Alex Jones must pay $4M in damages for Sandy Hook hoax claims
bbc.com
bbc.com
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.
The system falls apart if it can't enforce its own rules, and if we don't see some serious perjury charges here, I think it's a very bad sign.
The message will no longer be: It's unacceptable to cheat and lie to win.
It will be: Cheat and lie better.
-- edit: I'd like to see at least two felony perjury charges against Jones. Ideally with max sentences.
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.
This is almost the definition of perjury.
The crime is deceiving through lies and fraud (or bribes), speech is just the tool used to achieve that.
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 sat in a jury for a DUI case. Their lead witness, a narcotics cop, lied blatantly on the stand in complete opposition to his deposition.
We jurors made up our minds 10 minutes in - not guilty. But this cop? He perjured himself. And not so much as a peep from the judge.
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.
It has nothing to do with his perjury.
Low multiples of compensatory damages would be more accurate.
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.
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.
Link to one of these past perjury situations where there were no repercussions?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Clapper
See:
https://jonathanturley.org/2013/07/03/perjury-by-permission-...
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2018/01/19/james-clap...
https://apnews.com/article/business-33a88feb083ea35515de3c73...
Additionally, Clapper was part of the government, testifying on something the government wanted kept quiet.
* 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
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.
That disabused me of the notion of Jones as an Evil Genius. He's just an alcohol-and-attention-fueled nut.
Occam's razor holds true, though. He's just a clown with issues.
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.
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.
> Reporter Jon Ronson travels to Jones' hometown in Texas, to investigate the story Jones tells about himself, and how he became who he is.
https://www.thisamericanlife.org/670/beware-the-jabberwock/a...
I know a bunch of these, including some in my family. None of them are capable of amassing even the fraction of following of the nut in question.
I am not in agreement with 'just' in that sentence.
otherwise it would be like saying ' he is not a genius, he is just fat' , which doesn't really make sense.
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?
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.
I don't feel bad at all.
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:
https://www.celebritynetworth.com/articles/celebrity/alex-jo...
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.
If he were to be charged with perjury, it might take a little while to prepare the indictment too.
I’m most shocked at his own sheer self-destructiveness. What is he going to do now? Claim the courts conspired against him?
He probably honestly thought he could bluster his way through this. He probably still thinks he can scream his way out of it.
It's literally Jerry's move in Rick and Morty, "I just kept crawling and it kept working"
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.
Ah. Now think about the other people who you also think are just putting on a show... No, this isn't acting, it is being.
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.
FAFO Alex.
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.
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.
Who, exactly, are you referring to with nonspecific language like that?
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.
For 50 years Iran rules have been on the fence?
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.
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.
This is fairly off topic though.
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.
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 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.
The messages themselves only go until March 2020 so while there might be "juicy" stuff there, it won't be specific 1/6/2021 planning.
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.
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".
If anything, he probably made more covering his own trial than what the trial cost.
It's almost as if Jones' show is a binary classification filter for chumps https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/why-do-...
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.
4M is chump change for someone making THAT much money. Plus, who knows how much money his nut job supporters are donating to him.
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.
The sort of people who make up his audience are, by definition, gullible, so they're a particularly valuable audience for advertisers.
He had previously claimed that profit was 20% of that, when pushed he said 20-40%, but documents suggest it's more like 70%.
Still, that $800k/day was for a week, it can't be extrapolated over the whole year.
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…
That companies would advertise their wares next to such an absolute shame of a man is beyond comprehension.
But why do they listen to him?
I'm asking because in many EU jurisdictions the equivalent of the punitive damages goes to the state or sometimes to charity organizations.
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.
Just in, jury finds 45 million in punitive damages, subject to reduction by the judge and any appeal in Jones's favor.
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.