By Jack Brammer
NKyTribune reporter
A Northern Kentucky attorney is part of the legal team to represent Kyle Rittenhouse in expected defamation lawsuits against “10 to 15” separate “large defendants,” including Facebook and its founder Mark Zuckerberg.
Todd McMurtry, who represented Covington Catholic student Nicholas Sandmann during his defamation cases, declined to say Friday exactly when the lawsuits for Rittenhouse would be filed.
Todd McMurtry
His legal work with Rittenhouse was first reported Thursday morning on Fox Digital News.
Rittenhouse, 19, was accused of shooting three demonstrators, killing two of them, during a night of unrest in Kenosha, Wisconsin, in August 2020 after a police officer shot Jacob Blake, a 29-year-old Black man, seven times in the back while being arrested.
Rittenhouse was charged with five felonies, including homicide.
He claimed self-defense and was found not guilty on all charges in November 2021.
Since then, he has accused several media outlets and celebrities of “defaming” him. He said Wednesday that actor Johnny Depp’s heavily publicized victory over Amber Heard in court moved him to pursue his own defamation lawsuits.
McMurtry told Fox News that Rittenhouse’s legal team is preparing to file defamation lawsuits against large companies and prominent persons. He said he has been “hired to head the effort to determine whom to sue, when to sue, where to sue.”
McMurtry said Zuckerberg would be “at the top” of the list” to be sued because of his “outsized voice.”
Kyle Rittenhouse
Facebook could not be immediately reached Friday for comment.
Fox News reported that McMurtry said Facebook said Rittenhouse “was involved in a mass murder incident.”
“This was not a mass murder incident,” said McMurtry. “It was clearly factually false.”
McMurtry represented Sandmann against several major media outlets, claiming they had portrayed him as a white nationalist after a viral video showed him on Jan. 18, 2019, standing near a Native American in Washington, D.C.
Sandmann and his classmates were in the nation’s capital to attend a March for Life event.
CNN settled a lawsuit with Sandmann but the settlement figure was not made public.
I had two FB accts deleted because I posted positive stuff about KR. FB said I cannot support violent or terroristic stuff.
It is about time to fight back against the lying liberal media before they totally destroy this country and what it stands for. Punish the real criminals, drug dealers, pedophiles, sex offenders and so on.
Todd due you check your personal blog any more Im trying to get in touch with you and sent 2 messages very important!