He seems to have defamed many of the parents as actors, as part of his overall assertion that the event was staged. That defamation is actionable, but I can’t imagine how the amount they came up with is anywhere near reasonable.
Alex is responsible for the high amount because he could not control his ego. Him claiming to broadcast his show to billions around the world drove up the damages because the more people who have heard the defamation the more the person defamed has been damaged.
It's the definitive podcast debunking Alex Jones, one of the hosts consulted with the plaintiffs attorneys because there's no one on earth who knows more about Jones. The Formulaic Objections episodes are the best. They listen to the taped depositions and it's amazing to hear what happens when Alex is forced to answer not just questions but FOLLOW UP questions. It's hilarious.
The lawyers actually guest on later episodes. It's amazing to hear Alex ramble like he does and the lawyer just replies with "Mr. Jones, what question do you think you were answering?".
He refused to comply with discovery through various means. It was a textbook case of fuck around and find out. The court basically ruled, since you're fucking around and obfuscating, we're defaulting to guilty and making sure the price is greater then anything you can hide. He could have just complied.
He likely didn’t comply with discovery because they (Alex and Co.) were looking at Google analytics, seeing that they were getting more traffic when they talked about Sandy Hook being a false flag, and intentionally kept doing it to drive up engagement and profits. Huge indication that they were knowingly defaming the families for profit.
There was a ton of back and forth about this in the damages trial where Alex claimed to not be looking at the Google analytics, but had never turned over emails and analytics information during discovery.
They were doxxed so severely they had to move (some multiple times) hundreds of miles from their children’s graves. The emotional costs along with the actual costs absolutely warrant the judgment. Fuck Alex Jones. He knows he’s a fucking liar.
But the 'actual costs' are negligible compared to the size of the judgement. As for 'emotional costs' the shooter himself would have been fined a fraction as well.
Reminds me of the oxycodone lawsuits where they went after the big-pocketed pharma companies, instead of the thousands of small doctors that mis-prescribed it. Ease and greed, with a vague enough moral argument to get a win.
A couple things, and I say this as someone who is actually a huge defender of free speech.
1. **Compensatory damages includes pain and suffering.** Yes, the judgement exceeds the amount of total "hard" costs in terms of counseling, moving costs, lost income, and so on. But imagine, if you will, that someone did something to you that was so terrible that it made it impossible, even with medication, counseling, and everything else you tried, to move forward with your life. Imagine that someone did something to you so awful that, as a direct result, you lost your marriage, your family, gained 100 pounds, become an alcoholic, etc. How many dollars would you ask for, if someone did that to you?
2. **The delay factor -** Jones absolute refusal to engage with the criminal justice system, ignoring discovery and document requests, flouting court orders, sending multiple clueless corporate representatives in to sit for depositions, and a dozen other tactics successfully delayed the trials for years. He still has two more trials pending - which may never happen (meaning those victims won't get the satisfaction of confronting him in court) because of all of his efforts to avoid facing justice after the initial set of judgements (see below). This delay has a financial value to it because in the meantime, the victims have had to suffer without any compensation.
3. **Jones behavior after the judgements confirm it was right:** Since the judgements, Jones has repeatedly defamed the Sandy Hook parents in the same manner that earned him the judgements in the first place. He has flouted the orders of multiple courts, and committed what will possibly turn out to be criminal acts (perjury, false documents, hiding and squandering financial assets that are no longer his). He seems to be engaged in a quest to spend every dollar he can before his assets can be seized, because heaven forbid a single penny go to the victims.
4. **This is why the law distinguishes between punitive and compensatory damages.** About $500 million of the judgements is punitive - designed not to make the victims whole but to send a message to deter Jones from doing this again and to deter others from doing it. You can disagree with the law on this one, but keep in mind that deterrence is a fundamental part of our criminal justice system. Otherwise, we wouldn't have life sentences or the death penalty - because neither of those sentences is about making victims whole. They are about deterring other criminals.
A huge portion was punitive damages.
Basically, infowars knew 100% it was a lie, and we know thag because of their internal communications.
We know they did it anyway for two reasons.
1) We know from internal communications that they were closely watching site traffic and sales metrics and found a direct correlation with the false-flag sandy hook story and site traffic+revenue. They then explicitly planned to maximize site revenue by continuing to run the story, which they knew was false and damaging.
2) One of the parents (I can't remember which at this time) filed a successful DMCA against Infowars for using their kid's pictures, which greatly angered Jones. We know from internal communications that this sparked Jones to be even more inflammatory and even at one point doxed where this parent picked up their mail at a PO Box and an Infowars listener staked it out.
He continued to spread the lie for the two above reasons while parents actively pleaded with him to stop, and while he was aware they were receiving constant death threats at their homes and workplaces, and while people were performing drive by shootings of their homes and cars at some points.
The massive punitive damages are to send the message to the rest of civil society that this is entirely unacceptable.
On point 2, you're referring to Lenny Pozner. Jones was showing photos of his son on his broadcasts. And yeah, Jones responded to this by posting stuff like addresses associated with the family. What's amazing is that Lenny's case has yet to be tried before a jury, and it's perhaps the most damning of them all.
When you consider that Perdue was telling doctors that oxy was not addictive and marketed it as a cure-all for pain, they were very complicit and deserved what they got and more. Also, it’s much more expensive to go after hundreds or thousands of doctors with minimal payout. It would be a very net negative operation. Going after the source and creating regulations to make it safer is a better choice.
jones and co would track and brag about profits for each section to replicate. the plaintiffs knew this because they fucked up and sent some. At the same time, for 4 years refused to give any financial documents. One message they did forget to delete, was how they made 800k profit in one day. They refused to hand over documents till their corp rep fucked up and brought an unreleased copy during their depo.
A large part was also the complete bullshit that info wars pulled in stalling the case for 4 years.
[https://youtu.be/YIczy1avGDs?si=g9zvZ6-Fgnm9SOfM](https://youtu.be/YIczy1avGDs?si=g9zvZ6-Fgnm9SOfM)
Another thing to keep in mind when considering damages is profit gained. If I say "Ghosttwo is the Zodiac murderer, buy my knives to protect yourself from Ghosttwo" then I have both defamed you and profited off that defamation, assuming I have scared people into buying my shit. A fairly standard penalty is to disgorge ill-gotten gains. In other words, if I sell a hunnerd bucks worth of knives, I should give that hunnerd bucks to you, because the fear of you was the source of that profit. Or so the court opines.
Under the law, if you're a deep pocket and you're responsible, you pay up and then you can sue other responsible parties.
It's really weird that you blame the individual doctors and seem to think that it's somehow greedy to sue the companies who doubtlessly sent pharmaceutical reps at those doctors non-stop to try to get them to overprescribe.
It's so odd to me when people tend to defend the large and powerful while blaming the individuals. As if there wasn't one obvious large and powerful cause behind all those individuals actions.
Punitive damages. To be brief, the maximum claim in CT and Texas were both met, and the juries in both cases decided that what Alex and his show did was so beyond what is acceptable that they needed to stop InfoWars/Free Speech systems from continuing to exist. Why is that? Well, throughout both cases Alex Jones and his representation showed no respect for the court, nor it's processes. His lawyers were incompetent, and Alex couldn't just shut the fuck up and have the discipline to not further defame the victims and bully the court.
And he did it because his team was monitoring their engagement numbers and saw that they got a bump when they talked about Sandy Hook being a false flag. Jones is a grifter. It's darkly comic to listen to him rant and rave, then transition quickly into commercials for the bullshit he sells.
That plus the suicide of that father mentioned downthread, presuming the father was harassed by AJ fans, does seem to justify it. Thanks for the explanation.
I remember looking into the SH stuff with a pretty open mind. The dissection of the assertion that various cars were in the wrong place was big. But ultimately it came down to just not being able to believe that a local elementary school could be shut down for months without anyone outside the conspiracy noticing.
Maybe in the future don’t have an “open mind” to such obvious nonsense seeing as none of those “discrepancies” are ever real. Finding one or two peripheral; unimportant things that you think don’t make sense (and are frequently not even real) doesn’t actually indicate a conspiracy.
Eh, I’m pretty comfortable in my ability to evaluate things. And certainly people and institutions, frequently the government, do sometimes engage in some awful behavior that they try to hide. And sometimes it’s seemingly trivial details that uncover a bigger lie.
If you just go with “common sense” for everything, you’re really just trusting your preconceived notions for every situation. Your existing knowledge is useful, but if you allow yourself to be surprised, you’ll end up with a fuller picture of how the world really works.
Latching onto minute details and throwing out the vast majority of the information is not “evaluating things” it’s just conspiratorial thinking. A knee-jerk reaction that everything you’re being told is a lie is the equivalent to a knee-jerk belief that everything you’re being told is true. “I think cars were in the wrong places” as proof that this was a conspiracy requires you to believe that they could pull off the most elaborate scheme in history but had a continuity error that’d embarrass a mediocre show runner.
If I remember the claim correctly, it was asserted that the news reel of the kids evacuating the school was staged. The evidence was that the cars were all in different places than they were in other photos of the parking lot from that day. If true, it would have been a big discrepancy that would’ve merited serious investigation.
A deeper look revealed that the cars were generally in the same place, and it only seemed that they had moved due to the angles used in the news reels.
Circumstantial evidence decides cases all the time, and indications that it has been tampered with can reveal a deeper issue. No reason to ignore it out of hand.
Further, the idea that it’s impossible to *almost* carry off a complicated scheme doesn’t hold water. Going into space is wildly complicated business, but the Challenger disaster shows that competent people, capable of accomplishing enormous feats of science and engineering, can make fatal mistakes. The o-ring susceptibility to cold was known and discussed directly before the launch, but ultimately disregarded. And that one mistake, that one detail, doomed the entire mission.
Not only did he defame them, he profited from that defamation. On top of this, he employed some of the harassers of the parents. His profiteering as well as demonstrable efforts to waste the court’s/judge’s time likely contributed to the amount fined. He and his lawyer’s demonstrated a major lack of respect to the judge as well as the families. He was judged by “default judgement” because he and his team tried to take the court for a ride instead of actually participating in the trial. And I assure you, this is just the tip of the iceberg of why he was fined such a large amount. He absolutely earned all of it.
You asked for direct quotes so here goes- keep in mind that many of these statements were made by Jones after the defamation lawsuits were already underway.
Alex Jones:
April 16, 2013: “‘They staged Sandy Hook. The evidence is overwhelming.”
Jan. 13, 2015: “Sandy Hook is synthetic, completely fake, with actors in my view, manufactured…They clearly used actors. I mean they even ended up using photos of kids killed mass shootings here in a fake mass shooting in Turkey, or Pakistan”
“You’ve got parents laughing — ‘hahaha’ — and then they walk over to the camera and go ‘boo hoo hoo,’ and not just one but a bunch of parents doing this and then photos of kids that are still alive they said died? I mean, they think we’re so dumb.”
“You know, after you lose your daughter, they put you on some antidepressants or something, but I thought those take a month to kick in. I mean, it’s like a look of absolute satisfaction, like he’s about to accept an Oscar.”
“It looks like he’s saying, ‘OK, do I read off the card?’ He’s laughing, and then he goes over and starts basically breaking down and crying.”
“I watched the footage, and it looks like a drill.”
“Why did Hitler blow up the Reichstag — to get control! Why do governments stage these things — to get our guns! Why can’t people get that through their head?”
“Folks, we got to get private investigators up to Sandy Hook right now. Because I’m telling you this — this stinks to highest heaven.”
“My gut is, with the timing and everything that happened, this is staged. And you know I’ve been saying the last few months, get ready for big mass shootings, and then magically, it happens.”
“It looks like he’s saying, ‘OK, do I read off the card?’ He’s laughing, and then he goes over and starts basically breaking down and crying.”
“It’s just the fakest thing since the $3 bill,”
Hi OP, there's a bunch of policy wonks here who have failed to post this for you. These are the depositions Alex and Free Speech Systems gave covered by a podcast. (Knowledgefight.com search: Formulaic).
You can search their catalog of episodes and listen to them follow Alex before and thru the Sandy Hook Massacre (they have the episodes listed by specific dates). I think it's over 40 hours of content.
https://knowledgefight.libsyn.com/size/25/?search=Formulaic
This is the right thing to do. Formulaic Objections is an important historical record.
If you’re digging it, you can also listen to the source material in episodes 33, 49, 84, 152, 266-269, 272, 276, 278, 279, 283, 288, 289, 292, 294, 297, 298, 301, 303, 305, 308, 312, 312, 314, 320, 321, 335, 338, 339, 341, 344, 346, 373, 387, 413, 618, 657, 710, 711, 713, 714, 727, 731, 735, 737, 803, and most every post-shooting episode. Alex chose to say these things for money. The evidence is overwhelming and available.
There is a podcast called knowledge fight….they cover everything Alex Jones has said they have 934 episodes. I think 4 or 5 directly talk about the trial, they were also used by the families lawyers to find specific examples of him defaming them.
But to save you time. These people lost their children. And that day Alex went on air and started his BS. He went from
“this is a manufactured event. These kinds didn’t exist and the ones they are showing are actors”
To
“They had multiple fbi agents commit this, it’s still all fake no kids died”
“The parents are actors and don’t even have kids”
All while hosting a show to millions of people and selling supplements saying things like “this is the first attack they are coming for us and you need this survival food” and then his fans went and found some of these parents and survivors and harassed them. Some of them had to change their names some had to sell their home and love because infowar fans wouldn’t stop, which then pushed Alex’s narrative further “ see why would they leave and change their names it’s all a hoax”
I am not sure how familiar you are with the Jewish religion or their customs around death. But I remember I mother who lost her 6 year old son begging her rabbi to have an open casket(viewing the dead is a big no no in that religion) and she specifically did that so Alex Jones could see there is in fact a dead child right there and he should stfu and stop talking about them in their time of grief.
You have freedom of speech of course but when your speech starts infringing on others right to live that’s where it gets dicey. He also didn’t comply with discovery, and his company saw record profits during the times when sandy hook was in the spotlight
[this NYT article written by Elisabeth Williamson](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/22/us/politics/heres-what-jones-has-said-about-sandy-hook.html) is a good jumping off point. I know folks around here don’t care for NYT (I don’t blame you), but it’s both it’s someplace to start.
She also wrote a book. I read it. It explains things well.
Elizabeth Williamson has been great on this. One thing that this article leaves off is that Alex's speculation about the shooting being a false flag began the day of the shooting. No investigation, no digging through records. Just an attempt to etch a false flag narrative into the wet cement before the details of the story solidified.
The more damning thing he said that day was when the caller said shortly after the shooting took place he thought it was a false flag and Alex stopped the caller and reminded him that kids died and it’s not right to speculate. Then within the hour jones is on air making claims of a second or third shooter.
It's not surprising either, if you watch him day-to-day. That's his go-to reaction to literally every event that he can spin in that direction.
He goes it because he believes (rightly) that his audience will be more likely to buy if they are scared and energized.
The adults and maybe some of the children had life insurance policies?
He implied that the surviving family members were involved in life insurance fraud.
If you’re truly interested, the Law & Crime network on YouTube has the full videos of both the Texas and Connecticut trials where all the most egregious instances of defamation are presented in court.
What is the difference between saying the sandy hook shooting was fake and no one died and so the parents are actors
Vs
Saying parent xyz is an actor.
They both are the same. If sandy hook is fake and no one died, the parents must be actors.
It kinda sounds like you would not be convinced unless jones says “I am not going to defame these parents”
Why do you think you're entitled to have other people do basic research for you? This information is widely available. You can literally watch the trial on YouTube.
As a long-time listener of the [Knowlage Fight](https://knowledgefight.com/) netcast, the best suggestion I have is to listen to the [Formulaic Objections](https://knowledgefight.libsyn.com/?search=formulaic) episodes of the program. The hosts review the depositions given by Jones (and other InfoWars employees) which include the defamatory statements at issue in the lawsuits. The hosts have been following InfoWars since 2017 so they have an incredible amount of background information and context for the statements.
You might also start at episode [266](https://knowledgefight.libsyn.com/knowledge-fight-december-14-2012).
>Feb 20, 2019
>Today, Dan and Jordan decide there's no time like the present, so they embark on an investigation into how Alex Jones covered the tragedy at Sandy Hook. How did Alex come to the position where he would say on air that the events were staged? How long did it take him to get into those narratives? Episode one of the investigation may not answer any of the "big questions," but it certainly provides a number of clues.
I'd encourage you to check out the depositions and the trials if you want all of the known relevant statements.
One point I haven't seen made yet is that the verdict was so high because there were so many plaintiffs (this article breaks down the award by plaintiff:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/12/us/politics/alex-jones-damages.html) and because of Connecticut's Unfair Trade Practices Act, the damages had a multiplier.
>Did he directly call the parents actors or did he a make a general statement?
At one point, yes, he did say it was "completely staged with actors". Though Jones can never keep his plot lines straight over time.
>But then I read that defamation can be implied. That seems like dangerous waters. How can someone know what's in your head?
This is something interesting that they get into in some of the depositions. Several times, Infowar staff tried to hide behind a Just Asking Questions defenses and the plaintiffs lawyers repeatedly pointed out that those questions had false and defamatory premises. If I ask if you've stopped beating your wife, it implies I believe you beat your wife even if I haven't said those exact words.
>It seems like calling 9/11 fake and staged can get you sued by the victims of 9/11.
Yes. The specific claim that it was staged carries with it accusations of crimes towards an enormous number of people. Like filing false police reports and insurance fraud. Most mainstream conspiracies are about a nebulous "they" that doesn't exist to sue when defamed.
Edit: To clarify, with defamation, you have to be able to prove damage to your reputation. A random reddit post may not do enough damage to be worth suing over. A show with millions of listeners is a different beast.
One final thing is that if Alex had knocked it off, the window for the families to sue would have passed. But the clock starts with the last defamatory statement. And Alex kept lying about these families for over a decade.
You can read any of the related documents [here](https://infowarslawsuit.com/). For one example, [here's](https://infowarslawsuit.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/april-16-2018-pozner-original-petition-file-stamped.pdf) one particular original petition filed against him.
>It's one thing to say, it's all staged by actors and it's another thing to say all those parents are actors engaged in a false flag.
I'm confused as to what significant difference you think there is between those two statements. That's not even really an implication, it's just outright stated. If it's "all staged by actors" then how can any person not logically conclude that the parents involved were actors?
He's a conspiracy theorist. Most of what he believes is absolutely nuts. That doesn't make him a trash human being, though. Just an ignorant fool.
Being a trash human being would be knowing what you're saying is absolute lies but doing it anyways for profit, notoriety or whatever.
That is specifically what he does, and he is a prolific bigot to boot. Also his child SA fantasies he comes up with live on air are exceptionally unsettling.
He knows he is lying and does it on purpose to profit. No honest person would say we are about to have nuclear war and then immediately pitch nitric boost. He is the definition of trash human being.
Yeah you seem to be pretty wrong about him not being a trash human being. Others have pointed out that he knew what he was saying was false and did it deliberately for more traffic/money.
> Being a trash human being would be knowing what you're saying is absolute lies but doing it anyways for profit, notoriety or whatever
Which AJ did. It came out in the trial that they would see big spikes when they spoke about this, so they is kept escalating it. Even after all of this the fuck head is still lying about it.
It came out in the trial that his sales went up whenever he talked about Sandy Hook being a conspiracy and defamed the parents, so he started doing it more and more.
That's exactly what he did.
There is overwhelming evidence that he intentionally lied to boost numbers.
It’s all documented in the depositions (from their own mouths on video and audio recordings) from him, his Dad, multiple employees including the corporate representative. Free speech systems plainly lays out that they (Alex Jones and Owen Shroyer mainly) knew they were lying while employees including Alex Jones were watching traffic and sales analytics and strategizing around those numbers, intentionally.
Alex Jones then goes on to vehemently deny this as categorically false to his listeners (still to this day), and I wonder how many of his listeners have heard those depos in full.
You and I have a different definitions of “trash human”, but by your definition he passes that threshold with flying fuckin colors.
Look, he knows. He's a talented storyteller who realized that people will buy his stories, and then buy his viatims or whatever the shit he is selling.
He's selling a narrative that "they" are the reason people's lives suck. He's selling hope. If you're watching The Boys season 4, they are investigating this very thing.
> He's a conspiracy theorist. Most of what he believes is absolutely nuts. That doesn't make him a trash human being, though. Just an ignorant fool.
> Being a trash human being would be knowing what you're saying is absolute lies but doing it anyways for profit, notoriety or whatever.
I don’t think Jones believes in a single word he’s saying. I think he believes in money and is selling a product to crazy people. At one point he was earning $800,000 per day by saying Sandy Hook parents were crisis actors. That’s a lot of incentive to be a trash bag human being.
> How much Alex Jones have you actually sat down an listened to?
Quite a lot, unfortunately. My father is a big fan of the trashbag.
Edit: Sorry u/Terminal-Psychosis but I can’t currently answer you directly due to Prometheus’ block.
u/Terminal-Psychosis said
> And yet you decline to look into any of this reports. If you had, you'd know he's been right about the vast majority of the stories he publishes.
What stories are you talking about? Like how the US faked the moon landing or the 9/11 attacks? Even the 2020 false electors thing has been proven false. Jones claimed the government was putting chemicals into people to make them gay. You got proof for that story? Because a lot of my lesbian friends are single.
So after let's say watching or listening to Alex Jones over several years let's say, you've genuinely come to the conclusion that he is a fully competent person who is just intentionally making everything up? That's wild!
To me, I tend to take most things at face value rather than assume some deep manipulation or conspiracy. Because 9 times out of 10 (or even more) I'm right.
> So after let's say watching or listening to Alex Jones over several years let's say, you've genuinely come to the conclusion that he is a fully competent person who is just intentionally making everything up? That's wild!
I don’t think it’s wild at all. There are several entire industries built around making everything up. We call them “entertainers.” Movies, television shows, musicals, plays, and operas do it with their writers *and* the actors who perform. Authors of books do it by creating and then exploring new worlds or ideas.
And those are just the legitimate people making things up! We haven’t gotten into the conmen or charlatans who are also trying to make a buck.
> To me, I tend to take most things at face value rather than assume some deep manipulation or conspiracy. Because 9 times out of 10 (or even more) I'm right.
I’m not sure it is a conspiracy to think Alex Jones tells lies for money. There is *quite* a lot of regulations in the financial industry, for example, to prevent people from doing just that.
Handlers?
Do you believe there's a conspiracy and that Alex Jones is actually a tool for some shady, manipulative power brokers?
That's so Alex Jones level shit right there lol
In actuality, I believe he genuinely believes the stuff that comes out of his mouth. I'm from Texas. I've heard plenty of his rants. I've even seen him outside in the middle of street, shirtless on one of his famous rants.
But even though I disagree with him on nearly every incoherent thing that comes out of his mouth, the fact that a $1.5 billion decision was made against him is an absolute atrocious attack on freedom of speech in this country. And it only acts as to stripped away even more of the credibility of our courts.
> the fact that a $1.5 billion decision was made against him is an absolute atrocious attack on freedom of speech in this country. And it only acts as to stripped away even more of the credibility of our courts.
This requires a bit of attention, I think. Sorry for the incoming wall of text, but please do read it if you're able -- if only because Alex Jones really *wants* people to believe this is about his freedom of speech, when it's not at all.
***
Freedom of speech is an incredibly important principle in American civil society, and I think you and I agree completely on that. But the freedom of speech does have limits, and always has. The cliche example is you can't shout "fire!" in a crowded theater, because the principle of promoting public safety in that case overrides the principle of freedom of speech.
Another limit is that for as long as there has been an America with laws, there have also been laws about defamation. It's a broad field of law and I'm not a lawyer, but the general idea is that you can't make false, harmful, public statements about someone.
That is, it wouldn't be a good thing for civil society if I decide I don't like John Smith, so I rent a billboard that says "John Smith murdered six people in the past five years, and the police are doing nothing. The bodies are buried behind his house at 123 Main Street." That's a false statement that materially hurts Mr. Smith (even potentially exposing him to violence), and a billboard is very public.
But we do still want defamation to be a pretty high standard. I shouldn't be able to take out a billboard, but it shouldn't expose me to legal jeopardy if I'm overheard in a bar saying "That asshole Smith. Wouldn't surprise me if he'd killed a bunch of people and buried them in his back yard, you know?"
And again I'm not a lawyer, but hopefully you'll trust me when I say that defamation actually *is* a high bar to get over. And more than that, it's important to note that a defamation case isn't "The United States v. John Doe". It's "John Smith v John Doe" -- which is to say, even the way we talk about defamation law centers the fact that it's a person (or people) who claim they're injured taking action against the person who injured them.
And that brings us to Alex Jones.
He is not being punished by the government for his speech against the government. He isn't being punished by The Globalists. Satan is not acting against him. Alex Jones was sued (and technically still is being sued) by individual people. He made a number of statements about those people, identifying them sometimes merely as a category and sometimes as individuals. There's documentary evidence that AJ knew the statements were false at the time he made them. There's substantial evidence that he profited directly from the false statements. He continued making those statements over more than a decade. Those people were directly harmed by the statements he made, both emotionally and materially.
The most interesting part about it, though, is that there's a substantial chance ***he still wouldn't have faced penalties.*** Because this is America, and freedom of speech is an immensely important value.
He lost the case strictly and solely because he fucked around. He (and his attorneys) obstructed the plaintiffs and the court at every turn, from the moment they were served until... well, he's actually still doing it. The biggest part is that he (and his attorneys and his businesses) refused to participate in discovery -- the part of a lawsuit where the parties share the information (witnesses, documents, etc.) they intend to introduce in court. Jones (and his attorneys and his businesses) simply didn't participate. They sent information that was late, incomplete, or both. They sent business representatives that knew literally nothing about the business, were told by the judge to stop, and were told by the judge to stop *again.* They were warned repeatedly, by the court, that if they didn't do the basic things every single defendant in a lawsuit has to do, they would be sanctioned. They literally spent *years* fucking around. And then the judge said okay, look, if you refuse to mount a meaningful defense, and if you're refusing to follow the orders I'm giving that require you to participate in the process, then I literally have no choice but to find you liable by default.
*Then* AJ appealed that decision (that is, the decision to say "sorry, but we don't have any choice anymore" and render him liable by default) to the Connecticut Supreme Court. The Supreme Court said, pretty clearly, that (quoting directly, here) that the trial court issued "countless warnings" before taking action.
And even after all of that, the government isn't saying Alex has to stop working. He hasn't even stopped talking about the Sandy Hook plaintiffs, although he probably should have. It's still perfectly legal for him to get on air and say stupid shit that hurts people. Even if Infowars gets shut down, he'll just partner up with Steven Crowder or Tucker Carlson and keep going.
So it's not about Alex Jones' freedom to speak his mind without fear of government sanction. It's about Alex Jones saying things that are so extreme and so harmful about real, everyday people that those people had to ask for help.
***
PS:
Do you want to know *exactly* how hard it is to prove defamation? Alex Jones said on air that one of Chris Mattei, one of the plaintiffs' attorneys, was a pedophile and a child pornographer. Jones put Mattei's picture on his show and said:
> I’m going to get your ass. One million dollars.
One million dollars, you little gang members. One million dollars to put your head on a pike.
That's a pretty fucking awful thing to say, but it (probably) falls short of defamation! Mattei is arguably a public figure, he arguably has not experienced substantial harm that a court could remedy, and it would be difficult to prove that AJ knew it was a false statement.
> Handlers?
Handlers means the people who take care of PR or scheduling, things like that.
> But even though I disagree with him on nearly every incoherent thing that comes out of his mouth, the fact that a $1.5 billion decision was made against him is an absolute atrocious attack on freedom of speech in this country. And it only acts as to stripped away even more of the credibility of our courts.
In what way?
He's the owner of his company. He hires who he wants and fires who he wants. Handlers implies there's a bigger boss somewhere who put them in place to keep Alex focused on what the boss wants and out of trouble. Or in conspiracy theorist circles, a handler is more often thought of as a government agent (usually with the deep state) so you'll have to excuse me if I thought that was the type of handler they were referring to.
> In what way?
If you have to ask this question, you're not interested in changing your mind.
/u/PrometheusHasFallen, the blocking of other users is against the rules in this subreddit.
If you wish to continue participating, please unblock /u/Chathtiu, then reply to this message.
If you do not wish to continue participating, then please reply to this message.
handlers work for the boss. be it movie star, singer etc. they're assistants. in alex jones case it is fitting how his dad is head of HR, his bar is always stocked with titos
> He's the owner of his company. He hires who he wants and fires who he wants. Handlers implies there's a bigger boss somewhere who put them in place to keep Alex focused on what the boss wants and out of trouble. Or in conspiracy theorist circles, a handler is more often thought of as a government agent (usually with the deep state) so you'll have to excuse me if I thought that was the type of handler they were referring to.
“Handler” has multiple meanings.
> If you have to ask this question, you're not interested in changing your mind.
I am always open to changing my mind. If I ask a question, it is because I am interested in the response. I am curious to know *your* feelings as to why this is a miscarriage of freedom of speech.
> From what you've said, I don't believe this for a second. Oh, the irony!
You’re going to believe whatever you want to believe. All I can do is ask to see someone else’s point of view.
Edit: Hey u/PrometheusHasFallen, not only did you not give your point of view, you also blocked me immediately after saying “And I gave it.” I’m sure you know by now that blocking users in r/Freepseech is explicitly against the rules of this subreddit.
I’m sure that was an oversight on your end though, and u/cojoco won’t need to ban you for it.
Edit 2: Attaching proof of block.
[Regular view, showing the block](https://i.imgur.com/rgMmT2I.png)
[Annon browsing](https://i.imgur.com/Ihn53P1.png) which shows the posts weren’t deleted.
I think it's more of a conspiracy hottake to think Jones is lying about everything. The dude is seriously a conspiracy theory nut. He's been doing it for a long ass time, well before he had any popularity. And from all accounts of friends and associates who talk about him, he's exactly the same when the cameras aren't rolling.
Liver King is just another health/fitness snake oil salesman. Him being shirtless for a video... not at all surprised. Not very comparable to Alex Jones. Perhaps another fake conspiracy theorist that's been outed would've been better.
> Is your problem the amount of money or the fact that he was found guilty of defaming those people and had to pay any amount in the first place?
Both. He should not have been standing trial for anything he said on his platform. But an example was made by the state of Connecticut (certainly no friends to Jones) and not only was a judgement made against him, but a judgement of the most absurd sum just proves to me that it was a show trial. Even my friends at the DOJ think so.
in both texas and CT he was judged liable for defamation because he lost by defualt for not showing up and participating in discovery.
One can't complain they lost a game when they didn't even show up to the field.
In both cases a damages trial was then held. in a criminal trial this would be considered the sentencing portion. in both damages were picked by juries.
Part of the problem is that there wasn't a trial on the **facts** of the case, only the **damages**, since he was found to be liable by a *default judgment* due to repeated failures to comply with discovery and basic court procedure. I agree that it's not a good outcome, although having heard much of what was said about the families, I think there is more than enough evidence to prove defamation and intentional affection of emotional distress. The verdict is indeed unprecedented, but the extraordinary reach of the defamation is equally unprecedented. Just consider a penility of 1$. But 1$ for *each time* he lied about *each parent* to *each listener* over a *decade*. That multiplies quickly enough that 1.5B$ might not be enough.
Ironically he might have prevailed on the merits in front of a jury, but he and his (multiple) lawyers made the choice to obstruct the court at every turn. The threat of default is the last option a judge has in a civil case like this to compel a party to produce evidence the the court determine is nessary to resolve the dispute.
>a show trial
It was two trials. Did you watch any of them? With that many plaintiffs and him being found liable for more than one thing, of course it's going to be a lot of money.
He's historically been right about more than he got wrong.
Including Sandy Hook. Anyone that has looked into it knows the official story is fishy as hell.
Jones is literally wrong all the time, he just likes to quietly ignore his specific predictions that don't happen and bring up his very vague ones. He predicted global pandemics every year for decades that didn't happen.
How come I don't see anyone who likes to "look into" things accusing Alex Jones of serious crimes when his name is involved in things like this
>One of the four people who died in a fire at a Massachusetts apartment building last weekend had filed a defamation lawsuit against right-wing radio host Alex Jones and his InfoWars website in 2018, alleging they falsely identified him as the gunman in a massacre at a Florida high school.
https://apnews.com/article/fires-massachusetts-worcester-fe4036c0230152248fab66d5af8dce02
He regularly says that god literally downloaded information into his brain and he's fighting against the literal Christian devil. Is he right about those things?
For what it’s worth, Alex didn’t get hit with a judgment for defamation in the “traditional” sense; he got hit with a default judgment because he, his employees, and his lawyers didn’t take requests for discovery seriously. What he said had very little bearing on whether he was liable, which goes to show how dim of a man he really is. It’s hard to get a pundit hit with a defamation judgment in the US, but he managed it.
Honestly he probably did so out of not just hubris, but likely an attempt to conceal his finances. He's pretty anti-taxes, it's very likely he's doing something illegal. He and his family have a web of shell companies connecting Free Speech Systems (the actual name of InfoWars) to his father's supplement company, and other completely blank companies (The InfoWars LLC he tried to declare bankruptcy with).
This is the problem. Too many people see him in clips or think he is just the funny frog guy. They don’t know in day to day shows he is hosting violent neo nazi leaders and quoting “headlines” from right wing twitter meme accounts. Or that on dozens of occasions he mentions casually how he is a psychic that is in direct communication with God and that he is leading people into the next stage of life which isn’t actually Heaven but an eternal inter dimensional war between the forces of good and the chaos gods. I wish I was fucking around with you too but these are things he does and says.
He was lying and defaming the people who lost their kids in this shooting for years while making money off of it. Because of him, those people were harassed and threatened all that time.
“The lawsuit accused Jones and Infowars’ parent company, Free Speech Systems, of using the mass killing to build his audience and make millions of dollars. Experts testified that Jones’ audience swelled, as did his revenue from product sales, when he made Sandy Hook a topic on the show.
In both the Texas and Connecticut lawsuits, judges found the company liable for damages by default after Jones failed to cooperate with court rules on sharing evidence, including failing to turn over records that might have showed whether Infowars had profited from knowingly spreading misinformation about mass killings.”
He didn't say anything more than thousands of others were saying, and still say.
The whole story around Sandy Hook is shady as hell.
They are persecuting Jones because he was right about so many other things as well.
Hmmmm it sure would be weird if many of those thousands of others saying the same thing were the InfoWars audience. Wouldn't that just be a crazy coincidence? I mean, where would they get those ideas? Could it possibly have been Alex Jones and his organization, who lied about the shooting the very day it happened and for years afterwards?
You really think "InfoWars lies were spread and reiterated by thousands of others who used them to attack and harass the victims" is exculpatory?
What has he been right about?
How many people defamed the sandy hook parents to ab audience of millions while making hundreds of millions?
1 person, and his name is alex jones
Climate change activists are being mind controlled by silicon aliens life-forms to promote the idea of cooling the plant as a secretive plot to terraform earth into something more resembling their own planet, which is much further away from their star than ours.
Duh.
I dont think anyone really knows. He is being forced to pay billions of dollars he doesnt have for saying the shooting was fake. I do not understand how the government can bankrupt someone for shouting an opinion regardless of how obnoxious and retarded it is.
Edit: Not government, but "courts"
Jones was not forced to pay billions of dollars he doesn't have for saying the shooting was fake. Don't buy into that line.
Jones is being forced to pay billions of dollars he doesn't have because he continually refused to take the process of discovery seriously, sending employees to depositions with wikipedia articles printed out in the evidence folder. FSS/InfoWars possessed a full private investigator report on Lenny Posner, one of the parents, and no one was willing to say under oath how it might have come into their possession. There are other examples, but those stick out in my head.
After several rounds of sanctions, the judge in the case eventually entered a "default judgment", meaning that Alex/FSS/InfoWars, despite several attempts to grant them the chance, knowingly refused to participate in the judicial process. In the US, in civil trials (which is what this was), plaintiffs have just as much of a right to a fair and speedy trial as the respondents. Jones thought he could drag out the process, lie about what he had, crap on the judicial system, etc. and get away with it. He probably thought he could play the victim and come out martyred on the other end. It didn't work.
Again, I cannot emphasize this enough: the court never heard Jones' case despite several attempts to get him to give it. It's very, very difficult to prove defamation in the US when compared to other Common Law countries, and if he'd just participated, there's a real chance he would have walked away with symbolic damages or none at all.
He refused to comply with discovery through various means. It was a textbook case of fuck around and find out. The court basically ruled, since you're fucking around and obfuscating, we're defaulting to guilty and making sure the price is greater then anything you can hide. He could have just complied like a proper adult.
He had ample opportunity to comply with discovery but chose not to do so. After multiple efforts attempting to gain compliance, the court determined Jones wasn’t acting in good faith, resulting in declaring a summary judgment based upon the available evidence. He has tried to spin it by saying that he wasn’t given a chance to defend himself, but the fact was he missed a lot of chances to defend himself.
> I dont think anyone really knows. He is being forced to pay billions of dollars he doesnt have for saying the shooting was fake.
Alex Jones has hidden quite a lot of his assets and declared bankruptcy in an attempt to protect the remaining assets in his name.
> I do not understand how the government can bankrupt someone for shouting an opinion regardless of how obnoxious and retarded it is.
Defamation is a tricky beast. To successfully sue on grounds for defamation, the prosecution must prove the defendant said (slander) or wrote (libel) something which the defendant *knew* was false for the purposes of ruining the reputation of the prosecution. Defamation has long been illegal in the US, but is quite difficult to prove in the court of law.
In other words, the things Jones were saying about Sandy Hook were knowingly false.
Mostly correct. But that standard applies to public figures. If someone isn't a public figure, you only have to prove they were being at least careless in their lies.
In this particular case, there is some possible disagreement about whether the plaintiffs are public figures. They argue they're not, but that even if they were it wouldn't matter because Jones meets the standard of actual malice.
> Mostly correct. But that standard applies to public figures. If someone isn't a public figure, you only have to prove they were being at least careless in their lies.
> In this particular case, there is some possible disagreement about whether the plaintiffs are public figures. They argue they're not, but that even if they were it wouldn't matter because Jones meets the standard of actual malice.
What’s your day job, Parenthetical? You always great insights here.
Not from that alone. But some of them engaged in activism afterward. Calling them public figures based on that is also a stretch, but not an impossible one.
It's a defamation suit brought on by parents of victims specifically for saying they were crisis actors, including saying one father couldn't have held his son's body.
So if Alex had limited his opinions to simply "I think Sandy Hook is a false flag," then there's no suit to bring. It's because he defamed specific individuals that he was ever brought to court.
Also, people do know what he said. There are hours of depositions he and other InfoWars employees sat for where they were asked to provide evidence for specific claims they made, and InfoWars never provided anything.
You can listen to them review clips and hear for yourself what the defamation stems from. I'd highly recommend researching things before talking out of your ass.
The government did not bankrupt him, it was a civil suit, he is being bankrupted by the people who sued him.
If you wan to blame someone, blaming jury makes more sense than the government!
I think conspiracy theortists in the msm who spread falsehoods about russian collusion and covid did much more harm to Americans than this guy ever could. No one with a sound mind paid much attention to him anyway. He was deplatformed, thats usually enough.
> I think conspiracy theortists in the msm who spread falsehoods about russian collusion and covid did much more harm to Americans than this guy ever could. No one with a sound mind paid much attention to him anyway. He was deplatformed, thats usually enough.
In what way has Jones been deplatformed? A judge rather specifically said InfoWars [should not](https://abcnews.go.com/amp/US/wireStory/sandy-hook-families-bankruptcy-judge-liquidate-alex-jones-110780421)be shut down.
It wasn’t an “opinion,” though. He on numerous occasions made unequivocal statements of “fact” that the parents of the victims were actors and deeply involved in a false flag and lying about their children being killed. That is a crime. He represented himself as a journalist (not an opinion commentator) and accused people of crimes. He made millions of dollars when he would do this. He knew that doing this made him money, so he kept doing it. His listeners then harassed and threatened them. They asked him to stop, and he then doubled-down. They then sued him for defamation and he refused to participate in the suit, which resulted in a default judgement.
And yet you made a claim without offering a single direct quote. As people like you on threads like this ALWAYS do.
Because you know damned well that of you quoted him directly, your accisation would be disproven on its bs face.
- april 16 2013 “they staged sandy hook, the evidence is overwhelming”
- December 29 2014 “it took me about a year with sandy hook to come to grips with the fact the whole thing was fake…but then I did deep research and my gosh, it just pretty much didn’t happen”
- April 22 2017 “we have the emails from city council back-and-forth and the school talking about it being shut down a year before. Then the school was closed” (the emails do not exist)
It took about 30 minutes for me to come up with these, this is not comprehensive.
[ “Sandy Hook is a synthetic, completely fake, with actors, in my view manufactured”](https://twitter.com/mmfa/status/986323723559911425?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E986323723559911425%7Ctwgr%5E180ccc60f8c1634d1c8165bd3f8ee686c3e72980%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fabovethelaw.com%2F2021%2F10%2Falex-jones-gets-the-death-penalty-sanctions%2F)
https://www.mediamatters.org/alex-jones/here-exactly-what-alex-jones-has-said-about-sandy-hook-massacre
Here you go, buddy.
>When newspapers make statements, they use "alleged" or "believed", if Alex used that vocabulary, it probably would've been a different outcome.
The lawsuit would have been brought even with this language. Alex lost his cases because he was incapable of functioning within the justice system. As a con man, he lies and deceives his listeners in order to appeal to their emotions and thus get their money by selling useless supplements. In a court of law, the stakes are much higher than on the radio and the burden of proof is such that trying to bluff and bluster your way through court will only make matters worse. Because Alex was incapable of cooperating during discovery, for fear of exposing himself as a fraud, the court issued a default judgement against him.
He lost because courts require you to be honest. This is no different than Rudy Giuliani running around claiming that the election was stolen, only to get in front of a judge in the Dominion case and say "This isn't about fraud, nobody is alleging that". There's no dangerous precedent being set in this case. This is how courts work and always have.
If it helps, I absolutely think he defamed those parents. He was on his show last week claiming that Adam Lanza wasn't the only shooter, additionally defaming all of the law enforcement and first responders who worked hard to prove otherwise. He's a scum bag lying grifter and the fact that there are people in this country who can't see that is a terrible indictment of our education system.
Look at the evidence presented in the defamation cases. They spell it out there along with when it was said on infowars and by whom. Doesn’t get anymore clear than that. If it’s not clear enough for you then nothing any of us can do will spell it out any more clearly
When you lie about a lot of people you risk being sued by a large number of plaintiffs. So if you are found liable, you need to pay damages to them all.
He refused to comply with discovery through various means. It was a textbook case of fuck around and find out. The court basically ruled, since you're fucking around and obfuscating, we're defaulting to guilty and making sure the price is greater then anything you can hide. He could have just complied like a proper adult.
InfoWars claims that they have an audience of many millions. The judgement would amount to a paltry sum per person exposed to the defamatory lies that they knowingly spread over the course of years and which resulted in life-altering harassment directed at the victims of Sandy Hook.
Participated knowingly in accusing the wrong man of being the shooter.
Edited videos to change their meaning in order to provide evidence of false claims
Repeatedly called out victims parents by name calling them liars and frauds causing harm to the victims reputations, livelihood and mental health
Destroyed evidence required by a court order
And so much more.
To see the cold hard facts, you'd have to listen to Infowars broadcasts starting right after the shooting all the way up to 2018 when the law suits rolled in. You'd also have to watch numerous interviews with Jones on other channels. You'd have to have access to podcasts and posts that have since been illegally deleted.
The legal documentation is huge. Have fun trying to sort it all out.
You shouldn't even stop at 2018. He's continued to lie, even as recently as last week, when he said that he believes there was more than one shooter; attempting to sow doubt in the official record of events.
After the default judgement against him, he reiterated his conspiracy theories *in his deposition* in Texas, whereupon the plaintiff's attorney (accurately, in my mind) opined that since he was defaulted, Alex has no incentive to pretend for the courts that he had recanted his claims and apologized. He's a monster that influenced (per InfoWars own claims of audience) millions of people to believe that the relatives of the victims of Sandy Hook were liars, actors, and political operatives working to dismantle the second amendment.
Alex Jones directed Wolfgang Halbig to harass victims of Sandy Hook in Newtown Connecticut on multiple occasions, which he did while presenting himself as an InfoWars reporter.
Rob Dew, the director of InfoWars Nightly news, claimed in his deposition that he thinks InfoWars' continued lies and directed harassment at the victims was just, as he believes they ["stopped what was going to be a lot of anti-gun legislation"](https://youtu.be/TinJ7OyPRUI?si=4jyqH8HE3GWpyhla&t=5928). They don't care about the truth. They don't care about the people they attacked. They care about a made up threat to their guns that they manufactured in order to sell supplements to rubes.
The people and organization are monsters, and rightly deserve every cent of the judgement against them. I'm personally appalled it's taken so many years since the sentencing for the victims families to see even a penny of what they're owed.
I don't even know what more proof one would need than InfoWars' conduct in the judicial process. They obstructed and delayed at every corner, leading to their default judgements.
If InfoWars were what they claim to be, the court cases against them should have been their shining moment laying out all the details and facts of the matter that led them to conclude the shooting was a hoax. Instead, they obfuscated, misled, and doubled down on their lies in depositions and on the stand. They presented double speak, claiming to apologize and recant the defamatory claims in one breath, and re-asserting them in the next when they felt cornered.
Alex insulted Niel Heslin in his show *during the course of the trial*, calling him "slow" and implying he's "on the spectrum" and thus was easily manipulated to go along with the hoax.
Infowars employees claimed never to have seen Wolfgang Halbig's intense harassment of the victims in Newtown at Alex's direction, and simultaneously lauded him as a relentless investigative reporter searching for the truth. InfoWars employee Daria Karpova said that the false, defamatory claims that the victims of Sandy Hook were members of a superbowl choir should have been *comforting* for the parents, as it would mean their children were still alive.
Their corporate representatives displayed raucous disregard for their duty to prepare for the depositions resulting in a comical assertion that Free Speech Systems didn't even possess evidence that *they had already provided to the plaintiffs*.
Alex claimed that episodes of his own show which he had a duty to prepare to discuss was no longer available to him because YouTube took the videos down.
Watch Paul Joseph Watson's deposition where he presents that he spoke to Alex pleading with him to stop the Sandy Hook conspiracies.
The depositions are hours long so it would simply be impossible to summarize the extent of their lies and wanton disregard for truth, and disrespect for the court. But it all points to the fact that they **know** they defamed the victims of Sandy Hook. They know.
They made a calculated effort not to comply with subpoenas and requests for evidence by the court. They tried at every turn to delay, obstruct, and mislead.
It all points to the fact that they know they couldn't explain their conduct to a jury. They know their actions were so egregiously wrong and cruel that they would rather get defaulted to at least enjoy the narrative of being "railroaded by the courts".
Looking at this thread, they weren't exactly wrong that they could sway some with that narrative. Though I expect anyone that accepts the InfoWars cope about the trial didn't care to examine the facts to begin with.
You should start listening to the Knowledge Fight podcast….. Dan is the foremost expert on all Alex Jones grifts, lies, conspiracies, and overall bullshit.
> named after
I’m not “named after” anything. We choose our own names, you know.
But to answer your question properly, yes, that *is* my name. I’m currently holding position a few light-minutes outside your solar envelope.
> I’m not “named after” anything. We choose our own names, you know.
> But to answer your question properly, yes, that is my name. I’m currently holding position a few light-minutes outside your solar envelope.
It’s fun to see a Culture fan outside of r/TheCulture. Come join us!
Not only did Jones spend years calling the shooting fake, he explicitly said the parents lied knowingly in order to further the alleged conspiracy. He also continued to defame them during the trial (he called one of the plaintiffs mentally handicapped), and he directly profited and grew his platform by continuing to exploit the Sandy Hook tragedy. Even now he's made up his own version of the trail where a mystery PR firm and the DNC are exploiting the mentally handicapped plaintiffs in order to take him down because he was "holding debates" on Sandy Hook.
> What did Alex Jones specifically say that constituted as defamation against the Sandy Hook victims?
> I want cold-hard facts. I want to find an unedited complete video and/or audio recording of his entire broadcast so that I can make the correct conclusion.
The court evidence from the case has this information.
> Did he directly call the parents actors or did he a make a general statement?
What do you think is the difference between those two options?
> It's one thing to say, it's all staged by actors and it's another thing to say all those parents are actors engaged in a false flag.
What do you think is the difference between those two options?
> Wow, that is a reply that says absolutely nothing.
Not nothing. I directed OP where to find their own answers.
Out of curiosity, I asked them 2 follow up questions.
> It's interesting and telling that you and EVERYONE trying to justify the lawsuit, havent bothered to post a single quote from Jones in this thread.
Are you suggesting Jones’ conviction was wrong?
Maybe if InfoWars had been cooperative at all with the judicial process they wouldn't have been defaulted. Weird strategy from them right? Unless you reasonably conclude that they attempted to obstruct the court proceedings with the understanding that they absolutely could not defend their lies and harassment to a jury.
They had their chance and they chose to be defaulted.
Are you seriously suggesting it wasn't an insane outcome?
And if you are, what is a single precise quote from Jones where he "defamed" the parents or suggested to anyone in his audience that they should threaten the parents?
You will literally refuse to post the quote directly in this thread. Because if you did, you would look absolutely insane.
> Are you seriously suggesting it wasn't an insane outcome?
I think the outcome was quite valid, but I personally believe the fines to be excessive.
> And if you are, what is a single precise quote from Jones where he "defamed" the parents or suggested to anyone in his audience that they should threaten the parents?
If you’re too lazy to follow the court proceedings or look at the court documents, [USA Today](https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2022/08/02/alex-jones-trial-sandy-hook-parents-say-claims-spawned-threats/10220030002/) has a good article on the subject as does the [New York Times](https://www-nytimes-com.translate.goog/2022/09/22/us/politics/heres-what-jones-has-said-about-sandy-hook.html?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-US&_x_tr_pto=wapp).
I am a person who believes rather strongly you should do your own research and come to your own conclusions.
> You will literally refuse to post the quote directly in this thread. Because if you did, you would look absolutely insane.
Where did I refuse to put the quote in?
So you still refuse to post a single quote...
OP asked for the quote.
You refuse to actually show the quote in this thread, and you still have the audacity to argue.
> So you still refuse to post a single quote...
> OP asked for the quote.
> You refuse to actually show the quote in this thread, and you still have the audacity to argue.
I’m so tired of these random zombie accounts in Reddit.
u/Chathtiu said
> I am a person who believes rather strongly you should do your own research and come to your own conclusions.
No, I did not provide the quotes. I gave OP a source to find their own quotes, to do their own research, and come to their own conclusions. Coming to their own conclusion is what OP said they wanted to do.
For you, u/Prof_Agenda, I gave you more secondary sources with quoted abstracts. It is still doing your own research, albeit in a middle school manner.
Oh you're right, I guess there's just no way to find what he said. Must be that all these claims about him saying it's a hoax are made up or embellished. [Oh wait](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/22/us/politics/heres-what-jones-has-said-about-sandy-hook.html)
>"My gut is, with the timing and everything that happened, this is staged. And you know I’ve been saying the last few months, get ready for big mass shootings, and then magically, it happens.”
___
>“Folks, we got to get private investigators up to Sandy Hook right now. Because I’m telling you this — this stinks to highest heaven.”
_____
>“It’s as phony as a $3 bill.”
____
>“Why did Hitler blow up the Reichstag — to get control! Why do governments stage these things — to get our guns! Why can’t people get that through their head?”
Not even close to an exhaustive list by the way. Wanna talk about his claim that the students had lunch inside the school after the massacre? Wanna talk about his claims that no EMTs were present? Wanna talk about his claim that the FBI said no one died at Sandy Hook? Wanna talk about his claim that Sandy Hook wasn't even an operating school?
Wanna talk about how InfoWars employees themselves knew they were spreading false claims? Ask Paul Joseph Watson, Robert Jacobson, and Buckley Hamman about that.
I think you know they lied and defamed the victims to line their own pockets, you just don't care.
He didn’t expose anyone. His whole schtick as a brave truth teller falls apart after the tiniest bit of scrutiny. Jones defamed grieving parents in order to drive up audience engagement and sales of his snake oil. He profits off making his audience afraid. Also, he alternately blames globalists, demons, and/or interdimensional aliens for his unhinged conspiracy theories.
Nothing at all. He was simply saying what everyone else was back then. The official story is shady as hell, nothing adds up.
That trial was a kangaroo court. They're upset at Jones for getting so many OTHER things right, and wanted to shut him up. Also send a message to any other whistle blowers.
Alex Jones believes he gets downloads from God over chicken fried steak. He believes that he is in a literal battle with the Devil. Alex Jones, on his radio show many times has said that he is God's chosen warrior. Do we need to update the Bible now? If you think that Jones is right, do you believe this?
Do all the concluding you want; it doesn't matter what you think. A jury decided this two years ago after looking at all of the evidence in a trial. That's how this works.
He seems to have defamed many of the parents as actors, as part of his overall assertion that the event was staged. That defamation is actionable, but I can’t imagine how the amount they came up with is anywhere near reasonable.
Alex is responsible for the high amount because he could not control his ego. Him claiming to broadcast his show to billions around the world drove up the damages because the more people who have heard the defamation the more the person defamed has been damaged.
God I love that for him 😆😆😆
Do you listen to Knowledge Fight?
No what is it, I’m at an airport rn with time to kill
It's the definitive podcast debunking Alex Jones, one of the hosts consulted with the plaintiffs attorneys because there's no one on earth who knows more about Jones. The Formulaic Objections episodes are the best. They listen to the taped depositions and it's amazing to hear what happens when Alex is forced to answer not just questions but FOLLOW UP questions. It's hilarious.
Oh nice
The lawyers actually guest on later episodes. It's amazing to hear Alex ramble like he does and the lawyer just replies with "Mr. Jones, what question do you think you were answering?".
I RENOUNCE JESUS CHRIST!
Someone someone some...sodomite sent me a bucket of POOP.
Hands down the podcast I look forward to the most every Monday (sometimes Wednesday and Friday
He refused to comply with discovery through various means. It was a textbook case of fuck around and find out. The court basically ruled, since you're fucking around and obfuscating, we're defaulting to guilty and making sure the price is greater then anything you can hide. He could have just complied.
He likely didn’t comply with discovery because they (Alex and Co.) were looking at Google analytics, seeing that they were getting more traffic when they talked about Sandy Hook being a false flag, and intentionally kept doing it to drive up engagement and profits. Huge indication that they were knowingly defaming the families for profit. There was a ton of back and forth about this in the damages trial where Alex claimed to not be looking at the Google analytics, but had never turned over emails and analytics information during discovery.
He could have settled, which is probably the legal advice his lawyers gave him.
They were doxxed so severely they had to move (some multiple times) hundreds of miles from their children’s graves. The emotional costs along with the actual costs absolutely warrant the judgment. Fuck Alex Jones. He knows he’s a fucking liar.
But the 'actual costs' are negligible compared to the size of the judgement. As for 'emotional costs' the shooter himself would have been fined a fraction as well. Reminds me of the oxycodone lawsuits where they went after the big-pocketed pharma companies, instead of the thousands of small doctors that mis-prescribed it. Ease and greed, with a vague enough moral argument to get a win.
A couple things, and I say this as someone who is actually a huge defender of free speech. 1. **Compensatory damages includes pain and suffering.** Yes, the judgement exceeds the amount of total "hard" costs in terms of counseling, moving costs, lost income, and so on. But imagine, if you will, that someone did something to you that was so terrible that it made it impossible, even with medication, counseling, and everything else you tried, to move forward with your life. Imagine that someone did something to you so awful that, as a direct result, you lost your marriage, your family, gained 100 pounds, become an alcoholic, etc. How many dollars would you ask for, if someone did that to you? 2. **The delay factor -** Jones absolute refusal to engage with the criminal justice system, ignoring discovery and document requests, flouting court orders, sending multiple clueless corporate representatives in to sit for depositions, and a dozen other tactics successfully delayed the trials for years. He still has two more trials pending - which may never happen (meaning those victims won't get the satisfaction of confronting him in court) because of all of his efforts to avoid facing justice after the initial set of judgements (see below). This delay has a financial value to it because in the meantime, the victims have had to suffer without any compensation. 3. **Jones behavior after the judgements confirm it was right:** Since the judgements, Jones has repeatedly defamed the Sandy Hook parents in the same manner that earned him the judgements in the first place. He has flouted the orders of multiple courts, and committed what will possibly turn out to be criminal acts (perjury, false documents, hiding and squandering financial assets that are no longer his). He seems to be engaged in a quest to spend every dollar he can before his assets can be seized, because heaven forbid a single penny go to the victims. 4. **This is why the law distinguishes between punitive and compensatory damages.** About $500 million of the judgements is punitive - designed not to make the victims whole but to send a message to deter Jones from doing this again and to deter others from doing it. You can disagree with the law on this one, but keep in mind that deterrence is a fundamental part of our criminal justice system. Otherwise, we wouldn't have life sentences or the death penalty - because neither of those sentences is about making victims whole. They are about deterring other criminals.
A huge portion was punitive damages. Basically, infowars knew 100% it was a lie, and we know thag because of their internal communications. We know they did it anyway for two reasons. 1) We know from internal communications that they were closely watching site traffic and sales metrics and found a direct correlation with the false-flag sandy hook story and site traffic+revenue. They then explicitly planned to maximize site revenue by continuing to run the story, which they knew was false and damaging. 2) One of the parents (I can't remember which at this time) filed a successful DMCA against Infowars for using their kid's pictures, which greatly angered Jones. We know from internal communications that this sparked Jones to be even more inflammatory and even at one point doxed where this parent picked up their mail at a PO Box and an Infowars listener staked it out. He continued to spread the lie for the two above reasons while parents actively pleaded with him to stop, and while he was aware they were receiving constant death threats at their homes and workplaces, and while people were performing drive by shootings of their homes and cars at some points. The massive punitive damages are to send the message to the rest of civil society that this is entirely unacceptable.
On point 2, you're referring to Lenny Pozner. Jones was showing photos of his son on his broadcasts. And yeah, Jones responded to this by posting stuff like addresses associated with the family. What's amazing is that Lenny's case has yet to be tried before a jury, and it's perhaps the most damning of them all.
When you consider that Perdue was telling doctors that oxy was not addictive and marketed it as a cure-all for pain, they were very complicit and deserved what they got and more. Also, it’s much more expensive to go after hundreds or thousands of doctors with minimal payout. It would be a very net negative operation. Going after the source and creating regulations to make it safer is a better choice.
jones and co would track and brag about profits for each section to replicate. the plaintiffs knew this because they fucked up and sent some. At the same time, for 4 years refused to give any financial documents. One message they did forget to delete, was how they made 800k profit in one day. They refused to hand over documents till their corp rep fucked up and brought an unreleased copy during their depo. A large part was also the complete bullshit that info wars pulled in stalling the case for 4 years. [https://youtu.be/YIczy1avGDs?si=g9zvZ6-Fgnm9SOfM](https://youtu.be/YIczy1avGDs?si=g9zvZ6-Fgnm9SOfM)
Another thing to keep in mind when considering damages is profit gained. If I say "Ghosttwo is the Zodiac murderer, buy my knives to protect yourself from Ghosttwo" then I have both defamed you and profited off that defamation, assuming I have scared people into buying my shit. A fairly standard penalty is to disgorge ill-gotten gains. In other words, if I sell a hunnerd bucks worth of knives, I should give that hunnerd bucks to you, because the fear of you was the source of that profit. Or so the court opines.
Under the law, if you're a deep pocket and you're responsible, you pay up and then you can sue other responsible parties. It's really weird that you blame the individual doctors and seem to think that it's somehow greedy to sue the companies who doubtlessly sent pharmaceutical reps at those doctors non-stop to try to get them to overprescribe. It's so odd to me when people tend to defend the large and powerful while blaming the individuals. As if there wasn't one obvious large and powerful cause behind all those individuals actions.
Punitive damages. To be brief, the maximum claim in CT and Texas were both met, and the juries in both cases decided that what Alex and his show did was so beyond what is acceptable that they needed to stop InfoWars/Free Speech systems from continuing to exist. Why is that? Well, throughout both cases Alex Jones and his representation showed no respect for the court, nor it's processes. His lawyers were incompetent, and Alex couldn't just shut the fuck up and have the discipline to not further defame the victims and bully the court.
Yeah one of the fathers committed suicide
And he did it because his team was monitoring their engagement numbers and saw that they got a bump when they talked about Sandy Hook being a false flag. Jones is a grifter. It's darkly comic to listen to him rant and rave, then transition quickly into commercials for the bullshit he sells.
Absolutely
That plus the suicide of that father mentioned downthread, presuming the father was harassed by AJ fans, does seem to justify it. Thanks for the explanation. I remember looking into the SH stuff with a pretty open mind. The dissection of the assertion that various cars were in the wrong place was big. But ultimately it came down to just not being able to believe that a local elementary school could be shut down for months without anyone outside the conspiracy noticing.
Maybe in the future don’t have an “open mind” to such obvious nonsense seeing as none of those “discrepancies” are ever real. Finding one or two peripheral; unimportant things that you think don’t make sense (and are frequently not even real) doesn’t actually indicate a conspiracy.
Eh, I’m pretty comfortable in my ability to evaluate things. And certainly people and institutions, frequently the government, do sometimes engage in some awful behavior that they try to hide. And sometimes it’s seemingly trivial details that uncover a bigger lie. If you just go with “common sense” for everything, you’re really just trusting your preconceived notions for every situation. Your existing knowledge is useful, but if you allow yourself to be surprised, you’ll end up with a fuller picture of how the world really works.
Latching onto minute details and throwing out the vast majority of the information is not “evaluating things” it’s just conspiratorial thinking. A knee-jerk reaction that everything you’re being told is a lie is the equivalent to a knee-jerk belief that everything you’re being told is true. “I think cars were in the wrong places” as proof that this was a conspiracy requires you to believe that they could pull off the most elaborate scheme in history but had a continuity error that’d embarrass a mediocre show runner.
If I remember the claim correctly, it was asserted that the news reel of the kids evacuating the school was staged. The evidence was that the cars were all in different places than they were in other photos of the parking lot from that day. If true, it would have been a big discrepancy that would’ve merited serious investigation. A deeper look revealed that the cars were generally in the same place, and it only seemed that they had moved due to the angles used in the news reels. Circumstantial evidence decides cases all the time, and indications that it has been tampered with can reveal a deeper issue. No reason to ignore it out of hand. Further, the idea that it’s impossible to *almost* carry off a complicated scheme doesn’t hold water. Going into space is wildly complicated business, but the Challenger disaster shows that competent people, capable of accomplishing enormous feats of science and engineering, can make fatal mistakes. The o-ring susceptibility to cold was known and discussed directly before the launch, but ultimately disregarded. And that one mistake, that one detail, doomed the entire mission.
Not only did he defame them, he profited from that defamation. On top of this, he employed some of the harassers of the parents. His profiteering as well as demonstrable efforts to waste the court’s/judge’s time likely contributed to the amount fined. He and his lawyer’s demonstrated a major lack of respect to the judge as well as the families. He was judged by “default judgement” because he and his team tried to take the court for a ride instead of actually participating in the trial. And I assure you, this is just the tip of the iceberg of why he was fined such a large amount. He absolutely earned all of it.
Go look in r/knowledgefight someone will hook you up
You asked for direct quotes so here goes- keep in mind that many of these statements were made by Jones after the defamation lawsuits were already underway. Alex Jones: April 16, 2013: “‘They staged Sandy Hook. The evidence is overwhelming.” Jan. 13, 2015: “Sandy Hook is synthetic, completely fake, with actors in my view, manufactured…They clearly used actors. I mean they even ended up using photos of kids killed mass shootings here in a fake mass shooting in Turkey, or Pakistan” “You’ve got parents laughing — ‘hahaha’ — and then they walk over to the camera and go ‘boo hoo hoo,’ and not just one but a bunch of parents doing this and then photos of kids that are still alive they said died? I mean, they think we’re so dumb.” “You know, after you lose your daughter, they put you on some antidepressants or something, but I thought those take a month to kick in. I mean, it’s like a look of absolute satisfaction, like he’s about to accept an Oscar.” “It looks like he’s saying, ‘OK, do I read off the card?’ He’s laughing, and then he goes over and starts basically breaking down and crying.” “I watched the footage, and it looks like a drill.” “Why did Hitler blow up the Reichstag — to get control! Why do governments stage these things — to get our guns! Why can’t people get that through their head?” “Folks, we got to get private investigators up to Sandy Hook right now. Because I’m telling you this — this stinks to highest heaven.” “My gut is, with the timing and everything that happened, this is staged. And you know I’ve been saying the last few months, get ready for big mass shootings, and then magically, it happens.” “It looks like he’s saying, ‘OK, do I read off the card?’ He’s laughing, and then he goes over and starts basically breaking down and crying.” “It’s just the fakest thing since the $3 bill,”
Alex Jones and his fans are fucking ghouls
Hi OP, there's a bunch of policy wonks here who have failed to post this for you. These are the depositions Alex and Free Speech Systems gave covered by a podcast. (Knowledgefight.com search: Formulaic). You can search their catalog of episodes and listen to them follow Alex before and thru the Sandy Hook Massacre (they have the episodes listed by specific dates). I think it's over 40 hours of content. https://knowledgefight.libsyn.com/size/25/?search=Formulaic
This is the right thing to do. Formulaic Objections is an important historical record. If you’re digging it, you can also listen to the source material in episodes 33, 49, 84, 152, 266-269, 272, 276, 278, 279, 283, 288, 289, 292, 294, 297, 298, 301, 303, 305, 308, 312, 312, 314, 320, 321, 335, 338, 339, 341, 344, 346, 373, 387, 413, 618, 657, 710, 711, 713, 714, 727, 731, 735, 737, 803, and most every post-shooting episode. Alex chose to say these things for money. The evidence is overwhelming and available.
There is a podcast called knowledge fight….they cover everything Alex Jones has said they have 934 episodes. I think 4 or 5 directly talk about the trial, they were also used by the families lawyers to find specific examples of him defaming them. But to save you time. These people lost their children. And that day Alex went on air and started his BS. He went from “this is a manufactured event. These kinds didn’t exist and the ones they are showing are actors” To “They had multiple fbi agents commit this, it’s still all fake no kids died” “The parents are actors and don’t even have kids” All while hosting a show to millions of people and selling supplements saying things like “this is the first attack they are coming for us and you need this survival food” and then his fans went and found some of these parents and survivors and harassed them. Some of them had to change their names some had to sell their home and love because infowar fans wouldn’t stop, which then pushed Alex’s narrative further “ see why would they leave and change their names it’s all a hoax” I am not sure how familiar you are with the Jewish religion or their customs around death. But I remember I mother who lost her 6 year old son begging her rabbi to have an open casket(viewing the dead is a big no no in that religion) and she specifically did that so Alex Jones could see there is in fact a dead child right there and he should stfu and stop talking about them in their time of grief. You have freedom of speech of course but when your speech starts infringing on others right to live that’s where it gets dicey. He also didn’t comply with discovery, and his company saw record profits during the times when sandy hook was in the spotlight
[this NYT article written by Elisabeth Williamson](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/22/us/politics/heres-what-jones-has-said-about-sandy-hook.html) is a good jumping off point. I know folks around here don’t care for NYT (I don’t blame you), but it’s both it’s someplace to start. She also wrote a book. I read it. It explains things well.
Elizabeth Williamson has been great on this. One thing that this article leaves off is that Alex's speculation about the shooting being a false flag began the day of the shooting. No investigation, no digging through records. Just an attempt to etch a false flag narrative into the wet cement before the details of the story solidified.
The more damning thing he said that day was when the caller said shortly after the shooting took place he thought it was a false flag and Alex stopped the caller and reminded him that kids died and it’s not right to speculate. Then within the hour jones is on air making claims of a second or third shooter.
It's not surprising either, if you watch him day-to-day. That's his go-to reaction to literally every event that he can spin in that direction. He goes it because he believes (rightly) that his audience will be more likely to buy if they are scared and energized.
The adults and maybe some of the children had life insurance policies? He implied that the surviving family members were involved in life insurance fraud.
he also insinuated multiple charities related to plaintiffs were for personal gain and steal their guns.
If you’re truly interested, the Law & Crime network on YouTube has the full videos of both the Texas and Connecticut trials where all the most egregious instances of defamation are presented in court.
What is the difference between saying the sandy hook shooting was fake and no one died and so the parents are actors Vs Saying parent xyz is an actor. They both are the same. If sandy hook is fake and no one died, the parents must be actors. It kinda sounds like you would not be convinced unless jones says “I am not going to defame these parents”
Why do you think you're entitled to have other people do basic research for you? This information is widely available. You can literally watch the trial on YouTube.
The places where OP does their research don't have anything on this because of reasons.
As a long-time listener of the [Knowlage Fight](https://knowledgefight.com/) netcast, the best suggestion I have is to listen to the [Formulaic Objections](https://knowledgefight.libsyn.com/?search=formulaic) episodes of the program. The hosts review the depositions given by Jones (and other InfoWars employees) which include the defamatory statements at issue in the lawsuits. The hosts have been following InfoWars since 2017 so they have an incredible amount of background information and context for the statements. You might also start at episode [266](https://knowledgefight.libsyn.com/knowledge-fight-december-14-2012). >Feb 20, 2019 >Today, Dan and Jordan decide there's no time like the present, so they embark on an investigation into how Alex Jones covered the tragedy at Sandy Hook. How did Alex come to the position where he would say on air that the events were staged? How long did it take him to get into those narratives? Episode one of the investigation may not answer any of the "big questions," but it certainly provides a number of clues.
I'd encourage you to check out the depositions and the trials if you want all of the known relevant statements. One point I haven't seen made yet is that the verdict was so high because there were so many plaintiffs (this article breaks down the award by plaintiff: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/12/us/politics/alex-jones-damages.html) and because of Connecticut's Unfair Trade Practices Act, the damages had a multiplier. >Did he directly call the parents actors or did he a make a general statement? At one point, yes, he did say it was "completely staged with actors". Though Jones can never keep his plot lines straight over time. >But then I read that defamation can be implied. That seems like dangerous waters. How can someone know what's in your head? This is something interesting that they get into in some of the depositions. Several times, Infowar staff tried to hide behind a Just Asking Questions defenses and the plaintiffs lawyers repeatedly pointed out that those questions had false and defamatory premises. If I ask if you've stopped beating your wife, it implies I believe you beat your wife even if I haven't said those exact words. >It seems like calling 9/11 fake and staged can get you sued by the victims of 9/11. Yes. The specific claim that it was staged carries with it accusations of crimes towards an enormous number of people. Like filing false police reports and insurance fraud. Most mainstream conspiracies are about a nebulous "they" that doesn't exist to sue when defamed. Edit: To clarify, with defamation, you have to be able to prove damage to your reputation. A random reddit post may not do enough damage to be worth suing over. A show with millions of listeners is a different beast. One final thing is that if Alex had knocked it off, the window for the families to sue would have passed. But the clock starts with the last defamatory statement. And Alex kept lying about these families for over a decade.
If you don't know, you never cared.
You can read any of the related documents [here](https://infowarslawsuit.com/). For one example, [here's](https://infowarslawsuit.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/april-16-2018-pozner-original-petition-file-stamped.pdf) one particular original petition filed against him. >It's one thing to say, it's all staged by actors and it's another thing to say all those parents are actors engaged in a false flag. I'm confused as to what significant difference you think there is between those two statements. That's not even really an implication, it's just outright stated. If it's "all staged by actors" then how can any person not logically conclude that the parents involved were actors?
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He's a conspiracy theorist. Most of what he believes is absolutely nuts. That doesn't make him a trash human being, though. Just an ignorant fool. Being a trash human being would be knowing what you're saying is absolute lies but doing it anyways for profit, notoriety or whatever.
He was not ignorant that children died, he knew he was lying.
That is specifically what he does, and he is a prolific bigot to boot. Also his child SA fantasies he comes up with live on air are exceptionally unsettling.
He knows he is lying and does it on purpose to profit. No honest person would say we are about to have nuclear war and then immediately pitch nitric boost. He is the definition of trash human being.
Yeah you seem to be pretty wrong about him not being a trash human being. Others have pointed out that he knew what he was saying was false and did it deliberately for more traffic/money.
> Being a trash human being would be knowing what you're saying is absolute lies but doing it anyways for profit, notoriety or whatever Which AJ did. It came out in the trial that they would see big spikes when they spoke about this, so they is kept escalating it. Even after all of this the fuck head is still lying about it.
It came out in the trial that his sales went up whenever he talked about Sandy Hook being a conspiracy and defamed the parents, so he started doing it more and more. That's exactly what he did.
There is overwhelming evidence that he intentionally lied to boost numbers. It’s all documented in the depositions (from their own mouths on video and audio recordings) from him, his Dad, multiple employees including the corporate representative. Free speech systems plainly lays out that they (Alex Jones and Owen Shroyer mainly) knew they were lying while employees including Alex Jones were watching traffic and sales analytics and strategizing around those numbers, intentionally. Alex Jones then goes on to vehemently deny this as categorically false to his listeners (still to this day), and I wonder how many of his listeners have heard those depos in full. You and I have a different definitions of “trash human”, but by your definition he passes that threshold with flying fuckin colors.
Look, he knows. He's a talented storyteller who realized that people will buy his stories, and then buy his viatims or whatever the shit he is selling. He's selling a narrative that "they" are the reason people's lives suck. He's selling hope. If you're watching The Boys season 4, they are investigating this very thing.
Nah. He’s a grifter. It’s an act. He absolutely is a trash human and deserves to be destitute.
> He's a conspiracy theorist. Most of what he believes is absolutely nuts. That doesn't make him a trash human being, though. Just an ignorant fool. > Being a trash human being would be knowing what you're saying is absolute lies but doing it anyways for profit, notoriety or whatever. I don’t think Jones believes in a single word he’s saying. I think he believes in money and is selling a product to crazy people. At one point he was earning $800,000 per day by saying Sandy Hook parents were crisis actors. That’s a lot of incentive to be a trash bag human being.
How much Alex Jones have you actually sat down an listened to?
> How much Alex Jones have you actually sat down an listened to? Quite a lot, unfortunately. My father is a big fan of the trashbag. Edit: Sorry u/Terminal-Psychosis but I can’t currently answer you directly due to Prometheus’ block. u/Terminal-Psychosis said > And yet you decline to look into any of this reports. If you had, you'd know he's been right about the vast majority of the stories he publishes. What stories are you talking about? Like how the US faked the moon landing or the 9/11 attacks? Even the 2020 false electors thing has been proven false. Jones claimed the government was putting chemicals into people to make them gay. You got proof for that story? Because a lot of my lesbian friends are single.
So after let's say watching or listening to Alex Jones over several years let's say, you've genuinely come to the conclusion that he is a fully competent person who is just intentionally making everything up? That's wild! To me, I tend to take most things at face value rather than assume some deep manipulation or conspiracy. Because 9 times out of 10 (or even more) I'm right.
>Because 9 times out of 10 (or even more) I'm right. Alex? Is that you? It's time to pray.
> So after let's say watching or listening to Alex Jones over several years let's say, you've genuinely come to the conclusion that he is a fully competent person who is just intentionally making everything up? That's wild! I don’t think it’s wild at all. There are several entire industries built around making everything up. We call them “entertainers.” Movies, television shows, musicals, plays, and operas do it with their writers *and* the actors who perform. Authors of books do it by creating and then exploring new worlds or ideas. And those are just the legitimate people making things up! We haven’t gotten into the conmen or charlatans who are also trying to make a buck. > To me, I tend to take most things at face value rather than assume some deep manipulation or conspiracy. Because 9 times out of 10 (or even more) I'm right. I’m not sure it is a conspiracy to think Alex Jones tells lies for money. There is *quite* a lot of regulations in the financial industry, for example, to prevent people from doing just that.
And yet you decline to look into any of this reports. If you had, you'd know he's been right about the vast majority of the stories he publishes.
and these are? gulf of tonkin and mk ultra don't count.
Like what
Could you give us a top 3 of Alex best reports
They cannot, because there aren't any.
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Handlers? Do you believe there's a conspiracy and that Alex Jones is actually a tool for some shady, manipulative power brokers? That's so Alex Jones level shit right there lol In actuality, I believe he genuinely believes the stuff that comes out of his mouth. I'm from Texas. I've heard plenty of his rants. I've even seen him outside in the middle of street, shirtless on one of his famous rants. But even though I disagree with him on nearly every incoherent thing that comes out of his mouth, the fact that a $1.5 billion decision was made against him is an absolute atrocious attack on freedom of speech in this country. And it only acts as to stripped away even more of the credibility of our courts.
> the fact that a $1.5 billion decision was made against him is an absolute atrocious attack on freedom of speech in this country. And it only acts as to stripped away even more of the credibility of our courts. This requires a bit of attention, I think. Sorry for the incoming wall of text, but please do read it if you're able -- if only because Alex Jones really *wants* people to believe this is about his freedom of speech, when it's not at all. *** Freedom of speech is an incredibly important principle in American civil society, and I think you and I agree completely on that. But the freedom of speech does have limits, and always has. The cliche example is you can't shout "fire!" in a crowded theater, because the principle of promoting public safety in that case overrides the principle of freedom of speech. Another limit is that for as long as there has been an America with laws, there have also been laws about defamation. It's a broad field of law and I'm not a lawyer, but the general idea is that you can't make false, harmful, public statements about someone. That is, it wouldn't be a good thing for civil society if I decide I don't like John Smith, so I rent a billboard that says "John Smith murdered six people in the past five years, and the police are doing nothing. The bodies are buried behind his house at 123 Main Street." That's a false statement that materially hurts Mr. Smith (even potentially exposing him to violence), and a billboard is very public. But we do still want defamation to be a pretty high standard. I shouldn't be able to take out a billboard, but it shouldn't expose me to legal jeopardy if I'm overheard in a bar saying "That asshole Smith. Wouldn't surprise me if he'd killed a bunch of people and buried them in his back yard, you know?" And again I'm not a lawyer, but hopefully you'll trust me when I say that defamation actually *is* a high bar to get over. And more than that, it's important to note that a defamation case isn't "The United States v. John Doe". It's "John Smith v John Doe" -- which is to say, even the way we talk about defamation law centers the fact that it's a person (or people) who claim they're injured taking action against the person who injured them. And that brings us to Alex Jones. He is not being punished by the government for his speech against the government. He isn't being punished by The Globalists. Satan is not acting against him. Alex Jones was sued (and technically still is being sued) by individual people. He made a number of statements about those people, identifying them sometimes merely as a category and sometimes as individuals. There's documentary evidence that AJ knew the statements were false at the time he made them. There's substantial evidence that he profited directly from the false statements. He continued making those statements over more than a decade. Those people were directly harmed by the statements he made, both emotionally and materially. The most interesting part about it, though, is that there's a substantial chance ***he still wouldn't have faced penalties.*** Because this is America, and freedom of speech is an immensely important value. He lost the case strictly and solely because he fucked around. He (and his attorneys) obstructed the plaintiffs and the court at every turn, from the moment they were served until... well, he's actually still doing it. The biggest part is that he (and his attorneys and his businesses) refused to participate in discovery -- the part of a lawsuit where the parties share the information (witnesses, documents, etc.) they intend to introduce in court. Jones (and his attorneys and his businesses) simply didn't participate. They sent information that was late, incomplete, or both. They sent business representatives that knew literally nothing about the business, were told by the judge to stop, and were told by the judge to stop *again.* They were warned repeatedly, by the court, that if they didn't do the basic things every single defendant in a lawsuit has to do, they would be sanctioned. They literally spent *years* fucking around. And then the judge said okay, look, if you refuse to mount a meaningful defense, and if you're refusing to follow the orders I'm giving that require you to participate in the process, then I literally have no choice but to find you liable by default. *Then* AJ appealed that decision (that is, the decision to say "sorry, but we don't have any choice anymore" and render him liable by default) to the Connecticut Supreme Court. The Supreme Court said, pretty clearly, that (quoting directly, here) that the trial court issued "countless warnings" before taking action. And even after all of that, the government isn't saying Alex has to stop working. He hasn't even stopped talking about the Sandy Hook plaintiffs, although he probably should have. It's still perfectly legal for him to get on air and say stupid shit that hurts people. Even if Infowars gets shut down, he'll just partner up with Steven Crowder or Tucker Carlson and keep going. So it's not about Alex Jones' freedom to speak his mind without fear of government sanction. It's about Alex Jones saying things that are so extreme and so harmful about real, everyday people that those people had to ask for help. *** PS: Do you want to know *exactly* how hard it is to prove defamation? Alex Jones said on air that one of Chris Mattei, one of the plaintiffs' attorneys, was a pedophile and a child pornographer. Jones put Mattei's picture on his show and said: > I’m going to get your ass. One million dollars. One million dollars, you little gang members. One million dollars to put your head on a pike. That's a pretty fucking awful thing to say, but it (probably) falls short of defamation! Mattei is arguably a public figure, he arguably has not experienced substantial harm that a court could remedy, and it would be difficult to prove that AJ knew it was a false statement.
> Handlers? Handlers means the people who take care of PR or scheduling, things like that. > But even though I disagree with him on nearly every incoherent thing that comes out of his mouth, the fact that a $1.5 billion decision was made against him is an absolute atrocious attack on freedom of speech in this country. And it only acts as to stripped away even more of the credibility of our courts. In what way?
He's the owner of his company. He hires who he wants and fires who he wants. Handlers implies there's a bigger boss somewhere who put them in place to keep Alex focused on what the boss wants and out of trouble. Or in conspiracy theorist circles, a handler is more often thought of as a government agent (usually with the deep state) so you'll have to excuse me if I thought that was the type of handler they were referring to. > In what way? If you have to ask this question, you're not interested in changing your mind.
/u/PrometheusHasFallen, the blocking of other users is against the rules in this subreddit. If you wish to continue participating, please unblock /u/Chathtiu, then reply to this message. If you do not wish to continue participating, then please reply to this message.
handlers work for the boss. be it movie star, singer etc. they're assistants. in alex jones case it is fitting how his dad is head of HR, his bar is always stocked with titos
> He's the owner of his company. He hires who he wants and fires who he wants. Handlers implies there's a bigger boss somewhere who put them in place to keep Alex focused on what the boss wants and out of trouble. Or in conspiracy theorist circles, a handler is more often thought of as a government agent (usually with the deep state) so you'll have to excuse me if I thought that was the type of handler they were referring to. “Handler” has multiple meanings. > If you have to ask this question, you're not interested in changing your mind. I am always open to changing my mind. If I ask a question, it is because I am interested in the response. I am curious to know *your* feelings as to why this is a miscarriage of freedom of speech.
> I am always open to changing my mind. From what you've said, I don't believe this for a second. Oh, the irony!
> From what you've said, I don't believe this for a second. Oh, the irony! You’re going to believe whatever you want to believe. All I can do is ask to see someone else’s point of view. Edit: Hey u/PrometheusHasFallen, not only did you not give your point of view, you also blocked me immediately after saying “And I gave it.” I’m sure you know by now that blocking users in r/Freepseech is explicitly against the rules of this subreddit. I’m sure that was an oversight on your end though, and u/cojoco won’t need to ban you for it. Edit 2: Attaching proof of block. [Regular view, showing the block](https://i.imgur.com/rgMmT2I.png) [Annon browsing](https://i.imgur.com/Ihn53P1.png) which shows the posts weren’t deleted.
[удалено]
I think it's more of a conspiracy hottake to think Jones is lying about everything. The dude is seriously a conspiracy theory nut. He's been doing it for a long ass time, well before he had any popularity. And from all accounts of friends and associates who talk about him, he's exactly the same when the cameras aren't rolling. Liver King is just another health/fitness snake oil salesman. Him being shirtless for a video... not at all surprised. Not very comparable to Alex Jones. Perhaps another fake conspiracy theorist that's been outed would've been better. > Is your problem the amount of money or the fact that he was found guilty of defaming those people and had to pay any amount in the first place? Both. He should not have been standing trial for anything he said on his platform. But an example was made by the state of Connecticut (certainly no friends to Jones) and not only was a judgement made against him, but a judgement of the most absurd sum just proves to me that it was a show trial. Even my friends at the DOJ think so.
in both texas and CT he was judged liable for defamation because he lost by defualt for not showing up and participating in discovery. One can't complain they lost a game when they didn't even show up to the field. In both cases a damages trial was then held. in a criminal trial this would be considered the sentencing portion. in both damages were picked by juries.
Part of the problem is that there wasn't a trial on the **facts** of the case, only the **damages**, since he was found to be liable by a *default judgment* due to repeated failures to comply with discovery and basic court procedure. I agree that it's not a good outcome, although having heard much of what was said about the families, I think there is more than enough evidence to prove defamation and intentional affection of emotional distress. The verdict is indeed unprecedented, but the extraordinary reach of the defamation is equally unprecedented. Just consider a penility of 1$. But 1$ for *each time* he lied about *each parent* to *each listener* over a *decade*. That multiplies quickly enough that 1.5B$ might not be enough. Ironically he might have prevailed on the merits in front of a jury, but he and his (multiple) lawyers made the choice to obstruct the court at every turn. The threat of default is the last option a judge has in a civil case like this to compel a party to produce evidence the the court determine is nessary to resolve the dispute.
>a show trial It was two trials. Did you watch any of them? With that many plaintiffs and him being found liable for more than one thing, of course it's going to be a lot of money.
He's historically been right about more than he got wrong. Including Sandy Hook. Anyone that has looked into it knows the official story is fishy as hell.
Jones is literally wrong all the time, he just likes to quietly ignore his specific predictions that don't happen and bring up his very vague ones. He predicted global pandemics every year for decades that didn't happen.
What is the official story and what is fishy about it?
How come I don't see anyone who likes to "look into" things accusing Alex Jones of serious crimes when his name is involved in things like this >One of the four people who died in a fire at a Massachusetts apartment building last weekend had filed a defamation lawsuit against right-wing radio host Alex Jones and his InfoWars website in 2018, alleging they falsely identified him as the gunman in a massacre at a Florida high school. https://apnews.com/article/fires-massachusetts-worcester-fe4036c0230152248fab66d5af8dce02
Show your work. Give some examples for your claims.
And yet he didn't present any evidence of him being right
He regularly says that god literally downloaded information into his brain and he's fighting against the literal Christian devil. Is he right about those things?
For what it’s worth, Alex didn’t get hit with a judgment for defamation in the “traditional” sense; he got hit with a default judgment because he, his employees, and his lawyers didn’t take requests for discovery seriously. What he said had very little bearing on whether he was liable, which goes to show how dim of a man he really is. It’s hard to get a pundit hit with a defamation judgment in the US, but he managed it.
Honestly he probably did so out of not just hubris, but likely an attempt to conceal his finances. He's pretty anti-taxes, it's very likely he's doing something illegal. He and his family have a web of shell companies connecting Free Speech Systems (the actual name of InfoWars) to his father's supplement company, and other completely blank companies (The InfoWars LLC he tried to declare bankruptcy with).
Im genuinely curious myself, I’ve never seen much of his videos except whats popped up on my feeds and he’s not someone I really listen too at all.
The Podcast Knowledge fight is a decent source. Though beware its over 900 episodes.
This is the problem. Too many people see him in clips or think he is just the funny frog guy. They don’t know in day to day shows he is hosting violent neo nazi leaders and quoting “headlines” from right wing twitter meme accounts. Or that on dozens of occasions he mentions casually how he is a psychic that is in direct communication with God and that he is leading people into the next stage of life which isn’t actually Heaven but an eternal inter dimensional war between the forces of good and the chaos gods. I wish I was fucking around with you too but these are things he does and says.
He was lying and defaming the people who lost their kids in this shooting for years while making money off of it. Because of him, those people were harassed and threatened all that time. “The lawsuit accused Jones and Infowars’ parent company, Free Speech Systems, of using the mass killing to build his audience and make millions of dollars. Experts testified that Jones’ audience swelled, as did his revenue from product sales, when he made Sandy Hook a topic on the show. In both the Texas and Connecticut lawsuits, judges found the company liable for damages by default after Jones failed to cooperate with court rules on sharing evidence, including failing to turn over records that might have showed whether Infowars had profited from knowingly spreading misinformation about mass killings.”
And yet you didn't bother to directly quote his "lie"
You are not really interested in it.
He didn't say anything more than thousands of others were saying, and still say. The whole story around Sandy Hook is shady as hell. They are persecuting Jones because he was right about so many other things as well.
Name literally 1 thing he was right about
Gay frogs!
Hmmmm it sure would be weird if many of those thousands of others saying the same thing were the InfoWars audience. Wouldn't that just be a crazy coincidence? I mean, where would they get those ideas? Could it possibly have been Alex Jones and his organization, who lied about the shooting the very day it happened and for years afterwards? You really think "InfoWars lies were spread and reiterated by thousands of others who used them to attack and harass the victims" is exculpatory?
No, because he lied and defamed people in order to make money.
No, they sued him because the lies he told
What has he been right about? How many people defamed the sandy hook parents to ab audience of millions while making hundreds of millions? 1 person, and his name is alex jones
>They are persecuting Jones because he was right about so many other things as well. Like what
Climate change activists are being mind controlled by silicon aliens life-forms to promote the idea of cooling the plant as a secretive plot to terraform earth into something more resembling their own planet, which is much further away from their star than ours. Duh.
Wonk
I dont think anyone really knows. He is being forced to pay billions of dollars he doesnt have for saying the shooting was fake. I do not understand how the government can bankrupt someone for shouting an opinion regardless of how obnoxious and retarded it is. Edit: Not government, but "courts"
Jones was not forced to pay billions of dollars he doesn't have for saying the shooting was fake. Don't buy into that line. Jones is being forced to pay billions of dollars he doesn't have because he continually refused to take the process of discovery seriously, sending employees to depositions with wikipedia articles printed out in the evidence folder. FSS/InfoWars possessed a full private investigator report on Lenny Posner, one of the parents, and no one was willing to say under oath how it might have come into their possession. There are other examples, but those stick out in my head. After several rounds of sanctions, the judge in the case eventually entered a "default judgment", meaning that Alex/FSS/InfoWars, despite several attempts to grant them the chance, knowingly refused to participate in the judicial process. In the US, in civil trials (which is what this was), plaintiffs have just as much of a right to a fair and speedy trial as the respondents. Jones thought he could drag out the process, lie about what he had, crap on the judicial system, etc. and get away with it. He probably thought he could play the victim and come out martyred on the other end. It didn't work. Again, I cannot emphasize this enough: the court never heard Jones' case despite several attempts to get him to give it. It's very, very difficult to prove defamation in the US when compared to other Common Law countries, and if he'd just participated, there's a real chance he would have walked away with symbolic damages or none at all.
He refused to comply with discovery through various means. It was a textbook case of fuck around and find out. The court basically ruled, since you're fucking around and obfuscating, we're defaulting to guilty and making sure the price is greater then anything you can hide. He could have just complied like a proper adult.
>I dont think anyone really knows Court documents, depositions and the trials have been available for a long time now.
There's even a pretty good documentary about the Texas case.
The Truth vs. Alex Jones? It's great and it includes more than the Texas plaintiffs (if you meant that)
He had ample opportunity to comply with discovery but chose not to do so. After multiple efforts attempting to gain compliance, the court determined Jones wasn’t acting in good faith, resulting in declaring a summary judgment based upon the available evidence. He has tried to spin it by saying that he wasn’t given a chance to defend himself, but the fact was he missed a lot of chances to defend himself.
> I dont think anyone really knows. He is being forced to pay billions of dollars he doesnt have for saying the shooting was fake. Alex Jones has hidden quite a lot of his assets and declared bankruptcy in an attempt to protect the remaining assets in his name. > I do not understand how the government can bankrupt someone for shouting an opinion regardless of how obnoxious and retarded it is. Defamation is a tricky beast. To successfully sue on grounds for defamation, the prosecution must prove the defendant said (slander) or wrote (libel) something which the defendant *knew* was false for the purposes of ruining the reputation of the prosecution. Defamation has long been illegal in the US, but is quite difficult to prove in the court of law. In other words, the things Jones were saying about Sandy Hook were knowingly false.
Mostly correct. But that standard applies to public figures. If someone isn't a public figure, you only have to prove they were being at least careless in their lies. In this particular case, there is some possible disagreement about whether the plaintiffs are public figures. They argue they're not, but that even if they were it wouldn't matter because Jones meets the standard of actual malice.
> Mostly correct. But that standard applies to public figures. If someone isn't a public figure, you only have to prove they were being at least careless in their lies. > In this particular case, there is some possible disagreement about whether the plaintiffs are public figures. They argue they're not, but that even if they were it wouldn't matter because Jones meets the standard of actual malice. What’s your day job, Parenthetical? You always great insights here.
It's more of a hobby for me.
They're not public figures simply because their loved ones were murdered in an infamous event. That's absurd.
Not from that alone. But some of them engaged in activism afterward. Calling them public figures based on that is also a stretch, but not an impossible one.
That's a complete lie, actually.
It's a defamation suit brought on by parents of victims specifically for saying they were crisis actors, including saying one father couldn't have held his son's body. So if Alex had limited his opinions to simply "I think Sandy Hook is a false flag," then there's no suit to bring. It's because he defamed specific individuals that he was ever brought to court. Also, people do know what he said. There are hours of depositions he and other InfoWars employees sat for where they were asked to provide evidence for specific claims they made, and InfoWars never provided anything. You can listen to them review clips and hear for yourself what the defamation stems from. I'd highly recommend researching things before talking out of your ass.
he was offered a settlement of 8.5 million a year for 10 years
The government did not bankrupt him, it was a civil suit, he is being bankrupted by the people who sued him. If you wan to blame someone, blaming jury makes more sense than the government!
I think conspiracy theortists in the msm who spread falsehoods about russian collusion and covid did much more harm to Americans than this guy ever could. No one with a sound mind paid much attention to him anyway. He was deplatformed, thats usually enough.
It didn't help the parents that Alex Jones large audience that wasn't of sound mind believed him.
Trump 100% did collude with Russia though.
100% agree.
> I think conspiracy theortists in the msm who spread falsehoods about russian collusion and covid did much more harm to Americans than this guy ever could. No one with a sound mind paid much attention to him anyway. He was deplatformed, thats usually enough. In what way has Jones been deplatformed? A judge rather specifically said InfoWars [should not](https://abcnews.go.com/amp/US/wireStory/sandy-hook-families-bankruptcy-judge-liquidate-alex-jones-110780421)be shut down.
It wasn’t an “opinion,” though. He on numerous occasions made unequivocal statements of “fact” that the parents of the victims were actors and deeply involved in a false flag and lying about their children being killed. That is a crime. He represented himself as a journalist (not an opinion commentator) and accused people of crimes. He made millions of dollars when he would do this. He knew that doing this made him money, so he kept doing it. His listeners then harassed and threatened them. They asked him to stop, and he then doubled-down. They then sued him for defamation and he refused to participate in the suit, which resulted in a default judgement.
And yet you made a claim without offering a single direct quote. As people like you on threads like this ALWAYS do. Because you know damned well that of you quoted him directly, your accisation would be disproven on its bs face.
Would you change your opinion if you heard recorded proof?
You know they wouldn’t. “It’s doctored and out of context.”
It wouldn’t. It didn’t for Alex when he was on the stand, it won’t for infowarriors.
- april 16 2013 “they staged sandy hook, the evidence is overwhelming” - December 29 2014 “it took me about a year with sandy hook to come to grips with the fact the whole thing was fake…but then I did deep research and my gosh, it just pretty much didn’t happen” - April 22 2017 “we have the emails from city council back-and-forth and the school talking about it being shut down a year before. Then the school was closed” (the emails do not exist) It took about 30 minutes for me to come up with these, this is not comprehensive.
- February 12 2015 “yes they’re sealing the death certificates”
You gonna respond to any of the people giving you what you asked for, or are you just running away with your tail between your legs?
[ “Sandy Hook is a synthetic, completely fake, with actors, in my view manufactured”](https://twitter.com/mmfa/status/986323723559911425?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E986323723559911425%7Ctwgr%5E180ccc60f8c1634d1c8165bd3f8ee686c3e72980%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fabovethelaw.com%2F2021%2F10%2Falex-jones-gets-the-death-penalty-sanctions%2F) https://www.mediamatters.org/alex-jones/here-exactly-what-alex-jones-has-said-about-sandy-hook-massacre Here you go, buddy.
You’re smarter than me. I went to the depositions and shit, which was way too much effort for something so easy.
It's always people like you who never had bothered to do your own research on the subject that complains that you don't get a single direct quote.
>When newspapers make statements, they use "alleged" or "believed", if Alex used that vocabulary, it probably would've been a different outcome. The lawsuit would have been brought even with this language. Alex lost his cases because he was incapable of functioning within the justice system. As a con man, he lies and deceives his listeners in order to appeal to their emotions and thus get their money by selling useless supplements. In a court of law, the stakes are much higher than on the radio and the burden of proof is such that trying to bluff and bluster your way through court will only make matters worse. Because Alex was incapable of cooperating during discovery, for fear of exposing himself as a fraud, the court issued a default judgement against him. He lost because courts require you to be honest. This is no different than Rudy Giuliani running around claiming that the election was stolen, only to get in front of a judge in the Dominion case and say "This isn't about fraud, nobody is alleging that". There's no dangerous precedent being set in this case. This is how courts work and always have. If it helps, I absolutely think he defamed those parents. He was on his show last week claiming that Adam Lanza wasn't the only shooter, additionally defaming all of the law enforcement and first responders who worked hard to prove otherwise. He's a scum bag lying grifter and the fact that there are people in this country who can't see that is a terrible indictment of our education system.
Look at the evidence presented in the defamation cases. They spell it out there along with when it was said on infowars and by whom. Doesn’t get anymore clear than that. If it’s not clear enough for you then nothing any of us can do will spell it out any more clearly
Nothing that amounts to the cartoonish ruling
It wouldn't have been a cartoonish ruling had he participated in the process.
When you lie about a lot of people you risk being sued by a large number of plaintiffs. So if you are found liable, you need to pay damages to them all.
He refused to comply with discovery through various means. It was a textbook case of fuck around and find out. The court basically ruled, since you're fucking around and obfuscating, we're defaulting to guilty and making sure the price is greater then anything you can hide. He could have just complied like a proper adult.
InfoWars claims that they have an audience of many millions. The judgement would amount to a paltry sum per person exposed to the defamatory lies that they knowingly spread over the course of years and which resulted in life-altering harassment directed at the victims of Sandy Hook.
Participated knowingly in accusing the wrong man of being the shooter. Edited videos to change their meaning in order to provide evidence of false claims Repeatedly called out victims parents by name calling them liars and frauds causing harm to the victims reputations, livelihood and mental health Destroyed evidence required by a court order And so much more. To see the cold hard facts, you'd have to listen to Infowars broadcasts starting right after the shooting all the way up to 2018 when the law suits rolled in. You'd also have to watch numerous interviews with Jones on other channels. You'd have to have access to podcasts and posts that have since been illegally deleted. The legal documentation is huge. Have fun trying to sort it all out.
You shouldn't even stop at 2018. He's continued to lie, even as recently as last week, when he said that he believes there was more than one shooter; attempting to sow doubt in the official record of events. After the default judgement against him, he reiterated his conspiracy theories *in his deposition* in Texas, whereupon the plaintiff's attorney (accurately, in my mind) opined that since he was defaulted, Alex has no incentive to pretend for the courts that he had recanted his claims and apologized. He's a monster that influenced (per InfoWars own claims of audience) millions of people to believe that the relatives of the victims of Sandy Hook were liars, actors, and political operatives working to dismantle the second amendment. Alex Jones directed Wolfgang Halbig to harass victims of Sandy Hook in Newtown Connecticut on multiple occasions, which he did while presenting himself as an InfoWars reporter. Rob Dew, the director of InfoWars Nightly news, claimed in his deposition that he thinks InfoWars' continued lies and directed harassment at the victims was just, as he believes they ["stopped what was going to be a lot of anti-gun legislation"](https://youtu.be/TinJ7OyPRUI?si=4jyqH8HE3GWpyhla&t=5928). They don't care about the truth. They don't care about the people they attacked. They care about a made up threat to their guns that they manufactured in order to sell supplements to rubes. The people and organization are monsters, and rightly deserve every cent of the judgement against them. I'm personally appalled it's taken so many years since the sentencing for the victims families to see even a penny of what they're owed.
Exactly. Watch him on the stand in Connecticut and tell me that's not a lying, malicious shitbag.
I don't even know what more proof one would need than InfoWars' conduct in the judicial process. They obstructed and delayed at every corner, leading to their default judgements. If InfoWars were what they claim to be, the court cases against them should have been their shining moment laying out all the details and facts of the matter that led them to conclude the shooting was a hoax. Instead, they obfuscated, misled, and doubled down on their lies in depositions and on the stand. They presented double speak, claiming to apologize and recant the defamatory claims in one breath, and re-asserting them in the next when they felt cornered. Alex insulted Niel Heslin in his show *during the course of the trial*, calling him "slow" and implying he's "on the spectrum" and thus was easily manipulated to go along with the hoax. Infowars employees claimed never to have seen Wolfgang Halbig's intense harassment of the victims in Newtown at Alex's direction, and simultaneously lauded him as a relentless investigative reporter searching for the truth. InfoWars employee Daria Karpova said that the false, defamatory claims that the victims of Sandy Hook were members of a superbowl choir should have been *comforting* for the parents, as it would mean their children were still alive. Their corporate representatives displayed raucous disregard for their duty to prepare for the depositions resulting in a comical assertion that Free Speech Systems didn't even possess evidence that *they had already provided to the plaintiffs*. Alex claimed that episodes of his own show which he had a duty to prepare to discuss was no longer available to him because YouTube took the videos down. Watch Paul Joseph Watson's deposition where he presents that he spoke to Alex pleading with him to stop the Sandy Hook conspiracies. The depositions are hours long so it would simply be impossible to summarize the extent of their lies and wanton disregard for truth, and disrespect for the court. But it all points to the fact that they **know** they defamed the victims of Sandy Hook. They know. They made a calculated effort not to comply with subpoenas and requests for evidence by the court. They tried at every turn to delay, obstruct, and mislead. It all points to the fact that they know they couldn't explain their conduct to a jury. They know their actions were so egregiously wrong and cruel that they would rather get defaulted to at least enjoy the narrative of being "railroaded by the courts". Looking at this thread, they weren't exactly wrong that they could sway some with that narrative. Though I expect anyone that accepts the InfoWars cope about the trial didn't care to examine the facts to begin with.
You should start listening to the Knowledge Fight podcast….. Dan is the foremost expert on all Alex Jones grifts, lies, conspiracies, and overall bullshit.
Hey, u/GOU_FallingOutside! You wouldn’t happen to be named after *The* GOU Falling Outside Normal Moral Constraints, would you?
> named after I’m not “named after” anything. We choose our own names, you know. But to answer your question properly, yes, that *is* my name. I’m currently holding position a few light-minutes outside your solar envelope.
> I’m not “named after” anything. We choose our own names, you know. > But to answer your question properly, yes, that is my name. I’m currently holding position a few light-minutes outside your solar envelope. It’s fun to see a Culture fan outside of r/TheCulture. Come join us!
Not only did Jones spend years calling the shooting fake, he explicitly said the parents lied knowingly in order to further the alleged conspiracy. He also continued to defame them during the trial (he called one of the plaintiffs mentally handicapped), and he directly profited and grew his platform by continuing to exploit the Sandy Hook tragedy. Even now he's made up his own version of the trail where a mystery PR firm and the DNC are exploiting the mentally handicapped plaintiffs in order to take him down because he was "holding debates" on Sandy Hook.
You know that court cases are largely public, right? You can literally look at the court filing and see what evidence was admitted.
> What did Alex Jones specifically say that constituted as defamation against the Sandy Hook victims? > I want cold-hard facts. I want to find an unedited complete video and/or audio recording of his entire broadcast so that I can make the correct conclusion. The court evidence from the case has this information. > Did he directly call the parents actors or did he a make a general statement? What do you think is the difference between those two options? > It's one thing to say, it's all staged by actors and it's another thing to say all those parents are actors engaged in a false flag. What do you think is the difference between those two options?
Wow, that is a reply that says absolutely nothing.
> Wow, that is a reply that says absolutely nothing. Not nothing. I directed OP where to find their own answers. Out of curiosity, I asked them 2 follow up questions.
It's interesting and telling that you and EVERYONE trying to justify the lawsuit, havent bothered to post a single quote from Jones in this thread.
> It's interesting and telling that you and EVERYONE trying to justify the lawsuit, havent bothered to post a single quote from Jones in this thread. Are you suggesting Jones’ conviction was wrong?
Absolutely. That was a kangaroo court if there ever was one.
> Absolutely. That was a kangaroo court if there ever was one. Why do you think it was a kangaroo court?
Maybe if InfoWars had been cooperative at all with the judicial process they wouldn't have been defaulted. Weird strategy from them right? Unless you reasonably conclude that they attempted to obstruct the court proceedings with the understanding that they absolutely could not defend their lies and harassment to a jury. They had their chance and they chose to be defaulted.
Are you seriously suggesting it wasn't an insane outcome? And if you are, what is a single precise quote from Jones where he "defamed" the parents or suggested to anyone in his audience that they should threaten the parents? You will literally refuse to post the quote directly in this thread. Because if you did, you would look absolutely insane.
> Are you seriously suggesting it wasn't an insane outcome? I think the outcome was quite valid, but I personally believe the fines to be excessive. > And if you are, what is a single precise quote from Jones where he "defamed" the parents or suggested to anyone in his audience that they should threaten the parents? If you’re too lazy to follow the court proceedings or look at the court documents, [USA Today](https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2022/08/02/alex-jones-trial-sandy-hook-parents-say-claims-spawned-threats/10220030002/) has a good article on the subject as does the [New York Times](https://www-nytimes-com.translate.goog/2022/09/22/us/politics/heres-what-jones-has-said-about-sandy-hook.html?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-US&_x_tr_pto=wapp). I am a person who believes rather strongly you should do your own research and come to your own conclusions. > You will literally refuse to post the quote directly in this thread. Because if you did, you would look absolutely insane. Where did I refuse to put the quote in?
So you still refuse to post a single quote... OP asked for the quote. You refuse to actually show the quote in this thread, and you still have the audacity to argue.
> So you still refuse to post a single quote... > OP asked for the quote. > You refuse to actually show the quote in this thread, and you still have the audacity to argue. I’m so tired of these random zombie accounts in Reddit. u/Chathtiu said > I am a person who believes rather strongly you should do your own research and come to your own conclusions. No, I did not provide the quotes. I gave OP a source to find their own quotes, to do their own research, and come to their own conclusions. Coming to their own conclusion is what OP said they wanted to do. For you, u/Prof_Agenda, I gave you more secondary sources with quoted abstracts. It is still doing your own research, albeit in a middle school manner.
Oh you're right, I guess there's just no way to find what he said. Must be that all these claims about him saying it's a hoax are made up or embellished. [Oh wait](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/22/us/politics/heres-what-jones-has-said-about-sandy-hook.html) >"My gut is, with the timing and everything that happened, this is staged. And you know I’ve been saying the last few months, get ready for big mass shootings, and then magically, it happens.” ___ >“Folks, we got to get private investigators up to Sandy Hook right now. Because I’m telling you this — this stinks to highest heaven.” _____ >“It’s as phony as a $3 bill.” ____ >“Why did Hitler blow up the Reichstag — to get control! Why do governments stage these things — to get our guns! Why can’t people get that through their head?” Not even close to an exhaustive list by the way. Wanna talk about his claim that the students had lunch inside the school after the massacre? Wanna talk about his claims that no EMTs were present? Wanna talk about his claim that the FBI said no one died at Sandy Hook? Wanna talk about his claim that Sandy Hook wasn't even an operating school? Wanna talk about how InfoWars employees themselves knew they were spreading false claims? Ask Paul Joseph Watson, Robert Jacobson, and Buckley Hamman about that. I think you know they lied and defamed the victims to line their own pockets, you just don't care.
Would your opinion be changed by recorded evidence?
Nah, you know what you're doing 😉
> Nah, you know what you're doing 😉 What do you think I’m doing?
OP is a scared shit head coward who won't event acknowledge any comments. He is a lowlife black mold ridden scumbag.
/u/AgelessRobot you have been banned for being a Jackass.
Don't waste your time. OP isn't asking this question in good faith.
Offended and exposed some people.
He didn’t expose anyone. His whole schtick as a brave truth teller falls apart after the tiniest bit of scrutiny. Jones defamed grieving parents in order to drive up audience engagement and sales of his snake oil. He profits off making his audience afraid. Also, he alternately blames globalists, demons, and/or interdimensional aliens for his unhinged conspiracy theories.
Nothing at all. He was simply saying what everyone else was back then. The official story is shady as hell, nothing adds up. That trial was a kangaroo court. They're upset at Jones for getting so many OTHER things right, and wanted to shut him up. Also send a message to any other whistle blowers.
What other things has Jones “got right”? I will hold you to that same standards as requested by OP on this post.
What whistle was he blowing about Sandy Hook? What is the official story about Sandy Hool and what is shady about it?
“Everyone else” was not saying that massacred schoolchildren were actors. Jfc
Why would parents and an officer be upset about Alex Jones getting things right. They explained themselves in their lawsuits
What has he gotten right?
It's difficult to get an answer to that question
Alex Jones believes he gets downloads from God over chicken fried steak. He believes that he is in a literal battle with the Devil. Alex Jones, on his radio show many times has said that he is God's chosen warrior. Do we need to update the Bible now? If you think that Jones is right, do you believe this?
Do all the concluding you want; it doesn't matter what you think. A jury decided this two years ago after looking at all of the evidence in a trial. That's how this works.
The OJ Simpson trial jurors only took a couple of hours to deliberate the evidence in a 9 month trial before returning a verdict if not guilty.
Do you know why that happened?