KENOSHA, Wis. — Jacob Blake, the Black man shot by Kenosha police in August 2020, recently told TMZ that he believes if Kyle Rittenhouse were a different ethnicity, "he'd be gone."

Rittenhouse was found not guilty on Friday on five counts linked to two fatal shootings amid protests against police brutality sparked by the shooting of Blake.

"I do still feel very strongly that if he was a different ethnicity or people/group, he'd be gone. There wouldn't be no 'he's a hero' and this that and the third," Blake told TMZ on Thursday. "They would have said, 'He's underage, he traveled to a different state with a firearm that didn't belong to him.'"

Rittenhouse and his defense team argued the then 17-year-old fired an AR-15 style rifle in self-defense. Prosecutors argued Rittenhouse was the instigator and aggressor in the incident.

Blake was shot last August when Kenosha police responded to a domestic incident. Kenosha police officer Rusten Sheskey shot Blake seven times in the back, paralyzing Blake from the waist down.

Police say they thought Blake was reaching for a knife. Sheskey was not criminally charged for the incident.

Blake's supporters have fought back against the narrative that he was a threat to the officers.

Mark Hertzberg/AP

During the TMZ interview, Blake was asked about the role of race in the Rittenhouse shooting.

"The high fives, he was caught throwing up the Aryan nation [hand sign], the judge seems like he really likes the guy [Rittenhouse]," he said. "Honestly the kid [Rittenhouse] might not be a bad person. I'm not saying he's a bad person at all, but what he did — he shouldn't have been there. He shouldn't have been there."

"I wish this didn't happen to me," he said. "But I also wish that it didn't escalate to the point where it caused a riot. I am not happy about that. But what can we do. The world — this type of stuff been going on for a long time."

Adam Rogan/The Journal Times via AP, File

Blake mentioned he turned 30 years old this year. He added he was born the same year that the police beating of Rodney King was videotaped, sparking riots in Los Angeles.

"It's just ironic 30 years later, here I am," Blake said.

Blake then returned to the topic of Rittenhouse.

"We know that he shouldn't have been out there," he said. "No matter if these people tried to kick him in the face, hit him with a skateboard, and there was even a guy he shot in the arm. The other guy had a gun — he didn't even shoot him. He could have opened fire on him easily. You know he was right there. He chose not to shoot him. The guy that he shot seems like a very stand up individual."

@rellovejones, @money_mike_la via attorney Ben Crump

Blake's recovery from his shooting continues. He told TMZ he had forgiven Sheskey, but the injuries continue to bring him pain.

This story was originally published by Jackson Danbeck on Scripps station TMJ4 in Milwaukee.

KENOSHA, Wis. — The judge presiding over the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse, Judge Bruce Schroeder, created controversy Thursday afternoon after making a joke about Asian food as the court went into a lunch break.

"I hope the Asian food isn't coming isn't on one of those boats from Long Beach Harbor," Schroeder said as the trial broke for lunch.

The comment appears to have been in reference to supply chain issues at ports in California. Long Beach Harbor is a container port near Los Angeles.

John Yang, the president and executive director of Asian Americans Advancing Justice-AAJC, told CNN that the judge's comments "harm(s) our community and puts us in the crosshairs of microaggressions as well as actual physical violence."

Schroeder's comments come almost two weeks after he dismissed a juror for making a joke about Jacob Blake, whose shooting by a Kenosha police officer sparked the Kenosha protests and unrest.

After learning about what the juror said, Schroeder told the court last week, "I'm going to summarize what I remember, what I was told. He was telling a joke. He told the officer, he made a reference about telling a joke about why did it take seven shots to shoot Jacob Blake. Something to that effect."

"It is clear that the appearance to bias is present, and it would seriously undermine the outcome of the case," Schroeder said as he made his decision to dismiss the juror.

Both the prosecution and the defense agreed with the dismal.

The judge also emerged in national headlines before the trial began when he ruled that prosecutors could not refer to people as victims — including the three people shot by Rittenhouse — before jurors in his Kenosha County courtroom.

Schroeder is currently the longest-serving trial court judge in Wisconsin.

Rittenhouse faces five felony charges stemming from the shooting amid protests following the police shooting of Jacob Blake. If convicted on one of two first-degree intentional homicide charges, he could face life in prison.

This story was originally published by Scripps station TMJ4 in Milwaukee.

KENOSHA, Wisc. — The U.S. Department of Justice will not pursue federal criminal, civil rights charges against Kenosha police officer Rusten Sheskey in the shooting of Jacob Blake last summer.

Officer Rusten Sheskey shot Blake, who is Black, during a domestic disturbance in Kenosha in August 2020. The shooting left Blake paralyzed from the waist down and sparked several nights of protests.

The U.S. Department of Justice launched its investigation days after the shooting. State prosecutors decided not to file charges against Sheskey in January after the video showed that Blake had been armed with a knife.

The DOJ announced in a statement Friday that federal prosecutors from their Civil Rights Division and the U.S. Attorney’s Office reviewed evidence to find out whether Sheskey violated any federal laws.

Their investigation focused on the "application of deprivation of rights under color of law, a federal criminal, civil rights statute that prohibits certain types of official misconduct."

According to the DOJ, evidence included police reports, law enforcement accounts, witness statements, affidavits of witnesses, dispatch logs, physical evidence reports, photographs, and videos of some portions of the incident.

For federal civil rights laws to have been broken, prosecutors must establish beyond a doubt that a police officer intentionally deprived someone of a constitutional right.

"Neither accident, mistake, fear, negligence, nor bad judgment is sufficient to establish a willful federal criminal, civil rights violation," the DOJ stated.

Following their investigation, federal prosecutors concluded insufficient evidence to prove "beyond a reasonable doubt" that Sheskey willfully violated the federal criminal, civil rights statutes.

The review of the shooting of Blake by federal authorities has now concluded, the DOJ said.

TMJ4 Staff and the Associated Press contributed to this report.