Rittenhouse has been added as a defendant to a civil lawsuit filed by the parents of Anthony Huber, a Wisconsin man Rittenhouse fatally shot in Kenosha during street protests in August 2020.
Kyle Rittenhouse Loses Attempt To Dismiss $10 Million Civil Suit Accusing Him of Killings
November 5, 2022
Share
The motion by his attorneys to dismiss the civil case against Kyle Rittenhouse by the family of Anthony Huber was denied.
According to The Washington Post:
In a criminal trial last November, Rittenhouse was found not guilty of five charges related to killing Huber and Joseph Rosenbaum and injuring Gaige Grosskreutz with an AR-15-style rifle. A civil trial could replay evidence against the 18-year-old before a jury, in addition to statements he has made in right-wing media since going free. The suit does not specify any monetary damages, but attorneys for the parents filed a $10 million claim notice in December.
“He’s responsible,” John Huber said of Rittenhouse, who fired at Anthony Huber after Huber struck him with a skateboard during a foot chase. Rittenhouse “killed two people. He became an active shooter and my son tried to stop him,” John Huber said. “Unfortunately, he wasn’t able to stop him, and he lost his life in the process.”
Huber’s parents filed the original lawsuit against the city of Kenosha and the Kenosha Police Department last August. The updated motion adds Rittenhouse and seven law enforcement agencies and counties from the area as defendants.
According to Ayesha Bell Hardaway, a law professor at Case Western Reserve University School of Law in Cleveland, the self-defense argument made by Rittenhouse’s lawyers during the criminal trial “won’t absolve him” in a civil trial because the threshold for liability is much lower.
The Hubers’ lawyers will need “clear and convincing evidence” that there was collusion between law enforcement and local gunmen, because otherwise a conspiracy “is hard to prove,” he said. A more winning strategy will be if they can show that law enforcement “was simply negligent in their ability to protect the deceased,” Aidala added.
In an interview with The Washington Post, John Huber accused law enforcement of purposely antagonized protesters by forcing them away from the courthouse square and toward “the vigilantes so they could deal with them.”
“They handled it badly. Plain and simple. And their policies of how to handle the situation were all bad. All the way to the top,” he said.
If they win, the court could claim future earnings Rittenhouse might make from a book deal and high-profile speaking engagements.
Hughes, who is not part of the lawsuit, said that should Huber’s parents receive money, it should be used to fund mental health services within Kenosha or for services “to help ease formerly incarcerated people back into society.”
Rittenhouse, she said, “didn’t go away quietly and pursue his dreams of nursing like he said he was going to do. He went to Mar-a-Lago. He went on Tucker Carlson.”
Rittenhouse has also been strident on Twitter and become a lap dog for right wing groups.
Some highlights of his garbage on Twitter:
The left did everything possible to sacrifice me for politics. They failed. Now they want me to go away and be quiet.
Not gonna happen.
THEY gave me this platform. I’m going to use it to vigorously defend the #2A and #gunrights.🪃
— Kyle Rittenhouse (@ThisIsKyleR) November 5, 2022
— Kyle Rittenhouse (@ThisIsKyleR) November 5, 2022
Many on the left consider the picture of me to be “looking for trouble.”
Many on the left consider the picture of Joshua Ziminski and his wife to be “wholesome civil engagement.”
Many on the left are incapable of rational and independent thought. 🤷♂️ pic.twitter.com/4Qbgrxvq8N
— Kyle Rittenhouse (@ThisIsKyleR) October 31, 2022
3,700 @Twitter employees and the entire Democrat party right now. 👇 pic.twitter.com/M8KLqgg9Hn
— Kyle Rittenhouse (@ThisIsKyleR) November 5, 2022
America Magazine talking about the factors that could lead to a civil war in the United States cites Rittenhouse. “One of the best predictors of whether a country will experience a civil war is whether it is moving toward or away from democracy. Yes, democracy.”
There is one remaining aspect to the argument. A civil war in the 21st century does not look like the civil wars of even the latter half of the 20th. It is best described as a state of sustained racialized insurgent violence, not unlike the diffuse acts of terrorist cells such as Hamas.
How does a country prevent a civil war? “Bolster the rule of law, give all citizens equal access to the vote, and improve the quality of government services.”
Tweet thisRecall that in 2020, antigovernment white nationalists sought to kidnap and execute the Democratic governor of Michigan. Later, Kyle Rittenhouse, a minor, traveled across state lines and then used an AR-15 rifle, a weapon of war, to murder two unarmed protesters. Earlier this summer, parade-goers celebrating the Fourth of July in Chicago were mowed down by a man who was also armed with an AR-15 rifle.
And lest we forget, on Jan. 6, 2021, a mob of Trump supporters—led, we now know, in premeditated paramilitary formation by white supremacist militias like the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers—stormed the Capitol, assaulted police officers and sought to hang the vice president. To this day, almost every single elected Republican at any level of office in the country has made the minimization and denial of this meticulously documented event the cornerstone of their political agenda.
As for how to prevent a civil war, that part turns out to be remarkably easy: “Bolster the rule of law, give all citizens equal access to the vote, and improve the quality of government services.” Easy, that is, if you ignore the fact that D.C. is dysfunctional, corrupt and structurally unrepresentative of the populace.
