[lettergram]

I mean… if anyone watched the trial this whole thing is a joke. He may have done something bad, but the trial was Soviet level.

I followed the trial and this is the way the “trial” went:

1. Plaintiffs / Judge claimed he had evidence (marketing material on sandy hook - claimed he never had marketing material)

2. Jones said he didn’t

3. discovery didn’t prove the evidence ever existed

4. Judge then said “guilty by default, because he must have destroyed the evidence”

5. Jury trial commences for damages - judge tells Jones he can’t claim not to have evidence, can’t claim innocence, and a whole list of other stuff

6. Jury trial talks about a bunch of unrelated stuff that other people said.

7. A few times you see a clip where Jones mention “sandy hook is a psyop” or “this parent laughing before fake crying is a crisis actor” (paraphrasing obviously). But never mentions people by name, nor outside what is presented on the news (CNN for instance)

If anyone knows about defamation. (1) defaulting never happens (2) you have to name the person and have to claim an explicit in the defamation that you know to be false, with the purpose of causing damage.

It was real interesting to watch, but I imagine it’ll be overturned

[orwin]

He didn't submit to discovery in 6 years.

So default judgment, and he goes to court for damages (default mean he is automatically guilty if i understand right? Us law is weird. In my country the police would've seized then copied everything). From what I've managed to get (from a non English source), his lawyer then submitted too much and did not retract in time, so the plaintiffs have now more evidence than asked during the initial discovery. Maybe it's wrong (this was humor so this might have been exaggeration, but the guy research his stuff pretty well).

[lettergram]

> He didn't submit to discovery in 6 years

You must be unfamiliar with the case; during the case they were bringing up Jones emails, texts, budgets, transaction history, deposition video. They even accidentally were sharing communications from between Jones and his attorney.

Even a search shows multiple articles on this without having to watch a second of court tv or read the docket.

https://news.yahoo.com/alex-jones-sits-depositions-sandy-185...

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/alex-jones-lost-two-sandy-hoo...

There’s a lot more, obviously he tried fighting producing all this. But in the end you can read / watch a lot of the information yourself. The trial had it as evidence.

> Us law is weird.

A little bit of explanation - this is a civil case for damages as it relates to defamation.

What that means is those suing Jones need to prove (1) Jones factually lied about them (meaning he said - “person X did Y” and Y is a lie. if he said it as an opinion though it’s fine: “in my opinion person X did Y”). (2) In addition, if they’re a public figure (ie on the news), it has to be actual malice - ie lying intentionally, with the intent to do harm.

In this case, none of that was adjudicated by a jury. Instead a judge defaulted Jones. Defaulting is when you’re found guilty because you refused to stand trial (aka show up to court)

https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/default_judgment

Jones was responding to summons and providing documentation. You can read the court filings and watch the depositions yourself. The judge just said “you didn’t provide what we think you have” - defaulted! (Btw this doesn’t mean he’s guilty, judgement can’t be rendered with no trial).

That was the most crazy part of all this.

The default was because Jones claimed he didn’t have something and although the plaintiffs never proved he did, the judge ruled Jones refused to provide the data (again, which was never proven to exist).

[orwin]

Like i said, i don't really follow that much us politics, i only heard of it by a non English speaker who made jokes about that.

Thanks for the information though.

[drcongo]

I believe this was a civil case, not a legal one, so the police don't have the power to seize and copy everything.

[cykros]

This is the first of these takes I've heard; seems most of us are just taking third hand hearsay on this one. I've always found Jones entertaining, though more interesting back in the 9/11 Truth and Bilderberg group days than anything recently as he seems to have gone a bit loopier than ever. I wasn't even terribly opposed to a hefty fine for defamation if he did what he's accused to have done, though the idea of it being a billion dollars is a bit absurd (Facebook, for reference, got hit with a large fine of $5 billion a couple years back).

I'll have to get to doing some digging, because if it's as you say, this is even more of a travesty than it seemed.

As for this new total, well, this makes the Napster lawsuits against children of yore seem sane by comparison, and much of the same logic seems to have been used for how the figure was calculated. And the idea that we're actually talking about the events the trial is supposedly about rather than Jones' entire history of being a thorn in the side of some powerful people is clearly a lie. If anything, I have to wonder how anyone doesn't see this as suggesting that maybe he was onto a thing or two they'd previously written off that he's being publicly made an example of for exposing.

[tinglymintyfrsh]

I don't understand the fuss apart from the media and lawyers dancing on misfortune to throw salt in someone's wounds. You either have freedom of speech or you don't. He didn't shout fire in a theater and didn't encourage a violent insurrection. There's either a marketplace of ideas or there's a purity test and truth-deciders and approved sentiment-shapers like MSNBC and Faux News.