As the jury in the Kyle Rittenhouse trial continued its deliberations on Tuesday, the accused man’s mother sent out an email on behalf of the “Kyle Rittenhouse Defense Fund” asking for financial help from supporters. She estimated that attorneys’ fees just for the month of November could add up to more than $100,000.

Both the prosecution and my son Kyle’s defense team have finished their closing arguments and I am beyond nervous. We have been fighting an extremely uphill battle from the beginning, but with the support of thousands of our fellow Americans we have put up a big fight.

Indeed, Wendy Rittenhouse has been selling “Free Kyle” merchandise for months and said in June that FreeKyleUSA, as the defense fund is also known, had already raised nearly half a million dollars just since March.

Selling iPhone cases for Kyle? Ugh. Just ugh.

According to The Hill, the Kyle Rittenhouse Defense Fund, also known as FreeKyleUSA, said on its Twitter account in June that it had raised $464,111 since March 1.

https://twitter.com/freekyleusa/status/1406945657475108866

The trial itself has been somewhat controversial, with the judge overseeing the case seeming to side with the defense on multiple occasions. Judge Bruce Schroeder disallowed the use of the word “victims” to describe Rittenhouse’s victims from the night of August 25, 2020. He shouted at the prosecution for attempting to establish for the jury — through photos and video — Rittenhouse’s connections to the white nationalist group the Proud Boys.

At one point, Schroeder even exhorted everyone in the courtroom, including the jury, to applaud for a star defense witness on Veterans’ Day.

In his last bizarre act, the Judge allowed Rittenhouse himself to pull the names of the jurors who will look at the facts of his case from slips of paper in a tumbler in the courtroom. That was an obviously randomized process since Rittenhouse didn’t know what names he was pulling out. But to allow this at all seems so performative and strange.

It looks less and less likely that the outcome of this trial will be anything other than freedom for the accused unless it becomes a mistrial.

No matter what, there are bound to be protests and demonstrations surrounding the verdict in this case. Let’s just hope that no one like Kyle Rittenhouse shows up there and decides to take matters into their own hands, as Kyle did.

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