Trump Derangement Syndrome

On Monday, the prosecution’s case against an Illinois teen, 18-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse, collapsed with a confounding unforced error. Watching the trial unfold, I now believe that a key witness’s calm, revelatory description of events, ensured Rittenhouse’s acquittal on five of the six charges in the controversial case.

The Kenosha saga began with the police shooting of knife-wielding Jacob Blake, a 29-year-old black man, in Kenosha, Wisconsin on August 23, 2020. Following three days of fiery protests and property destruction, Rittenhouse, then a 17-year-old minor, traveled across state lines, armed with a Smith & Wesson M&P 15 rifle provided by a friend.

The prosecutors are some real pieces of💩.
They tried to get this witness to change his police statement to help their case against Kyle Rittenhouse.#RittenhouseTrial pic.twitter.com/Juj2kDDk57

— Chuck (@VikeKang_) November 9, 2021

From bad to worse for Binger. pic.twitter.com/Ttr1DeEYDs

— Viva Frei (@thevivafrei) November 10, 2021

As Kyle Rittenhouse’s prosecutors go into their grand facepalms, following the trial revelation from their star witness that just supported the 17-year-old murder defendant’s claim to self-defense, it’s pretty obvious the wretched case is now over.  AT deputy editor Andrea Widburg has an excellent post today on that here.

The short story here is that the kid was beset by Antifa thugs during the Kenosha, Wisconsin arson-and-looting riots last summer and ended up killing a couple of menacing Antifa-linked thugs who seemed to be trying to kill him first.  The argument stands up, and even the guy who’d been aiming the gun at Rittenhouse at close quarters admitted it.  The case obviously should have never been brought to trial, and the kid should not have been held in jail, been subject to a Red Queen–style trial by press, nor held up as a pariah in the months that followed.  These prosecutors had no case whatsoever and are now on record as junk prosecutors who bring trash cases premised on the direction of the political winds.  The kid should be acquitted promptly.

Kenosha County Circuit Judge Bruce Schroeder said Tuesday morning that court officers saw a person take a video of the jurors in the high-profile Kyle Rittenhouse trial.

Schroeder, before the day’s testimony began , said officers had taken the cellphone from the person recording jurors getting on a bus and erased the footage. He added that new procedures would be instituted to prevent a similar situation.

It would be hard to fully express what a catastrophe this day was for Prosecutor Binger. State laughably responds with suddenly-discovered drone footage.

Today was the fifth day of the trial by which ADA Thomas Binger’s is seeking to have Kyle Rittenhouse convicted and sentenced to life in prison for having shot three men (two fatally) the night of August 25, 2020 in Kenosha WI, when the city was suffering a tsunami of rioting, looting, and arson following the lawful shooting of a knife-wielding Jacob Blake by Kenosha police officers.

And it would be hard to fully express what a catastrophe this day was for Prosecutor Binger.

LIVE: Rittenhouse Trial Day 6

NYT On The Rittenhouse Trial: The Prosecutor’s Case Has Developed Not Necessarily To The Prosecution’s Advantage.

Former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe said Sunday that he is expecting “many indictments” from the investigation by special counsel John Durham into the notorious Steele dossier, arguing that everyone involved in creating the file is in “jeopardy.”

Ratcliffe made the claim on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures” days after Igor Danchenko, a key contributor to the dossier, was arrested on charges that he lied to the FBI regarding his sources — one of whom turned out to be a PR executive with close ties to Bill and Hillary Clinton.

The indictment of the Steele dossier’s key source newly humiliates the Clinton campaign, FBI, and US media.

It did not seem possible for the Steele dossier – the collection of Trump-Russia conspiracy theories funded by the Clinton campaign; hyped by the US media establishment; and tapped by the FBI for surveillance and investigative leads – to get more embarrassing for all of those involved.

But the indictment by Special Counsel John Durham of Steele’s key source, Igor Danchenko, offers 39 pages of new evidence that Russiagate — after five years of failed innuendo, debunked “bombshells”, and humiliating revelations — has no rock bottom.

The plot thickens as Special Counsel John Durham indicts a Russian Washington-based think-tanker for lying to the FBI about the the rumors he passed on to Christopher Steele for his “dossier.”

The Trump-Russia collusion hoax is the most successful and destructive partisan political scam in the history of our nation. Based on lies portraying Donald Trump as a covert Russian operative, it was cited by the Obama-era FBI and Justice Department as the putative justification for using the nation’s vast intelligence apparatus to investigate Trump and concomitantly benefit Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.

And this…

Good morning. I'd like to make 3 points:

1) The vast majority of disinformation, propaganda and lies that flooded the country over the last 5 years did not come from MAGA boomers on Facebook or 4Chan teenagers but the largest and most influential liberal corporate media outlets.

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) November 7, 2021

KENOSHA, Wis., Nov 8 (Reuters) – When George Zimmerman faced life in prison for killing Trayvon Martin, his lawyers chose not to have him testify, a decision some legal experts say contributed to his acquittal in 2013 in the last highly divisive civilian self-defense trial.

Kyle Rittenhouse, the teenager on trial for killing two protesters and wounding a third in Wisconsin last year, appears set to try a different tack. His lawyer, Mark Richards, said in court last week that he would take the stand in his own defense.

Armed Rittenhouse shooting victim Assailant: Thought ‘I was going to die’

KENOSHA, Wis. (AP) — A witness at Kyle Rittenhouse’s murder trial testified Monday that he confronted a rifle-toting Rittenhouse with a gun of his own to try to stop the bloodshed, and thought he was going to die as he closed in on the young man.

Gaige Grosskreutz, 27, ended up getting shot and seriously wounded in the arm by Rittenhouse.

Grosskreutz went into action that night after seeing Rittenhouse kill a man just feet away — the second person Rittenhouse fatally shot that night.

Update – Trial Over?

Rittenhouse trial should be over immediately. pic.twitter.com/PHZnHS5rD9

— Viva Frei (@thevivafrei) November 8, 2021

“To my good friend … A Great Democrat.” Those words written to a Russian figure in Moscow, inside a copy of a Hillary Clinton autobiography, may be the defining line of special counsel John Durham’s investigation. The message reportedly was written by Charles Dolan, a close Clinton adviser and campaign regular whom news reports identify as the mysterious “PR-Executive 1” in the latest Durham indictment, this time of Igor Danchenko.

KENOSHA — A Kenosha police officer testified Friday he ignored Kyle Rittenhouse’s attempts to surrender because he believed there was still an active shooter situation and the teen didn’t behave as people typically do when they’re giving themselves up.

In the first public explanation since that night, Officer Pep Moretti said he and his partner were responding to an active shooter call during the Aug. 25, 2020, unrest when they spotted Rittenhouse walking down the street with his hands up. He said neither he nor his partner heard bystanders yell “The dude right there just shot them” as they sat inside their squad car.

Prosecutors arguing to put Kyle Rittenhouse in prison for the rest of his life tipped their hand on how they plan to do that in the fourth day of testimony on Friday. Questions abound, however, about its relevance and admissibility in court.

Rittenhouse could spend life in prison for killing two men, Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber, and wounding a third, Gaige Grosskreutz, during the Kenosha, Wisconsin riots on August 25, 2020. Rittenhouse claims self-defense in all three shootings, parts of which were recorded or live-streamed. Prosecutors even shared clips from FBI surveillance recordings from a fixed wing spy plane flying above the melee.

Moments before a fatal shooting on August 20, 2020, a masked Joseph Rosenbaum continued to chase down Kyle Rittenhouse despite the teen repeatedly yelling that he was “friendly,” Kenosha Police detective Martin Howard confirmed during testimony on Wednesday.

Howard was reviewing never-before-seen FBI infrared aerial surveillance footage for the court when defense asked him about Rittenhouse being pursued by Rosenbaum, and the then-17-year-old’s repeated yells of “friendly.”