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I think what Alex Jones did is more than mere defamation.
Repeatedly lying about the reality of a school mass shooting, over years, in such a way that he caused threats to be made against the families of victims?
Incitement to credible threats of violence, and especially continuing to do so even after you're aware that's what your listeners are doing, deserves severe consequences.
In such a way that somebody else decided on their own do something...
Incitement means means explicitly encouraging. Just because someone people made threats of violence to the families because they believed what Alex Jones said about the shootings, doesn't mean that saying "The shootings were faked" is incitement. If Jones had explicitly said "the families deserve to suffer violent consequences for helping fake the shootings", that would be incitement.
That's why he wasn't convicted of incitement, he was convicted of defamation.
There’s a reason even the right wing hardliners abandoned this guy.
More to the point he has Roger Stone and Steve Bannon on the show constantly, who in turn have direct access to Trump.
Alex is firmly within the mainstream of the right wing.
He was literally, as in literally, comparing the families of the victims to Adolf Hitler and the Nazis.
I don’t know about you, but if someone has been screaming at me for years that I need to be ready for armed conflict with “the enemy” and then points to someone screaming “that guy’s Hitler”, I would definitely take that as explicit encouragement. But obviously it’s all “just comedy” right?
I am going to pick ignorant in this case.
> “Folks, we got to get private investigators up to Sandy Hook right now. Because I’m telling you this — this stinks to highest heaven.”
> “Why did Hitler blow up the Reichstag — to get control! Why do governments stage these things — to get our guns! Why can’t people get that through their head?”
How is a bankruptcy case "stealing stuff through improper process"?
Being liable for an amount more than you have means the people you owe won’t be able to get the full amount, but it doesn’t mean you get to keep all your stuff and pay them nothing.
We should fix that system, but like, why is Alex Jones the one to get hung up on?
Bankruptcy itself aside, the judgement against Alex Jones here is huge. I haven't looked it up but I'm sure it broke records. The plaintiffs' initial demands of trillions of dollars were absolutely insane. They could have actually gotten more money with a lower judgement that allowed him to pay over time. But clearly restitution is not the objective.
Not sure why the bankruptcy trustee working with the companies largest creditors, so large, that a simple proportionate would result in them claiming pretty much the entire possible payout, can be considered collusion.
The only people who can possibly be harmed are the creditors themselves. If they want to strike a deal that results in more equitable outcome, but with less total cash, that’s their business. Remember Alex Jones is on the hook for close to a billon dollars, and that sum has already been through various appeals and due process already, it’s no longer up for debate. The only question left is how Jones is gonna pay it. Unless someone creditably believes someone is going to hand over close to a billion dollars to purchase InfoWars, it seems silly to reject an offer that the creditors themselves believe is fair and reasonable.
Because there is no actual money, there must be consensus among creditors, and the assets in question might more than pay the debt (in general). I believe there are also tax implications to writing off debt in some cases, as well as tax implications associated with the actual sale of property. So no, you can't just go rogue and take possession of someone's property for any price you like without even having the cash, just because they haven't paid their debts or they are an unlikeable person.
What makes you think there wasn’t agreement from all the creditors? There is zero chance the assets can cover the debt (which is close to a billion dollars). The whole point of the deal was that the primary creditor was giving up part of their claim to allow the other creditors to actually see a real payout. There was real cash on the table, and under the rejected deal, every creditor, except the biggest, would see more actual cash in their pocket.
All of this was only possible because the largest creditors worked with the trustee to create a better deal for everyone involved. The fact it also allowed the largest creditors to stick it Alex Jones was icing on top.
> So no, you can't just go rogue and take possession of someone's property for any price you like without even having the cash, just because they haven't paid their debts or they are an unlikeable person.
If you’re the one that owns their debts, then yes you absolutely can. The current owner has already forfeited their claim to the property when they defaulted on the debt and started bankruptcy proceedings. Why the hell would the owner of the debt be required to have the needed cash on hand to repay themselves, that’s ridiculous.
> But clearly restitution is not the objective.
Sure. And damages can be punitive in nature.
Free advice, kids: stay in school, don’t do drugs, and comply with court orders when you’re sued.
No they are not. Technically nobody knows what someone might be willing to pay. That is why public auctions are the default. The only reason an auction should be private is to protect the identity or interests of the bidders. Taking one round of bids from private parties is not an auction.
Yes they are. They encourage people to make the best bid they reasonably can based on their desire to ensure the purchase goes through. There's a reason they are the de facto standard for bidding on government contracts.
> Technically nobody knows what someone might be willing to pay.
This is correct. But what you don't seem to understand is that this also causes people to overbid. This is the reason why the vickrey method was created - to ensure that the highest bidder does not massively overpay against the second.
> That is why public auctions are the default.
Public auctions are the default for... what? Bankruptcy? In the US, yes. In Canada and other parts of the world, no. And default does not mean only option or best option.
> The only reason an auction should be private is to protect the identity or interests of the bidders.
They are frequently used explicitly because they often get the person selling the best offer. If the people bidding in auction have asymmetric purchasing power, in an open auction, the winning bid will be slightly over the purchasing power of the weaker party. In a sealed bid auction, the winning party will frequently have a bid with a larger delta than they would have in an open auction.
> Taking one round of bids from private parties is not an auction.
Nothing about the word 'auction' precludes a single round of bidding, sealed or otherwise.
Just to reiterate - the trillions number is irrelevant - it's just an initial damages claim. The judgements were for 965M and 50M - slightly over 1B in total - and the expected final award to the injured parties is likely going to be below 200k.
It's not the only objective, punishment is also an objective. If not you get settlements like Purdue Pharma's one which even after paying billions in damages still had made more money than that, you don't want an incentive to break the law like that, it becomes just another cost for the business and not really a punishment for it.
On the point of "any award in the billions (much less trillions, as they initially demanded) is exorbitant for mere defamation" this is a pretty clear misunderstanding of our legal system as it is today. Initial claims are a mere formality that do nothing but potentially limit damages - the judgements rendered against Jones were 965M in the Connecticut case and 50M in the Texas case - no other numbers are relevant. Finally, referring to 1.015B as "Billions" feels rather dishonest - the total award is technically above a billion but the families will see nothing near that amount in the final resolution.
Repeating the verifiable lie that the Sandy Hook incident did not happen, and promoting violence against the surviving families, despite repeated opportunities to stop without penalty, is beyond forgivable.
And this penalty is because he declined to defend this behavior. Remember, it's a default judgement.
The conditioning to the public is that this behavior is not tolerated in a civil society, no matter what your political leanings. Him losing his "intellectual property", but not his voice, is getting off lightly.
Indeed. This should be a matter of criminal charges. Jones should be in jail.
OTOH, he would, of course, be pardoned in a couple months.
Targeted harassment, defamation, libel, intimidation? Sure. Dishonesty, however, doesn’t seem to even remotely cut it.
The First Amendment is nearly absolute, and must protect unpopular and offensive speech even more than it protects popular speech.
(Don't start with the bogus "fire in a crowded theater exception" - that wording comes from Schenk v. United States (which was not even a 1A case, but involved the Espionage Act), and was nearly entirely overturned in 1969's Brandenburg v. Ohio. The clear falsity of the "Fire!" claim has repeatedly and wrongly used as a justification for suppressing speech for a century, to the detriment of us all.)
As much as I'd personally enjoy never hearing from or about him again, I agree that 1A is an extremely important right that should be defended, even if you hate what the person is saying.
But free speech does NOT mean freedom from consequences. Taking away infowars does not stop him from continuing to speak his nonsense.
> But free speech does NOT mean freedom from consequences
Freedom of speech most certainly means freedom from coercive consequences. Or do you think the first amendment merely prevents the government from engaging in physical prior restraint such as putting duct tape over your mouth, and post facto punishment is legal? Ultimately this "consequences" refrain is a broken talking point that was arrived at by people arguing for the attractive cryptofascism of big tech censorship [0].
The right answer is that there are "exceptions" [1] for freedom of speech based on other concepts. For example, forming a contract (especially a verbal one) is done entirely through speech but yet still commits parties to performing other actions in a legally enforceable way. Defamation and harassment are other concepts that get equitably weighed against the ideal of freedom of speech. And those last two are what Jones ran afoul of.
[0] It started off something like "... consequences from private parties" and then the last bit got dropped because the focus wasn't a good faith discussion of freedom but rather a cheering on of the consequences. See also the fake libertarians saying "edgy" things like those who can't afford food should die - their focus isn't really the freedom but rather it's the death.
[1] In actuality they are not exceptions but rather equitable balances. The axiomatic-foundation framing of rights is a dead end, as it intrinsically supports the cryptofascism of denying rights through an ever-increasing amount of preconditions.
You're going to be hearing that word a lot in the next four years. May as well get a head start on it.