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Comment by binarymax | Hacker News Reader

> Jones had offered to pay $120,000 to each of the 13 plaintiffs to settle the case.

...

> According to Sunday's court filings, InfoWars listed its estimated assets in the range of $0-$50,000

I read this as: Jones has enough personal funds to pay a large settlement, but keeps InfoWars intentionally small and easy to bankrupt. But I don't understand what the two have to do with one another. What does bankrupting InfoWars have to do with his personal crime? Is this a corporate veil thing? The article doesn't make this clear at all.

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If he can prove that he was saying what he did as an employee of IW then IW, the company, is responsible. The US doesn't necessarily hold that the company and the owner (even a sole owner) are the same. The phrase "corporate veil" is used here. However if it can be shown that AJ was using IW as a he, the person, wants then he can be held liable "piercing the corporate veil"

Keeping the owner and the company separate is a necessity under US law, even for one person companies

It appears from at least one complaint that Alex Jones is named personally as well as InfoWars corporate entities. This should shield the corporate entities but not Alex Jones from personal liability.

In at least one way this could help the plaintiffs in that if InfoWars remains on air Alex had a steady source of income from which to pay his damages. Unless the plaintiffs goal is Infowars shut down (that’s a heavy lift however).

One complaint: https://drive.google.com/file/d/12mHNXnFQo2nH555yJxC5JIEEeAo...

I'd also be surprised if Jones kept a strictly disciplined financial operation running at InfoWars over all these years, such that there is no opportunity for the courts to pierce corporate veil.

His voicing his opinion for the show.

If the show gets sued for what's being broadcast, then the lawsuits would take money from the company. By keeping it "bare bones", then lawsuits can't do much damage as he can file for bankrupcy and the value of the suits will be scaled down.

>>> Alex Jones, founder of InfoWars, was found liable for damages in a trio of lawsuits last year filed after he falsely claimed that the 2012 Sandy Hook school massacre was a hoax

Doesn't sounds like a crime?

I assume the reporting on the case is really bad, because if that is literally the reason he is being sued it would be outrageous. Being a conspiracy theorist may be in poor taste but it is not a crime.

But realistically the situation is probably quite complicated with actual harms that can be demonstrated.

> I assume the reporting on the case is really bad, because if that is literally the reason he is being sued it would be outrageous.

mikeryan's comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31070389) includes a link to an actual complaint.

Claiming that parents are lying about their murdered children seems like quite a harm.

You're still speaking in a generality like the parent post is complaining about with the press coverage.

There would be a big difference between Jones saying "the shooting was fake, it was a hoax" versus "that father on screen, John Smith, is a liar and an actor and doesn't even have a kid plus he's probably a pedo".

Well, which is it? What did Jones actually say about Sandy Hook? That seems to never get reported.

Well, which is it? What did Jones actually say about Sandy Hook? That seems to never get reported.

It gets reported all the time. It's both. Jones has said the shooting was fake/hoax, and Jones has called the parents liars and actors and said that they were making up the shooting for financial gain. In other words, libel.

He has literally said both. He has accused specific parents of being liars and actors, and has revealed their contact information to the point where many of them received death threats from his followers.

It was leading to harassment re: the complaint linked in the other comment.

The reporting on the case is bad because a case was never made in court.

Jones basically ignored court orders and wasn’t forthcoming in his responses to requests so the plaintiffs basically got a summary judgement without it going to trial. The only trial left is a judgement on damages.

> Doesn't sounds like a crime?

Defamation is not a crime, but it is a "tort" (a civil wrong, rather than a criminal wrong).

-- https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/defamation-law-made-....

Libel is criminal in 24 states.

-- https://www.aclu.org/issues/free-speech/map-states-criminal-...

>> Alex Jones, founder of InfoWars, was found liable for damages in a trio of lawsuits last year filed after he falsely claimed that the 2012 Sandy Hook school massacre was a hoax > Doesn't sounds like a crime?

My understanding of the judgement [1] is that he didn't follow the law at all w.r.t. court proceedings and so lost on that route. Which is not to say that he would've won the actual lawsuit but just he lost on technical grounds before it got to the emotional grounds.

[1]: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21074090-pozner-judg...

> His voicing his opinion for the show.

The plaintiffs claim that Alex Jones was `not` voicing his opinion.

#9 in the Sandy Hook complaint (https://drive.google.com/file/d/12mHNXnFQo2nH555yJxC5JIEEeAo...) is ...

"Alex Jones does not in fact believe that the Sandy Hook shooting was a hoax -- and he never has."

Do you have evidence that Alex Jones' did, in fact, have the belief that the Sandy Hook shooting was a hoax, at the time he made the statements?

It's a civil defamation case and the professional US legal system has agreed that Alex Jones claiming Sandy Hook was a hoax and making various claims that have been shown to be false nor things he believed himself and exhorting his followers to harass the parents of the victims is a case of the accusations.

Alex Jones has been hiding his wealth so he won't have to pay financial penalties for his frankly appalling behavior. Filing for bankruptcy while listing little of value is simply the next step in his attempts to duck out of the consequences of his malicious actions. His house in West Austin is worth at least a million dollars if not a few and Infowars has some goofy looking 4x4 SVU that has been heavily modified to appear intimidating and must be worth more than $50,000:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/local/infowars-founder-...

"has some goofy looking 4x4 SVU that has been heavily modified to appear intimidating" LOL.

Why do I get down voted for liking this sentence?

I don't know I got downvoted for my post too. I assume it's pro-Alex Jones brigading

likely because quoting a line and adding lol doesn't add anything to the thread.

I liked the line.

Yeah, an ex- of mine tried to make this argument many years ago (leaving aside any freedom of speech issues).

I said "Marshall Mathers (Eminem) could end up in a situation where he's sued for slander / defamation based on lyrics in his songs."

Her: "No, because he's not singing - that's Slim Shady, who is a character of his. You can't sue the character, because it doesn't exist."

Me: "That's not really going to fly in a court. Among other reasons, if he doesn't exist, where's his voice coming from?"

I wish the media were more liable for deliberate fabrications such as this and other things which they rarely retract, or if they do it's hidden and never given the same prominence as the original news article that tarnishes people's reputations.

I agree it would be nice. The problem is I can't think of a good way to both guarantee a high level of journalistic integrity while also protecting the freedom of speech. I guess one could make an amendment to place certain speech restrictions or requirements on the media but that's a super slippery slope. The reason media is so free in a legal sense in the US is because there is such a strong incentive for the government to control it. Its basically guaranteed to happen.

And none of that touches on the other major issue which is the mass consolidation of journalism under a few owners. That is something that can be dealt with by government regulation at least. There used to be rules about such things.

Journalists used to say they they would need two independent sources that corroborated each other before they went with a story of note.

These days, two anonymous tweets "are corroborating sources" for them. It's such a joke of a profession, with a few exceptions where there is in-depth vetted reporting, but those are anomalous these days and not representative of the profession, to the detriment of society.

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