Jeff Neslund, a Chicago-based civil rights attorney and a former prosecutor with the Cook County state’s attorney’s office, said the website “is dangerous for prosecutors” attempting to secure a conviction in the pending trial, because it has the potential to taint a jury pool.
“You’re going to have a lot of people who want to be on this jury to help this kid because they have an agenda, so prosecutors will have a tougher time to do their homework to flush those people out,” he said. “But if someone says they never saw the website, what are you going to do? Check their browser history?”
[John Pierce, a Los Angeles-based attorney for Rittenhouse] Pierce defended the site, saying “the notion of a fair trial was blown out of the water” when celebrities and political figures used the case to portray Rittenhouse “as a mass murderer and white supremacist.”
“All we are doing is defending his reputation and telling the truth,” Pierce said. “He has a constitutional right to that. There’s nothing wrong or inappropriate to it.”
If you click on the link to the website — which WaPo provides — you don't get to what I'd call a "merchandise site." It looks like a somber presentation of the facts of the case. It does have links across the top of that page and one of them is labeled "store." If you click on that, you get to a page that says, "We're making some adjustments." According to WaPo, the website had "more than 30 apparel items and accessories emblazoned with the logo 'Free Kyle' and a slogan, 'Self-defense is a right, not a privilege.'"
