Dan Abrams called out leaders across the U.S. political spectrum on Monday night for their reactions to the verdict in the Kyle Rittenhouse murder trial.
Abrams, the host of Dan Abrams Live on Newsnation, warned that leaders ignoring the facts of the case and politicizing the verdict is not only wrong but is undermining our “entire judicial system … for political purposes.”
Abrams — who is a legal analyst and also the founder of Mediaite — introduced the segment saying, “I’m really frustrated about the reactions to the Rittenhouse verdict. A verdict that surprised really no one who was watching the evidence and remotely understood the law.”
He then explained that the jury’s verdict “was not a judgment of Kyle Rittenhouse but a legal question of whether prosecutors disproved self-defense beyond a reasonable doubt.”
He then went on to look at the reactions of Vice President Kamala Harris and President Joe Biden — who said the verdict left him “angry and concerned.”
“Angry and concerned the jurors did their duty and came to a fairly obvious legal?” Abrams questioned before noting that Biden said he did not watch the trial.
Abrams then showed a clip of Harris saying how as a former prosecutor and attorney general she spent much of her career working to make the justice system more equitable and “we have a lot more work to do.”
Abrams went on to discuss more bombastic reactions from Reps. Cory Bush (D-MO), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-
Abrams concluded:
“He [Rittenhouse] isn’t a hero either, but in this case its worse for our leaders to try and impune our entire judicial system to try to get people riled up for political purposes. It’s a point I made before. It’s a point I am going continue to make here. You will hear me calling out politicians on both sides of the aisle who try to use the courts for political gain.”
Abrams then went on to look at the media treatment of Rittenhouse.