While I was away, I missed all the news about Alex Jones’ trial. Would you believe he’s been brought before a court now to answer for his cruel lies about the Sandy Hook shooting, ten years ago? Justice is a slug.
Anyway, he’s being sued for defamation by parents of children murdered, because Jones was such a dishonest asshole about their pain and sicced mobs on them. The parents are still in fear for their life, because they’re still being harassed by Alex Jones fans. Jones himself has been dodging the trial — his lawyers probably told him his testimony would be a liability, although he is scheduled to take the stand today — so instead we’ve got the testimony of Owen Shroyer. Owen Shroyer! I’m sorry, that guy was an obvious stooge and dullard from the beginning of his career with InfoWars, and it must have hurt to have to rely on that bozo to represent the organization. I hope it hurts worse from now on.
Here’s a bit of Shroyer’s defense against the charge that he’d defamed Neil Heslin, the father of a six year old girl killed at Sandy Hook.
It was brutal. And yet Karpova was only the second worst witness of the day, because after her came Owen Shroyer. Shroyer is an Infowars host who pushed the “Pizzagate” conspiracy theory, called for former President Barack Obama to be lynched, and is currently charged with unlawfully entering the Capitol on January 6, 2021, an action he likens to those of Jesus Christ and the Dalai Lama.
Plaintiffs’ attorney Kyle Farrar got the ball rolling by getting Shroyer to agree that deceptively editing videos is bad. Also airing unvetted stories and videos from random sources, because people can get hurt, and that, too, is bad.
Golly, wherever could this line of questioning be going?
Surprise! It was going to Shroyer using a deceptively edited video from some rando on the internet without doing a single moment of vetting in an apparent effort to smear Heslin and get back at Megyn Kelly.
In a spectacular act of cruelty, Shroyer took a “story” from an anonymous internet source to suggest that Heslin was lying when he told Kelly he’d held his dead son in his arms. Based on a snippet of video from the coroner explaining that the bodies were so riddled with machine gun fire that he’d opted to allow the parents to identify their children by photograph rather than in-person, Shroyer inferred that the state had confiscated the bodies and never returned them to the parents at all.
“You would remember if you held your dead kid in your hands with a bullet hole, that’s not something you forget,” Shroyer said gleefully in the broadcast, played multiple times for the jury.
“I could have done a better job,” Shroyer conceded.
“You could have done a job,” Farrar shot back.
When Shroyer protested that he was live on air when the story came to him and didn’t have time to check it, Farrar pounced
“Is ‘I didn’t have time’ an excuse for defamation?” he demanded.
Shroyer conceded it was not.
Jones knows this is not going well, and has filed for bankruptcy to escape the $150 million judgment that is barreling down the tracks at him. This is for one set of parents and one child! I hope all the others join in and hammer this fraud deep into the ground.
It’s a lesser issue, but the court also hammered the InfoWars cronies about the “supplements” he sells. It’s all one big marketing scam for selling quack pills. Would you believe he makes $600,000 per week on that crap? And he can’t shut his mouth — he’s going on air on his program to brag about how he’s gaming the system.
Alex Jones says he filed for bankruptcy so his appeal bond on the Sandy Hook judgment will now only be half his net worth, allowing him to tie it up for years and stay on the air. pic.twitter.com/pHdL1ai48H
— Ron Filipkowski 🇺🇦 (@RonFilipkowski) August 1, 2022
Wreck him. Wreck him bad.
Where’s Paul Joseph Watson in all this? Did he bail on InfoWars to escape the wrecking ball?
I tend to increase my grain of salt when one story that’s presented as evidence talks of machine gun wounds, when no such weapon was in use. What other facts being reported as equally fanciful?
As for Alex and bankruptcy, I seem to recall some obscure outfit trying the same dodge in NY. The judge told the NRA to fuck off and take their medicine.
Note at Alex Jones has already lost the case. The current hearings before a jury are to decide the level of damages.
(at == that)
Infowars is consistently wrong about everything.
Did you know the Swine flu vaccine is designed to kill billions of people in the UN/Illuminati/Globalist population reduction program?
And, you will have to take it or get sent to a FEMA concentration camp.
This is from 2009.
None of this happened.
What happened was that the Swine flu vaccine was rapidly developed and prevented millions of cases of Swine flu and saved at least in the thousands of lives.
Infowars and its audience just ignore reality and move on the next conspiracy theory.
Infowars said something similar about the Covid-19 virus vaccines. They were wrong once again.
Infowars just lies a lot about everything.
They made up a lot of lies about the Covid-19 virus vaccines.
The reality is that the Covid-19 virus vaccines were highly successful and saved the lives of ca. 2 million Americans.
Alex Jones lies every day about everything.
He also makes tens of millions of dollars by doing that.
raven @6,
“There is no evidence that the COVID-19 vaccines weaken or destroy the immune system”
Recurring Covid infections, however…Google T-cell exhaustion if you want to have a few sleepless nights. Think HIV.
There is plenty of evidence that listening to Alex Jones, Joe Rogan, et al will destroy brain cells and weaken one’s immune system by exposing one to amedical, contra-indicated approaches to health care.
It follows that they should be denouncing themselves as evil authoritarians.
You need to double-check your copy. You say his daughter died, but the story you quote says it was his son.
Should not Jones be charged with contempt of court for walking out of the hearings and trashing the judge and system on the very courthouse steps, and the same on his radio/TV shows?
@8
Make no mistake, these are very dangerous men. Their rhetoric is fueling violence every day. Violence against minorities. Violence against immigrants. And most importantly and visibly, violence against women. They are dehumanizing human beings. Treating ANY group of humans as less than human is a dangerous road to take.
To us they are clowns, but to others (mostly angry white men) they are prophets.
It bothers me that the media have reported on infowars’ bankruptcy as if it’s a surprise – when 2 months ago they were reporting that Jones was spinning off shell companies and shuffling money around. It was obvious that that was what Jones was doing. I don’t understand how the justice system does not take into account that you can’t use such an obvious trick to avoid a judgement – it’s clear what is going on. I believe there is something called “tortious transfer” transferring money in a criminal manner for exactly this purpose, so I don’t understand how Jones can expect to get away with it. My suspicion is that what will happen is Jones will get a judgement against him (he has already lost the case) and the plaintiffs will just have to keep coming after him any time he appears to have an asset worth $1 or more, or has $1 in his pocket.
I knew a person who did something like this to avoid child support. He did not have an enjoyable life, being constantly hauled into court and constantly losing. When lung cancer caught up with him, he tried to reconcile with the people he had dodged paying for 30 years, and was surprised that they were not particularly accomodating.
My impression of people like Jones and this other fellow is that they are literally sociopaths: it’s not that they don’t give a shit about other people, it’s that they don’t even know what giving a shit about other people is. The problem, as I see it, is that everyone knew he was making stuff up, and our society is set up in such a way that there’s nothing to do about it until damage piles up – and even then, there’s nothing to do. It’s disgusting because the legal system protects the criminal not the victim.
A few snarky asides on the bankruptcy procedings:
(1) The debts may be nondischargeable, depending on exactly how they are characterized in state law. If the actual judgment uses the proper language, the resulting debt may be nondischargeable under § 523(a)(2) or (a)(6), so long as the judgment creditor (the plaintiffs in the state-court trial) move to have the debt declared nondischargeable on those grounds.
(2) If these “transfers” occurred within the 90 days preceding the bankruptcy filing, they are “avoidable” by the Trustee as preferential transfers. Of more importance, if the “transfers” occurred while the debtor was — as specially defined in the Bankruptcy Code — insolvent, the avoidance period extends to the earlier of one year prior to filing or the date of insolvency. Note that “avoidability” is a question that belongs to the Trustee, not to the debtor (even in debtor-in-possession proceedings under Chapter 11, where the debtor-in-possession has to formally justify each avoidance decision to the supervising Trustee).
(3) Even if both (1) and (2) fail, the transfers are subject to examination as fraudulent transfers… and the appearance here falls squarely within the Uniform Fraudulent Transfer Act’s scope.
(4) Then there’s 18 U.S.C. §§ 151, 157. Far be it from me to accuse someone of holding a specific criminal state of mind regarding commercial transactions for which I have not carefully evaluated the actual documentation and other relevant facts, particularly after ensuring that I have no conflict of interest or commercial advantage to be obtained depending upon the outcome of the inquiry. (It helps that for six years I lived in a community that had no fluoridation; my mind is obviously much clearer now.)
Jones’s strategy, such as it is, appears calculated to make collecting on the judgment impracticably expensive and time-consuming. As the old saying goes, “In the eyes of a guilty defendant, justice delayed is… justice.”
@12 Jaws Thanks for the info. Fact is I don’t no shit from shinola about these laws.
@13 Follow up
I’ve never had enough money to declare bankruptcy. Like the vast majority of Americans, I go broke, I just die.
OT
You need some good news.
The first ten minutes is about how badly Trump et al have fucked up.
At the 33 mark there is the story of how an emu beat a drunk driver.
“Skepticrat # 179 Emutant Ninja Edition”
https://youtu.be/WPU70Kmp3Yk
Good news- the PACT act just cleared the senate! 🥂
Mitt Romney and Rand Paul were among the Republicans who voted against it. (Ted Cruz chickened out)
More good news: Kansas voters overwhelmingly rejected the ballot measure to remove the right to abortion access from the state’s constitution.
microraptor @ #17 — That is very good news indeed, particularly “overwhelmingly rejected”.
Re: microraptor @ #17..,
Both NBC news and the BBC are reporting that, but neither is giving any numbers. It’s got to be on very early returns, though.
Not unrelated – just noticed a Jordan Peterson youtube video titled “The mind of highly disagreeable people”. Comment would be superfluous…
whheydt @19: The New York Times said that it was 64/36.
(Kansas amendment) NBC News is putting the No vote at 60.8%, with 88% of the votes counted.
(Kansas amendment)
Obviously an artifact of the rate at which votes are counted and announced, but (from the NBC News site), the percent of the No vote is slowly declining as more votes come in. It’s now down to 60% with 90% of the votes counted.
It certainly looks like the Noes will win (and the networks are calling it that way), but it’s not looking nearly as decisive as it did earlier.
The Kansas City Star currently shows 59.7% No, 40.3% yes with 88% counted. 60/40 is pretty good these days. Fingers crossed it holds. Needless to say, it’s urban versus rural. The Kansas City area, Topeka, and Wichita are solidly no. The rest of the state is yes.
(Kansas amendment)
NBC News now shows No with 59.2%, 99% of votes counted, estimated 8746 still to count. Since the margin is a good deal more than the number of ballots left to count, I think it’s safe to consider it 59/41.
The guy has never been right about anything. The half truth he tells in his lies, he claims that since that’s true all the made up stuff he added is true too. And his supporters eat it up. He constantly claims he’s near broke and barley scrapes by… someone just gave him $8million in bitcoin a few months ago. The guy has never told the honest truth in his life. He’s still making out that the families he harassed aren’t suing him, but a conspiracy of left wing godless globalist blah blah. He will never take responsibility for his actions.
@ ^ Alt-X : “someone just gave him $8million in bitcoin a few months ago.”
So maybe enough for a small cup of coffee at its present market value then?
Otherwise – yeah. Spot on.
StevoR:
Only if a small cup of coffee at its present market value is $8m.
Did you not realise that the phrase “$8million in bitcoin” refers to the market value?
(Perhaps think before you snark)
I think Jones will leave the country with tens of millions all while continuing his broadcasting from abroad. In other words, I don’t think the parents will see a penny.
@27 I wish someone would give him Ebola!!