The Democrat Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) Chairman Sean Patrick Maloney (D-NY) — the top Democrat tasked with keeping their House majority — issued a statement filled with factual inaccuracies after 18-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse was found not guilty of all charges on Friday, later having to issue a correction.
“It’s disgusting and disturbing that someone was able to carry a loaded assault rifle into a protest against the unjust killing of Jacob Blake, an unarmed black man, and take the lives of two people and injure another – and face absolutely no consequences,” the first part of Maloney’s original statement said.
However, Blake was not unarmed, nor was he killed. On August 23 of last year, police shot Blake seven times during an altercation in which they were trying to arrest him. “Blake was wanted on charges that included sexual assault, and his alleged victim called 911 after he came to her residence,” Breitbart News reported.
“He fought police and evaded a Taser, allegedly reaching for a knife inside his car before he was shot,” the report added. “He is paralyzed from the waist down; he pleaded guilty to lesser charges in November and received two years’ probation in a deal with prosecutors.”
Chris Hayden, the DCCC communications director, later corrected the statement, saying, “We sent out an incorrect version of our statement. Here is the corrected version. Apologies.”
“It’s disgusting and disturbing that someone was able to carry a loaded assault rifle into a protest against the unjust shooting of Jacob Blake, a black man, and take the lives of two people and injure another – and face absolutely no consequences,” the corrected statement said.
The statement responded to the jury finding Rittenhouse not guilty on all charges Friday, after a lengthy trial and four days of deliberation in Kenosha, Wisconsin.
The 18-year-old was on trial for “two charges of murder, one charge of attempted murder, and two charges of reckless endangerment relating to a melée near midnight on August 25, 2020, during Black Lives Matter riots in the small Midwestern city,” Breitbart News reported.
Jacob Bliss is a reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow him on Twitter.