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It seems like the push finally came to shove for Alex Jones, as he will have to liquidate pretty much almost everything he has to pay the $1.5 billion dollar settlement after the Sandy Hook defamation lawsuit went the plaintiffs way. Via AssociatedPress:
Considering $9 million is more than 100 times less than what he owes, I don't see any other way for this to end in his completely left in the dust, with no business media, no career in journalism (at least as a self-owned publication, though I doubt anyone wants to hire him, and I don't think him having a Rumble channel with no structure to back him is going to bring him that much money). His only hope involves a Hail Mary crowfunding moneybomb from his supporters and people annoyed by the veredict a la Trump, but even if he raises as much as Trump, he's still owing hundreds of millions left, and I doubt he could even reach that point; not only we're talking about somebody not as popular, but the specifics of the case do touch sensitive spots (nobody likes someone stating falsehoods about dead children)
Comment from ZeroHedge:
Two things that come to my mind:
First, from what I understand, the final payment number came from Alex Jones not being willing to disclose his net worth, which allowed to the plaintiffs to imagine an infinite net worth if they wanted to. But once the books are finally displayed, does that make sense? And even if he hadn't, why isn't the level of damage caused to the plaintiffs part of equation to lower the number? Isn't this institutionalized debt slavery as punishment for what is at the end of the day an civil case? Don't get me wrong, as a libertarian I certainly don't oppose debt slavery for a sort of tort system where crimes are punished with payments; but it has to be equivalent to the crime and the criminal's means; $1.5 billion would be too much of a punishment for Adam Lanza, the actual sicko who murdered the children in Sandy Hook, let alone for the guy who espoused things that weren't true about the shooting. Is he even going to able to ever pay for it entirely?
Secondly, isn't this simply a completely disproportionate answer to Jones sins? Yes, he went on for too long with this charade and should had never started it in the first place, not to mention that his claims didn't went against the NWO or the globalist elites that he despises, but against parents of dead children, claiming that the most emotionally painful thing that had ever befallen them was something they were lying about on TV. However, is he responsible at all for the fact that his followers went too far and harassed those people? Are CNN or MSNBC liable for defamation since they broadcasted Jones making those same claims? Do we know that if the people that harassed the victims parents actually got their information directly from Jones himself?
It seems to me that defamation law is a two edged sword...a society that doesn't have it allows misinformation to be used to harm people, but a society that doesn't have it on a tight leash allows to weaponize claims of misinformation with far worse repercussions.
I have only kind of paid attention to this case so I will not claim deep legal knowledge here, but I suspect this case is, like so many others, one in which the deep legal details matter, and are mostly ignored by partisans in favor of "He's being punished by the Elites for offending the NWO" or "He's an evil monster who mocked dead children."
A number like $1.5 billion is basically saying "We're taking everything you have (except your home)." Is that a fair judgment? Eh. I don't feel sorry for him, and not just because he's a crank.
My understanding is that the huge judgment was not so much because he claimed Sandy Hook was a hoax and told parents their children didn't really die (vile and obnoxious and possibly cause for a defamation suit, but not $1.5 billion), but because of all those followers of his who harassed and threatened the parents for years. So as to whether he is responsible at all: having some crazy followers who do things without your knowledge or instigation is one thing, but if you keep beating the "crisis actor" drums for years, until you know darn well what your followers are doing to those parents, then at some point yeah, I think you become responsible for continuing to egg them on. That and his legal fuckery with the court makes me think he FAAFO.
And if someone assassinates Trump, can Trump Jr bankrupt Maddow?
It is a very slippery slope to apply an “egging on” standard.
All laws are slippery slopes. I never understand this argument: "If you took this principle to an unreasonable extreme, terrible things will happen." Well, yes.
Trump Jr. suing Maddow on the premise that her bashing of Trump directly and intentionally or recklessly instigated an assassination would have to prove a lot of things beyond "Maddow said Trump bad."
Maybe things like calling him a threat to democracy or a Russian plant etc etc. not that dissimilar to what Jones did to be honest.
Law is supposed to have procedures that protect the defendant as much as it provides vindication to the plaintiff. For example, there is a limitation on unreasonable fines. This seems like a paradigmatic unreasonable fine.
If hordes of Maddow's followers started physically harassing Trump and she seemed to be egging it on (or at least conspicuously silent about it), he might have a case. But as others have pointed out, Jones's legal troubles were not just because of what he said, but because when sued he tried to play shell games with his finances.
This narrative some of you are swallowing where Alex Jones got sued to oblivion for the crime of wrongthink and offending liberals just doesn't hold up. The judgment may be absurd, but not for the reasons you are claiming.
Hmmmmm, what about a situation where a literal designated terrorist organization posted lists of people to harass, and the followers of that designated terrorist organization repeatedly committed criminal violence against those people?
But somehow I'm not seeing them being fined eleventy billion dollars, because they're just terrorists rather than political opponents of the regime.
Are you talking about Hamas? How do you imagine this equivalence works, since we can't sue Hamas?
I don't know, maybe they could actually investigate them for admitting to firebombing a federal building?
But hey, the libs who run the security state have more important targets, like kids leaving scooter tire marks on rainbow crosswalks and parents at school board meetings complaining about their kids being forced to read gay porn
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Isn't Trump the victim of a nearly decade long harassment campaign that was initially started (in part) by very spurious claims and outright lies, which has now cost him millions of dollars and resulted in outright harassment from his political enemies via the legal system?
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Not to mention that the default judgment happened not once, but twice, in both Connecticut and Austin, after some of the most hilariously incompetent lawyering by his defense counsel. They accidentally emailed Jones’s unculled phone data to plaintiffs’ counsel, which included texts showing that Jones was refusing to produce relevant information, all after years of dilatory tactics and abuse. They data dumped on the plaintiffs in the Connecticut case, including child porn that should have been culled. If you are an unsympathetic defendant, maybe don’t fuck around with testing the limits of the rules of civil procedure.
Jones is definitely an enemy of the cathedral, but he’s also a scumbag and an idiot who deserved to lose his cases. He will get out of this relatively intact after discharging the judgment debt in bankruptcy and go back to being a convenient weakman for the left to meme on.
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What’s the standard here? If people tried to break into his home whilst burning historic churches next to where he then lived would that count?
Can you show that that was done by Rachel Maddow followers as a result of things she said? Can you show that it was happening for months or years? Can you show that she knew (or should have known) that it was happening, and did nothing about it?
No but we also can’t prove it was done as a result of Jones’ followers. Causation is really hard (people hear a lot of stuff and do random things all of the time).
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I haven't followed this case at all closely, but my impression was that he didn't comply with his discovery obligations and so the court said that the worst possible inference should be drawn from his lack of disclosure, and that's why the judgement was so astronomical?
That was two of the cases.
Sort of. The default judgments meant he had to be treated as if he’d “admitted all allegations.” Then juries went wild.
It still only covers about $50M of his debts.
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I don’t buy that as a theory simply because it makes it too easy to shut up dissent. Under this theory, my repeating of a statement that I believe is true makes me liable for any actions taken by people who listen to what I’m saying even if I never tell anyone to harass or harm others, and even if I’m not giving out personal information. And thus it’s now easy to shut down dissent by suggesting that a speaker has total control over all of those who listen to his show.
No, under this theory, if I repeatedly use my public platform to say "@MaiqTheTrue is murdering children in his basement," and I continue making this claim for years, even knowing that some of my followers are now harassing you (and the Sandy Hook parents weren't just having mean things said about them on the Internet, they were being followed and harassed and physically threatened in meat-space), you can hold me responsible. There is a difference between having total control over your followers and knowing what your followers are doing and not only saying nothing to discourage them, but continuing to do what you know is encouraging them.
Sort of. If you’re telling people I’m killing kids in my basement, then, sure, it’s possibly inflammatory. But it’s also something that, charitably you believe to be true. And as far as I’m concerned, this is something that should be protected unless the person is trying to provoke the response. To do otherwise can easily be abused into silencing those who hold dissident views. And even if the fans of a given dissident are mostly behaving themselves, there are always agents provocateur who would gladly make trouble for those fans, especially if the prize was that the dissident was forced into bankruptcy and silenced forever.
Now the question of whether Jones either knew or intended harassment is rather open. He would certainly know based on metrics who is listening, but I don’t think that he’s reading every comment on his articles or videos. Most people here have blogs, how much do you know about your subscribers? If your subscribers would decide to come after me, how would you even find out? Creators tend to live in a bubble, the audience isn’t really known to them unless they do a lot of public speaking. Thus I don’t think it’s clear that Jones necessarily was aware of his fans’ behavior. As far as I’m aware from dipping into old podcasts of his show, he doesn’t encourage anyone to do anything beyond buying supplements and gold coins. He doesn’t say things advocating harm or writing letters or anything like that. He just reports what (assuming charity here) he believes to be true.
Legally, I don't know how much of Jones's defense did or could rely on him claiming not to know people were being harassed. But as to your first point, I think it requires a lot of charity to assume Alex Jones sincerely believed everything he was saying (IIRC, he at one point actually made some sort of "I'm Just Asking Questions" disclaimer), and me sincerely believing you are murdering children in your basement wouldn't absolve me of responsibility if I'm causing people to show up at your house trying to free the children.
I find the argument that is setting some precedent that will "silence dissent" unconvincing; most people objecting seem to just hate the people who hate Alex Jones, and therefore him losing means the wrong people won. I suspect if an unhinged follower of Rachel Maddow really did attack Trump and he sued her and won, the same people defending Alex Jones would say she deserves it.
I think we’ve had a full eye full of what can happen when the state decides what ideas are simply too dangerous to be considered. And taking away a person’s livelihood for having said things that those in power don’t like is a huge danger to the ability to have free exchange of ideas. I think Jones is at best wrong and at worst a grifter shilling stupid products that don’t work. But there are lots of other people with ideas that they believe to be true that would absolutely be bothersome to the elites. Dissent on trans issues being a big one. The idea that someone can be induced to believe they are trans is something I think is worth taking seriously. But at the same time, a person who’s listening to that might get upset by it, or if it’s connected to things going on in their kids school, then they might harass teachers. Is that the fault of someone just stating a theory? I don’t think so, unless that person is telling people to take action. My personal bias is strongly towards not shutting down speech unless the person is clearly trying to incite criminal action. If Maddow says “Trump wants to be a dictator, somebody should stop him” that’s pretty open and close incitement. If she just says “Trump wants to be a dictator,” that’s not her trying to get a response from her viewers, it’s simply her opinion on the facts.
I feel like we are going in circles. I completely agree that no ideas should be censored and people should not be sued or persecuted by the state for expressing them, and I completely disagree that this is what happened to Alex Jones.
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Once again, there was no trial on the merits.
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So I have an obligation to censor myself if I know my fans are doing bad stuff? Even when they are doing it against my wishes?
If I repeatedly say that abortion clinics are mass murdering babies, am I liable if an unhinged follower blows up a clinic?
If what they are doing is disconnected from what you're saying, no. I don't think Taylor Swift is responsible for her insane fans harassing her ex-boyfriends, even though she sings songs dunking on them.
If what you are saying is "A specific group of people are vile, evil liars," and as a result, your fans begins harassing that group of people, to the point that those people are legitimately in fear for their lives, then yes, I think you have an obligation to, at the very least, publicly state "Don't do that, I do not endorse this."
To extend the Taylor Swift example, if her fans started physically threatening her exes while she kept composing pop melodies like "My Ex is a Dirtbag Who Totally Deserves to Die," I think her exes might have a legitimate civil case.
(Did Alex Jones ever, in any way, indicate that the harassment of the Sandy Hook parents was something he disapproved of?)
If they are unconnected to you or your words, no, but if your followers start doing this on the regular, and you keep talking about how abortion clinics are mass murdering babies oh look another one got blown up today, then at some point it becomes a turbulent priest scenario.
It would have to be a false statement of fact, whereas this is opinion, so no defamation liability. "My Ex kicks puppies and is a dirtbag who deserves to die" would potentially be actionable if Joe Alwyn does not, if fact, kick puppies. In the US, Swift might get away with "I was obviously joking", so not really a statement of fact, so no liability (Elon Musk successfully ran this defence after falsely accusing Vernon Unsworth of being a paedophile). But Alwyn is British and Swift's albums are published in the UK, so an English court would have jurisdiction and "I was obviously joking" is not a defence in the UK.
Again what about Maddow? What about say Tucker?
Claims about Trump being a "threat to democracy" aren't specific enough to constitute defamation. Russian agent claims could plausibly be specific enough, but it would come down to specific statements. There's also the issue that public figures such as Trump have to meet a higher standard when proving defamation claims than private citizens like the Sandy Hook parents do.
I'd also add that,. while it seems counterintuitive, wrongful death claims are almost always worth less than cases where the plaintiff is living, even when the plaintiff is in decent shape. Your hypothetical of an assassination is geared toward rock bottom damages because the relatively minimal amount of pain and suffering combined with the inability of the plaintiff to testify about that pain and suffering means you're not getting much in the way of non-economic damages. In most cases like this you'd be looking at maybe a million for the decedent, a couple hundred thousand for the widow, and maybe 50 grand for each of the kids. Maybe up that to three million because it's Trump, but these damages aren't unique and you'd have a hard time justifying more than that. Compare that with unassuming people who suffered an unimaginable loss and then had to contend with years of harassment from people who claimed they were faking it, and they're all available to testify about how much of a nightmare it was and there's little the defense can do on cross to counter. It's not a typical scenario and there aren't any clear guidelines on how to value something like that.
The bigger factor in damages in a hypothetical Trump assassination would be economic damages far in excess of what a normal person has, but this would rest on the testimony of various economic experts who would have to contend with the tendency of his companies to show a net loss for tax purposes. I'm actually working on a case right now where a guy is claiming excessive economic damages based on a speculative business venture that was derailed by the Plaintiff's death, and this shit gets messy.
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