Rittenhouse lawyer criticizes Republican representatives and Donald Trump Jr for job offers and free guns.
Kyle Rittenhouse’s attorney accused prominent Republicans of trying to cash in on his client, calling him “disgusting.”
Rittenhouse, 18, was charged with manslaughter, attempted murder and reckless danger for killing two men and wounding a third with an AR-style semiautomatic rifle during a night of protests in August last year over the shooting of a black man. , Jacob Blake. , by a white police officer in Kenosha, Wisconsin.
Rittenhouse traveled from his home in nearby Antioch, Illinois, to join other armed civilians on the streets, carrying a weapon that authorities said was illegally purchased for him because he was a minor.
On Friday, a jury cleared Rittenhouse of all charges after Rittenhouse and his attorneys successfully argued that he had acted in self-defense during a confrontation.
Since then, Rittenhouse’s attorney, Mark Richards, has criticized those who try to use Rittenhouse’s acquittal for their own purposes. “There are a lot of people trying to take advantage of this, and I don’t think people should,” Richards told Insider.
Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz said he expected a not guilty verdict because Rittenhouse “would probably be a pretty good intern for Congress.”
Rep. Paul Gosar later tweeted that he would do an “arm wrestling” with Gaetz to “get dibs for Kyle as an intern.”
Meanwhile, Representative Madison Cawthorn went live to Instagram to praise the verdict. “KYLE: IF YOU WANT AN INTERNSHIP, CONTACT ME,” read a caption posted on the video.
Richards accused Republicans of trying to “trade with [Rittenhouse’s] celebrity.”
“They are raising money and all these Republican congressmen are saying come work for me,” he said. “They want to trade with their celebrity and I think it’s disgusting.”
Richards also chided Donald Trump Jr. for encouraging people to support a gun rights organization that he said would “award” Rittenhouse an AR-15 for his “defense of gun rights.”
In a tweet that has since been deleted, Trump Jr. wrote: “Gun Owners of America is sending Kyle Rittenhouse an AR-15. Sign the card in support of Kyle. Americans have a fundamental right to defend themselves and to keep and bear arms. The verdict in the Kyle Rittenhouse trial is an acknowledgment of those rights.”
“He’s an idiot,” Richards told Insider. “I don’t have to dwell on that because it speaks for itself.”
In another interview, hours after the verdict, Richards said that “too many people carry guns in our society.
“I know people will go crazy when they say this, but there are too many guns in our society,” Richards told CNN’s Chris Cuomo on Friday.
“I wish our society wasn’t perceived as so dangerous that people needed to arm themselves.”
During the same interview, Richards said that Rittenhouse had wished “a hundred times more” that he had never been to Kenosha on the night of the fatal shootings, but said that his client had “no regrets for what he did that night under those circumstances.”
Richards has been contacted for additional comment. Representatives for Gaetz, Gosar, Cawthorn and Trump Jr. have also been contacted for comment.