The attorney of former Covington Catholic High School student Nicholas Sandmann joined Kyle Rittenhouse’s legal team Thursday to begin filing defamation lawsuits.
Todd McMurtry
told Fox News he will lead the effort in deciding who Rittenhouse will file lawsuits against for publicly defaming him during his 2021 trial. The attorney estimated there will be a total of 10 to 15 cases against “large defendants.”
“I’ve been hired to head the effort to determine whom to sue, when to sue, where to sue,” McMurtry said. “We’re going to look at everything that’s been said, determine which of those comments are legally actionable and proceed from there.”
Rittenhouse was
acquitted of all five charges brought against him, including two counts of homicide and one count of attempted homicide, for fatally shooting Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber, plus injuring Gaige Grosskreutz with his AR-15-style rifle in August, 2020.
McMurtry signaled that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg will be at the “top” of the “list” of being hit with lawsuit due to his platform labeling that the Kenosha shootings a “mass murder” event, which the lawyer said is “factually false,” Fox News reported.
“Let’s just use for an example what Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg said about [Rittenhouse]. They said that he was involved in a mass murder incident,” McMurtry explained. “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. And it was seriously mistaken and seriously defamatory.”
(RELATED: ‘Hold Them Accountable’: Nicholas Sandmann Says Rittenhouse Should Sue ‘Liberal Elites’ For Defamation)
Rittenhouse
announced the launch of the Media Accountability Project on “Tucker Carlson Tonight” in February, vowing to sue media organizations, public figures and politicians after they falsely reported that he is a “white supremacist” and illegally “crossed state lines” with a firearm. The teenager said lawsuits will be brought forth against NBA star
LeBron James and “The View” co-host Whoopi Goldberg, who
claimed Rittenhouse “murdered” Rosenbaum.
McMurtry represented Sandmann after the media defamed him for a confrontation with a Native American man at the March For Life in 2019. The former high school student settled a $250 million lawsuit with the
Washington Post in 2020, and also settled suits with NBC Universal and
CNN. He said in a November Daily Mail
op-ed that he was involved with six defamation suits with media outlets.
In the op-ed, Sandmann called on Rittenhouse to sue the liberal media to “hold them accountable” for their “attacks.”
“So, if Kyle is prepared to take on another burden in his early life, with the acceptance that it might result in nothing, I answer, give it a shot and hold the media accountable,” Sandmann previously said. “Taking a life, for any reason, sticks with someone forever and yet the liberal elites would rather turn it into a joke for likes. Not only does Kyle have to deal with that, but it is compounded with the overwhelming stress and trauma of the character assassination taking place against him.”
