Whoa. If this were on a cop show, I wouldn’t believe this twist in the Alex Jones case. Jones’ lawyers apparently screwed up and sent the complete text contents on Jones’ phone to the opposition lawyers “by mistake” (?), and sprung them on Jones right there in court.
Wow. Sandy Hook parents' lawyer is revealing that Alex Jones' lawyers sent him the contents of Jones' phone BY MISTAKE.
"12 days ago, your attorneys messed up and sent me a digital copy of every text" Jones has sent for years.
"You know what perjury is?" the lawyer asks.
— Ben Collins (@oneunderscore__) August 3, 2022
Just want to add that Alex Jones' latent cough came back in full force when his own texts, which he didn't know the Sandy Hook parents' lawyers had access to, appeared on a screen in the court room and he was asked to read one.
— Ben Collins (@oneunderscore__) August 3, 2022
They’re also catching him in calling the judge a pedophile on InfoWars.
As cross-examination kicks off, the Sandy Hook family's lawyer grills Alex Jones about whether he broadcast a conspiracy theory that the judge is "involved with pedophilia and child trafficking."
Jones denies it.
They roll tape on InfoWars broadcasting that very claim.
— Adam Klasfeld (@KlasfeldReports) August 3, 2022
I get the impression that lawyers dream about moments like this.
The lawyer who just obliterated Alex Jones on cross (Bankston) is strutting around a bit on break, visibly coming down from an adrenaline high.
Well-deserved. He know that was a career-defining moment, and he crushed it. And more importantly, it was in a righteous cause.
— Colin (@Kolyin) August 3, 2022
So he perjured himself, grossly insulted the judge, and a whole bunch of incriminating data is going to be passed on to law enforcement. I almost feel pity for Alex Jones.
Nah, not a bit of it. A villain is getting the comeuppance he deserves.
I am kind of wondering what happens to Jones’ lawyers after all this, though.
Also…I’m wishing Ed Brayton would rise from the dead to join me in laughing our asses off at this debacle.
“I get the impression that lawyers dream about moments like this.”
More like masturbate to moments like those.
Still, that lawyer is going to be eating out on that moment for months. Deservedly so.
Perjury is a thing, especially with bankruptcy cases. Yes, I know that this is a tort case but it may have just become a criminal case too. Heh.
You can go to prison for perjury.
The first thing they do when you enter prison is take away your watch, wallet, etc.
Hee hee hee. Poor Alex, shilling all that worthless crap to be able to buy all those expensive watches. :D
This is fabulous! This is just one of the maga crowd who deserves being ground to dust under the wheels of justice. It also highlights the need for laws that prevent lying propaganda programs from being broadcast in the first place.
Between this, Cippilone getting subpoenaed by the DOJ, and Kansas flipping off SCOTUS, it’s been a good day for US democracy.
Here’s the thing that really bothers me about this. Jones will NOT see any jail time for this. He’s already gearing up for bankruptcy. Can someone please explain to me why rich people can “declare bankruptcy”, while the rest of us starve in the streets when we run out of money? After all of this, Jones is still going to be someone who can live a life of comfort no matter what. People like this never go to jail and always have a backup.
Pardon my cynicism, but I’ve seen it happen too many times.
It would be nice to have Ed Brayton back. His wit, wisdom, and snark entertained me for 25 years (give or take), and I’m still getting used to the idea that he’s gone.
The Jan 6th committee will be so interested in his emails and texts. I’m sure the subpoenas are being written up with great delight.
Here’s the extent of my pity for Alex Jones: it’s sad that he has no capacity for human empathy.
Jones should have stuck to comedy.
Jones was in “The Waking Life”. His whole scene is hilarious.
I wouldn’t piss on Alex Jones if he were on fire. I only hope that we get to witness the mental, physical and moral destruction of this pathetic excuse for a human being. It can’t start quickly enough or go on long enough.
I’m sure Jones claims that audio clip was somehow taken out of context, selectively edited, or even deepfaked by the Deep State lizard-Jew demons.
Ray Ceeya@3–
As this is a civil case, jail time isn’t on the cards, however any perjury committed during this case could trigger a referral to the criminal system with a potential prison sentence. Also, just because someone wants to declare bankruptcy doesn’t mean the courts will allow it, and even more importantly, attempts to file bankruptcy to avoid debts can be found fraudulent…which would be another way to open the possibility of criminal charges with potential prison sentences. Jones is in deep legal trouble and may well find that the only way he can stay out of prison is to lose a huge chunk of his fortune.
So can he get a mistrial declared due to a manifestly incompetent defense?
But I would break out the marshmallows and skewers.
@10 chrislawson
I know that, but he still may be lift with enough money to live out his life in comfort. I want to see this man broken. I want to see him dying cold an alone and poor. I want to see his teeth rot out from the meth he sold his ass for. Even then that only covers a fraction of the pain he’s caused to others.
And there is another, similar, trial to determine damages pending in Connecticut…..
He testified before the Jan 6th committee and invoked the 5th amendment over 100 times.
Now his texts and emails for the last two years are official evidence, and I imagine there are many staffers within the DOJ and Jan 6th committee currently combing through them.
I hope he loses all his money in the civil suit, and criminal sedition charges to make sure he joins his fellow maga buddies in prison.
I know this pales in comparison to the story, but is anyone else weirded out that the headline font changes the ‘g’ from a looptail to an opentail in italics?
Yesterday, Sandy Hook trial judge berates Alex Jones like a child over his courtroom behavior: ‘Spit your gum out, Mr Jones’ (all quotes attributed to Jones set in because, well, it’s Jones):
If you (not specifically, just a general generic ‘you’) are on the stand, and the other side’s lawyer asks a very specific question (for instance, “Did you ever call the presiding judge a pedophile and accuse him of trafficking children?”), that, to me (not a lawyer), would be a clue that the other side’s lawyer knows something. Lawyers, in a trial, do not generally ask things just for shits and giggles. Is Alex Jones really that stupid?
This ha what Trump would be if he was unable to afford good lawyers.
And unable to pay “campaign contributions” to prosecutors.
(As in a case against Jared and Ivanka)
The problem, such as it is, is almost certainly on your end with the fonts your browser is choosing (or is configured) to use (and hence also the fonts available, i.e., those present on your system); the size (e.g., whether or not you’ve increased / decreased the point size) can also be a factor, as presumably are other technical issues I’m too lazy (and hot🥵!) to recall at the moment.
For me, both g‘s use a closed looptail, albeit the kerning between the italic g and subsequent e is awful.
He’s had substantial time to get “component” representation, but he knows damn well that a decent lawyer would have told him to settle from the start. His ego won’t let him do that, so he gets one some RW kook or grifter to defend him, drags his feet during discovery, and screams “conspiracy” and how his right to a fair trial has been violated when a default judgement is brought down on him.
Nah, that would just make the marshmallows taste terrible. Like roasting them over a fire made of resinous wood, except in the case of Jones, over a fire made out of a pile of shit.
Larry@ 11
IANAL, but I don’t think that’s an option. It’s a civil case, with the purpose of determining the judgement he must pay.
Considering that this new evidence also proved to the judge that he has submitted false information on the original subpoenas of his phone records, I’m guessing that he is about to pay an awful lot.
I wonder just how much of an accident it was for his lawyers to provide the court incontrovertible evidence documenting his lies for the last 2 years? Now he has to pay them for this trial, and I hope he gets to face new criminal charges.
I think it’s some high stakes trolling of someone who has been among the head trolls of maga.
I applaud whoever hit send.
@ 18
Jones knows what he’s doing. He’ll claim that the clip was manufactured or modified. His fans, who are predisposed to believe that the government (well, a government they don’t control) creates media hoaxes and frauds all the time, will believe him. The resulting victim narrative results in more dick pill sales.
IIRC, the rule for lawyers is, “Never ask a question in court unless you already know what the answer is.”
Yes.
More specifically, he is mentally fogged up and not capable of thinking clearly and coherently.
AFAICT, Alex Jones got away with lying and making up absurd conspiracy theories about “them”, the Globalists, the Illuminati, the FEMA concentration camps, etc.. for decades. To the point that he never could imagine that one day, someone was going to call him on his babbling.
And then someone did.
NOW can we hang him? Asking for a republican friend.
@10 you beat me to it, but yes… so much that.
Also, generally not a great idea to piss of the judge by calling her a pedophile and accusing her of judicial fraud (whatever that is).
@16, 20 yes, and I’m going blind looking at it. This is what happens when the website interprets the font rather than buying all the variations of the font outright. Gahhh.
@24 Akira MacKenzie
Couldn’t agree more. The man is a grifter. Doesn’t matter what happens in this trial. If he wants $100,000 to pay for something, he would have it from his followers in a week or two. The price he will pay won’t hurt him one bit. It’s a cult of personality and it’s dangerous.
@26 if he’s in Texas, maybe.
@29 @26
Or Washington. Last I checked it’s still an option there.
Meanwhile, in the senate:
With 2024 approaching, Hawley takes a Trumpian turn to clip NATO
He’s so crazy that not even other Republicans will go along with him.
chrislawson @16: That’s because PZ deliberately (IMO) italicized the second half of the word “bigger.”
Now they’ve found child porn in emails on his phone.
I’m a little sympathetic to the problem in interpreting that, because people send me porn (not child porn fortunately, because I’d report that to the police) and I delete it as soon as I get it, so don’t use what other people send to people as evidence of crime on the part of the recipient.
Ray Ceeya #30:
No form of the death penalty has been an option in Washington state since October11th 2018 – the state Supreme Court ruled it was unconstitutional as applied due to racial bias.
Reginald Selkirk @31: From the cited article:
…the freshman senator said he plans to oppose the two countries’ bids to join the alliance because he believes the U.S. should be prioritizing the myriad threats emanating from China rather than expanding its security commitments in Europe.
Most sane people would respond to serious threats by making sure they had allies to help them out. If anyone or anything made me feel threatened, the FIRST thing I’d do is look around to see if anyone might help me out. This is just plain common-sense, at both the global and personal levels.
He has long called for reducing U.S. troop levels in Europe in favor of an Asia-focused strategy.
Yeah, because ignoring our most consistent allies and going it alone in Asia worked out so well for us the last time. Did Josh Hawlass specify what his “Asialationist” “strategy” was supposed to accomplish for the USA?
And no, that word “Asialationist” is not at all new — it’s older than I am, and was coined by Herblock to describe right-wing Republicans who wanted to push off and ignore the rest of the world, but also charge into Asia unilaterally to fight the evil commies in some way or other, or turn Chiang kai-Shek loose on Mao, or something.
@33 Depends. If the email was a regular contact or a previous email from Jones solicited the child porn? Then he’s done. Stick a fork in him done.
For that matter, if it was unsolicited, and he didn’t report it to the police, he’s still done.
The Better Half works for a law firm, they get all manner of spam. There is an entire array of procedures should you ever accidentally come across any child porn in a legitimate research internet search or if found unsolicited in email, any form of correspondence, reply, etc. because officer of the court, etc. etc.
“It got there accidentally” is not going to hold up at all well in court. Any court. In any state.
…so don’t use what other people send to people as evidence of crime on the part of the recipient.
Um…if he didn’t delete it, as you did, that’s pretty suspicious in itself — more so given previous suspicions of him traveling to sex-tourist countries with a stash of Viagra.
@chrislawson #16:
If you think that’s bad, check out what happens to the “a”‘s (see examples on this page).
The child p0rn was found in a much earlier tranche of documents — the link cited by poopyhead@33 is dated June 18, 2019.
@12
well I would not want to get too close to that greasy shit fire
watching from a safe distance however…
An amusing side-story, Alex Jones Could Lose His $300,000 Armored Truck, Poor Guy:
There’s a video at the link (which I haven’t watched) about this “ridiculous military cosplay truck.”
Wow, the Jan 6th committee will be issuing a subpoena soon. from Rolling Stone;
I thought they would be very interested, but I’m surprised that they’ve jumped on it within a few hours.
Pop corn eating music.
https://youtu.be/Be5xi6xNz6Q
@34 Thanks for the correction. I just remember Washington hanging a serial killer back in the 90s. They let you choose your way out back in those days and he opted for hanging. Maybe he was a western fan.
I couldn’t find an MPG rating for this monster, but let’s assume the number is very low.
Eight long city blocks! Or, I dunno, maybe four…?
@45, MPG (metres per gigalitre), not braking distance…
I never met him in my life but I miss Ed Brayton and his blog so much too.
Hopefully, there’s an empty cell available at SuperMax.
I just saw the “tank” video. Yes, it has a “turret,” but no cannon, so what’s the point? And it’s not really bulletproof, just “bullet-resistant.” Not a huge amount of passenger or cargo space either. That’s what $300K buys you?
Separating fools from their money: it’s a dirty job, but someone’s gotta do it, I guess…maybe the court can find a Jones fan who’ll pay even more for it…
@41 the best was watching video on ABC’s World News, in which the judge tells Jones “you are not allowed to tell these people that you are bankrupt” and “when you sit in that chair [the witness chair], you must tell the truth. This is not your show.”
Would post a link but apparently World News posts to the website a day later.
CNN carries it though, at the 2:43 mark.
here is a better clip
“You believe everything you say is true.” PRICELESS.
I suppose we assume his lawyer and staff are incompetent but I wonder how long it will take Jones to wrap a conspiracy around this accident. Or, use firing his incompetent lawyer to ask for a new trial.
Re: robro @ #52…
He’ll have to move fast. I think that closing arguments were supposed to be presented this afternoon. More likely he’d try to claim incompetent representation as a reason to appeal. (And I do expect him to at least try to appeal, if only to drag it out before the bills come due.)
He can’t ask for a mistrial.
Due to the fact that he tried to evade going to court it’s a default judgement against him. He has already lost, the current legal proceedings are to decide how much he has to pay. Plaintiffs asked for 150 million.
Just a few notes from Uncle Ernie’s Litigator Farm:
(1) Unless I’ve missed a protective order — which is certainly possible, I haven’t been obsessively reading the docket and transcripts of pretrial orders and such — the material that was “incompetently” turned over was being improperly withheld and was subject to discovery anyway. And one can tell that this was most probably the case because Jones’s lawyers did not jump up, start pounding on the table, and demand a sidebar concerning an improper question based on improperly obtained, otherwise-protected material, even before Jones started to answer the question.
Indeed, I suspect there were pretrial motions in limine regarding the appropriate use of this material. As far as I can tell, it wasn’t printed out, entered as an exhibit, and handed to the jury; it is, instead, impeachment material that comes into evidence only to contradict Jones’s own testimony. (And unless the messages were to and from Jones’s lawyers, that’s the proper treatment under the rules of evidence; exact contours vary, but not that much.)
(2) Jones’s remedy if the material was indeed otherwise properly withheld but turned over incompetently is a later malpractice suit against his own lawyers. That, however, is within core bankruptcy court jurisdiction for his two business-entity bankruptcies, and, umm, I’ll be appointed to the next Supreme Court vacancy by the next Republican administration before Jones wins that claim in a bankruptcy proceeding.
(3) I’m actually more concerned about whether this judge is going to be forced to recuse herself because having Jones’s attacks on her revealed in open court this way certainly leads to “an appearance that reasonable persons might question her impartiality” (that’s the federal standard, but both Connecticut and Texas state courts say they have similar standards†). That the defense lawyers didn’t immediately move to disqualify her is a further indication that there has already been motion practice — out of hearing of the jury and the public — concerning Jones’s messages. And videos. And, in all probability, the potential-perjury warnings.
† Do not get me started on whether those standards are actually enforced. Just. Don’t. It’s waaaaaay too far OT.
(4) In civil proceedings in US courts, the competence of one’s own counsel is not grounds for either a new trial or appeal. Even in criminal cases, it’s much more complex than that, usually involving a later lawsuit as a collateral attack on the prior adverse judgment; that’s what most cases that one reads about concerning trial-counsel (or even appellate counsel) competence are. But that collateral attack can’t even start until the ordinarily available appeals are exhausted.
Jones’s best avenue for an appeal is to claim that the default judgment against him was an abuse of discretion by the judge, and that none of the material he’s currently being criticized about would have been relevant to the liability phase so the appellate court should ignore it. Yeah, that’s gonna work… Unless there’s a state-law-specific, binding-precedent case that says that the kind of misconduct that the judge found as a fact Jones and his counsel had engaged in never justifies a “terminating sanction,” or there’s something else that’s actually in the record showing that the judge’s statement of facts justifying her terminating sanction (the default judgment on liability imposed for his stonewalling) is pretty blatantly counterfactual, that terminating sanction will stand up on appeal. And should, looking at it from an objective-procedural-fairness point of view.
Jaws@54–
Surely Jones can’t just keep openly attacking judges to force recusals, though.
chrislawson @56: He can probably get away with it once. But consider that this “attack matterial” is from a while back; Jones would have to establish a similar pattern against, well, every eligible trial judge in the state. Not gonna happen.
I’m looking forward to Alex Jones pull a Jeff Epstie maneuver real soon.
I would go for “sickening”, or “derisible”.
He also admitted that he was lying about the “crisis actors” all along. Gotta wonder if his listeners are a little embarrassed to learn that they were stupid and Jones played them. Probably not, so his fans will divide into “extra stupid” and “extra stupid and super gullible”
Clearly Jones’ lawyers understand at this point that they’re not going to be paid.
@PZMyers
I was reading up on the child porn situation; they found it back in 2019 but here’s the thing… the prosecutor reported it to the FBI and the next day dipshit Jones and his lawyer goes on his show, running his mouth of course. He’s literally so stupid he threatens counsel for the prosecution and accuses them of trying to set him up. Well the Judge didn’t take too kindly to that and he ended up being sanctioned and fined. Dipshit Jones appeals it to the Supreme Court, saying his free speech was violated, but in 2021 the ruling is upheld. You can’t be just threatening prosecutors in the middle of a case, putting a bounty on their head and accuse them of misconduct! I mean they obviously did the right thing… you would think a big child pedophile “fighter” like himself would WANT the FBI to have that info?!
Now here’s the confusing part; I can’t find a single FBI statement clearing him. There’s plenty of statements from dipshit Jones and his lawyer, CLAIMING he was cleared, but the FBI always pulled a “no comment” kind of deal. At least that’s all I could find? So maybe the FBI is patiently waiting…. letting the Sandy Hook victims collect on their monetary judgments before taking his pedophile dipshit ass off to prison! That’s my fantasy anyway….
Guess what — Jones is now saying he’ll show everyone just how truly sorry he is, by…inviting the plaintiffs on his show.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/alex-jones-said-he-would-prove-he-is-truly-sorry-to-sandy-hook-parents-by-inviting-them-on-infowars/ar-AA10iHau?rc=1&ocid=winp1taskbar&cvid=330bcd73c9ca4678cbf901ab439c3c06
Alex Jones said in court on Wednesday he would show his remorse for defaming Sandy Hook parents by inviting them onto Infowars, the show where he spread his conspiracy theory about the shooting.
I can’t speak for anyone else here, but I think the best way he can show how sorry he is would be as follows:
1) Admit on his own show to every single lie and falsehood he told about Sandy Hook, the victims, or their families.
2) Admit he knowingly told every single one of those lies in a spirit of pure malice, with no explanation or excuse.
3) Shut down Infowars and all of his other businesses and media outlets forever and swear in court never to let his voice be heard on any radio or TV program ever again.
4) Pay the plaintiffs every penny of the money he got for spouting his malicious lies, plus interest at the standard credit-card rate of 29.99% per year.
Oh, and…
2b) Stop pretending he’s bankrupt and re-consolidate all of his assets in one easily-verifiable place.
Raging Bee@63 I’d accept “Shut up and go away.” as a good start on an apology.
According to ABC News, the jury has awarded the plaintiffs $4 million.
So far as I know, the next thing to happen is a sort of mini-trial to decide if they get punitive damages, as well. (And from what little I know of the law, those would be tripled, if awarded…)
Since Jones claimed (under oath) that $2 million would sink him (probably lying about that), this would appear to be the jury telling him he’s been holed below the waterline.
True to form, Jones did ask for a mistrial over the release of his phone contents, which was summarily denied by the Judge.
Apparently it contains ‘intimate’ communication with Roger Stone, among other evidence.
The NBC news report can be found here.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sct36Kli-Oc
Re: Tethys @ #67…
The followup video of the hearing on the motion for mistrial is priceless. The judge agreed that the Jan 6 Committee can just subpoena everything and that will bypass any protective order on any of the material, plus the protective order already allows the plaintiffs lawyer to provide protected materials to the lawyers in the Connecticut case.
In short, it looks like any attempt to protect any of the material is moot, so why bother.
The US Supreme Court has established a presumptive limit for punitive damages of ten times more-than-nominal compensatory damages. It is possible, on the right set of facts and bases for relief, to go above that; this is not the right set of facts and bases for relief, especially because it’s on default. So the top end for punitives will be $40M (and you can forget about any purported trebling provided in state law, that’s a pretty hard limit).
Where things will get interesting, to a civil procedure nerd like me, is in whether and how this judge assesses sanctions for perjurious statements in court after her specific warning. I anticipate that there will be a significant additional sanction, possibly as high as $400,000 (ten percent of the compensatory damages) but more likely between $10,000 and $25,000. Per statement. This judge seems pretty level-headed, so I don’t think she’ll make the mistake of trying to assess penalties for the false, outside-of-court attacks on her personally (which would/should be overturned faster than The Orange One can tweet a blatant, verifiable falsehood).
And Tethy@67, I am never going to forgive you (or NBC News) for imposing the concept of “intimate s/texting between Roger Stone and Alex Jones” on my poor brain. I’ve already tried half a dozen applications of BrainBleach™ and the stain is still there.
Jones’ lawyer has been pushing for mistrials ar every opportunity. I think he is incompetent enough to think “accidentally” sending confidential info to the other side, and their using it, would be a slam dunk mistrial.
What a fool if so.
Yeah, whatever happened to “…anything you say or do can be used as evidence against you?”
@70, At least some of the data was not “confidential”, but requested during discovery and improperly withheld. And Jones’ ambulance-chasers did not raise any objections to the reveal.
@70, @72:
Yes, at least some (from what I’ve been able to tell, virtually all) of the phone material was properly requested in discovery, and was improperly withheld on either spurious or formally rejected claims of confidentiality.
But that largely doesn’t matter because the families’/plaintiffs’ attorneys used it in a way that allows use and even admission of evidence that often is othewise inadmissible: As impeachment regarding prior factual statements made by that witness. If a witness — during direct examination by his/her/their own counsel — says X, cross-examination of that witness can use things and documents in which that witness said/necessarily implied not-X to challenge the witness’s recall or truthfulness. For example, let’s say that it’s an essential part of a defense that the witness was not at Massage Parlor Y at 2:30pm on the 27th, and the witness claims “I wasn’t there then.” It is proper to — while the witness is on the stand — confront the witness with his calendar entry showing an appointment for that time; with the Uber trip log on his account showing that he was dropped off out front of that Massage Parlor at 2:23pm on the 27th; and with his sexting message with Roger Stone at 2:33pm that day describing the massage “therapist” in… not-family-forum-friendly terms. The next step is to ask if that material “refreshes the recollection” of the witness; what rhetorical flights are taken thereafter are largely within the discretion of the judge.
tl;dr When you say something on the witness stand, and the other side has documents that you previously said otherwise in a way that harms your credibility, the other side can impeach you using those documents unless they fall inside not just “confidentiality” but “absolute privilege” (and, sometimes, in some contexts, even then).
One is reminded of the incident during Kitzmiller v. Dover when the judge asked the plaintiff’s lawyer for the copy of a deposition he was holding. The judge then looked it over and started questioning–and impeaching–the witness…