In their doomed quest to paint Kyle Rittenhouse as a foaming-at-the-mouth white supremacist who showed up in Kenosha to shoot people supporting black lives, the left constantly pointed to a picture of the young man posing with members of the Proud Boys, a far-right-wing organization. They claimed this was proof positive that Rittenhouse hates black and brown people with a passion and that he couldn’t wait to ventilate anyone supposedly fighting for minorities.

Of course, there can be no doubt they resorted to this particular tactic because they scoured Rittenhouse’s entire internet activity to find something, anything, that would prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that the young man was secretly a racist Nazi. They found nothing, so they are making as much hay with this picture — which shows Rittenhouse flashing the “A-OK” sign, which the left has decided is a white supremacist gesture — as possible.

But, the plot, as they say, has thickened.

A new development in the matter surfaced when Rittenhouse said that the photo-op was set up by none other than attorney and conspiracy theorist nutjob Lin Wood and attorney John Pierce. During a Tuesday interview with NewsNationNow’s Ashleigh Banfield, he said the meetings with the Proud Boys “were set up by my former attorney, who was fired because of that, for putting me in situations like that with people I don’t agree with.”

Banfield reported that “Rittenhouse said he didn’t know making the ‘OK’ sign with his hand had become a white supremacist signal, and he didn’t know he was in a bar full of Proud Boys members Jan. 5.”

Rittenhouse told NewsNation that he “found out they were Proud Boys when [he] saw the headlines” and that he “thought they were just a bunch of … construction dudes based on how they looked.”

The young man also said Wood and Pierce discussed having the Proud Boys provide security, but he rejected the idea because he didn’t “want anything to do with them.”

Rittenhouse insisted that Wood was “insane” and a QAnon conspiracy theorist, and these were some of the reasons why he fired Wood. He said:

“And he just says all these weird things like, ‘We’re going to keep that boy in jail because there’s not going to be any civil or criminal cases come the election,’ which is just complete insanity.”

Rittenhouse had previously discussed Wood’s behavior during an interview with Fox News’ Tucker Carlson. He said the lawyer deliberately kept him in jail for 87 days, ostensibly to raise more money for his bail. “Lin Wood was raising money on my behalf, and he held me in jail for 87 days, disrespecting my wishes, put me on media interviews which I should never have done,” Rittenhouse said.

He added: “They said I was safer in jail instead of at home with my family.”

The young man also said Pierce and Wood falsely labeled him as part of an “unorganized militia.”

Rittenhouse continued:

“John Pierce said that and it’s blatantly false. I didn’t know [what a] ‘militia’ was until after the fact, until November 25, when I was watching some of the interviews he did. I’m like, I’m not in a militia. I don’t know what that is.”

Rittenhouse’s revelations about Lin Wood are not surprising. It became clear a long time ago that the attorney is nothing more than a conspiracy theorist and a grifter. Wood has been taken less seriously over the past year as he has gradually gone over the deep end. It became clear that he is not exactly an ally to conservatives, having supported primarily Democrats until recently.

Moreover, he was instrumental in the Stop the Steal movement’s effort to suppress Republican voter turnout in Georgia during the Senate election. They did their level best to aid Democrats by convincing conservative voters that their votes would not matter because of voter fraud – and it worked.

It is no surprise that Rittenhouse fired him. Nick Sandmann, whom Wood represented in his lawsuits against media outlets that defamed him, also fired the lawyer after he realized how unhinged he is.

People like Wood do far more damage to the conservative movement than good. Hopefully, this revelation will decrease his popularity further.