FACT CHECK: ‘He Should Be Locked Up In Jail For Murder’ – Did Kamala Harris Send This Tweet About Kyle Rittenhouse?

An image shared on Facebook allegedly shows Vice President Kamala Harris tweeting that Kyle Rittenhouse created a specific Instagram account and that people should not follow it, also saying, “He should be locked up in jail for murder!”

Verdict: False

Harris did not tweet the statement. The Instagram account mentioned in the fake tweet is a fan account.

Fact Check:

The Facebook post features a tweet purportedly sent by Harris that reads, “WOW! Kyle Rittenhouse just started a new Instagram account called @the.Kyle.Rittenhouse He should be locked up in jail for murder! Go report his account and do not follow him. We can’t let these conservatives win @the.Kyle.Rittenhouse don’t follow.”

Rittenhouse fatally shot two men and non-fatally shot a third during an Aug. 25, 2020, protest in Kenosha, Wisconsin, CNBC reported. In November, a jury found Rittenhouse, who argued self-defense, not guilty on all of the charges filed against him in connection to the shootings, video of his trial shows.

There is no record of Harris tweeting the statement attributed to her in the Facebook post. An advanced search of her verified Twitter accounts – @KamalaHarris and @VP – yielded no matches for the statement, and it does not appear in ProPublica’s Politwoops archive of her deleted tweets. The comment is also absent from her other social media posts.

The Instagram account mentioned in the fake tweet, @the.Kyle.Rittenhouse, identifies itself as a fan account in its bio. Rittenhouse’s actual Instagram account has a different handle. (RELATED: Did The Prosecutor In The Kyle Rittenhouse Case Wear A Black Lives Matter Pin?)

Journalist Mary Spicuzza reported on Twitter Nov. 16 that Harris told her that the “focus should be on the facts and the evidence in the case” and that she was “not going to comment on either.” On Nov. 19, the date Rittenhouse got acquitted, Harris tweeted, “Today’s verdict speaks for itself. I’ve spent a majority of my career working to make our criminal justice system more equitable. It’s clear, there’s still a lot more work to do.”

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