Kyle Rittenhouse has announced that he is planning to file a defamation lawsuit against Facebook and several large media outlets.According to WANE.com, Rittenhouse announced on Friday that he is working with attorney Todd McMurtry.McMurtry, adds WANE.com, represented Coving Catholic student Nicholas Sandmann in a defamation case against The Washington Post, which circulated a viral video of Sandmann having an apparent confrontation with a Native American activist.In the video, Sandmann appears to be smirking at the indigenous activist, who is playing a drum and chanting.However, later footage emerged showing that Sandmann—along with several other Covington Catholic students—were being verbally harassed by a group of Black Hebrews, who were shouting racial slurs at the students and activists.Now, McMurtry says that he and Rittenhouse are preparing “at least 10” defamation lawsuits against prominent figures and media outlets.Rittenhouse—who was tried and acquitted in the killing of 2 Black Lives Matter protesters in Kenosha, Wisconsin, in 2020—hired McMurtry to determine “whom to sue, when to sue, where to sue.”According to McMurtry, he has so far identified “10 to 15 solid [cases against] large defendants.”“We’re going to look at everything that’s been said, determine which of those comments are legally actionable and proceed from there,” the lawyer told Fox News Digital.

Bullet casings on the ground. Image via U.S. Air Force. Airman st Class Racheal Watson. Public domain.

WANE.com notes that Rittenhouse appears to have been inspired by Johnny Depp’s defamation lawsuit against his ex-wife, Amber Heard.“Johnny Depp trial is just fueling me!” Rittenhouse wrote on Twitter. “You can fight back against the lies in the media, and you should!”While McMurtry said that legal proceedings are only just beginning, he did say that Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook are “certainly going to be at the top of [the] list” as potential defendants.Although Rittenhouse’s killing of 2 Black Lives Matter protesters was widely condemned, Rittenhouse has since been upheld as a hero by aspects of the right-wing media and political establishment.Rittenhouse’s supporters claim that the teenager—who traveled from Illinois into Kenosha with a semi-automatic rifle for the specific purpose of “protecting” businesses from Black Lives Matter protesters—has been unfairly vilified by liberals.“Let’s just use for an example what Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg said about [Rittenhouse],” McMurtry told FOX News “They said that he was involved in a mass murder incident. This was not a mass murder incident. It was clearly factually false. To call somebody a mass murderer is seriously defamatory. And then to use the power of social media to basically […] censor any views that would take opposition to that mass murderer statement is a serious effort to destroy his character.”"Facebook has an outsized voice, they can do a lot of damage, as compared to somebody maybe who has a small blog with 100 subscribers. But we're going to look at everything that we have access to and that's been published, and decide which ones are actionable," McMurtry added.

Sources

Inspired by Johnny Depp, Kyle Rittenhouse Ready to File Defamation LawsuitsKyle Rittenhouse’s lawyer looks to target Facebook in defamation lawsuitSandmann lawyer joins Rittenhouse team, says Zuckerberg a 'top' target of numerous 'solid' lawsuitsStudent wearing MAGA hat in viral video with Native American elder sues Washington Post for $250M