Kyle Rittenhouse's Mom Says Lin Wood Told Her Kyle Should Stay In Jail to Avoid Post-Election Unrest

In exclusive interviews for Law&Crime's podcast "Objections," the teenager's mother Wendy Rittenhouse and #FightBack's former executive director Dave Hancock speak out for the first time about their demands that the non-profit conduct an audit of the money that was fundraised.

Ms. Rittenhouse claims on the podcast that two of #FightBack's leaders—Wood and conservative firebrand John Pierce—latched onto her son's case for their own personal reasons.

"They used Kyle to gain money, gain Twitter followers," Ms. Rittenhouse told Law&Crime. "I felt now they didn't care about Kyle."

The mother has cut ties with #FightBack to start a new legal defense fund for her son under her control called FreeKyleUSA, and she claims that Wood and Pierce have ignored repeated requests to open up their books.

"He used my son's image to make profit off of that. And I asked for an accounting of it. And I never got it. I was ignored," Ms. Rittenhouse said of Wood in an interview with Law&Crime. "They used a 17-year-old kid's image for their own political shit."

"I asked Lin, where's the money?" Ms. Rittenhouse recalled separately. "I wanted to see the books, like the accounting books."

In an email, Wood denied receiving any request for an audit and said FightBack would be "perfectly willing to undergo any audit required by law."

[...] Ms. Rittenhouse told Law&Crime that Wood and Pierce damaged their client's case with public messaging motivated more by their political ideologies than her son's best interest. She also claims on the podcast that the two lawyers left her son in jail for 87 days because of Wood's belief in a breakdown in U.S. society following the presidential election.

"He told me that my son would be safe in jail because he thought that on the night of the election—was Nov. 3 or the fourth, I can't remember what day the election was on—that there was going to be Armageddon going to happen," Ms. Rittenhouse said in an interview. "And Kyle was safer in jail."

In an email, Wood emphasized that he is not a criminal defense attorney and did not represent Rittenhouse in that capacity. He claims that he agreed with a decision to keep Rittenhouse in jail because of death threats that he received, but that is not how the teen's mother recounts it.

[...] As the 2020 election approached, Hancock said that he grew frustrated with the direction of the #FightBack Foundation, and he expressed that Wood had been using what had been intended to be a non-partisan organization to advance his political agenda, including a fundraiser for the ill-fated Senate campaign of ex-Rep. Doug Collins.

"I absolutely do not agree with FightBack using FightBack funds for a political fundraiser, especially since Lin had maxed out his personal contribution," Hancock said in a statement backed up by Federal Elections Commissions records.

An accurate accounting/audit would put this whole mess to bed. I’m not aware of a situation where an “overview” would replace the detailed financial records others claim exist. Weird how these numbers differ from the ones tweeted in December. pic.twitter.com/thwLzx65Hu

— freekyleusa (@freekyleusa) March 6, 2021