“I think it detracted from what we were trying to do, and that was obviously to get Kyle found not guilty.” “It was not approved by me, but I’m not always in control,” he said. He said it was arranged by those raising money for Rittenhouse. Richards told The Associated Press that he opposed it as inappropriate and said he tossed the crew out several times. The crew sometimes sat in on defense meetings. Fox News had a camera crew embedded with Rittenhouse at certain points, including before and after the verdict, gathering material for a documentary marketed as a “Tucker Carlson Original.” Carlson tweeted a promo for the documentary to air in December, along with teasing an exclusive interview with Rittenhouse to air Monday night. It was a strategy that sometimes conflicted with other forces surrounding Rittenhouse.
But Richards, beaming as he talked to reporters outside his Racine law office after the acquittal, said that to him, the only thing that mattered was “whether he was found not guilty or not.”Īlong with co-counsel Corey Chirafisi, he spent the months leading up to the case in virtual silence - “I don’t do interviews,” he said brusquely to one emailed request in December - and sought at trial to minimize the polarizing questions about Second Amendment rights. The angry rhetoric surrounding Rittenhouse’s case didn’t subside with the change in attorneys.
“They wanted to use Kyle for a cause and something that I think was inappropriate - and I don’t represent causes. I’m not going to use their names,” Richards said Friday. Soon after a Wisconsin jury acquitted Kyle Rittenhouse of all charges against him, defense attorney Mark Richards took a swipe at his predecessors, telling reporters that their tactics - leaning into Rittenhouse’s portrayal as a rallying point for the right to carry weapons and defend oneself - were not his.