The Daily Signal - What You Need to Know About Jacob Blake, Kyle Rittenhouse, and the Kenosha Violence

Episode Date: September 2, 2020

Jacob Blake, 29, was shot seven times in the back by a police officer Aug. 23 after police responded to a report of a domestic dispute in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Kyle Rittenhouse, 17, is accused in the fatal shootings of two men who his lawyers say attacked the teen Aug. 26 as he was trying to protect property from rioters in the wake of the Blake shooting. What is the media alleging about Rittenhouse, and what are the known facts? Amy Swearer, a legal fellow in the Edwin Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at The Heritage Foundation, joins "The Daily Signal Podcast"to discuss. We also cover these stories: President Trump visits Kenosha, despite the wishes of state and local politicians who asked him not to come.  Chad Wolf, acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, tells Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler in a letter that the federal government will get involved if local leaders don’t quell the ongoing violence since the May 25 death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. The Department of Justice is looking into possible criminal activity by the Black Lives Matter organization.   Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for Wednesday, September 2nd. I'm Virginia Allen. And I'm Rachel Del Judas. What happened in the shooting of Jacob Blake and the protesting of Blake's situation where Kyle Britton House allegedly killed two protesters? Amy Swearer, a legal fellow in Edwin-Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at the Heritage Foundation, joins me on the Daily Signal podcast to discuss. Don't forget.

If you're enjoying this podcast, please be sure to leave a review. or a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts and encourage others to subscribe. Now onto our top news. President Trump visited Kenosha, Wisconsin, on Tuesday, despite state and local politicians asking him not to come. Trump has defended the actions of teenager Kyle Rittenhouse,

who shot and killed two protesters in Kenosha last week amid riots. Video footage shows Rittenhouse running down the street with a long rifle and being being chased by a crowd of demonstrators. The teen stumbles and falls and shoots his gun multiple times at those pursuing him, killing two men and wounding another. When asked about the shooting, Trump told reporters Monday,

we're looking at all of it. That was an interesting situation. You saw the same tape as I saw. And added, And it was something that we're looking at right now. And it's under investigation, Trump said. But I guess he was in very big trouble. He probably would have been killed, but it's under investigation.

After visiting some of the businesses that had been burned to the ground by rioters in Kenosha, Trump spoke with law enforcement and other community leaders at a roundtable in Kenosha per Fox News. Trump pledged to provide $1 million to support law enforcement in Kenosha and $4 million for local businesses in the Wisconsin City. It's an honor to be in your neighborhood. It's an honor to be in your great state, Wisconsin, and we're here for you all the way. Some people thought it would be a good thing for me to come, a bad thing. I just wanted to come.

I really came today to thank law enforcement and to just, really, that what you've done has been incredible. It's been really inspiring because you see it happening all over, and it just never seems to end. And it never seems to end because it's almost as though they don't want it to end. because you ended it really fast. And Congressman, I want to thank you for the job you did. You were the first call, and I want to thank you very much, Brian. Really great job. Chad Wolf, the Acting Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security,

said in a Monday letter to Ted Wheeler, the Democrat mayor of Portland, that the federal government will get involved if local leaders don't quell the ongoing violence that has been occurring since the death of George Floyd on May 25th. We are standing by to support Portland, Wolf wrote, At the same time, President Trump has made it abundantly clear that there will come a point when state and local officials fail to protect its citizens from violence. The federal government will have no choice but to protect our American citizens. President Trump and officials from the Department of Homeland Security have offered to send backup but have been refused by Oregon officials. The Portland police declared a riot in the city after Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler's house was marched on and burning debris was thrown into his building.

The Department of Justice is looking into possible criminal activity carried out by Black Lives Matter. Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf joined Fox News host Tucker Carlson on Monday night and explained that he spoke with Attorney General Bill Barr and the Department of Justice is examining the funding and leadership of Black Lives Matter specifically in Portland. Department of Justice is also targeting and investigating. the head of these organizations, the individuals that are paying for these individuals to move across the country. What we know, Tucker, is that we have seen groups and individuals move from Portland to other parts of the country. We had about 175 arrests in Kenosha.

Almost 100 of them were from out of state. So we know they're moving around. We've seen them in D.C., in Sacramento and elsewhere. They're organized. We've seen similar tactics being used from Portland and other cities across the country as well. So we know that there's organization. I know the Department of Justice is also looking at that as well. President Trump says many strokes are not the reason he was sent to Walter Reed Hospital

last year. A new book authored by New York Times correspondent Michael Schmidt alleged per the Hill that Vice President Mike Pence was told to be on standby to assume presidential powers last November in the event the president had to be anesthetized during a previously unscheduled visit to Walter Reed Medical Center. On Tuesday, Trump tweeted in response to claims in the book, saying, it never ends. Now they're trying to say that your favorite president, me, went to Walter Reed Medical Center, having suffered a series of mini-strokes. Never happened to this

candidate, fake news. Perhaps they are referring to another candidate from another party. Kenneth Walker, the boyfriend of the late Brianna Taylor, filed a lawsuit against the Louisville, Kentucky Police Department. In March, Brianna Taylor was shot and killed in her apartment by law enforcement who were carrying out a no-knock search warrant. It is alleged that Walker fired at the officers first when they entered the apartment, but Walker says he did not shoot police officer sergeant Jonathan Mattingly, but rather that the sergeant was hit by friendly fire from one of the other two police officers present. Walker's suit claims that he fired a single shot to scare away those entering the apartment and says this use of force is justified under the

the state's stand-your-ground law. The suit also claims that police threatened Walker's life, illegally detained Walker, interrogated him under false pretenses, ignored his account, as cooperated by neighbors, and arrested and jailed him per WDRB. Florida Republican Governor Rhonda Santa said lockdowns will never happen again in his state. We will never do any of these lockdowns again, and I hear people say they'll shut down the country and honestly, I cringe. DeSanta said Monday during a press conference at the Village's retirement community

via Fox 13 News. Now stay tuned for my conversation with Amy Swerer on what happened in the shooting of Jacob Blake, the Kyle Brittenhouse situation and what you need to know about Kenosha. Do you have an interest in public policy? Do you want to hear some of the biggest names

in American politics speak? Every day, the Heritage Foundation host webinars called Heritage Events Live. Webinar topics range from ethics during the COVID-19 pandemic to the CARES Act and the economy. These webinars are free and open to the public. To find the latest webinars and register, visit heritage.org slash events. I'm joined today on the Daily Signal podcast by Amy Swearer. She's a legal fellow in the Edwin-Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at the Heritage Foundation.

Amy, it's great to have you with us on the Daily Signal podcast. Thank you so much for having me. So we'll be talking a little bit about Kyle Rittenhouse as well, but let's start with Jacob Blake, who was the 29-year-old man who has shot multiple times by police on August 23rd in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Amy, can you tell us what we know about what happened here? Sure. So with Jacob Blake, this was really the event that kicked off the firestorm, if you will, that has been going on in Kenosha over the last week or so. The first video that came out was just a very short video that was about 20 seconds. And admittedly, it's very hard to watch. It's Jacob Blake walking away

from an officer with the officer's gun drawn. He tries, he, Jacob Blake tries to get into the car. The officer tries to pull him back. And as he's leading into the car, he shoots Jacob Blake roughly seven times in the back. Now, again, it's difficult to watch. But I will point out that it was immediately apparent to me that this is different from the George Floyd situation. If you remember George Floyd, again, was the man in Minnesota who had his neck kneeled on for four minutes by an officer as he was unconscious. So something like that, you know, kneeling on an unconscious man for four minutes, there's no context that is going to justify that.

That man is in no capacity of danger to anyone. He can't be. There are times like this where even when it looks bad, there's context that can matter. There's context that can come out. I can point you to dozens of videos of individuals, quickly reaching into a vehicle or a pocket, or within a split second, having a weapon, and now the cop is injured or dead. So I think it was important for us to wait for the facts to come out, but that's not what happened. And so, you know, you immediately have this narrative of police shooting an unarmed individual for no reason.

And then the fact started coming out. And it was a little different than what was initially reported. So the officers had been called to the residence for a domestic dispute in which Blake was reportedly threatening a woman. The officers knew he was wanted on a felony warrant for sexual assault. Previous video shows him about 30 seconds earlier, physically fighting with the officers, brushing off a taser. at some point it's unclear whether he had a knife on him. The officers seemed to be under the impression he had a knife on him, and a knife was ultimately found on the floorboard of the car.

You know, and there's just a lot going on here that with that added context, you know, I don't know that there's enough to determine from what we have that the officer either did everything right or absolutely nothing wrong, but it was immediately apparent that this was far more common. complicated and dangerous of a situation than what we saw reported and clearly what we saw with the George Floyd situation. There was a way in which the shooting was not as grotesque and inexplicable as it might have been initially reported.

So on that note, Amy, what questions would you say remain to be answered about Blake's shooting? You know, it would have been helpful if there was body camera images, you know, something where we could see from the officer's perspective, sort of what the officer saw. that it made him believe he needed to use lethal force at that moment against Jacob Blake, whether he saw Blake reaching for a weapon or reaching for something. You know, there is a sense in which if Blake is reaching for a weapon, you know, if Blake had made threats to the officers, I've seen some reports saying he had threatened

to shoot the officers. But again, none of that has been confirmed. And so it's just sort of up in the air, this idea of what initiated, you know, what prompted that officer to believe lethal force was necessary. And that belief may be reasonable, it may be unreasonable. We just don't know, but the facts are going to affect that belief. So, Amy, the Blake shooting has been often compared to the death of George Floyd. I know you mentioned this a little bit earlier, but are there any other distinctions that you think should be drawn between the two situations?

Yeah, I mean, other than that sort of factual reality of, you know, that there is a way, given certain facts that the Jacob Blake death could have been reasonable. You know, I think more than anything with their distinctions is what you saw in the similarities of sort of the aftermath, how it immediately set off a firestorm that has since destroyed major parts of the city in which it took place. And so it's, you know, it's interesting because in many ways, despite their differences, the similarities in outcome, I think is so pretty. found that it's hard to get over that. Well, let's talk about Kyle Rittenhouse. He's the 17-year-old boy

who per CBS is accused of killing two protesters who were actually protesting the Jacob Blake shooting and injuring another with an AR-15-style rifle in Kenosha, Wisconsin on August 25th and has been charged as an adult with two counts of first-degree homicide and one count of attempted homicide. So what do we know about why the 17-year-old was in Kenosha in the first place? and guarding the town. Well, so this, again, is going to come down to what we know is going to come down to, if you will, competing narratives. And I think this is another example of how even with some very clear video timelines that we

have in this case, you can read different narratives into it that, you know, if you're reading them, they appear to be written about completely different events depending on who's writing them. So what do I mean by that? I'd say the three different narratives that you have. First, you have sort of the common media narrative, which right now seems to be that written house was a white nationalist member of a right-wing militia who drove across state lines with a rifle because he was intent on threatening peaceful protesters. He intimidated and provoked the crowd and then open fire indiscriminately. And the protesters who attacked him and were killed were heroes who sacrificed themselves to protect others. So that's one

narrative you have. I'd say then you have the narrative from Writtenhouse and his attorney, which is that, you know, he showed up on arms earlier in the day. He just wanted to clean up graffiti in a town where he worked, where he had many friends. He was either invited to or heard about an invitation from store owners who wanted people to protect their property. He legally obtained a firearm in Wisconsin. He was administering first aid to protesters. And basically, he never did anything unwise, illegal. or otherwise wrong. And then you have what I would say is the more objective video evidence.

There's a lot of videos from all across that night. And I think when you put them all together, you get a third narrative that frankly is far closer to Writtenhouse's account than to the media account. And if you want, I can sort of get into what that more objective account looks like. Yeah, let's talk about that for a minute. What do you see and what do you think people should know? Yeah. So, you know, I'd highly encourage people to, the videos are graphic.

But the New York Times in particular is put together sort of a video timeline from all of the different live streams. And I think when you put all of these together and you watch them, a number of things become very clear. So I'm not going to reiterate the entire timeline, but, you know, sort of the main points. I think the first is that written house was never the initial. aggressor in either of the deadly confrontations. In fact, both times he was actively trying to remove himself from the confrontation. He was walking and in one case running away from the confrontation. And in fact, the second point is that contrary to this idea of the protesters being unarmed and peaceful,

I think it's very clear from the video that the protesters in particular who were shot, either killed or injured, were not only confrontational and threatening the initial aggressors, several of them were armed and appeared to be in both cases either firing or preparing to fire guns at Rittenhouse. They were these initial aggressors who actively attacked him as he's trying to get away. And I think third, and I think this is very, very important here. So you've got this narrative of, you know, essentially he just opened fire indiscriminately. What you actually see in the video is that written house only fired his gun at individuals who at least arguably posed an imminent and serious threat to him. You know, the moment that other protesters stopped approaching him in a threatening manner, he put down his firearm and continued trying to remove himself from the situation.

But the individuals who were shot were those who, you know, attacked him with a skateboard, pointed a gun literally at his face or who, you know, was. was chasing him down for 40, 50 yards, things of that nature. So it paints a very different narrative than I think you've seen on either side. But I'd say definitely it's closer to the narrative that you're getting from Writtenhouse's attorney. Well, something else that's been a big topic of discussion and I think confusion is about Kyle Rittenhouse's gun. Was that firearm legally or illegally obtained? So this is, you know, again, where it's, you have the version from his attorney, which is actually quite vague. According to his attorney, the firearm never crossed state lines. So apparently, he at some point was given a firearm in Wisconsin. There are serious

questions, however, at least in my mind, about the legality of that. So Wisconsin has a law that prohibits, in most cases, individuals under the age of 18 from, it's called going about armed with a dangerous weapon. So basically open carrying guns. Now, there are exceptions to that, such as if you have a valid hunting license or are accompanied by an adult, but it's unclear whether any of those exceptions sort of exist. And this is where we get into, you know, again, you have a narrative from his attorney, how well does it match up with the facts? I don't think we have, you know, that sort of thing doesn't come out on video. We just don't have enough evidence at this point to sort of weed through that.

Something else that, as you've mentioned earlier, Amy, has been a topic of discussion amongst people across the country, is was written house the aggressor in the situation, as a lot of people are saying he was, what is, what do you see when you look at the facts? Yeah, so this idea of, you know, who is the initial aggressor becomes important. Wisconsin, like most states, has a law that essentially says, look, you can claim self-defense except for in two circumstances. So the first is when you do something unlawful to provoke the violence or when you do something regardless of whether it's lawful or unlawful with the intent specifically of provoking people to attack you so that you can then use it as a guise

to kill your attacker. So in those two situations, you know, if you're, it's provocation and you can't claim self-defense anymore. Now, at least, As to this idea of, you know, was he provoking? Was he intentionally seeming to provoke the attack? I mean, it's hard to say that when you look at the video. You have an individual who is, in the first case, actively running away and being chased. Now it's possible, you know, maybe he said something or did something prior to that. I think certainly the state will try to argue that if he was an illegal possession of that rifle, he was doing something unlawful.

You also have this reality that I think the state is going to play into of saying, we're going to paint this kid as essentially showing up with a rifle planning to kill someone. Again, he was this white nationalist who was trying to create a situation where he could kill protesters and claim self-defense. but it's just so hard because you have videos from earlier in the day where he, you know, is just cleaning graffiti, saying, look, I'm here peacefully. I don't want to, my goal is not to hurt anybody. You know, so again, just a lot to weed through with that. But it would seem to me that at least on its face, I don't think, I think the state has an uphill battle trying to prove that Kyle Wrightenhouse was, was provoking his attackers or showed up their intent on killing someone. Can we talk, Amy, a little bit more about the charges written houses facing and what his likely

defense will be? Yeah, so I think these are very serious charges. I mean, he's looking at life in prison. He's got five felony charges, including two for first degree intentional murder, one for attempted murder, and then two counts of what's called reckless endangerment. And then, you know, as I mentioned earlier, he's got that. It's a misdemeanor count for carrying a dangerous weapon as a person under the age of 18. So here's where it gets interesting.

First degree intentional murder in Wisconsin doesn't require premeditation. It just requires that you intended to kill the person. I think it's very clear from the video and from the context that Rittenhouse was intentionally using deadly force against specific individuals. You know, he intended to fire at them. The only question is whether he acted in lawful self-defense because that's considered privileged action. You can't be held criminally liable for acting in self-defense, even if you intentionally killed someone. So what's going to happen is written house is going to argue, look, when I shot them, it was because I was in reasonable fear of imminent, serious bodily harm. I had to do this to lawfully defend myself. And then after that, the state is

going to have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he actually wasn't in reasonable fear, or in the case of provocation, that he unlawfully provoked the situation. And then real quick, not to get too far into the weeds here, but as I said, he's facing two charges of reckless endangerment. These are quite odd to me. I anticipate these not coming into play and probably getting dropped because they appear to be related to the two deaths for which is also facing intentional murder charges. So kind of a just a technical issue here is that the way recklessness works is that you don't have intent. So recklessness would be like he just sort of fired randomly without regard for who it was going to injure. But I don't think anyone's actually

arguing that he, that he, written house, wasn't intentionally firing at specific people. He's essentially saying, yeah, I intended to shoot them, but it was in self-defense. So it's a weird charging decision to sort of get him for intent and recklessness. Unless written house suddenly changes the self-defense argument, I think those two at least are going to be dropped. But again, when you're facing intentional first-degree murder counts, you're still looking at life in prison, even without those. Amy, what do you think the prosecution, which is the state of Wisconsin, will say, will they argue written-house didn't have grounds for self-defense? Yeah, so I think to me, most probable thing that the prosecution is going to go after is this idea of he waived his right

of self-defense by provoking the situation. And I kind of touched on this earlier. You know, it could say that, you know, again, they say, look, he was illegally armed and therefore he was doing something unlawful, just carrying his gun, that provoked to the attack. But even assuming that's all true, in that scenario, you can regain your right. to self-defense by withdrawing from the confrontation. And then, you know, if you're threatened with deadly force after you've withdrawn from the confrontation and say, hey, okay, fine, like, I'm done with this fight, you know, you can regain that right of self-defense. And I think even if he, you know, as we talked about, even if he said something that provoked people to chase him,

he's running away. And, you know, he's, he is clearly booking it out of there saying, hey, I want no part of this. And at that point, if he, you know, he's, he's, he's clearly booking it out of there saying, fear and imminent fear of your life, you regain that right to self-defense. So I think that's an uphill battle for the state. And then as I said, there's the second argument essentially that he showed up intending to kill people, you know, intending to provoke them to attack him so that, you know, he could kill them in quote unquote self-defense. But again, you know, when you look at the video evidence, when you look at both what you see, which is someone actively running away, not standing there and say, yes, now I get to kill people in self-defense.

You know, you also see someone who's distraught, who immediately turns himself into police, who says, yeah, I shot someone that was in self-defense, who doesn't use it to then shoot random other people, you know, who showed up there apparently not even armed initially, who was administering aid to others. I think if all those facts are true, there's just a lot of things that don't match up with that narrative that the state would have to prove of, you know, he intended to show up and shoot people. Well, big picture, Amy, what do you think about what happened in Kenosha? And do you think Rittenhouse was wise to go to Kenosha with a gun? Even while recognizing that I think Kyle Rittenhouse has very clear claims of self-defense, there is this idea of him being there in the first place

as an armed 17-year-old who doesn't live there that makes a lot of people, frankly, myself included, very uncomfortable. There's still a lot of facts we don't know. I think sort of broad picture from a Second Amendment perspective, there's a difference between lawful defense and questionable vigilantism. I think the clearest way of distinguishing those two things is the posturing.

Are you actively going out to find and take on criminals? Are you simply prepared to defend yourself and your community in a reactive way when crime happens? And I think there are facts that have been alleged here, you know, if true, make this case more like active vigilantism. And I think that there are facts in this case that if true, make it more like community defense, like in Korea town and much more uncomfortable. You know, we don't know how those facts are going to shake out. But I think, broad picture, that distinction between lawful defense and vigilantism is something that gun owners

have to be very, very careful with and think of. very deeply, especially in times of chaos and disorder like this. And I think finally, above and beyond all that, there are a lot of arguments for why Kyle Wright House shouldn't have been there that night. But most compelling for me is that he shouldn't have been there because this shouldn't have been happening. You know, government officials in Wisconsin should have been better willing and able to protect Kenosha in previous days. We shouldn't have gotten to a point where a 17-year-old

thinks that he needs to go protect a city. You know, you have a governor who declans to send in an extra 500 national guardsmen that have been requested by local law enforcement. You know, just even beyond that, you know, you have the reality that for several days, the entire nation watched as Kenosha was burning because of, yes, largely peaceful protesters, but protesters who still over the last three months for various reasons have caused hundreds of millions of dollars of damage across the country. So I think there's a lot of blame to go around, even before we get to a point where we start questioning, you know, the wisdom of a 17-year-old showing up thinking he needs to keep the peace. You know, I think we start with how did we get to that situation and how do we prevent us from getting to that situation again?

Lastly, Amy, can you talk about the difference and how the media has treated the Kenosha in Portland shootings? Yeah, this is interesting because I think a lot of people may not have even heard that there was also a shooting between. Black Lives Matter protesters, or I guess it was an Antifa protester and a more of a far-right counter-protester in Portland. And the reason a lot of people don't know that is because it just has sort of not made the news in the way that Kyle Rittenhouse has. That when the rules are switched, you know, it seems that the media hasn't been very apt to talk about it. You know, we immediately knew everything there was to know about Kyle Rittenhouse. You know, the people were questioning, how did he get the gun?

What were his, you know, what's his life story? What's everything he's ever said online ever? Whereas, you know, you have this individual in Portland who all of a sudden it's not interesting to them sort of who he was affiliated with or that he was an illegal possession of a firearm that he had been arrested at previous protests. And I think that says a lot just sort of about the state of really the narrative that It's very easy for one particular narrative to be crafted to the exclusion of, you know, other important information, other important stories that are out there. It's very disappointing.

Well, Amy, thank you so much for joining us today on the Daily Signal podcast. We appreciate having you. Thank you for having me. And that'll do it for today's episode. Thanks for listening to the Daily Signal podcast. You can find the Daily Signal podcast on Google Play, Apple Podcast, Spotify, and now on I Heart Radio. Please be sure to leave us a review and a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts and encourage others to subscribe. Thanks again for listening and we'll be back with you all tomorrow. The Daily Signal podcast is brought to you by more than half a million members of the Heritage Foundation. It is executive produced by Kate Trinko and Rachel Del Judas, sound design by Lauren Evans,

Mark Geinney, and John Pop. For more information, visitdailySignal.com.