A former spokesman of Kyle Rittenhouse, who became a national figure in 2020 after fatally shooting two men during a violent Wisconsin protest, says the MAGA darling was “patrolling the streets for months” prior looking for an excuse to get into a gunfight.
Law & Crime reports Dave Hancock, who also served as Rittenhouse’s bodyguard, said his former employer misled the jury and the public at large when he testified he acted in self-defense.
“When the world finds out everything that happened in this case and with Kyle, it’ll be shocking,” Hancock said. “It’s breathtaking.”
Hancock’s account seems to support the state’s claim that Rittenhouse was looking for a fight on that August 2020 evening when he arrived in Kenosha. The atmosphere there had grown increasingly volatile, with armed residents facing off against protesters demonstrating against the police shooting of Jacob Blake, a 29-year-old Black man paralyzed after a run-in with a white officer.
Rittenhouse, 17 at the time of the incident, testified he had gone there to offer his services as a medic. Instead, he ended up shooting and killing Joseph Rosenbaum, 36, and Anthony Huber, 26, and injuring Gaige Grosskreutz, then 26.
Rittenhouse testified Rosenbaum chased him and grabbed his rifle. Huber and Grosskreutz then joined the chase, he told jurors. Huber struck him with a skateboard, which evidence seemed to support, and Grosskreutz admitted to pointing a gun at Rittenhouse, though he said that he didn’t intend to shoot.
Prosecutors contended that Rittenhouse escalated the danger by bringing a deadly weapon into an already tense scene. Jurors disagreed, acquitting him on all charges.
Hancock’s account “would have bolstered my main argument about Kyle’s state of mind,” prosecutor Thomas Binger said in “The Trials of Kyle Rittenhouse,” a new documentary airing on the Law & Crime Network. “It may have changed the outcome of the trial.”
Hancock, who had been working for Rittenhouse since after the shooting, said he initially believed Rittenhouse’s claims of self-defense, but that changed when he later became aware of text messages that surfaced as part of a civil lawsuit filed by the family of one of the victims. He told Law & Crime that the jury probably would’ve convicted Rittenhouse if they were aware of the text messages.
Hancock, who helped Rittenhouse promote his book, “Acquitted,” before parting ways with the shooter sometime last year, said he regrets misleading the public.
“There was a history of things he was doing prior to Kenosha, specifically patrolling the street for months with guns and borrowing people’s security uniforms, doing whatever he could to try to get into some kind of a gunfight,” Hancock said. “I believed things he told me that I now understand to be one of his many lies. And that hurts.”
According to the Guardian, Rittenhouse vowed to “murder” people he saw shoplifting at a local CVS Pharmacy two weeks before the Kenosha shooting.
“I wish they would come into my house,” one text message said. “I will f–king murder them.”
Rittenhouse, while not addressing Hancock’s claims directly, reasserted his innocence in an interview for the documentary.
“I was left with no other choice because I was surrounded and (had) nowhere to go and nowhere to run,” he said. “I didn’t do anything wrong.”
Hancock also said he learned during the trial that Rittenhouse sent messages that included racist slurs to friends. Another former bodyguard, Leonard “LT” Toon, says he also saw the epithets in transcripts allegedly lifted from Rittenhouse’s cellphone.
“So, when I see this, like my blood starts boiling,” Toon said. “I look directly at him and I look at the lawyers and I said, ‘What is this?’ I said, ‘What is this? How could you say this?’ And he said nothing.”
Rittenhouse has previously denied accusations that he’s racist after a video surfaced of him at a meeting of the Proud Boys, a right-wing extremist group.
“I’m not a white supremacist, ” he said at the time. “The trial proved I wasn’t a white supremacist. I don’t believe in white supremacy; I think it’s disgusting, and I think it’s hateful.”
Rittenhouse has turned the tragedy into a successful career as an author, gun rights advocate and conspiracy theorist.
In a recent interview with Alex Jones, he claims to have received “thousands” of death threats.
“I’ve had people text me that: ‘I am showing up to your house. I’m gonna kill you, ‘ ” Rittenhouse said.
The family of the two victims in the shooting, along with the survivor, have filed a federal lawsuit alleging that the city of Kenosha and police conspired with militia groups and facilitated the violence that led to the deadly shootings. Hancock said he is prepared to help their case in any way he can.
“If Dave is providing info to Plaintiffs, it would not surprise me, he has been threatening to do this for quite some time,” said Mark Richards, Rittenhouse’s attorney. “He also told me he would give the phone back if Kyle paid $40K that he believes Kyle ‘owes’ him. Never a dull moment.”
Richards said he is unaware of any racist messages in his client’s texts and suggested Hancock was “a disgruntled former employee” who overstates his closeness to Rittenhouse.
