1318

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.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] FlowVoid@lemmy.world 66 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

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.

[-] DocMcStuffin@lemmy.world 45 points 1 year ago

Yeah, his lawyers were super incompetent. They pretty much proved to everyone he was lying.

Damaging Alex Jones texts mistakenly sent to Sandy Hook family’s lawyers

Attorneys for the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones “messed up” and sent to his legal adversaries “every text message” he had written in the past two years – contradicting claims Jones had nothing on his phone pertaining to the deadly Sandy Hook school shooting, which he long maintained was a hoax, it was revealed at his defamation trial on Wednesday.

[-] meco03211@lemmy.world 25 points 1 year ago

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.

[-] Default_Defect@midwest.social 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

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

[-] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

I saw it live and laughed my ass off.

[-] frezik@midwest.social 1 points 1 year ago

I loved the legal commentary around it that Perry Mason moments don't happen, except this time, it did.

[-] charles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 12 points 1 year ago

I think they were afraid of discovery revealing even more malicious information than what's being assumed.

[-] ZeroCool@feddit.ch 21 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

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.

[-] willworkforicecream@lemmy.world 13 points 1 year ago

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

[-] a_queer_one@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

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

[-] GlendatheGayWitch@lib.lgbt 8 points 1 year ago

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

[-] frezik@midwest.social 6 points 1 year ago

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.

[-] Mago@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

You literally described Putin aswell lmao

this post was submitted on 20 Oct 2023
1318 points (98.5% liked)

News

23360 readers
1893 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS