So all the memes aside, is anyone else astounded at how poorly that went for Alex Jones? Just a shit-show nearly the entire time. From his terrible legal representation, to his own terrible testimony. Just a mess.
I mean, his 'on-air' personality is a mess, but I always sort of thought it was just a show. It's interesting to me that it turned out he really is just an absolute train-wreck of a person.
I always wonder what truly unlimited free speech would mean. How is it possible that perjury would be a crime? Fraud - just free speech right? And if money is speech, then corruption is just free speech as well. It doesn't really feel like it breaks the system down, it's more like does/did the system even exist?
Free speech exists for a reason - to allow a society to introspect and for truth to be explored and expressed. When one monetizes lies and conspiracy theories, manufacturing false narratives as truth, speech ceases to offer a positive value to society and its freedom should be less protected.
The justice system is designed to find out the truth about disputed events or actions. Deliberately lying to it is a direct attack on its mission and should be considered a criminal offence.
yeah, I guess lying under oath is no big deal? I always thought it mattered.
I was deposed to give testimony once in a dispute between two other parties and it was nerve wracking to give testimony about a few questions because it was stuff I hadn't thought about in a couple of year.
Turns out it's no big deal to lie under oath?
This is really troubling, how can we have the rule of law if lying under oath is allowed for some people?
I can attest that it's not (a big deal). My ex-wife lied repeatedly in written court certifications about money she was receiving from her parents which I ultimately proved were lies. This, I assumed, was tantamount to perjury (given that these were supposedly 'sworn statements' with all the requisite mumbo jumbo about 'penalties'). Guess what? nothing happened. thanks for paying all of that extra money in alimony that you didn't have to...You lied to the Court.. and me, for years.. eh, no big deal. thanks for playing our super-fun anachronistic, ceremonial scamfest. I believe lying is actually encouraged by the Court system because the onus is the adversary to prove it and, even if you do, nothing really happens. Threats of 'contempt' are just that.. threats. Contempt of Court, contempt of Congress..perjury.. yawn. On another note, getting some rain today..really need it.
I'm not a lawyer, but I suspect that judges sorta know that people who are being sued or prosecuted are not exactly going to be reliable witnesses if they testify, and that it'd probably be a bigger deal if this were one of Jones' associates who wasn't on the hook for the money. There's also plenty of time for the judge to dial up some perjury referrals.
I could be wrong but my understanding is that technically lawyers are liable if they put someone on the stand they know is going to lie. I’m surprised that isn’t enforced more often.
Defendants in any proceeding have the right to not self-incriminate. It's not the judge's responsibility to do the job for a lawyer that a defendant hires. Once they hit that witness stand, they're fair game.
I think part of the problem with perjury is that if it's detectable you only have hurt your own case, and if it isn't detected it can't be tried.
This might be somewhat unique in that the perjury charges relate to hiding evidence as well (rather than just running counter to the evidence). And, obviously, that Alex Jones isn't a cop, so that particular fetishism of law enforcement the US operates under doesn't apply.
$4M is a repercussion for spending years making up conspiracy theories and targetting the families of dead children. Also note that this is compensitory damages only, and hasn't even touch on punitive damagers yet.
Also, this isn't a suit covering all the Sandy Hook families; I think to covers two. There are at least two other suits already in progress from other families on similar grounds
Punitive damages are capped at low amounts in Texas and may not happen at all since they require unanimity (which the jury did not have on the compensatory verdict).
Yeah for sure. My impression though is that the perjury played a role in the decision here though...the opposing counsel definitely made a point of highlighting it over and over.
Although we all want to see our "political enemies" and indecent people everywhere punished, we have to stop calling for people to be jailed without clear crimes being committed. The whole "lock her up" for Hillary that the Trump crowd chanted disgusts me, but likewise so do people calling for Trump to be prosecuted and jailed when they cannot pin an actual crime on him.
If we turn into a nation of "show me the man, I'll show you the crime" I will bugger off to a small island somewhere. We cannot rule by mob sentiment, laws matter.
I wouldn’t be surprised if there are perjury charges on the way. Things like that take longer than we would like, but DA’s saw the same stuff we all saw.
Why do you assume that there were no repercussions?
The jury got to see that he was a liar. Do you think that played no part in their decision? Do you think it will play no part in their decision on punitive damages?
Or did you mean something more like prison? The provable perjury happened, what, two days ago? Indictments like that don't happen overnight, but I hope (and maybe even trust) that it is in fact coming.
It's how he became a media personality among right-wingers, make up the most outlandish and inflammatory things to get attention. Plato covered this in the Republic.
Because we have spent the last 6 years watching dozens and dozens of bad actors get away with it, and never facing repercussion and we have become incredibly cynical of anyone wealthy ever facing justice.
It does happen sometimes. My personal favorite example is this guy. I recommend search terms like "james clapper perjury congress". If this fish never got fried in the biggest pan of all, what chance do these little chefs have?
This is spot on. There is something really psychologically off with him, watching how he behaved on the stand:
* fidgeted with everything
* couldn't focus
* couldn't follow simple instructions
* would forget about something said a short time ago
* has extreme paranoia, borderline schizophrenic to me
If there are no consequences for anything, the system is coming apart. There is a good goddamn reason why lying under oath, or even lying to investigators, is a crime, because truth is the bedrock of accountability. Truth is always the first victim of psychopaths.
Doesn't this assume the system ever worked? Is this actually a sign of the decline of civilization, or just that we are able to aware of the status quo now?
Lying to investigators shouldn't be a crime, in my opinion. It too often creates a situation where you can just investigate someone endlessly, find no real evidence, and then convict them of lying based on some flimsy inconsistencies in their statements.
I suppose some specific kinds of lies could be crimes, but there should be a high bar for both the type of lie told as well as the certainty that it's really a lie.
> there should be a high bar for both the type of lie told as well as the certainty that it's really a lie.
Perjury convictions are a fairly high bar. People don't generally get charged for "flimsy inconsistencies in their statements." Prosecutors, judges, and juries don't have endless time to spend on getting someone.
The feds use this all the time. "plead guilty to this thing we probably can't get a jury conviction on and we'll drop the lying charge we can easily prove"
I assume you mean that it's a defence that you thought it was true so you didn't commit a crime. That might be true at the beginning but I'm sure high-profile people like Alex Jones have enough exposure for people to put them straight at which point it becomes less of an excuse!
That was my initial assumption too.
By now I think people like Alex Jones are so far removed that every decent, same and integer human being has left his bubble. Some out of disgust, some after they tried to influence him towards society. In the end they left for their own safety/sanity.
This would also be an explanation why his defence was a mess. Amber Heard is a similar case. Lawyers who side with his views and find defendable positions might not be at the top of the lawyer ladder. It's a working theory.
Watching him on Joe Rogan post Sandy-Hook gave me a pause that made me wonder if, under the public persona, there was a genuine human. I can certainly imagine that, if you're getting so heavily rewarded for the OTT absurdity, vitriol and anger, you can eventually get lost in the act.
Occam's razor holds true, though. He's just a clown with issues.
Also often times there is some underlying mental illness that carries you there. A lot of people had "funny schitcks" persona for purpose of entertainment - look Stephen Colbert in Colbert report.
But even without strong psych knowledge you can clearly feel if this is a parody/pastiche of particular genre. Alex does not give this vibes. Feels like there is a meta-person luring the physical person into some dark stuff.
Alex Jones reminds me of the Introduction to Kurt Vonnegut's "Mother Night" -- We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.
There are plenty of people out there who are somewhere between mentally ill, people who thinks things are funny or those who will literally do anything for fame or fortune.
I mean those people who shared the fake "magnetic covid chip" videos without even a thought for feeding paranoid people who then die because they don't get vaccinated.
Or people who create those ridiculous "You won't believe what Barack Obama did next" as pure click bait ads just for the money, without thinking that people then believe this stuff etc.
I don't think it increases the chances, but it also doesn't decrease them enough so as to make the eventual ascendancy of one of the many impossible. It's an argument that he's not specially gifted, just lucky.
It's hard to tell a true believer vs a conman, and often that's a false dichotomy anyway. During the 2016 Republican primaries, I thought Donald Trump was doing an act for the type of voter who participates in a Republican primary, and would act "normal" once he won the primary. Obviously that was a mistake.
I also used to have similar ideas about private equity - I thought they were really smart guys with a lot of money, but after working with them a bit, I think they're just guys with a lot of money.
Turns out that money insulates you from the consequences of your bad actions, who would have thought?
No person is a asshat only 30% of the time. They are an asshat who can occasionally hide it.
You take an asshat and put him under extreme stress, and the true personality comes out.
I can only imagine how working with him was. He may have gone through a bunch of lawyers, and the ones who stuck with it... who knows. I wouldn't be surprised if these people were so done with him, and done with yelling at grieving parents, that they intentionally leaked info. At some point you stop caring about whatever scraps the person is paying you.
It's interesting to me that it turned out he really is just an absolute train-wreck of a person.
He seems to me like he is a very successful rabble rouser and promoter. He seems to have made millions of dollars per year fulfilling that role - as much as $800,000 per day:
The $4.2 million verdict doesn't seem significant to him, despite his protestations to the contrary. The plaintiffs were seeking $150 million. We'll see how much the $4.2 million is increased during the punitive phase of the trial but so far it seems like a cost of doing business for him.
He has quite a few other pending lawsuits, plus the jury can still find for punitive damages. But you are somewhat correct, filings show that he has spent $15M in legal fees, though his income is around $62M.
Having followed the case, him being absolutely demolished in court repeatedly is no shock given his brazen contempt for the court system and his refusal to abide by any sort of law or rules.
I’m most shocked at his own sheer self-destructiveness. What is he going to do now? Claim the courts conspired against him?
It was seeing him be at the top of his niche for so long, him running a successful business with a handful of employees, him just remaining this counterculture icon who seemed to get away with everything, it made me think that he might be more calculated than people gave him credit for.
But more than anything, it was this insincere apology he gave regarding sandy hook, after which he seemed to feel above the Sandy Hook’s Survivors right to confront him in a court of law. I just sort of hoped he was a better and smarter person, maybe somebody who believed some kooky things but was doing a show mostly to entertain people and didn’t mean badly. Just seeing such hateful stupidity is surprising and disappointing to me. I might be too naive.
In his, uh, defense - years of serving nonsense to gullible chumps who eat up every word of your insane drivel who then send you piles of money, makes one lose their edge in the real world.
>is anyone else astounded at how poorly that went for Alex Jones?
No. I'm really not. His entire livelihood was based on talking bullshit and selling it. I had zero expectation that he could stop while dealing with some serious real world shit like taking responsibility.
I think his lawyer was intentionally bagging him. I can't imagine anyone is that bad at their job in not prepping their client for trial, in turning over documents they shouldn't have, in not following up.
I hope they throw the book at him for punitive damages as well. Maybe then people will learn you don't get to sit there spouting blatant lies without consequence.
I thought forwarding his messages to the jan6 committee was just a stunt but apparently there's some juicy stuff in there. Will be interesting to see what comes out of it.
> Maybe then people will learn you don't get to sit there spouting blatant lies without consequence.
That is partly true. The ruling class gets to lie with impunity whenever they want, for profit or power. Remember WMDs in Iraq? And Iran has been "6 months away from a nuclear bomb" for the past 50 years.
>And Iran has been "6 months away from a nuclear bomb" for the past 50 years.
To be fair, that statement has always been "if Iran seriously tried to build a nuclear bomb, it'd take them roughly six months to do so."
That is probably fairly true, but they've constantly lied about how serious Iran has ever been about building a nuke while using the statement stoke fears.
Why do you think Iran is just toying with the idea of building a nuke? Doesnt it make sense that if they had the capacity, or if they had the capacity to make one in 6 months, that they would?
> Why do you think Iran is just toying with the idea of building a nuke?
After 2003's Iraq and Libya in 2011 (and Russia in 2022) it's straightforward to prove that autocrats need to have nukes (or be a staunch ally of a country with nukes) as it's the best way to prevent international sanctions escalating to military action; and conversely Ukraine shows us that not having nukes is a good way to get invaded by certain kleptomanic historically-revisionist irredentist kakistocracies.
> Doesn't it make sense that if they had the capacity, or if they had the capacity to make one in 6 months, that they would?
Consider that these countries need to build "real" nukes: whereas if Iran/NK/etc had only developed a couple of Hiroshima-sized fission bombs (~15kt) then the destructive potential is really limited and I imagine it wouldn't be a credible deterrent. But if they focus on getting 100kt+ fusion bombs (not just boosted bombs) working then the regime in charge can sleep easy at night.
> For 50 years Iran rules have been on the fence?
Iran has been actively trying to produce a nuke all the time - they just don't talk about it - nor do they talk about Israel's often successful clandestine air-strikes to their bomb production facilities - nor does Israel talk about it either. No-one talks about it.
Most of the things necessary to build a nuclear bomb are also used for nuclear energy and research. The estimates are that Iran could alter their completely legal nuclear program into one to develop a bomb in six months.
To be fair, they're probably going the israeli route and have 'turn key' nukes. No way they don't have enough highly enriched material for a bomb or two by now. It's just not in their interest to advertise it.
Let's ignore how incredibly difficult that'd be given the amount of scrutiny Iran has been under for decades.
We basically know Israel has nukes because testing nuclear bombs is easily detectable worldwide. There aren't any other unexplained bombs activated. If Iran secretly built one, they have next to no idea if it works or how powerful it is.
So even if it wasn't nearly impossible, there's no reason to suspect they've built any.
The ruling class gets to lie with impunity whenever they want
You seem to be parroting the exact thing that Alex Jones said in his video responding to the $4.2 million verdict. It's simple Whataboutism.
The fact is, people's children were murdered. He created and spread a conspiracy theory that the entire event was fake, and that the parents of the murdered children participated in the conspiracy.
He admits he was wrong. He admits he did harm to the parents. A jury found he was liable for $4.2 million in compensatory damages. We'll see what the punitive damages end up being soon.
In the meantime, talking about lies that other people have done doesn't take away from his reprehensible actions.
No its not in this context because GP responded to a comment that said this will teach people about general principle of 'lying = bad'. GP responded with 'it won't because ..' .
Context here isn't alex jones at all. Its wether this a general teaching moment for 'people' about dangers of lying.
If Jones can't run his mouth without financial repercussions then politicians shouldn't be able to run theirs either and their PACs shouldn't be able to run those stupid lying ads.
It's not whataboutism. It's complaining about inequality under the law.
The lesson being learned here isn't "don't lie". It's "don't lie unless you're one of the more equal animals"
I think spouting blatant lies is and should be something you can "get away with," at least legally. Jones was (IMO) actually attacking these people. He continuously unleashing a mob of shitposting arseholes and actual lunatics on them.
>I think spouting blatant lies is and should be something you can "get away with," at least legally.
I think anyone with a 'megaphone' has a responsibility to speak the truth. Frankly, as soon as you start soliciting money for your opinions, I think you should be held to a higher standard. Journalists, politicians, talk show hosts, whatever. I'm sick of living in a post truth world.
This is a great line but also leads to another: "If the penalty for a crime is a fine, then that law only exists for the poor."
Interesting fact about this one: it is often attributed to the game Final Fantasy Tactics because of a meme, but it is never actually said in the game.
I watched the entire trial. I couldn't turn it off, tt was so enlightening to watch the legal proceedings, and I learned a lot.
My opinion: to be fair, (not defending Alex Jones at all), the plaintiff's lawyers did not enumerate the actual damages these poor people suffered, nor did they tie them directly to what InfoWars or Alex Jones said (i.e. he never used their names).
Although I condem the things he said, if I were on the jury I would have had a hard time assigning a monetary value to something which isn't clear defamation to me.
To be fair, the things he said were beyond horrible, but the case and the behavior of all representatives and the judge should be shown in law school classrooms as a reference to "don't EVER do this".
That per day figure is misleading since it was a particularly good couple of days. But yeah he still made tons of money over the years at the families’ expense.
Correct, the Plaintiff's lawyer pointed to the $800k day and said, "on average you make this" and I firmly believe Jones was confused, and tried to correct it, but the goal of the lawyer was to inflate the income numbers to maximize damages.
That being said, I don't understand how they couldn't have gotten all general accounting records as part of discovery, and if they didn't why they couldn't force a forensic audit by court order.
As revealed in the trial(s), that's not true. He continuously promoted that false story for many years, even after he first started running into legal trouble as a result.
The attention economy seems to be particularly vulnerable to charlatans. Platforms are happy to take their cut as long as those eyeballs are glued and the ad profits are dollars in. They'll furrow brows and play act some carefully chosen words, but these platforms will keep giving clowns a stage, because this circus is the best yet.
OP said 800,00 so I'm not sure if that was intended to be 800,000. But that obviously doesn't pass the BS test. Alex jones is not pulling in over 100m a year or anywhere close to that.
I have seen the 800k figure quoted elsewhere too. But even 80k per DAY is insane amount of money. Let’s say half of it is profit. 4M/40k = 100 days.
For the amount of damage he has caused, for the amount of pain he has inflicted - 100 days of profit as punishment is nothing.
My hope is that they clean him out of every dollar he has got. But, my guess is he’ll come out of it relatively unscathed. Even a 20M settlement might not be much to him.
There are much bigger problems though - how is he able to get such a large audience? Shouldn’t these social media companies have some responsibility? Why has it taken so long for this case (years and years) to reach the verdict stage? How is he lying freely in court, to the judge, on camera, and not facing any consequences? And so on…
Aren't his advertisers mostly supplements and other snake oil? It seems perfectly fitting for them to advertise with charlatans who have cultivated an angry audience whose BS filters have been strategically decimated.
This is neither here nor there but my favorite Alex Jones fun fact is that during his divorce trial he told the judge that he once ate a bowl of chili that was so big that it caused him to forget his children’s names.
This is a great and a just decision, but it seems like the damages are a far cry from the $150 million claimed. Were there any sentence limits for the charges against this guy?
Relative to what? The point of a punishment is to dissuade similar actions in the future. This amounts to nothing more than a slap on the wrist, and is not appropriate for the gravity of the crime.
I'm not familiar with the legal system in the US. How much of the awarded money does the plaintiff actually receive as compensation in such a case? Do they have to share some of the awarded money with the lawyers? Also, are they also entitled to the punitive part of the damages?
I'm asking because in many EU jurisdictions the equivalent of the punitive damages goes to the state or sometimes to charity organizations.
> How much of the awarded money does the plaintiff actually receive as compensation in such a case? Do they have to share some of the awarded money with the lawyers?
Depends on the agreement with the lawyers. The two main payment terms are:-
A) you pay your laywer their fees no matter the outcome. In this case you keep all the money awarded to you.
B) A contingency agreement. In this case you don't pay the laywer directly for their fee's however payment for your attorney's services is "contingent upon" your receiving some amount of compensation and the award is split based on the agreement. NOTE: Some types of cases can not be based on contingency for iirc ethical rules reasons.
It _COULD_ be a fee based contingency agreement saying "If we win, you will pay all our fees", but the more common agreement is the award sharing agreement saying for example "If we win you agree to pay 33% of the award given".
> are they also entitled to the punitive part of the damages?
Yes, however often punitive awards are often capped which the jurors are not told about. So lets say X state caps punitive awards to 1 Million, but the jury gives 10 million, the punitive award is reduced to the 1 million cap.
In theory the law is applied without personal bias, but of course all legal officers are humans and in practice personal bias can be very relevant.
The man propagated a repugnant and objectively false slander, that parents of murdered children were engaged in a performative coverup, which lead to countless death threats and other indignities against the parents.
I everyone should get fair treatment under the law, but I think it’s almost impossible to imagine the nature of what he did will not influence the outcome of his trial and appeals. Also, civil cases have lower standards of proof and far fewer opportunities for a judgment to be appealed than criminal.
I mean, his 'on-air' personality is a mess, but I always sort of thought it was just a show. It's interesting to me that it turned out he really is just an absolute train-wreck of a person.