# Kyle Rittenhouse **Kyle Rittenhouse** (born 2003) shot three men, killing two, during unrest in Kenosha, Wisconsin, on August 25, 2020, when he was 17. A jury acquitted him of all charges on self-defense grounds in November 2021. Much of the right embraced him as a symbol of armed self-defense against rioting. To critics he stands for the danger of armed civilians at protests. A pending federal lawsuit also alleges that police treated armed civilians like him leniently that night. Since the trial he has worked as a conservative speaker and gun-rights activist, mostly in Texas politics. > [!note] Not to be confused with > Joe Rittenhouse, a State Department official who appears elsewhere in the wiki in connection with [[Lauren Chen]]. ## At a glance | | | |---|---| | **Born** | January 3, 2003, Antioch, Illinois | | **Kenosha shootings** | August 25, 2020. Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber were killed; Gaige Grosskreutz was wounded. | | **Verdict** | Not guilty on all counts, November 19, 2021 | | **Since 2022** | Based in Texas. Founded the Rittenhouse Foundation (2023); outreach director for Texas Gun Rights (2024) | | **Still pending** | A consolidated federal civil-rights suit brought by Huber's estate and Grosskreutz | ## Kenosha, August 2020 On August 23, 2020, a Kenosha police officer shot Jacob Blake, a Black man, seven times in the back, leaving him paralyzed. The protests that followed turned into property destruction and arson (see [[George Floyd Protests 2020]]). Two nights later Rittenhouse, then 17 and living across the state line in Antioch, Illinois, went to Kenosha saying he wanted to protect businesses. He carried an AR-15-style rifle that a friend, Dominick Black, had bought for him because he was too young to buy it himself. Black later pleaded no contest to a reduced charge and avoided prison. That night Rittenhouse fired on three men: 1. **Joseph Rosenbaum** chased him into a car-dealership lot and grabbed at the rifle's barrel. Rittenhouse shot and killed him. 2. As Rittenhouse ran down the street, **Anthony Huber** struck him with a skateboard and grabbed the rifle. Rittenhouse shot and killed him. 3. **Gaige Grosskreutz**, who was holding a pistol, approached and pointed it at him. Rittenhouse shot him in the arm. He then walked toward police with his hands up and was not stopped. He turned himself in the next day in Illinois. Six days later, [[Donald Trump]] declined to condemn him. "He was trying to get away from them," Trump said at a press briefing, adding that he "probably would have been killed." ## The bail money The #FightBack Foundation, launched in 2020 by attorneys [[Lin Wood]] and John Pierce to support Rittenhouse, posted his $2 million bail. The foundation then turned to efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. The Rittenhouse family later distanced itself from Wood and Pierce, saying it never received a full accounting of the money raised in Kyle's name. In September 2021 Wood's foundation demanded that the bail money come back to it. ## Out on bond: the Proud Boys bar visit In January 2021, prosecutors told the court that Rittenhouse, while out on bond, had visited a bar in Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin, where he was photographed flashing a hand sign associated with white supremacists and was serenaded with a [[Proud Boys]] song. They asked the judge to bar him from bars and from associating with the group. A *New York Times* reporter later described him as an informal mascot of the Proud Boys in this period. ## The trial (November 2021) The trial ran in Kenosha County before Judge Bruce Schroeder. On November 15, 2021, the judge dismissed the charge of illegally possessing a dangerous weapon as a minor, after the defense argued that the state law's exception for long-barreled rifles applied. On November 19 the jury found Rittenhouse not guilty on all remaining counts: two homicide counts, one attempted homicide count and two counts of reckless endangerment. Public opinion split along party lines. An Economist/YouGov poll found that about two-thirds of Republicans thought he should be acquitted, while about three-quarters of Democrats thought he should be convicted. ## Becoming a movement figure - **Fox and Mar-a-Lago.** On November 22, 2021, [[Tucker Carlson]] aired an interview with him that drew about 4.9 million viewers. The same day he met Trump at Mar-a-Lago, and Trump called him "really a nice young man." - **Offers from Congress.** [[Matt Gaetz]], [[Paul Gosar]] and Madison Cawthorn offered him congressional internships. [[Marjorie Taylor Greene]] introduced a bill to award him the Congressional Gold Medal, which drew no co-sponsors. Bills nicknamed "Kyle's Law" were introduced in Oklahoma and Tennessee in 2022. In November 2022 he met with the House Second Amendment Caucus. - **The speaking circuit.** He spoke at [[Turning Point USA]]'s AmericaFest in December 2021 and has toured campuses with the group. In March 2024 he walked off a University of Memphis stage amid protests, and returned there in February 2025. In October 2024 several bands pulled out of an Orlando music festival over his appearance. - **Books and games.** He co-wrote a memoir, *Acquitted* (December 2023), with Mark Richards and Michael Quinn Sullivan. A video game titled *Acquitted* appeared in 2022, and he announced a game meant to fund defamation suits against the media. He launched a gun-rights YouTube channel in 2022 that later went quiet. ## Texas politics and gun rights Rittenhouse moved to Texas in 2022 and soon joined the state's hard-right political network. - **The Rittenhouse Foundation.** He filed paperwork for the gun-rights nonprofit in July 2023. Its directors included Chris McNutt, president of Texas Gun Rights, and the treasurer of [[Defend Texas Liberty PAC]]. That PAC and the allied [[Empower Texans]] network have received tens of millions of dollars from oil billionaire [[Tim Dunn]] and the [[Wilks Brothers]], according to the *Texas Tribune*. - **Endorsements and fights.** He endorsed the firearms YouTuber [[Brandon Herrera]] against Rep. Tony Gonzales, criticized the Texas House's impeachment of Attorney General [[Ken Paxton]], and opposed a 2023 bill to raise the minimum age for buying semi-automatic rifles from 18 to 21. In January 2023 a brewery in Conroe canceled an anti-censorship rally where he was to appear with the head of the secessionist Texas Nationalist Movement. - **The Fuentes meeting.** In October 2023 he was among those seen entering the Fort Worth-area office where Defend Texas Liberty's president, Jonathan Stickland, hosted the white nationalist [[Nick Fuentes]] for nearly seven hours. Afterward Stickland posted a photo of himself with Rittenhouse. - **Texas Gun Rights.** He became the group's outreach director in June 2024. - **The Trump wobble.** On August 2, 2024, he said he would not vote for Trump, citing Trump's bump-stock ban and his signing of the Fix NICS Act, and would write in [[Ron Paul]] instead. Hours later he reversed himself, saying he would vote for Trump after "productive conversations with members of Trump's team." ## Stepping back, and back again In January 2025 he stepped away from public life, saying he "needed peace, a fresh start." In December 2025 he returned to social media to announce that he had married six months earlier. He said he was "back in the fight," citing the [[Assassination of Charlie Kirk]], and pledged to help defeat Rep. Gonzales. Gonzales withdrew from his race in March 2026 amid an ethics scandal, and Herrera became the Republican nominee (see [[TX-23-2026]]). ## The civil lawsuits Huber's estate and Grosskreutz each sued in 2021, mainly over the conduct of Kenosha police and sheriff's officials. Huber's estate added Rittenhouse as a defendant in January 2022, and Grosskreutz added him in February 2023. Rittenhouse countersued Grosskreutz that April. The suits rest on federal civil-rights law. They allege conspiracy and failure to protect, saying police treated armed civilians with leniency while cracking down on protesters. A federal judge allowed the claims to proceed in 2023 and combined the cases for pretrial evidence-gathering. By July 2025 more than a million pages had been exchanged, and Kenosha County's lawyer warned the case had "a very long runway." Summary-judgment motions were scheduled for March 2026. In December 2025 Rittenhouse said he was being sued for $20 million. ## What Kenosha means: the two readings **His supporters' case.** A jury that saw extensive video found that he fired only after being chased, struck and threatened with a gun. To them the prosecution was political, and the early media coverage, which often treated the killings as murders before trial, was a smear. The verdict, in this view, vindicates the right to defend yourself during a riot the authorities failed to control. **His critics' case.** Acquittal answers a legal question, not a moral one. A 17-year-old with a rifle at a riot helped create the danger he then answered with deadly force. Critics argue his celebration by members of Congress, Fox and Turning Point turned a tragedy into a recruitment poster for armed civilians at protests. The pending civil suits press a related point: that police waved armed civilians through while treating protesters as the threat. ## Why it's on the map **1. He is the reference point for armed counter-protest.** Kenosha became the right's leading example of "self-defense" against unrest, a thread that runs through the [[Militia Movement]], the [[Proud Boys]], and the 2020 counter-mobilization described on [[Black Lives Matter]]. **2. He shows how a defendant becomes a political brand.** Within weeks of the verdict he had a Fox interview, a Mar-a-Lago visit and internship offers from members of Congress. Within two years he had a book, a foundation and a seat inside the Dunn- and Wilks-funded Texas political network. **3. The money trail leads somewhere else.** The fund that bailed him out became a vehicle for overturning the 2020 election, an early example of how the post-2020 right recycled donor money from one cause to the next. ## Connections - [[George Floyd Protests 2020]] · [[George Floyd Murder and Aftermath Timeline]] — the unrest in which Kenosha happened - [[Black Lives Matter]] — the movement whose 2020 protests framed the case - [[Donald Trump]] — defended him in 2020 and hosted him in 2021 - [[Lin Wood]] — co-founded the fund that posted his bail - [[Proud Boys]] — the 2021 bar visit - [[Tucker Carlson]] · [[Turning Point USA]] — his main media and speaking platforms - [[Matt Gaetz]] · [[Paul Gosar]] · [[Marjorie Taylor Greene]] — members of Congress who honored him - [[Brandon Herrera]] · [[Ken Paxton]] · [[TX-23-2026]] — his Texas political fights - [[Tim Dunn]] · [[Wilks Brothers]] · [[Empower Texans]] — the money behind his Texas allies - [[Second Amendment]] · [[Gun Owners of America]] — the gun-rights cause he now works in - [[Assassination of Charlie Kirk]] — the event he cited in returning to public life