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.

  • @[email protected]
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    21 year ago

    Unironically, wholeheartedly, YES, we should be okay with this. I don’t think you realize the full extent of how badly Alex Jones fucked up. He made specific statements about specific people, that were false, and that he KNEW were false. These statements ruined the lives of multiple grieving families, forcing them to hire personal security at great personal cost, and to uproot their entire lives and move to entirely different states out of fear of their personal safety. That’s the baseline defamation, and it’s as close as you can get to the textbook legal definition of defamation. Then Alex Jones ignored the lawsuits, refused to turn over evidence he was legally required to provide for discovery, and then proceeded to lie to the court that the evidence didn’t exist. His actions were so bad, the judge warned Alex "if you don’t start doing what we say, we’re going to enter a default judgement, and that means we’re assuming everything the plaintiff says is true and that they would assume the worst about Alex’s actions. He continued to ignore the court, so they got a default judgement. That’s the second part of why it’s so high.

    Then while holding a trial to determine how much Alex owed after getting the default judgement, his lawyers fucked up and leaked evidence they had previously lied about not existing directly to the plaintiff’s lawyers, AND ignored the plaintiff when they said “hey did you send this to us on accident, because if you don’t respond we’re going to use it as evidence.” So now the court has direct, incontrovertible evidence that Alex Jones not only defied the court, but gave a bald-faced lie while doing so. He directly attacked the entire legitimacy of the entire judicial system. And that’s the biggest reason why the judgement is so high: if the court DIDN’T award damages high enough to ruin his life, it would have sent a message to every billionaire and megacorp in giant flashing red letters saying “That massive team of lawyers you’ve been paying millions for to make sure you don’t lose a lawsuit? You don’t need them, you can just ignore the court outright, and even if you get caught red-handed lying it won’t make a difference.”

    So yeah, if you mistake the Defamation 101 chapter in the textbook for a how-to guide, don’t take part in the legal process at ALL, repeatedly lie to the court, give the plaintiff clear and convincing evidence that you lied, and ignore the plaintiff when they do their due diligence and ask you if they can use the evidence you accidentally gave them, your life SHOULD be ruined.

    • PatFusty
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      1 year ago

      I have a problem with conflating ruining someone’s life with taking money from them to give to someone else. If you want to ruin his life, send him to jail for life and move on (if you can). I dont really care how aggregiously moronic Alex and his team was. I dont like the idea of tying someone’s capital to their capability to live. That is all.

      I understand that some families had to get protection and move or whatever the fuck, i just dont believe it all amounts to a sum that large. Give the families what he owes them, send him to jail, thats it. Theres no fucking way 20 families combined spent 1 billion dollars unless their sur names are Rockefeller.

      • @[email protected]
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        21 year ago

        If he wanted to argue that, he probably should have argued that in court. Especially considering that he always had the chance to do so. But that would be admitting guilt, isn’t it? He continued to fight the legal system after he was shown to be squarely in the wrong. Indeed, this is the case where legal system is actually working as intended - Judge shouldn’t actively protect either side, they judge, not represent.

        And yes, ‘Being bankrupt’ is a valid argument. But only if it is true. Just like any other arguments, if evidence to the contrary is found, that is just another crime to be punished for lying in the court. Now you can see how he ended up with that much fine.