minutes, the direction of my life was horribly altered when I was forced to defend myself with deadly force. So much was said and written about me that was not true.”
