Kyle Rittenhouse lawyer says he tried to eject Tucker Carlson's embedded film crew, 'but I'm not always the boss'

Fox News host Tucker Carlson had a film crew embedded with Kyle Rittenhouse and his legal team throughout his murder trial in Kenosha, Wisconsin, Carlson revealed in a clip Friday night, hours after a jury acquitted Rittenhouse of all charges. One of Rittenhouse's lawyers, Mark Richards, told CNN's Chris Cuomo he objected to the arrangement. He suggested giving Carlson's camera crew access was part of the effort by Rittenhouse's family and a family adviser to raise money for Rittenhouse's expensive legal defense.

"I did not approve of that," Richards told CNN. "I threw them out of the room several times. I don't think a film crew is appropriate for something like this." The camera crew was "a definite distraction," he added. "And I didn't approve of it, but I'm not always the boss."

Justin Wells, a senior executive producer with Carlson's show, told The Washington Post that neither Fox News nor its new streaming service "paid for any access, footage rights, legal fees, or made any other payments in the production of the episode on the Kyle Rittenhouse trial."

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Cable news occasionally became part of the story during the Rittenhouse trial. On Thursday, the judge, Bruce Schroeder, banned MSNBC from the Kenosha County Courthouse for the rest of the trial over a police report that a man working for the cable news network or a corporate sibling had tried to follow the jury transport van on Wednesday.

Richards told CNN he is satisfied with the jury's verdict, with reservations. "To me — and I know people will go nuts when I say this — but there's too many guns in our society," he said. "And that might seem like a hollow statement coming from me. I do own firearms. I don't conceal carry. I don't want to carry a firearm. I think too many people run around with guns in our society."

Richards also told Cuomo he had told Rittenhouse about this discomfort over Carlson's film crew adding to the sharp polarization of the trial. "Kyle's going to have some hard choices in his life about the direction he goes and what he stands for," he said. "Those will have to be made by Kyle, eventually."