Donald Trump has congratulated Kyle Rittenhouse for his homicide acquittal after shooting and killing two protesters and wounding another.
On Friday, November 19, a 12-person jury consisting of seven women and five men found the teen not guilty on all counts after three days of deliberation.
Rittenhouse, 18, of Antioch, Illinois, shot and killed Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber, and injured Gaige Grosskreutz on August 25, 2020, with an AR-15 rifle, during protests which took place in Kenosha, Wisconsin, after the police shooting of Jacob Blake.
The former POTUS was quick to send his congratulations to the teen, in a statement posted on Twitter by his spokesperson Liz Harrington.
"Congratulations to Kyle Rittenhouse for being found INNOCENT of all charges. It's called being found NOT GUILTY—And by the way, if that's not self-defense, nothing is!"
Trump visited the city in September 2020 to view the damage done during the civil unrest that was sparked by the police shooting of Jacob Blake.
Current US President Joe Biden called on Americans to "express their views peacefully", while acknowledging that the outcome of the high-profile case "will leave many Americans feeling angry and concerned, myself included, we must acknowledge that the jury has spoken."
The teenager, who was 17 at the time of the shooting, had been charged with five felonies; first-degree intentional homicide, first-degree reckless homicide, attempted first-degree intentional homicide, and two counts of first-degree recklessly endangering safety.
Per BBC News, Rittenhouse had denied all the charges and maintained he acted in self-defense.
His homicide trial started on November 1 and had seen testimonies from dozens of witnesses and footage taken of the night the then-17-year-old opened fire. Jurors were even played a graphic video of Rosenbaum lying still, unable to breathe after he was shot four times.
Rittenhouse's defense argued that the then-17-year-old had feared for his life last August.
Attorney Mark Richards spoke with CNN in an interview on Friday, November 19, after his 18-year-old client, was found not guilty on all charges in his homicide trial.
CNN's Chris Cuomo asked Richards if Rittenhouse "thinks he did anything wrong," to which the lawyer responded: "Kyle said: 'If I had to do it all over again and I had any idea something like this would happen. I wouldn't do it.'"
He added: "I want to be clear that is not regret for what he did that night under those circumstances.
"Hindsight is always 20/20, if not better, and he didn't want to kill anybody and he was left with a terrible choice and he exercised that choice, which was found to be lawful."
Cuomo asked Richards again: "Does he think he did anything wrong?"
"Legally, No," Richards replied. "Morally?" Cuomo followed up.
"He wishes he didn't have to do it," Richards said. "This case as you said has been so political. So yes, or no. The narrative that came out was not the truth. At trial, it did come out."
