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They say this, yet he's still making and spending to the tune of 100k per month and the courts aren't doing anything about it. Rich people don't get to go broke like the rest of us, he's gonna keep living in a nice house and making millions and get away with not paying anyone, and the courts won't do shit
This is part of due process in doing something about it. Unfortunately it's a lot faster to commit crimes and get "creative" with moving money in not-quite-crimes-but-still-bullshit than it is to weigh up their legality and enforce appropriate penalties.
When a legal system relies heavily on precedent as guidance and technicalities can destroy a decision, and fixing that might take decades and destroy lives, you have to make sure it's good. Especially when this many people are watching.
Unfortunately you're very right that the slow speeds to ensure precision are easily and visibly exploited by scumlickers like Jones.
The good news is that he’s not nearly clever enough to actually hide assets. They will get tracked over time and seized.
I can see why you would think this, but this is a very unusual case. Particularly so given the decision in this article.
You're dead right in that rich people don't go broke like the rest of us - because they have accountants and lawyers set up complex business structures so if something falls over they can just walk away (or drive away in their nice car to their nice house).
This article is pretty much saying that all that usual dance isn't going to work in this case - he still has to pay $1.1b.
Also, there's no law that prevents him from going on making money. That may not feel "right" or just but that dynamic is the same even for poor people. That said, at 100k per month it would take him 916 years to pay $1.1b soo... he might curtail his luxurious lifestyle, maybe not.
HAHA
Fuck you Alex Jones
Couldn't have happened to a more deserving "person". This isn't going to bring the kids back but at least it'll stop people from fucking harassing the parents decades later. Jones is mentally fucked up and he deserves to be locked up.
And yet I believe he still will not pay them a dime... just like if trump loses all his court cases in New York, I really believe he will just refuse to pay and force them to chase him around asking for that money for the rest of his life. Rich people never have to pay fines in the US, its all for show, they always find a way to get around everything.
The victims will almost certainly not see the full $1.1B, or even anything close to that. Not because Jones will hole up his money and refuse to pay, but because Jones doesn't have the assets to cover it, and never will. With a judgement hanging over him, he will be unable to raise the capital necessary to ever pay it back--it takes money to make money, especially when you need to crack the billion dollar mark.
Jones himself is still fucked. Rich people get away with stuff because they hire good lawyers. Jones forgot that part of the plan.
I'm not really in the loop on this but can someone ELI5 why Alex Jones is the only one that's being forced to pay money for the shit that comes out of his mouth? It seems like everyone else is doing whatever they want with no repercussions.
He made very specific defamatory statements accusing fellow citizens / parents of murdered children of participating in a government conspiracy and those people were able to prove they experienced harm as a consequence of his words.
The plaintiffs also had enough financial backing from (understandably horrified) strangers, and a high enough chance of winning for lawyers to want to represent them. Those factors allowed the plaintiffs to survive the legal system long enough to get a ruling, and the severity of the situation maintained their motivation to keep pushing for it instead of accepting settlement so they could somewhat move on with their lives.
Sometimes, the planets align to create the trifecta of enough energy, money, and evidence to force the justice system into enforcing justice. And I am grateful that can sometimes still happen, as rare as it feels.
I prefer to think thusly:
“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”
---Martin Luther King, Jr.
But I can certainly understand people's pessimism, looking at the world around us...
That's fair, I'm not a flat-bow conspiracy theorist, even if the curve looks real flat right now from down here.
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.
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.
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.
I think they were afraid of discovery revealing even more malicious information than what's being assumed.
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.
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.
On top of everything else, his idiot lawyer accidentally emailed ALL of the discovery evidence that they had claimed didn't exist TO THE PLAINTIFF'S ATTORNEY. As well as no showing and getting a summary judgement.
There is so much stupid in that trial, you really should go find a legal YouTuber who documented the various levels of idiocy and just watch in amazement.
I'd recommend LegalEagle.
Alex Jones got himself into this position via a trifecta of pure stupid.
First of all, he made claims that the Sandy Hook shooting was a hoax. This turned public opinion against him severely, because Sandy Hook was a lines-crossed kind of event. Although school shootings are common in America, these tended to happen in colleges and high schools. Sandy Hook was an elementary school, meaning the victims were much younger
Secondly, he called the victims of the aforementioned shooting 'crisis actors', people who are paid to portray victims during emergency drills. These lies by Jones directly led to harassment campaigns against families that were already grieving the loss and extremely violent deaths of their very young children. This also got national attention, and many people pitched into the responding lawsuits raised by the grieving families against Jones's media company.
Thirdly, and perhaps a big reason why the punishment is so severe, Jones treated court hearings and depositions as optional, and skipped a huge amount of them. He didn't even seriously attempt to defend himself in a court of law, and when he did try, his lawyers were either idiots or actively working against him, leaking text messages (EDIT: and emails) that contradicted his own testimony. This led to a lot of default and highly punitive judgements against him.
To the third point, if they had done the minimum, they were more or less fine. The burden lied with the plaintiffs. He handed them a default judgement dream.
I hear ya. There are at least some other recent examples. The settlement between Fox News and Dominion. Giuliani is being held to account for libeling the Georgia poll workers. And of course all the Trump cases. But yeah, feels like a drop in the ocean.
That's... wild.
Aside from whatever you feel about this guy, he's fucked. It might take some time but the victims will start to get court orders to seize his assets, which they can then present to banks, police, and other authorities, who will then turn them over directly.
The USA has it's fingers in almost every financial network in the world and Alex Jones can no longer be safe anywhere except basically crypto, bad actor countries, and I guess cash in his mattress. For the rest of his life. And he can't escape it with bankruptcy.
He'll be better off trying to get citizenship in Russia or China or something and never coming back.
Good.
You would think he would pay, but look at OJ. Verdict to pay 30 million, and after all these years he only did 130,000.
Getting assets seized and wages garnished is not as easy as you would think.
Time to start freezing assets and looking for what he's got offshore (and in Russia).
Well since the USA has brought back debtor prisons anyhow, I know someone that ought to be in one
Dude, what the fuck. How morally bankrupt is the US?
Think of the lowest point you can imagine and still have a functioning society. Realize there's at least a solid third that want to go lower than that.
I love this for him.
I was once told by a wise man, “Jar-jar Binks has a Caribbean, black accent”.
This is what the “loser little, lil titty baby” deserves. Only a shame it’s arriving so late.
A fellow policy wonk, I see.
Couldn’t have happened to a better guy, honestly
Good
Now i understand why he is appearing on russian propaganda shows, perhaps trying to pull a Snowden?
Nothing matters until they find him guilty of contempt of court in not paying his judgements, everything else is just wasting time