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- cross-posted to:
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Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones cannot use his personal bankruptcy to escape paying at least $1.1 billion in defamation damages stemming from his repeated lies about the 2012 Sandy Hook elementary school massacre, a U.S. bankruptcy judge ruled Thursday.
Alex Jones and/or his lawyers were too stupid to show up to court and defend themselves, so Jones automatically lost a defamation lawsuit without anyone even proving that Jones lied.
Wow, you might be thinking, that’s great for these plaintiffs but surely nobody else would be dumb enough to ignore a defamation lawsuit and thus instantly lose! Well, let me introduce you to a certain Donald J Trump.
Yeah, his lawyers were super incompetent. They pretty much proved to everyone he was lying.
It went even further than just sending the messages. Jones’ attorneys sending those could maybe have been a mistake. Had opposing counsel just gone and used them it could have bogged the whole process down horrifically. They’d likely appeal and fight that hard. So opposing counsel did the ethical thing and informed Jones’ attorneys multiple times seeking clarification and basically covering their own ass a bit. Jones’ attorneys didn’t respond. They could have said “that was a mistake and privileged so you can’t use them”, but they didn’t. Jones first found out in court while being cross examined. It was hilarious.
The video I saw of the lawyer telling AJ in court that he had all that and his lawyer did fuck-all to fix it is FANTASTIC.
Edit - Its in the link! WATCH IT
I saw it live and laughed my ass off.
I loved the legal commentary around it that Perry Mason moments don’t happen, except this time, it did.
I think they were afraid of discovery revealing even more malicious information than what’s being assumed.
After listening to all of the Knowledge Fight podcast’s 70+ hours worth of coverage of both cases (including multiple interviews with the plaintiffs lawyers)… I don’t believe for a minute that Alex Jones’ lawyers are competent enough to attempt a devious strategy.
Fun fact: they actually just fined Alex $1 for each time he said “I don’t remember” or “I don’t recall that” during the depositions and that’s how it got up to over a billion.
And Dan testified for the plaintiffs as an expert witness! Pretty incredible
Minor correction, Dan didn’t testify. He was present for some of the depositions of Alex in the TX case, being there to help guide Mark Bankston’s questioning. Mostly mentioning cause Dan was pretty clear he didn’t want to actually testify
Oops, you are right! Thanks for catching that
Only for his lawyers to send the prosecutors a copy of every text message that he sent and received for the last 2 years. Haha
There’s a proto-fascist idea out there that authoritarians can find all the best people and put them in positions to do their best work. What actually happens is that they select people for personal loyalty first and competence a distant second. This is why Trump and Jones have such shit people on their legal teams.
You literally described Putin aswell lmao