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Except the prosecutor in his case literally said he would not have prosecuted the protesters if they were the ones that killed Rittenhouse instead.
Assuming that is true, we are talking about the arrest stage, not the prosecution stage. Police make arrests, not prosecutors.
I wish @ArjinFerman had provided a reference, but I have the itch to look up ridiculous claims ... and what the hell, that was another thing that actually happened. The interview is here, with the money quote at 37:50:
"In my mind, if someone in that crowd had a gun and had shot and killed Kyle Rittenhouse, our office would not have prosecuted; our office would not have found that person criminally liable."
He provides some context, but it's not "self-defense is completely obvious" context, it's "remember when a gun owner stopped a mass shooting and then the cops blundered in and killed the hero" context, and that was supposed to be in support of his thesis. He claims Rittenhouse running away with his gun after killing Rosenbaum is sufficient reason to kill him ... but what else was Rittenhouse supposed to do? Drop his weapon for the angry mob to pick up? Not retreat? The idea that you can identify and kill an active shooter because you see them running past a ton of people without shooting any of them is such obvious nonsense; you'd hope he would stop and rethink his life after that came out of his mouth.
I can't believe this interview didn't get more play! The only relevant Google hits for 'binger rittenhouse "would not have prosecuted"' right now are the author's blog I linked, a single episode of a video podcast with 50k subscribers, a meme, and a tweet from this April.
I think you have excluded some of the context. What he says is, "From the crowd's perspective, that's how they viewed him [ie as an active shooter]. And that was a reasonable assumption on their part at that particular moment. ... After learning that he just shot someone, seeing him running through a crowded area with a gun that it would have been reasonable for ... the crowd to view him as an active shooter."
No, that is not what he says. He says it would have been reasonable for someone to believe that he could shoot him in self-defense or defense of others. It is important to bear in mind 1) if I reasonably believe someone is a threat, I can kill him in self-defense, even if I am mistaken;* and 2) it is perfectly possible for both parties to be acting in self-defense defense.
*"If the defendant kills an innocent person, but circumstances made it reasonably appear that the killing was necessary in self-defense, that is tragedy, not murder." People v. Minifie, 13 Cal. 4th 1055 (Cal: Supreme Court 1996).
I might need to listen to the whole thing again, but from what I remember, he actually explicitly denies that, and argues one party must have a greater claim to self-defense, and that party was not Rittenhouse.
Anyway, none of this is relevant, the important claim is that he said his office would not prosecute if the mob ended up shooting him, rather than the other way around. If both parties have a claim to self-defense, than both parties should be prosecuted, or neither.
See my comment to your previous comment. He says the crowd had a stronger claim, which is true, because from what the crowd knew (which is all that matters) their claim would have been VERY strong, but he does not say that only one of them could have a valid claim.
Of course it is relevant; it is the basis of his statement re not charging the crowd.
It's not true, and it's not VERY strong. It's a subjective judgement call on his part that clearly shows bias.
The reason roystgnr had to look up the source of the claim is that it's ridiculous on it's face given what we all know about the facts of the matter. The fact that Binger can come up with an ad-hoc rationalization to justify his decision after the fact, doesn't make his decision any less ridiculous. Most people can come up with ad-hoc rationalizations like this.
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Sorry for wasting your time, usually when I make ridiculous claims, I have the source ready at my fingertips, so next time feel free to PM me.
I find it necessary, because if you provide sources from the start, people tend to build cases that the claim is, in fact, not ridiculous, and our glorious system is working as intended to provide justice for all. So I like to get people to contradict me first.
There's also a bunch of youtube lawyers that covered it. The funny thing is that I'm not sure if this is the worst thing he said there, the whole interview is insane.
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