From The New York Times, I’m Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily.

Today —

— a jury has acquitted Kyle Rittenhouse on all five charges that he faced. My colleague Julie Bosman was at the courthouse in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

It’s Monday, November 22.

Julie, the last time we spoke with you, this trial had just gotten underway. And you had told us that Kyle Rittenhouse and his lawyers had a relatively strong case given the trial’s focus on self-defense. So just remind us why that was the thinking.

So I think for a lot of people, this case has been about a lot of different things. What people saw in the very beginning was the image of Kyle Rittenhouse, a white teenager who had brought a rifle to a protest that had grown out of a police shooting of a Black man, Jacob Blake, by a white police officer. They saw images and video of Kyle Rittenhouse walking down a city street carrying an AR-15-style rifle. And they learned that he had shot and killed two people and shot and wounded a third man.

All of the people who were shot were white, and two of them were unarmed. So these were the things that everyone in this country had immediately learned about Kyle Rittenhouse. But when this trial started in Kenosha on November 1, it was really just about one thing. And that was, under Wisconsin State law, the question of self-defense.

Did Kyle Rittenhouse act in self-defense when he shot and killed two people and wounded another? Did he reasonably fear for his life or fear that he would suffer great bodily harm when he fired those eight shots in Kenosha?

Right, but there was uncertainty about exactly how the trial would unfold, about just how sympathetic the jury would be to Rittenhouse and to his argument of self-defense, and whether the prosecution could show that Rittenhouse shouldn’t have feared for his life. And given that Rittenhouse was found not guilty on every single count, clearly the prosecution didn’t accomplish that.

So we want to talk to you about the key moments in this trial that explain why that was — why this trial ended up being such a complete victory for Rittenhouse. Where should we start?

Well, a lot of the testimony that we heard over the three weeks of this trial centered on the three men that Kyle Rittenhouse shot. And the first person who was shot was a 36-year-old named Joseph Rosenbaum.

Tell us about that testimony.

So in theory, Joseph Rosenbaum would have been a pretty challenging element for the defense lawyers. He was seen carrying what looked like a kind of clear plastic bag throughout the evening. He was 5 foot 4“. He was probably not there as a protester, but he came downtown for reasons that aren’t clear. And —

He was unarmed.

So throughout the trial, this was a point that the prosecutor made over and over from witness to witness.

That Joseph Rosenbaum was not armed with a gun that night.

But as the trial went on, some witnesses began to offer testimony that painted Rosenbaum as a much more problematic figure for the prosecution.

This happened, early on, with one of the prosecution’s witnesses who was Joseph Rosenbaum’s fiancee. And the prosecutor asked her, in her testimony —

— if Rosenbaum had picked up his medication that day.

Which then opened the door to a new line of questioning from the defense.

And why does that matter?

For the jury, I think that that gave them a piece of information that suggested that he was suffering from mental health issues and being treated for them. So that created a question for the jury about Rosenbaum’s state of mind.

And then, as testimony continued, we heard from witnesses who had seen Rosenbaum that evening — at one point he was starting a fire.

He was shouting at people —

— and shouting racial epithets and scuffling with other people in front of a gas station.

And then we heard from a really crucial witness named Richie McGinnis who’s a video director for The Daily Caller, a conservative site.

And Richie McGinnis testified that he saw Rosenbaum chasing Rittenhouse.

He saw Rittenhouse start to yell “friendly, friendly” in Rosenbaum’s direction — meaning I’m not a threat to you, I’m friendly.

And Richie McGinnis, who was the only person who was really standing close to them when the first shooting occurred, testified that he saw Rosenbaum continue to chase Rittenhouse until Rittenhouse whirled around.

And he saw Rosenbaum lunge forward and —

— reach for the barrel of the rifle.

So all of this was very damaging to the state, because the jury was starting to get a picture of Joseph Rosenbaum as someone who was behaving erratically and someone who posed a physical threat to Kyle Rittenhouse.

Got it. So what the jury would have absorbed here is testimony that Rosenbaum was mentally ill, perhaps unstable, behaving erratically — at times violently — that he initiates an encounter with Rittenhouse in which he’s chasing Rittenhouse. Rittenhouse is trying to convince Rosenbaum that he, Rittenhouse, is not a threat, but Rosenbaum persists and ultimately seems to grab after Rittenhouse’s gun.

Right. And the reason that this was so important is that, from the beginning of this trial, the defense knew that if they could convince the jury that was a justified shooting, then they would have a much better chance of convincing the jury that the other shootings were also justified.

OK, let’s turn to the next of those two shootings and the testimony around them.

So the second person who was shot was a 26-year-old man named Anthony Huber. And Huber also would seem, on the surface, to be a real problem for Kyle Rittenhouse’s defense. Like Joseph Rosenbaum, he was not carrying a gun that night.

And the prosecution described Huber as a hero.

He was holding his skateboard when the first shots rang out. He started running immediately, as Kyle Rittenhouse was running down the street and people were shouting to get him, that he was the shooter, that people in the crowd needed to tackle him. And so Anthony Huber was one of the people who tried to do that. He caught up with Rittenhouse. He hit him on his head with his skateboard. And Rittenhouse shot him once in the chest and killed him.

So the potential problem for the defense here is that Huber is being described as a civic-minded person trying to stop a shooter from, I guess, shooting more people. And that could make a self-defense argument trickier.

Exactly. So the defense then started to set up a counternarrative. They started to make the case that Huber was actually a lethal threat to Kyle Rittenhouse.

One of the defense lawyers questioned a livestreamer who testified. And this live streamer was there that night. He was taking video of what had happened.

So the defense lawyer was asking the livestreamer. If you were going to swing that skateboard in an effort to create some velocity and hurt someone, how would you swing it?

Could you inflict great harm on this person by using a skateboard?

And as you have explained, in this case, the recurring question that matters, perhaps the only question that matters, is did Kyle Rittenhouse see each and every one of these people as a potentially lethal threat to him?

Yes. So the jury, again, has to go back to that basic question of how Kyle Rittenhouse is viewing the situation and how he viewed the threat that he had faced. And whether Kyle Rittenhouse’s view that night and his assessment of those threats was reasonable, that is the question, the very narrow question, before the jury.

Right. And what’s interesting about that is that it means that the self-defense argument here doesn’t really acknowledge the idea that somebody like Huber thinks that he’s protecting the public from Rittenhouse and Rittenhouse’s gun in this moment. It only sees Huber’s actions to disarm or to disable Rittenhouse as a threat to Rittenhouse.

Right. Because Anthony Huber, of course, is not here to explain in a courtroom what he was thinking or feeling that night or how threatening he saw Kyle Rittenhouse. That is a question that was not able to be answered.

So at this point, we can see that the prosecution’s case is starting to crumble a little bit.

Yes, but the prosecution had another witness lined up, Gaige Grosskreutz, who was a 26-year-old who was there that night. And he was the third person who Kyle Rittenhouse shot that evening.

And unlike the other two people who were shot, Grosskreutz survived with a shot to the arm. So he could describe what he was doing, what he was thinking, what he was feeling, what he saw that night. And the question was, would that undermine the self-defense argument that Kyle Rittenhouse’s lawyers had made so far?

We’ll be right back.

So Julie, tell us about the testimony from this third person shot by Kyle Rittenhouse and the only one to survive, Grosskreutz, and where his testimony leaves Rittenhouse this case for self-defense.

So like Anthony Huber, the prosecution had presented Grosskreutz as a heroic figure.

Grosskreutz was a trained paramedic. He was a person who had attended a lot of protests in a capacity as a volunteer medic.

And he testified that he heard the shots that had killed Rosenbaum.

And wanted to immediately go and help and see who had been shot and if he could render medical aid.

So like Huber, a seemingly sympathetic character.

Yes. But early on, the prosecution confronted one of the facts that made Gaige Grosskreutz a pretty complicated witness.

He acknowledged that he was carrying a gun that night as well.

Grosskreutz testified that he carried a gun very frequently.

And it was framed as, look, this guy is just another supporter of the Second Amendment. And that’s how he’s exercising that right. But in the context of what happened in Kenosha that night, it got a little more complex.

What do you mean?

Well —

Very quickly, he found himself in the middle of the street as Kyle Rittenhouse was fleeing.

And people in the crowd were chasing Rittenhouse.

Grosskreutz was only a few feet away when Rittenhouse shot and killed Anthony Huber.

And at this point —

— Grosskreutz had reached behind him and pulled out his gun, which he was holding, and standing face to face with Kyle Rittenhouse, who is now on the ground and still holding his rifle.

And then Grosskreutz testifies that he raises his arms in the air in a gesture of surrender.

And then he testifies that he sees Kyle Rittenhouse make some kind of motion with his rifle.

And this is where, on cross-examination, the defense turned this around in Rittenhouse’s favor.

The defense lawyer who was questioning Grosskreutz asked him about this exact moment.

And Grosskreutz says that he began moving toward Rittenhouse to stop him in what he said was a non-lethal way, presumably without having to shoot him.

And in a pretty powerful moment —

— the defense lawyer got Grosskreutz to admit that he was pointing his gun in Rittenhouse’s direction.

So right now, instead of this image of Kyle Rittenhouse shooting at someone who was trying to render aid, we have an image of Kyle Rittenhouse on the ground and Gaige Grosskreutz standing, and two men pointing their guns at each other until Rittenhouse fires a single shot, which hits Grosskreutz in the right bicep. So we’re just seeing that encounter slightly differently and in a way that I think, became really problematic for the prosecution’s case.

So that’s how these three key encounters in this case played out to the legal benefit of Rittenhouse. I’m curious, as somebody in the courtroom, Julie, did anything else in the trial seemed to strengthen Rittenhouse’s case and help explain how the jury gets to the point where it ultimately ended up?

I would point to Kyle Rittenhouse’s testimony.

I think that the central question of this case was his self-defense argument. If his defense hinged on that question and the fact that he was saying that his life was in danger, only Kyle Rittenhouse could effectively make that case to the jury.

So not long into his testimony, Rittenhouse’s lawyer began asking him about what had led up to the shooting of Joseph Rosenbaum.

And as Rittenhouse started to get into details about what had happened, he began sobbing. He was almost gasping for air.

And the judge very quickly called a recess so that Rittenhouse could compose himself and get back to testimony.

And what do you think that would have represented to the jury as they thought about this self-defense case and his state of mind.

You know, they were trying to emphasize his youth. And they were trying to get across the point that he was scared that night, which of course goes back and supports his self-defense claim.

And other than that, he was pretty composed throughout most of his testimony.

And during the cross-examination, the prosecutor questioned his decision to bring his gun downtown. They had questioned his motivations.

But Rittenhouse was a pretty consistent witness.

He kept sticking to his story that he was just trying to defend himself in the moment, and that if he hadn’t killed Rosenbaum, that Rosenbaum would have taken his gun and perhaps killed other people with it along with Rittenhouse.

So the final element of this trial is the gun itself, the one Rittenhouse used in these three shootings. And Julie, you had told us in our last conversation that because Kyle Rittenhouse was 17 when all this happened, it was possible that his possession of that gun on that night might be considered illegal, and that could color the entire trial in a way that was bad for Rittenhouse. So what ended up happening with that in this case?

So this is another thing that went the defense’s way in the trial. So at the very beginning, the defense tried to knock out this illegal gun possession charge. And this was a charge that, because he was not 18, he was too young to possess this gun. And the defense had made an argument that Kyle Rittenhouse actually did not violate the statute because of the length of his rifle.

And near the end of the trial, the judge, in a surprise, did throw out that gun possession charge. So when the jury entered their deliberations, the gun possession charge was no longer something that they could consider.

What do we now know about the jury’s deliberations?

Well, one thing that was really striking about the deliberations is just how long they took. The jury deliberated for 3 and 1/2 days. At one point, they asked if they could rewatch videos that portrayed each of the three shootings. One day, one of the jurors asked if she could bring the jury instructions home with her. This was 36 pages of very dense, very hard to understand instructions. And the judge said that he would allow her to do that even though that was a pretty unusual request.

Of course, in the end, the jurors were agreed that it was a full acquittal. And they all left the courthouse that day without stopping to speak to any reporters. So it’s hard to get clarity into what their discussions were like at this point. But it is clear that the jury was really wrestling with the complexity of this case and the complexity of each of those five counts.

Right. And it seems that the rest of the country is still wrestling with the complexity of this case.

Well, I think that, since this case began, people have been looking at Kyle Rittenhouse the individual. There has been so much focus on who he is, what he believes, what he was thinking, what his motivations were.

But I think that what this verdict shows is that this case is about something much bigger than just one person. I think this really shows us that self-defense laws are colliding with another set of laws, with open-carry laws. In dozens of states, it is legal to openly carry a firearm in public.

And I think that the self-defense laws that are on the books tended to spring from a different era, where people kept guns at home. But now open carry, like in Wisconsin, allows people to bring guns into public places. You can bring your gun to the grocery store or to a crowded demonstration. So to focus on Kyle Rittenhouse the person feels to me like it’s missing the larger point of this case.

We are now at a moment where someone can bring a gun into a public place, shoot someone, maybe even kill them, and still mount a successful self-defense case because that person felt threatened by the other. So whether you like it or not, the reality is that this is where our gun laws and our self-defense laws have brought us.

Thank you, Julie. We appreciate it.

Thank you, Michael.

We’ll be right back.

Here’s what else you need to know today.

After passing in the House of Representatives on Friday, President Biden’s $2 trillion climate and social spending bill is now in the hands of the U.S Senate. The bill would, among other things, cap the cost of child care, provide paid family and medical leave for workers, and tax polluting industries. Its future in the evenly-split Senate is uncertain given the objections of two moderates, senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema. But on Sunday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer predicted the Senate would pass the bill by Christmas.

And police in the city of Waukesha, Wisconsin said that multiple people, including children, were killed and injured on Sunday afternoon when the driver of an S.U.V. plowed into crowds gathered for a holiday parade. The police said that a person of interest was in custody, but offered no information about a possible motive.

Today’s episode was produced by Daniel Guillemette and Clare Toeniskoetter, with help from Alexandra Leigh Young. It was edited by Larissa Anderson and engineered by Chris Wood. Original music by Dan Powell and Marion Lozano. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly.

That’s it for The Daily. I’m Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.