The lawyer for Kenosha shooter Kyle Rittenhouse is on a Twitter tear again—this time, urging supporters to “dust off those Second Amendment rights” and not let China “steal” the election from lame-duck President Trump.
“Time to dust off those Second Amendment rights. Founders put it there for a very specific reason,” attorney John Pierce tweeted Wednesday night.
In another tweet, Pierce wrote, “Trump won in a landslide. The triad of Big Tech, mainstream media and the CCP is trying to steal it. Obvious. Do not let them. Do not give an inch. Fight over every single hedgerow. Nothing less than our freedom hangs in the balance.” The post included hashtags: #FightBack, #TrumpWon and #1775.
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Pierce then shared an image of Washington Crossing the Delaware—an oil painting commemorating General George Washington and the Continental Army in the American Revolutionary War—with the words: “All combat takes place at night.”
Some Twitter users have called out Pierce for trying to “incite violence.”
Asked whether he was actually encouraging people to bear arms to defend Trump, Pierce told The Daily Beast, “Of course not. Just metaphors.”
“Our true enemy is the Chinese Communist Party,” Pierce said in an email. “All Americans must unite together in this time of adversity as we always have. E Pluribus Unum. We are one family and one nation under God. We all must unite in peace and insist on free and fair elections.”
Officials have found no evidence of voting fraud in the 2020 election, despite Trump’s claims.
Pierce’s client, 17-year-old Rittenhouse, is charged with killing two Black Lives Matter protesters and injuring a third during an Aug. 25 demonstration over the police shooting of Jacob Blake. Two days before, a Kenosha cop shot Blake seven times in the back at close range, paralyzing him. Blake was unarmed.
On the day of the protest, Rittenhouse joined a group of gun-toting civilians supposedly guarding businesses. Video from the scene revealed the Illinois teenager tripped and fell to the ground before firing an AR-15-style rifle at protesters who tried to disarm him.
According to a criminal complaint, Rittenhouse shot and killed one of the demonstrators, Joseph Rosenbaum, 36, after he accosted the teen and tossed a plastic bag at him. Several protesters chased Rittenhouse and tried to grab his weapon after he stumbled to the pavement. Rittenhouse then fatally shot Anthony Huber, 26, as he tried to swing a skateboard at the gunman and snatch his rifle. Gaige Grosskreutz, 26, who appeared to be holding a handgun, was shot in the arm and survived.
This week, Rittenhouse’s mother Wendy broke her silence to defend her son and instead blame protesters and law enforcement for the deadly episode.
Meanwhile, Pierce is on a publicity blitz that, at one point, tried to paint Rittenhouse as a hero of a new American Revolution. As The Daily Beast previously reported, the attorney vowed to dispatch a “Seal Team” of lawyers to Wisconsin and is drumming up support for the teen’s legal defense via the #FightBack Foundation, a right-leaning fundraising vehicle he launched with defamation lawyer Lin Wood.
In September, Pierce stepped down from the organization’s legal fundraiser after The Daily Beast reported on the troubled financial history of his boutique litigation firm Bainbridge Pierce, which is millions of dollars in debt.
A Wisconsin court commissioner recently set Rittenhouse’s bail at $2 million, saying because he’s considered a “flight risk” because of the life sentence he faces if convicted. Pierce recently told the Chicago Tribune a legal-defense fund raised nearly $2 million to secure his client’s release, while a separate Christian crowdfunding site has raised $565,678 for Rittenhouse.
On Tuesday, Pierce tweeted, “Please understand that because I am no longer on #FightBack board, I do not have precise figures. We should be looking at another couple hundred thousand needed for bail. But keep in mind we will need much more for the entire defense of this case.”
“There are also lawyers, investigators and experts who need to be paid,” Pierce added. “This is going to be a very long, hard and expensive fight. But one that we will win.”
