WATCH: Prosecutor Lists Numerous Alleged Crimes Of Man Kyle Rittenhouse Fatally Shot, Downplays As Irrelevant

During a pre-trial hearing on Monday, prosecution tried to argued that alleged past actions of Joseph Rosenbaum have no connection to the deceased being fatally shot by Kyle Rittenhouse during a riot in August 2020.

Attempting to illustrate the point that there’s “no factually commonality” between prior alleged actions of Rosenbaum on the night of the incident to the shooting, prosecution listed off accusations from defense and downplayed the relevance.

“Mr. Rosenbaum started fires that night,” prosecution said. “Well, that has nothing to do with the allegation that he chased after Mr. Rittenhouse and tried to physically attack him. Arsonist — or alleged arson, has nothing to do with an alleged physical assault. There is an allegation that Mr. Rosenbaum was shouting racial slurs; that has nothing to do with physical assault.”

“There’s an allegation that he’s telling other people at [a] gas station to shoot him, which, really, is different than what was going on with Mr. Rittenhouse,” he argued. “Um, he clearly didn’t want Mr. Rittenhouse to shoot him. So, I don’t see that there’s any commonality, there.”

“So, this is bad character evidence, your honor,” prosecution claimed. “This is an attempt to tell the jury Mr. Rosenbaum was a bad guy and deserved to die. That’s really what it is.”

“‘He was an arsonist, he was a rioter, he was starting fights — well, not starting fights, he was starting problems, he’s disorderly, he was loud — whatever. Therefore, it was okay for the defendant to kill him.’ That’s really what’s going on here, your honor.”

It seems prosecution is getting ahead of the narrative that Rosenbaum is a “bad guy,” which has been circulating in news reports since the fatal shooting. For example, Rosenbaum’s criminal history and apparent sexual abuse of minors surfaced online after the riot.

Snopes reported that the claim Rosenbaum was “convicted of sexually abusing at least one child” is “true,” per criminal records:

For example, yes, at age 19, Rosenbaum was sentenced to prison for sexually abusing five children — all boys between the ages of 9 and 11 — in Arizona’s Pima County in early 2002, according to his case file obtained via a public records request by Snopes.

The documents said Rosenbaum was temporarily living with the boys’ parents after his mother had kicked him out for disobeying her rules about one month earlier. Over the course of his weeks-long stay, Rosenbaum molested the boys, showed them porn, and performed oral sex on them,

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