After the jury’s not-guilty verdict in the Kyle Rittenhouse trial was announced Friday, the White House released a statement from President Joe Biden saying, “While the verdict in Kenosha will leave many Americans feeling angry and concerned, myself included, we must acknowledge that the jury has spoken.”
What does Joe Biden have to be angry about? It seems the verdict in the Kyle Rittenhouse case did not go his way. I would hope that the president of the United States did not spend any time watching the presentation of evidence over the past few weeks, as he ought to be chest-deep addressing the myriad disasters he has caused since assuming office in January.
If he didn’t watch, that might explain his dull commentary expressing anger over the outcome of a criminal trial in Wisconsin. After all, no one who spent any time watching the much-televised evidentiary flow of the prosecution’s case against Rittenhouse should be shocked, concerned, or even angry about the jury’s acquittal on all counts against the 18-year-old Rittenhouse.
As a former prosecutor and attorney general, my concern is that the American judicial system has been turned into a playground for leftist propaganda, exemplified by a prosecution that should have never seen the light of day. As a black man, I am appalled by Biden and the corporate media’s brazen audacity in declaring race as a factor in this case, although no racial animus existed. Rittenhouse and all those involved in the jury-adjudicated incidents were white.
Still, Rittenhouse was targeted for persecution by the maddening left, including the insatiable leftist media and regrettably the president of the United States. He is a white teenager who was marked for personal destruction to feed the narrative that pro-gun defenders of liberty are by definition “white supremacists,” as Biden claimed, and therefore entitled only to a summary determination of guilt by the angry mob.
Since when did the right to a jury trial and the presumption of innocence give way to prosecutors satisfying the radical bloodlust of idiots who know nothing of the facts? The prosecutor’s responsibility is to evaluate facts as evidence that support a proposition that a criminal act has occurred, or not. The prosecutor’s responsibility remains the same even if the president of the United States implausibly and ignorantly weighs in with a baseless opinion maligning the accused as a “white supremacist.”
This isn’t the first time a Democrat president has decided he knows better than the local justice system. Recall, President Biden’s “clean and articulate,” as he once described him, partner in the White House waded aggressively into Ferguson, Missouri with big Justice Department guns blazing for social justice, only to sneak out of Missouri under cover of darkness after failing to identify any semblance of an unjust result. Like many Democrats, Biden probably still thinks Michael Brown’s hands were up.
I have never been a big fan of cameras in the courtroom. Lawyers tend to cheese for the crowd, altering their performance accordingly. However, thankfully cameras recorded every detail of evidence in this case to confirm for posterity that the only just verdict was an acquittal on the basis of self-defense.
While the jury verdict is likely a disheartening blow to the families of those killed and injured in this tragedy, justice requires jurors consider only the evidence presented in the trial and not the passions of anyone, including the president. In President Biden’s statement expressing anger about the verdict, he reminds us of his “promise to bring Americans together” and to “ensure that every American is treated equally, with fairness and dignity, under the law.”
But apparently Joe’s fairness standard does not apply to Rittenhouse, which is odd since Biden is such an “inclusion” guy. Joe seems to be signaling solidarity among the “angry” that will encourage more violence and more division.
This Rittenhouse jury did an outstanding job while operating under the extreme pressure of a ridiculously “woke” culture. If undermining and insulting the intelligence of a hard-working local jury is Biden’s way of bringing Americans together, his thinking is as disjointed as his policies.