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Saying he was inspired by Johnny Depp, Kyle Rittenhouse is moving ahead with his own defamation lawsuits with his lawyer already singling out a social media giant as one of the many intended targets.
Rittenhouse announced on Twitter Friday that he was working with Todd McMurtry, the lawyer who represented Covington Catholic student Nicholas Sandmann in his defamation case against the Washington Post after a video went viral involving Sandmann and a Native American activist. Along with the Washington Post, McMurtry has reached settlements with media companies NBCUniversal and CNN.
McMurtry spoke with Fox News recently where he stated Rittenhouse’s legal team was preparing for “at least 10” defamation lawsuits against prominent figures and companies for comments made about Rittenhouse. Rittenhouse was acquitted last year of all charges in a shooting that killed two people and wounded another during a protest in Kenosha, Wisconsin.
McMurtry went on to tell Fox News Digital in a phone interview that he’d been hired by Rittenhouse to determine “whom to sue, when to sue, where to sue” and said they probably had “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,” McMurtry told Fox News Digital.
Taking to Twitter in the wake of the Johnny Depp defamation verdict against his ex-wife Amber Heard, Rittenhouse made a statement on Wednesday that credited Depp as inspiration in his push to pursue defamation lawsuits.
“Johnny Depp trial is just fueling me,” he tweeted. “You can fight back against the lies in the media, and you should!”
Though McMurtry told FOX News the legal process for potential defamation cases is only just beginning, the lawyer did single out Mark Zuckerburg and Facebook as targets stating Zuckerberg was “certainly going to be at the top of your list” when examining potential defamations.
“Let’s just use for an example what Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg said about (Rittenhouse),” McMurtry said to FOX News Digital. “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.”
This is not the first time Rittenhouse has stated he was going to sue for defamation. TMZ reported in February that Rittenhouse intends to sue LeBron James, Whoopi Goldberg and President Joe Biden for defamation.
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