The Patriot Post® · An ASU Mob Smears Rittenhouse

On May 25, 1987, after an eight-month corruption trial in the Bronx, Ray Donovan walked out of the courtroom a free man. It’d been an ordeal, though. Ronald Reagan’s former labor secretary had resigned from office months earlier, having become the first-ever serving cabinet member of any presidential administration to be indicted. The jury had deliberated just 10 hours over two days before clearing Donovan and his seven fellow defendants on all counts, and when their forewoman had finished reading the verdict, most of the jurors stood and applauded.

The 56-year-old Donovan, though, was in no mood to celebrate. He’d maintained his innocence all along, and his words upon leaving the courthouse with his wife were tinged with bitterness: “It’s a cruel thing they did to me,” he said. “After two and half years, this nightmare is behind us. The jury has reawakened my faith in our system of justice. It was shattered here for nine months. The question is, should this indictment have ever been brought?”

And then Donovan asked another question — a question that countless other wrongly accused defendants have asked ever since: “Which office do I go to to get my reputation back?”

Young Kyle Rittenhouse must be thinking the same thing, if not in those exact words. He too was the victim of a weak and nakedly political prosecution by the state, and he too was acquitted of all charges by a jury of his peers.

But perhaps word hasn’t made its way to the Desert Southwest, to Tempe, to the main campus of Arizona State University, where Rittenhouse had been enrolled in online classes. How else to explain the ignorance and indecency of so many students there?

As the Washington Examiner reports: “Students at Arizona State University took part in a campus protest Wednesday against Kyle Rittenhouse’s status as a student even after it was revealed that he was no longer enrolled as an online student. Dozens of participants in the event organized by liberal groups chanted ‘killer Kyle off our campus,’ ‘Lock him up,’ or ‘ASU, shame on you.’”

Indeed, shame on ASU, but not for the reasons falsely articulated by the student mob. Kyle Rittenhouse had his day in court, the jury spoke, and, like Ray Donovan, he was cleared of all charges. By what sick leftist standard is he still presumed guilty for having defended himself against three rioters — an unhinged child rapist and two other violent felons — all of whom attacked him without provocation?

“The American justice system does not acquit morality,” said one marching snowflake. “They are not the objective morality in America. … They are founded on genocide and chattel slavery. Their morality is based in white centricism. Their morality is based in white supremacy. So the American justice system does not work for people outside of that umbrella. … He deserves to be locked up!”

This young man’s anthropology professors must be so proud. Clearly, he didn’t bother to follow the Ahmaud Arbery case, in which three white men were convicted last week of murdering a black man. Nor did he follow the Andrew Coffee case in which a black man was acquitted of attempted murder charges for having opened fire on police officers who’d raided his home early one morning. Coffee, like Rittenhouse, claimed self-defense. And Coffee, like Rittenhouse, was acquitted.

So much for the lie that our criminal justice system works only for white people.

As for Arizona State University, its cowardly kowtowing to the mob and its shabby treatment of Kyle Rittenhouse sets a rotten precedent for other colleges and universities. If it allows a student to be slandered as a “murderer” and bullied off campus for purely political reasons, what’s to prevent other schools from doing the same thing?

There’s probably a lawsuit in here somewhere. Perhaps Rittenhouse’s lawyers can make time for it after they’ve taken then-candidate Joe Biden to the cleaners for having defamed him as a white supremacist.

And then, perhaps, he can go about getting his reputation back.