{"id":19617,"date":"2022-12-26T16:10:44","date_gmt":"2022-12-27T00:10:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/?p=19617"},"modified":"2022-12-26T16:10:44","modified_gmt":"2022-12-27T00:10:44","slug":"alex-jones-lawsuits-updates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/2022\/12\/26\/alex-jones-lawsuits-updates\/","title":{"rendered":"Alex Jones lawsuits updates"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n<p>A set of links about what\u2019s been up with the defamation lawsuits against Alex Jones over the past year-plus.<\/p>\r\n<p>Content warning for references (throughout these articles) to Sandy Hook and to Jones\u2019s utterly despicable and completely false claims that the attack was faked. Also content warning for prominent photos of Jones, sometimes apparently in the midst of yelling. (Which I mention in case you find even seeing his face distressing.)<\/p>\r\n<ul>\r\n  <li>I think the lawsuits were filed in 2018.<\/li>\r\n  <li>\u201cIn 2019, Jones recanted his Sandy Hook comments, acknowledging that the shooting occurred and blaming his false statements on \u2018a form of psychosis.\u2019\u201d (Mentioned in passing in a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/nation\/2021\/11\/15\/alex-jones-sandy-hook-defamation-lawsuit\/\">WaPo article<\/a>.)<\/li>\r\n  <li>In late 2021, Jones lost two lawsuits in a row, both by default because he \u201crefused to turn over financial records and other documents ordered by the court.\u201d (Same link as above.)<\/li>\r\n  <li>The next step was a trial to determine damages.<\/li>\r\n  <li>In July, 2022, partway through that trial, \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.texastribune.org\/2022\/07\/30\/alex-jones-company-bankruptcy\/\">Alex Jones\u2019 main company, Free Speech Systems, filed for bankruptcy<\/a>.\u201d It filed as a small business, presumably in order to avoid being treated as a larger business when the damages were finalized.<\/li>\r\n  <li>In early August, 2022, Jones\u2019s lawyer accidentally sent the plaintiffs\u2019 lawyers two years\u2019 worth of Jones\u2019s text messages, which provided a great deal of evidence that Jones had been trying to keep hidden. Several articles about that incident and its consequences:\r\n  <ul>\r\n    <li>\u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/nation\/2022\/08\/03\/alex-jones-sandy-hook-phone\/\">Sandy Hook lawyers say Alex Jones\u2019s attorneys accidentally gave them his phone contents<\/a>.\u201d<\/li>\r\n    <li>\u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2022\/08\/03\/us\/politics\/alex-jones-trial-sandy-hook.html\">Alex Jones, Under Questioning, Is Confronted With Evidence of Deception<\/a>.\u201d<\/li>\r\n    <li>\u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2022\/08\/03\/media\/alex-jones-sandy-hook-trial\/index.html\">Sandy Hook family attorney exposes Alex Jones\u2019 dishonesty during brutal cross-examination<\/a>.\u201d<\/li>\r\n    <li><a href=\"https:\/\/slate.com\/news-and-politics\/2022\/08\/alex-jones-perjury-inept-lawyer-sanctions.html\">More details<\/a> about what Jones\u2019s lawyer accidentally sent, and what the consequences could be. (Side note: At first, Jones indicated that this wasn\u2019t a mistake, that his lawyer had just sent the info that the plaintiffs had requested. But this article makes very clear that it was a huge mistake.)<\/li>\r\n    <li>\u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/ideas\/archive\/2022\/08\/alex-jones-sandy-hook-defamation-trial\/671045\/\">Jones has spent his entire life believing the rules don\u2019t apply to him<\/a>. For decades, he\u2019s managed to build a fantasy world where that\u2019s true. It\u2019s only in a courtroom that the gravity of real-world consequences seems to apply.\u201d<\/li>\r\n  <\/ul>\r\n  <\/li>\r\n  <li>The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/business\/media-telecom\/jury-alex-jones-defamation-case-begin-deliberations-punitive-damages-2022-08-05\/\">award in one of the trials was $45.2 million<\/a> in punitive damages.<\/li>\r\n  <li>The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/us-news\/2022\/oct\/12\/alex-jones-sandy-hook-hoax-lawsuit-damages\">award in another trial was $965 million<\/a>. (Note: This article includes extensive self-serving quotes from Jones, including his asking his audience to send him money.)<\/li>\r\n  <li>\u201cJones now faces a third trial, in Texas near the end of the year, in a lawsuit filed by the parents of another child killed in the shooting.\u201d (Same link as previous item.)<\/li>\r\n  <li>In late November, \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/alex-jones-declares-personal-bankruptcy-4f50412d0c4ce0495b351b8417f5d09c\">Infowars host Alex Jones filed for personal bankruptcy protection<\/a> [\u2026], citing debts that include nearly $1.5 billion he has been ordered to pay to [Sandy Hook] families [\u2026] His filing listed $1 billion to $10 billion in liabilities and $1 million to $10 million in assets.\u201d<\/li>\r\n  <li>Apparently the bankruptcy declarations provide an automatic stay to the legal proceedings\u2014but they may result in Jones having to reveal more of his financial situation and his attempts to hide his money. A bankruptcy lawyer not connected to the case <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/us-news\/2022\/dec\/07\/alex-jones-infowars-bankruptcy\">estimates<\/a> that the bankruptcy proceedings may take 3 to 9 months.<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n<p>It is unlikely that Jones will end up having to pay $1.5 billion; at this point, it sounds like he truly doesn\u2019t have that much money. But I\u2019m hoping that the end result of the current proceedings will be some combination of (1) him being taken off the air, (2) all of the money he does have going to Sandy Hook parents, and (3) jail time for Jones\u2019s perjury during the trial.<\/p>\r\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,90,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19617","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-improving-society","category-journalism","category-law"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19617","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19617"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19617\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19618,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19617\/revisions\/19618"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}