US AP: Alex Jones defiant in deposition in Sandy Hook hoax lawsuit - “I’m sure your pet judge will do whatever you want,” Jones said.

Alex Jones defiant in deposition in Sandy Hook hoax lawsuit​

Associated Press (archive.org)
By Dave Collins
2022-07-14 16:54:40 GMT

HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones was defiant and cited free speech rights during a lawsuit deposition in April when questioned about calling the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting a hoax and the effect the statement had on families who lost loved ones, according to court documents released Thursday.

Jones insisted he wasn’t responsible for the suffering that Sandy Hook parents say they have endured because of the hoax conspiracy, including death threats and harassment by Jones’ followers, according to partial transcripts of the deposition in Bridgeport, Connecticut, on April 5 and 6. Several Sandy Hook families are suing Jones for defamation over the hoax claim.

“No, I don’t (accept) responsibility because I wasn’t trying to cause pain and suffering,” Jones said, according to the transcripts. “And this is they are being used and their children who can’t be brought back being used to destroy the First Amendment.”

Jones added, “If questioning public events and free speech is banned because it might hurt somebody’s feelings, we are not in America anymore. They can change the channel. They can come out and say I’m wrong. They have free speech.”

After first promoting the hoax conspiracies on his Infowars show and other media platforms, Jones later said he did believe the shooting happened but has maintained he had the right to say it didn’t.

A gunman killed 20 first graders and six educators at the Newtown, Connecticut, school on Dec. 14, 2012. Families of eight of the victims and an FBI agent who responded to the school are suing Jones and his company, Free Speech Systems.

Connecticut Judge Barbara Bellis found Jones liable for damages to the families in November. Jury selection for a trial to determine how much money he should pay them is scheduled to begin Aug. 2 in Waterbury.

Bellis found in favor of the Sandy Hook families’ claims and defaulted Jones without a trial on the liability issue, as punishment for what she called Jones’ repeated failures to follow court orders and turn over documents. Jones has criticized Bellis and denies he failed to turn over documents to the Sandy Hook families’ lawyers.

A judge in Texas, where Jones and Infowars are based in Austin, issued similar default rulings and found Jones liable for damages to Sandy Hook families who filed lawsuits in that state over the hoax conspiracy promoted by Jones. Trials on damages also are pending there, with the jury selection in the first one scheduled to begin July 25.

The partial transcripts were released ahead of a court hearing before Bellis on Thursday to prepare for the trial. They were included in a motion by the families’ lawyers, Alinor Sterling and Christopher Mattei, asking the judge to bar Jones from challenging her liability finding against Jones during the trial.

Questioned by Mattei during the deposition, Jones called Bellis’ ruling “fraudulent,” accused her of lying and alleged she was friends with a lawyer in Sterling and Mattei’s firm, Koskoff, Koskoff & Bieder.

“I’m sure your pet judge will do whatever you want,” Jones said.

Mattei asked Jones if he had said the Sandy Hook shooting wasn’t real. Jones’ lawyer, Norman Pattis, objected to the question. Jones then said, “It is my right as an American citizen. ... I have said that in context I could see how people would believe it’s totally staged and synthetic.”

Mattei later asked Jones if he considered the Sandy Hook families to be “unwitting pawns” in a plot against him.

“I have just seen really a lot of sad people that lost their children using me to keep the story of their children in the news and gun control in the news. And so ... then I see the accusations by you guys that I made all this money off Sandy Hook when I know I didn’t.”

Thursday’s court hearing was held to deal with various scheduling matters and motions filed by both sides in the case. Bellis did not issue any major rulings.

Jones has filed motions to bar certain evidence from being presented at the Connecticut trial, including information about “white supremacy and right-wing extremism.”

Pattis also objected to media coverage of Thursday’s hearing, saying pretrial publicity could undermine Jones’ right to a fair trial. Bellis denied the objection, saying it did not outweigh the presumption of open courtrooms.

Pattis noted that on Tuesday, Jones figured prominently in a hearing of the U.S. House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the nation’s Capitol. The panel played videos of Jones and others vowing that Jan. 6 would be the day they would fight for Donald Trump.

 

[SSj_Ness (Yiffed)]

Yeah he actually is.

And now he’s gonna pay for it.

I'm open to being wrong, is there proof that his actions meet the legal criteria required for incitement? Or is this just butthurt libs who want him to pay for exercising his right to free speech, like Trump did on 1/6?

 

[MadStan]

I'm open to being wrong, is there proof that his actions meet the legal criteria required for incitement? Or is this just butthurt libs who want him to pay for exercising his right to free speech, like Trump did on 1/6?

Let's take a real example here of liability.

Someone calls into the Fire Department and reports a false fire not he other side of town. The trucks leave. While on the way another call comes in for a real fire but the trucks can't get there in time. People die that could have been saved.

Now we can argue the first person was exercising their right to free speech, but they have created a situation. Alex Jones and others knowingly spew false information out and state that they are facts.

It is not unreasonable to expect people to act on them.

Telling people the election was stolen and an illegal government is about to take over in any country is grounds to overthrow that incoming government and it is fair and reasonable to die for your country to protect it. If those people on Jan 6 had a real case, I'd throw them the munitions. But they didn't. They were told absolute fucking lies to get them to do something. The people who gave them the false info are culpable.

If I tell a cop at a traffic stop I'm going to blow him away with explosives under my seat and he decides to shoot first, you can argue all you want the cop shot an unarmed man that was actually not a risk at all, but the person making the false claim bears responsibility.

If you think me calling your employer and telling them there is a court case where you were prosecuted as a child molester and I email make up JPEGs of images with you and children and you lose your job go ahead and blame your boss, but surely I would bear some responsibility.

You know, there is nothing wrong with dealing with facts, and I am sorry if Alex jones can't sell airtime with facts and needs to resort to destructive tales to make a buck - but there is a price for this shit as he is finding out.

You don't get to profit from bullshit and then whine when you get caught. Fuck Alex jones - for all the right reasons.

 

[SSj_Ness (Yiffed)]

So, no then.

 

[Tad Loaf]

Not to bring whataboutism into this but this trial is such a joke considering CNN and other major news outlets have spouted far more bullshit and done far more harm than Alex Jones ten times over and yet they aren't slapped this hard for it ever.

 

[DaBigBopper]

Not to bring whataboutism into this but this trial is such a joke considering CNN and other major news outlets have spouted far more bullshit and done far more harm than Alex Jones ten times over and yet they aren't slapped this hard for it ever.

I believe Alex Jones has actually recanted a story before and made his show about what he got wrong in some cases. CNN, MSNBC, and FOX will do it at 11PM in the most legally non-binding way they can.

 

[Jaimas]

Why are they going so hard at Alex Jones?

Is his really that popular or is he really saying things the powers that be don’t want out there or is Jones just being a dramafag?

I’m genuinely curious, all I know about Jones comes from memes and his appearances on other people’s shows because, honestly, his show doesn’t interest me but he does as a person, if that makes sense.

Short version: Back when Bush was in office, Jones was willing to call the Bush Administration out on their shit, which made him a useful idiot to the establishment. When Obama got in, they thought they'd make Jones one of their attack dogs, akin to Olberman or Colbert. Unfortunately for the establishment, Jones would not be bought, and, disgusted by them, immediately went hard against the Obama administration. The usual tactics they could leverage against one of their own going rogue didn't really apply to Jones, who wasn't on their leash in the first place and had his own platform. Him questioning mainstream narratives and backing Trump was just salt in the wound.

At its rotten core, this entire sham trial is to punish him for rebuking them and failing to take the knee.

 

[Keavy Rain]

Short version: Back when Bush was in office, Jones was willing to call the Bush Administration out on their shit, which made him a useful idiot to the establishment. When Obama got in, they thought they'd make Jones one of their attack dogs, akin to Olberman or Colbert. Unfortunately for the establishment, Jones would not be bought, and, disgusted by them, immediately went hard against the Obama administration. The usual tactics they could leverage against one of their own going rogue didn't really apply to Jones, who wasn't on their leash in the first place and had his own platform. Him questioning mainstream narratives and backing Trump was just salt in the wound.

At its rotten core, this entire sham trial is to punish him for rebuking them and failing to take the knee.

Damn, son. Jones is like my homie because I’d do what he’s doing in his situation.

 

[SBG]

Heard that punitive damages get capped at under 9 million. So not as damaging for AJ as done making it out to be.

 

[heathercho]

Let's take a real example here of liability.

Someone calls into the Fire Department and reports a false fire not he other side of town. The trucks leave. While on the way another call comes in for a real fire but the trucks can't get there in time. People die that could have been saved.

Now we can argue the first person was exercising their right to free speech, but they have created a situation. Alex Jones and others knowingly spew false information out and state that they are facts.

It is not unreasonable to expect people to act on them.

Telling people the election was stolen and an illegal government is about to take over in any country is grounds to overthrow that incoming government and it is fair and reasonable to die for your country to protect it. If those people on Jan 6 had a real case, I'd throw them the munitions. But they didn't. They were told absolute fucking lies to get them to do something. The people who gave them the false info are culpable.

If I tell a cop at a traffic stop I'm going to blow him away with explosives under my seat and he decides to shoot first, you can argue all you want the cop shot an unarmed man that was actually not a risk at all, but the person making the false claim bears responsibility.

If you think me calling your employer and telling them there is a court case where you were prosecuted as a child molester and I email make up JPEGs of images with you and children and you lose your job go ahead and blame your boss, but surely I would bear some responsibility.

You know, there is nothing wrong with dealing with facts, and I am sorry if Alex jones can't sell airtime with facts and needs to resort to destructive tales to make a buck - but there is a price for this shit as he is finding out.

You don't get to profit from bullshit and then whine when you get caught. Fuck Alex jones - for all the right reasons.

Read Brandenburg v Ohio.

 

[MadStan]

Read Brandenburg v Ohio.

Thank you for that reference. I'll quote some of Brandenburg v Ohio (that for everyone else benefit ) specifically states:

"(1) speech can be prohibited if it is "directed at inciting or producing imminent lawless action" and (2) it is "likely to incite or produce such action." The criminal syndicalism act made illegal the advocacy and teaching of doctrines while ignoring whether or not that advocacy and teaching would actually incite imminent lawless action. The failure to make this distinction rendered the law overly broad and in violation of the Constitution."

What Alex did falls under point 1 & 2. He knew what would happen with such rantings and it did indeed follow. And then separate from that we have the defamation which is quite real and apparent as the families suffered.

 

[Tomboy Respecter]

And to every retard who sympathizes with Alex Jones: You're rooting for a man whose net worth is 5 million, who lives in a gated community estate worth 2,5 million, and whose companies made 76 million dollars in revenue in 2019, mostly by selling snake-oil to idiots. And this dude claims to oppose the "elites". JFC, you must be one dumb motherfucker to fall for this con.

You would have made a better point if you weren't so assblasted by a man that unironically watches tranny porn. I'm not all that sympathetic to Alex Jones' plight but I am congniscent enough to realize that getting (rightfully) butthurt over very inappropriate statements someone said years ago about your child's death is not really a good reason to suspend the fucking First Amendment, especially over speech that is constitutionally protected if crude. This thread shows the general lack of nuance the American Left (or the Left in general) has. You can not like a person and their actions and realize that they fundamentally are in the right solely based on objective standards. The world doesn't care about your feelings. It cares about cold hard facts. That's why society is so fucked up: it stopped being very objective in many respects that even the most primitive of civilizations would recognize and shifted to this effeminate feelings based system of morality where there is no objective truth or standards of measuring the truth.

I really don't care about Alex Jones but all the criticisms of him boil down to "he's a meanie" versus "he objectively did something wrong". It's moral crusading at it's most infantile state yet.

 

[Jaimas]

Damn, son. Jones is like my homie because I’d do what he’s doing in his situation.

Even if you absolutely hate Jones, and everything he represents, this trial represents something that everyone, of every single political stripe, should stand aghast in front of:

It is absolutely a political sham trial being conducted for no reason other than causing him as much harm as possible for pissing off the powers that be.

How stupid his Sandy Hook shit is fucking irrelevant; this is a demonstration of intent on the part of the state to show everyone what happens when you go against the mainstream, or worse, refuse them. The Judge in this case acted more like a Prosecutor than the actual fucking Prosecutor in this case, and it was blatantly apparent the fix was in before anything in this trial ever happened. If you don't even have a sliver of hope for a fair trial, the entire premise of our system of law starts to come crashing down. That may seem like a lofty claim, but I will remind you how little it took for a handful of activist District Attorneys to utterly fuck our legal system in several states by refusing to prosecute for nakedly partisan reasons.

Worse, this is not one-off incident - they will do this to other people. Alex Jones being banned from every social media platform in 2018 was a dry run for what the powers that be could and did do to other people later. They will try pulling this shit against other people now that they've succeeded with this technique against Alex Jones, and the fact that they have people unironically cheering for this outcome is a damning indictment of our society as a whole.

 

[Übertroon]

I've yet to see any proof that Alex Jones actually caused any damages with his speech, and instead it's being argued that he's liable for having hurt the feelings of the families.
Creating a legal precedent that you're responsible for hurt feelings and being rude and insensitive seems dangerous.

 

[Tomboy Respecter]

I've yet to see any proof that Alex Jones actually caused any damages with his speech, and instead it's being argued that he's liable for having hurt the feelings of the families.
Creating a legal precedent that you're responsible for hurt feelings and being rude and insensitive seems dangerous.

Because that literally what Britan does and see the countless threads of people being arrested for hurting some minority's feelings on Twitter to see why that's an amazingly retarded idea for a country that believes in free speech. This goes past libel laws and outright is the state actively trying to control the concept of speech and what you can say with it. With libel laws at the very least, you have to prove some tangible harm (typically monetary, but physical also) was done to you due to someone's comments. I like not living in the UK and don't want to import their shitty failed state ideas here.

 

[MadStan]

I've yet to see any proof that Alex Jones actually caused any damages with his speech, and instead it's being argued that he's liable for having hurt the feelings of the families.
Creating a legal precedent that you're responsible for hurt feelings and being rude and insensitive seems dangerous.

If someone told you there was a shooting at a school and the children were child actors and the entire incident was created to destroy your second amendment rights and you found out that your neighbor was one of those parents who were covertly working for the government; pretending to have children with fake funerals and were actually covert government agents, you’d do nothing?

 

[Mr Cuddles]

The world doesn't carw about your feelings. It cares about cold hard facts. That's why society is so fucked up: it stopped being very objective in many respects that even the most primitive of civilizations would recognize and shifted to this effeminate feelings based system of morality where there is no objective truth or standards of measuring the truth.

I was watching one of Tim Pools podcasts when they had Lauren Southern on and she unironically said that the right fails to understand "that their feelings don't care about your facts". It's a good point to have made and one that's got to be processed. I agree with your premise that once "my feelings don't care about your facts" gets in to significant power that the world will, and has started to fall apart. The problem is what can be done?

I'm coming to the conclusion that the modern left have become completely and utterly mentally ill. Not being able to distinguish between how you feel and reality is a mental illness. People should when calm and lucid be able to say I hate this man but he doesn't deserve this. The problem with the upper trenches of society being consumed by this illness is that now we are in position that's practically impossible to fix.

This isn't meant as a doom/fed/bait post but what the hell can we do to get out of this shit situation. The best answer I have is to separate and leave them to destroy themselves.

 

[Tomboy Respecter]

If someone told you there was a shooting at a school and the children were child actors and the entire incident was created to destroy your second amendment rights and you found out that your neighbor was one of those parents who were covertly working for the government; pretending to have children with fake funerals and were actually covert government agents, you’d do nothing?

Weaponizing the judicial system to get revenge for mean spirited words is not the point of the law. The law is not a set of moral guidelines to live by; it's basic bitch rules to establish law and order and using the justice system to punish someone that said mean things is literally one of the reasons Europe is stagnating so hard (in addition to other economic and social factors). I literally do not get how people don't get this: you can't have the seperation of chirch and state and have the government then act like a church and enforce morality and be okay with it.

 

[MadStan]

Weaponizing the judicial system to get revenge for mean spirited words is not the point of the law. The law is not a set of moral guidelines to live by; it's basic bitch rules to establish law and order and using the justice system to punish someone that said mean things is literally one of the reasons Europe is stagnating so hard (in addition to other economic and social factors). I literally do not get how people don't get this: you can't have the seperation of chirch and state and have the government then act like a church and enforce morality and be okay with it.

You are completely ignoring the context and avoiding the question. Your deflecting. Stick with Alex Jones.

So I’ll repeat the question given the scenario outlined; you’d do nothing and expect nothing to happen?

 

[Übertroon]

If someone told you there was a shooting at a school and the children were child actors and the entire incident was created to destroy your second amendment rights and you found out that your neighbor was one of those parents who were covertly working for the government; pretending to have children with fake funerals and were actually covert government agents, you’d do nothing?

Yes, cause madmen shouting from their soapboxes do not typically justify acting upon what the man is telling you.
If there were tangible proof that the event was a hoax I would like someone to investigate the matter, but I wouldn't think it's a call to start blasting the "crisis actors" who participated in it.
I would presume something is wrong with you if being told someone is a government stooge your first instinct is to cause them harm.

 

[Tomboy Respecter]

I was watching one of Tim Pools podcasts when they had Lauren Southern on and she unironically said that the right fails to understand "that their feelings don't care about your facts". It's a good point to have made and one that's got to be processed. I agree with your premise that once "my feelings don't care about your facts" gets in to significant power that the world will, and has started to fall apart. The problem is what can be done?

I'm coming to the conclusion that the modern left have become completely and utterly mentally ill. Not being able to distinguish between how you feel and reality is a mental illness. People should when calm and lucid be able to say I hate this man but he doesn't deserve this. The problem with the upper trenches of society being consumed by this illness is that now we are in position that's practically impossible to fix.

This isn't meant as a doom/fed/bait post but what the hell can we do to get out of this shit situation. The best answer I have is to separate and leave them to destroy themselves.

Excuse the double posting, but it is not even a hard concept to understand. What Alex Jones said about the Sandy Hook kids is morally unacceptable and no parent should have to deal with that. BUT, the law really isn't there to enforce morality: that's for communities and the individuals therein to regulate. The law is there to actually make sure society is stable and maintainable. It has to be as far removed from personal preferences as possible or else it runs the risk of breaking down due to people exploiting it or otherwise overstepping with it. What he said is prorected by the 1st Amendment, whichbis made specifically for this type of speech. Pretending that the government is a moral agent (it's not) is not going to change that fact.

You are completely ignoring the context and avoiding the question. Your deflecting. Stick with Alex Jones.

So I’ll repeat the question given the scenario outlined; you’d do nothing and expect nothing to happen?

I ignored the question because it's fucking stupid. Maybe rephrase it in such a way where the actual premises match up with reality in that there's more than two choices: good and evil. You can't force me to answer your stupid overly emotional hypothetical question.