Okay, today's date is Thursday, December 2nd, 2021, and the time is 9 p.m.
I'm sorry, it's 1041 a.m.
This is the deposition of Owen Troyer.
Morning, my name is Melissa Rall.
I'm a Texas CSR number 11482. I'm located in Weatherford, Texas, and I'm reporting this deposition remotely by stenographic means.
Counsel, would you please state your appearances and stipulations or agreements before I swear to the witness game?
Bill Ogden for the plaintiff.
Brad Reeves for defendant Owen Schroer.
And then just at the very outset, We spoke with plaintiff's counsel prior to going on the record, but we're in agreement to stipulate that this deposition is subject to the pending protective order that is awaiting signature from the judge.
Is that correct, Mr. Ogden?
Correct.
Thank you.
recording in progress will you raise your right hand to be sworn in please Do you solemnly swear the testimony you're about to give in this case will be the truth, the whole truth, and not the best truth?
Yes.
Please introduce yourself to the jury.
My name is Owen Schroyer.
I live in Austin, Texas, and I am a reporter and talk show host.
Mr. Schroyer, what's your address?
7312 East Ben White Boulevard.
How long have you lived there?
I believe just under four years.
Who lives at that house with you?
Just myself.
Okay.
Are you married?
No, sir.
Divorced?
Nope.
Alright.
The internet's got you wrong.
A lot about me is wrong on the internet, yes.
There's not a lot about you in general, though.
It's impressive.
I try to keep my life private.
Do you have any children?
No.
Have you ever given a deposition before?
Yes.
Okay, when was that?
Would have been about a month ago and in a Connecticut case similar to this one.
Okay, so that would be the Lafferty lawsuit?
Yes.
Okay.
Probably most of the rules that they had there are going to apply here.
If you need a break or anything like that, let me know.
All I ask is if I have a question on the table that it's answered before we take a break.
Eventually, this is going to get a little conversational, most likely, and we'll anticipate what each other's going to say.
We may start answering before my question's done, or I may start asking my question before your answer's done.
If we talk over each other, the court reporter's going to have a hard time getting a clear record, so if you allow me to finish, I'll allow you to finish.
Answers need to be audible, so mm-hmms or shaking other heads is natural conversation, but so that we can get a record.
If I say, is that a yes, it's not me in any way griping at you.
It's just so that the record can be clear.
What did you do to prepare yourself for today?
I met with my counsel for about an hour and a half earlier this week.
Do you know what day that was?
Tuesday?
Tuesday.
Okay.
Did you review any documents?
Just the document in front of me here, which is just the notice of the deposition.
Okay.
Other than that, you didn't review any documents?
No.
Okay.
Did you talk with...
If any of my questions imply an answer that has to do with information that you've conveyed from your lawyer, I don't want that.
And he'll let you know if it's going to go that way, and he'll object and instruct you not to answer.
But all my questions are asked for information that is not privileged.
So just an FYI on that.
You understand that this case was filed on behalf of Neil Hessland for defamation.
Yes.
You understand that the court has found you to have defamed Mr. Heslin?
Objection of form.
I was not understanding that, no.
Okay.
Are you aware that default judgment has been granted against you?
I am aware of that, yes.
Okay.
Do you have an understanding of what that means?
Not exactly.
This is my first time having any involvement really in this case.
Okay.
Do you understand why default judgment was granted?
I do not, no.
Okay.
I'm going to represent to you, and if I'm wrong your attorney will correct me, but I'm going to represent that that was because of multiple issues with discovery abuse.
Did you know that?
No.
Okay.
There were a number of questions that were sent to you and requests for documents and for written responses under oath.
There were requests for depositions, and there were a number of different things that were sent to all defendants that were not adhered to for a number of times, and that's why the court found what they did.
Do you understand that?
Objection form.
No.
This is everything that I've been requested of.
I've cooperated with.
I've answered the questions that have been brought to me as far as You know, electronic requests for documents or anything like that.
As far as my understanding, I've responded to everything and provided everything I possibly could.
Okay.
How long has Mr. Reeves been your lawyer?
I'm not sure when he was officially retained as counsel in regards to this case.
We have been in and out of communication for give or take a couple months, and we finally met for the first time this week.
Okay.
Prior to Mr. Reeves, who was your lawyer?
There have been a bunch of lawyers in and out of this case.
I can't think of who would have represented me off the top of my head previously.
Sure.
Who's paying for your lawyers?
I have a...
We have a legal trust fund with the Pattis law firm that is a result of a crowdfunding.
Prior to that, we have retained legal counsel via Free Speech Systems, LLC. Okay, so your personal representation was being covered by Free Speech Systems?
I believe me setting up this legal trust with the Pattis law firm, yes, and with these cases, yes.
Okay.
Were you aware that affidavits have been filed in this case that have shown how much attorney's fees have been spent defending you up until you got Arranged with Mr. Pattinson's legal trust?
Objection form.
Did you know that the legal defense bills that have been submitted have been in the tens of thousands of dollars?
Objection form.
Did you know that?
No.
Have you reported any of that on your income taxes?
Objection form.
No.
Okay.
With free speech systems providing you with personal legal counsel, is that part of your employment?
I do not know if that's an official part of my employment or not.
When you say Free Speech Systems, who owns Free Speech Systems?
It's my understanding that Alex Jones is the owner.
Sole owner?
It's my understanding.
Okay.
And so when you say Free Speech Systems is paying for it, Alex Jones is paying for your lawyers?
Objection form.
My understanding is that We have counsel on retainer, and when stuff I do that is in regards to my professional work at Free Speech Systems ends up in a courtroom, that that legal counsel that we have retained represents me.
Okay.
So it's part of your employment?
Again, I'm not sure if that's a technicality as part of my employment or just something they decided to do with me because of these cases, but that's been the case.
Okay.
And was Mr. Jones the individual who brought this arrangement to you?
Objection form?
I would say unofficially, yes, I guess.
There was never a strict conversation about it.
It was just kind of implied and understood.
Well, I mean, you knew you weren't getting bills, right?
Right, exactly.
Somebody was paying for it.
Yeah.
We're almost to the end of 2021.
Are you going to claim any income for legal services that were rendered to you and paid for by individuals other than the trust that was set up?
Objection form.
Don't answer that question.
That has nothing to do with the underlying claims in this lawsuit.
How much he makes?
You just said he was going to claim legal fees as income.
I'm asking about his income for the year.
Punitive damages discovery is net worth.
Okay, but that's different than legal fees.
It's a liability versus his assets, Brad.
That's not an appropriate, so you're asking him to talk about future claims on his taxes that he's, one, may not even know yet, and two, that's not appropriate here given the underlying claims here, punitive damages claims related to your income, and claiming that is different than legal fees.
I'm asking about net worth.
Okay, well, if you could repeat your question, then, because that's not how I heard it.
I'm not trying to, go ahead.
The income that you're going to claim that you've received from your employer for this year, is it going to include the legal services that they have paid for?
I do not know.
Okay.
How much money do you make from free speech systems?
Is it salary or hourly?
Salary.
What's your salary?
Give or take, currently, about just over $100,000 a year after taxes.
After taxes, $100,000 take home?
I don't know the exact number.
I think it's about, I think before taxes, it's just over $120,000.
After taxes, I think it's just right around $100,000.
Do you get paychecks bi-weekly, bi-monthly?
Bi-weekly.
Okay.
And those are roughly $5,000 every two weeks?
Yeah.
Okay.
How long has that been your salary? - Thank you.
About 12 months.
Okay.
And before that?
It was probably closer to about $3,500 bi-weekly.
Okay.
What caused the significant increase in income for your salary?
Time of employment.
Just working a lot, I would say.
Maybe the success of my broadcast has increased as well.
Sales of the products that I promote.
Okay.
And when you say products that you promote, those are the, you know, supplements and items that you can buy at the Infowars website?
Yeah.
Okay.
Do you get a commission off those?
No.
So, other than your set salary, there's no commissions or bonuses that you receive from the company?
We've had seasonal bonuses before, like Christmas bonus.
Okay.
Are they significant?
It's about the same as my bi-weekly paycheck.
Okay.
Somewhere $5,000 to $10,000?
Yeah.
Okay.
Do you own your house or do you lease it?
Own it.
Do you have a mortgage or do you pay for it in cash?
Mortgage.
Okay.
What was the purchase price of your home?
$430,000.
Okay.
And are you the sole name on the mortgage?
Yes.
Okay.
How much did you put down?
I don't recall the exact number off the top of my head, but it was somewhere in the range of $25,000.
Other than the money that you make in your salary, do you receive income from any other sources?
I have one other source, which is just an independent social media platform called Subscribestar.
It's a subscription-based service.
I make about $1,000 a month, probably closer to $900.
Okay.
Do you receive any income from social media platforms other than Subscribestar?
No.
Prior to early 2019?
18?
Were you receiving income from YouTube, Facebook, anything like that?
No.
Okay, so the videos...
You had a YouTube channel, correct?
I did.
And your YouTube channel was getting...
What I would say is fairly significant views on videos you were posting, correct?
Yes.
And you were not monetizing that?
No, not me personally.
Who was monetizing it?
I have no knowledge of any monetization of any of my YouTube videos.
I know for a fact my personal YouTube was never monetized.
Any other channels that featured my content, I can't say with confidence were or were not monetized.
Okay.
So, since you've started at InfoWars, your income has been pretty much your salary plus the Subscribestar that you've recently started doing.
Yes, and that is it.
I think I've been on Subscribestar for maybe two years now.
Okay.
Prior to your employment at Infowars, what did you do?
Okay.
I was mostly working in sports media in St. Louis.
I also had another job doing youth development for the YMCA. I've had other part-time gigs like DJing, emceeing, weddings and proms and events like that.
But most of my work and income would have been from just doing sports media in St. Louis.
Okay.
And who is that for?
Honestly, there's a long list of people.
I believe that we may have submitted that in a resume form, in a documents request, but KFNS, KXFN, CBS Sports, a lot of that was just contractual work, so it may have been a different person paying me every time.
Sure.
But those are the entities for sure that I was receiving checks from.
Did you apply to InfoWars or did they reach out to you?
They reached out to me.
And by they, who was they?
My first professional contact with InfoWars, I'm guessing, would have been from Rob Dew.
I'm sorry, from who?
Rob Dew.
And was that an email, a call, to come meet you?
Maybe both.
But the first request was to just do an interview on air.
Then they asked if I wanted to come down for an interview for a job.
And I came down to Austin for that summer of 2016. And then they offered me a job and I accepted it.
When you accepted the job, what was your job description?
At the time, field reporter.
Every once in a while I would do live fill-in hosting, live on air.
I was doing a lot of video editing at the time then as well.
So I would say as far as titles, reporter, editor.
Journalist?
Yeah.
Okay.
And has your job changed since you started?
As far as the day-to-day, yes, but there's never really been a professional title per se slapped on me.
I guess what I'm asking is, sitting here today, you're still a journalist, right?
Yeah, for the most part, I've still been doing the same thing.
You said for the most part.
Other than being a journalist, what other things do you do?
Well, I'm just referring to I'm now live three hours a day, versus back then I may not have even been live one minute a day, just depending on the day.
Sure.
Okay.
Okay.
And I was just making sure that you weren't changing out of being a journalist into some other role for the company.
Do you own, you know, and I'm ballparking here and I understand that you don't know exactly what everything's worth. and I'm ballparking here and I understand that you don't But do you roughly estimate that you own more than $60,000 worth of personal property?
What would be included?
Everything you own.
House, cars.
Not your house, not your car.
No.
And two guns and any horse or cattle that you have.
No.
$60,000?
No.
Okay.
Do you own any expensive jewelry?
I have one Rolex watch, and that's it.
Which Rolex do you have?
I don't know, Chrono Master, I think.
I don't know.
Okay.
And did you purchase that yourself, or was that a gift?
That was a gift.
And who was that a gift from?
From Alex Jones.
When did he give you that?
I don't know the time.
Early in your career, recently in your career?
Definitely early.
If I had to guess a year, I'd say 2017. And was that just a welcome to the team or did you earn it in some way?
No, I think it was more of a welcome to the team, more of just an appreciation token.
How's your relationship with Mr. Jones?
I would say good.
I mean, there's elements of friendship and then there's elements of boss and employee, but I would say good.
Okay.
Would you consider him your best friend?
No.
Okay.
Does he consider you his best friend?
I doubt it.
Okay.
What's it like working for him?
Pretty tough.
High intensity atmosphere, very demanding, but also at the same time, I'd say liberating because he's not breathing down your neck all day, but he has high expectations.
Okay.
Has he ever asked you to do something you didn't want to do?
Well, I mean, I guess any boss has done that to an employer, but as far as, like, against my morals, if that's what you're talking about, no.
Okay.
How many people would you say work at your employer?
I'd say that just from the day-to-day media operations that I am aware of, about 50. And in the hierarchy of those 50 individuals, where do you stand?
It's tough to say.
There's not really a flow chart, per se, of ranking, but given my persona and recognizable status at the company, probably pretty high, I would say.
Okay.
Are you privy to the financial information of the company?
No.
And that's what I'm saying.
When it comes to The inner workings of the company, I'm low on the totem pole.
Other than Alex Jones, do you have a direct boss?
I would say if there was one, it would be Rob Dew, but not really.
Do you and Mr. Do have a personal relationship as well as a professional relationship like Mr. Jones?
Yes.
Are y'all best friends?
No.
Okay.
Do you hang out with him outside of work?
Occasionally.
How's that?
Just your typical stuff.
Go out for dinner.
Go out and have a drink.
Nothing, nothing too serious.
Okay.
Do you own any guns?
Yes.
Do you own more than two?
Yes.
How many?
Four.
Thank you.
Are any of them expensive?
What is the classification for expensive?
It's a subjective question.
What's the most expensive gun you have?
Maybe $5,000.
Okay.
What kind of gun is it?
It's a Sig Sauer rifle.
Okay.
What kind?
I don't know the name exactly.
I'm not the biggest gun enthusiast, but I do have some.
Did you purchase that gun or was it a gift?
Purchased.
Okay.
How many vehicles do you own?
Two.
What kind of vehicles are they?
A Dodge Charger and a Dodge Challenger.
Are they base models?
No.
What kind of are they?
Charger is an SRT, Challenger is an RT. Other than your home on East...
I didn't write that.
Ben White.
Ben White Boulevard.
Do you own any other real property?
Yeah.
Okay.
If you, what is your current net worth?
If I had to guess, between $50,000 and $100,000.
And I understand it might be a little bit of a guess, but you understand that on Monday your Responses to additional discovery that we've sent on net worth is due, so I assume that you'd compiled that already.
I've been working on getting a better idea of that, and that's where I've landed is somewhere between $50,000 and $100,000.
Do you own any businesses?
I do have an LLC. It's not currently doing any business.
Has it ever?
No.
Just in case?
Yeah, it was something I set up for a potential thing, and it just never really manifested.
Where do you bank?
Wells Fargo and U.S. Bank.
How long have you been with Wells Fargo?
I don't know the exact date.
At least four years.
Would you say they're a good bank or not so great bank for consumers?
Honestly, it's just a savings account.
I put money in.
I take money out.
That's pretty much all I've ever had.
Savings or checking?
Savings.
Okay.
And then US Bank is your checking?
Yes.
Do you have a retirement set up?
No.
Okay.
What made you choose Wells Fargo?
It was the closest location where I could set up a savings account in Austin, Texas.
Okay.
And I ask only because, you know, with all the documentaries and them going in front of Congress and all the stuff they've had with violations for, you know, kind of sticking it to the little man, I was just curious what made you choose Wells Fargo?
Just ease of access more than anything.
Convenience again.
That line of questioning was not in that notice.
So I might've caught you off guard.
But when you got that notice and you came in here today, what was your understanding of what we were going to talk about?
Are you talking about this notice?
Yeah.
Mostly a, I think, a five-minute or so segment that was done when I was live hosting an Alex Jones show about a Zero Hedge story.
5 minutes and 27 seconds.
And that was on...
I got it here.
June 25th, according to your affidavit of 2017, correct?
Yes.
That was a Sunday show.
Yes, that's my understanding.
What time does the Sunday show air?
4 to 6 p.m.
Central.
Okay.
And when you shot that movie during that segment...
I mean, excuse me, when you were shooting that segment and the...
Portions of this segment, this five minutes and 27 seconds that we're talking about, I think it's 27 seconds, about five and a half minutes, came out.
Was that at the beginning, middle, end?
I'm not sure.
Okay.
How did you learn about that article?
It was presented to me that day as I was on air.
By who?
I do not recall.
So you got it after 4 o'clock?
Yes.
And when it was presented to you, did they just hand you a copy of the article?
Pretty much.
I mean, my best recollection, and this is just trying to dig into my memory, is I'm in the studio.
Someone comes in and says, hey, here's a story.
We also have the video clips for it.
And then we're live, and I mentioned the story and showed the video clip.
Okay, so who handed it to you?
I do not recall.
Okay.
Who has the authority at Infowars?
Let me back up.
Sunday show, you're filming it.
I'm assuming Mr. Jones is not present in the studio.
That's my understanding, yeah.
If I'm filling in, most likely, yeah.
Okay.
And who has the authority...
If he's not there, to find a story, cut a number of clips into a small segment, and hand it to you and give you the authority to go with it live.
I would say anybody has that authority.
There's not really an authority figure that has to decide that.
Anybody can bring me a story at any given time.
There's not going to be somebody that tries to stop me from reading it or try to stop somebody from bringing me a story.
So if there was testimony from the corporate representative of Free Speech Systems and Mr. Jones and the litigation surrounding the lawsuits The Sandy Hook lawsuit filed in Texas that said that Mr. Jones has the authority and that he approves everything.
That wouldn't be true according to you.
Objection form.
Can you just rephrase the question for me?
You're saying that Alex Jones does not have to approve everything that goes on air.
And if somebody was to testify under oath...
That Mr. Jones did have to approve everything, they would not be telling the truth, correct?
Objection form.
So you're saying that Jones personally approves everything that I would cover on air?
Is that what you're implying?
I'm asking if Mr. Jones...
I'm asking if somebody testifies that Alex Jones has to approve everything that goes on air beforehand, If they testified to that, they would not be telling the truth according to you, correct?
Objection form.
Alex Jones does not approve everything that goes on air.
Okay.
So right now, has he ever told you not to cover a certain story?
Not that I recall.
Okay.
So if you wanted right now to go in studio when you leave here and do a whole segment about how you think Sandy Hook is a hoax, you could do that.
Objection form.
I could, and my guess is I would get quite a tongue lashing afterwards.
Okay.
But he wouldn't stop you.
The mic is on, the camera's on, we're live.
I mean, other than coming in studio to tackle me or turning it off, no.
Do you run stories by him before they go on air?
No.
We'll discuss sometimes just as a matter of discussion, you know, what I'm going to be covering or what my biggest story is, but there's not really a rundown.
So day to day, how many people are working on a Sunday?
Eight.
So one of those eight people came up to you, handed you a printout of a Zero Hedge article, and told you they had clips ready to go.
Yes.
And you said, sounds good.
Yes.
So did you say, let's run with it before or after you read the article?
I do not recall.
Did you see the video clips before you ran them?
I do not believe so, no.
Okay.
So you ran with a story and you did not know exactly what was about to go out on air, correct?
I had the story brought to me.
I probably looked at it, scanned it, and just basically did a form-fitting, here's the story, here's the video clips.
So it wasn't even really an opinionated piece.
It was more of a, here's the different elements we have, introduce them, pitch to them.
Okay, so you weren't giving your opinion, you're just stating facts?
As far as I was concerned, what was in the article and what was in the videos, yes.
Okay.
Do you know who wrote the article?
I believe the author is Tyler Durden from Zero Hedge.
Okay.
You ever met Mr. Durden?
No, it's my assumption that Durden is just a pseudonym for whoever the actual author is.
But it could be the real Tyler Durden.
I doubt that exists, but maybe the guy's name is Tyler Durden.
Have you ever met Dan Ivandijewski?
No.
Have you ever met Colin Loki?
No.
Have you ever met Tim Backshall?
No.
Do you know who they are?
No.
Okay.
Have you ever had any correspondence between you and anyone at Zero Hedge?
Not to my recollection, no.
Okay.
Do you know anybody that works at Zero Hedge?
Not that I know of.
Okay.
Nobody has talked about Zero Hedge with you as far as being from an employment standpoint?
No.
Okay.
Do you know Jeremy Hartley?
No.
Okay.
So do you consider Zero Hedge to be a reliable source of information?
Objection form.
What's the form of objection so I can clear it up?
Fae as to what you mean by reliable.
Okay.
Mr. Schroyer, do you know what the word reliable means?
Yes.
Okay.
Would you consider Zero Hedge a reliable source of information?
I would say it would just depend on whatever information that they're publishing.
Okay.
By that you mean you would see what they published, you would read it, and then you would determine the veracity of it?
Yes.
Okay.
But here you just scanned it, right?
Yes.
You didn't read it?
I may have read it before, I may not, if I can't recall.
Okay.
Prior to this instance and after, frankly, have you been handed a document, scanned it, and then just went with it?
Probably, but it's not a normal occurrence.
But there'll be times where I'll be on air and somebody will bring me a breaking news story and sit it on my desk and I'll scan it and I'll say, this is a developing news story right now.
Okay, so what happened here is not a normal occurrence.
Objection form.
I would say yes and no.
It's a normal occurrence in that it's a news story.
We're a live news organization.
There's constantly news coming in and out of my desk.
But I would also say no.
It's not like every day or every segment someone says, hey, here's this news story.
It's breaking right now.
Right, but what I'm saying is not common is the fact that you're live on air and somebody hands you a document and says, we're running with this, we got clips ready to go.
That's not a common occurrence.
Usually it's something that is fact-checked.
You see the different video clips that you're going to be talking through and you're prepared for it.
Yeah, I mean, in this instance, it's really just kind of a momentum thing, you know, because, like, let's say there's a developing story of You know, like just the other day, we had somebody run somebody over with a vehicle, right?
So if there's an ongoing story, you know, somebody will be bringing me stuff as I'm on air just updates to the story.
In this case, the reason why there was momentum to this is because Megyn Kelly was just in town.
She was in the news.
So there was already all this momentum about Megyn Kelly.
We saw that she was in the Zero Hedge article, and that's why they brought it to me.
Was any of it retaliatory for Ms. Kelly's portrayal of Mr. Jones and her interview with him the week before, a couple weeks before?
I can't even recall the dates, if that aired before or after the segment in question here.
So I wouldn't say retaliatory.
I would just say it was relevant.
Did you, have you watched the video in question?
Which video?
The five minute video where you're on air talking about Neil Heslin's son.
Yes.
When was the last time you watched it?
During my latest deposition in the Connecticut case.
Okay.
And in that video, surely you realize that, I don't know, 75% of it is the Megyn Kelly interview that happened before you went on air.
You're talking about the Megyn Kelly interview.
Yeah, I believe she was interviewing Mr. Heslin.
Right.
And so I cleared it up because you said, I don't remember if the Megyn Kelly interview came out before or after.
Okay.
Well, I guess what I should have said is I'm not aware if it was the same Megyn Kelly show.
I gotcha.
What do you think of Megyn Kelly?
Not too much.
Why?
I just don't really think much about her.
Okay.
And I was just asking, positive, negative, neutral?
It doesn't matter to me.
Probably neutral.
Okay.
And what about Mr. Jones?
I'd say positive.
Really?
Yeah.
Okay.
And I say really, kind of in a surprise, based on the few hours of InfoWars that I've watched of him talking about Miss Kelly.
Oh, you're asking me what Alex Jones thinks of Ms. Kelly?
That was my follow-up.
Oh, okay.
I thought you were asking about my opinion on Alex.
Oh, you know what?
I really don't know what Alex thinks of Megan.
Okay.
He hasn't voiced any frustrations or animosity in front of you or to you?
No.
Okay.
Do you watch the program when you're not on air?
The InfoWars programming?
Whether it's, you know, the Alex Jones show or any of the other ones that you guys have?
Yes.
Do you watch them every day?
If I can, yes.
Okay.
And do you recall Mr. Jones's reaction when Megan Kelly's interview with Mr. Jones aired?
The only thing I really recall is he felt betrayed because Megan My understanding was that she wasn't going to talk about Sandy Hook and that was pretty much my understanding was that was the agreement that Alex had to even bring her in was that she wouldn't talk about Sandy Hook and then that's all she wanted to talk about and so I think there was a frustration.
He felt betrayed.
But other than that, I'm not aware of any other opinions expressed to me from Alex.
Okay.
Earlier we talked about Tyler Durden, and I think you and I can agree that the author of the Zero Hedge article, his real name is likely not Tyler Durden, correct?
Yes.
Tyler Durden is a name from a movie Fight Club, correct?
Yes.
Okay.
I just got reminded that it actually wasn't Tyler Durden.
Tyler Durden is another editor or Reporter on whatever Zero Hedge is.
It was Zero Point Now who wrote the Zero Hedge article that you ran with.
I recall that now.
Prior to that, had you ran articles by Zero Point Now?
Not that I'm aware of.
Okay.
And you realize Zero Point Now is obviously not the author's name, correct?
I would assume, yeah.
Is it?
Earlier you said that you work at a news organization, correct?
Yes.
And that you're a journalist, correct?
Yes.
Is it good journalism to receive an article from an anonymous source that you can't recall ever using before and voicing it on live air as a news organization?
I believe in this case I'm not doing Prime journalism.
I'm doing journalistic commentary.
The journalist in question would be zero point now, or the people in the videos that I played would be considered the journalist.
It was their original reporting, not mine.
I was just simply commentating on that journalism.
Right, but your commentating had conclusions in it.
It wasn't just opinion.
You understand that, right?
Objection four.
I'm not so sure.
What conclusions are you speaking of?
I think it's impossible.
It's impossible for you to list yourself as over 5'8".
That's me asserting a fact.
That's not my opinion.
I don't say it's unlikely.
I say it's impossible.
That's a fact, right?
We can agree?
I'm asserting a fact.
That I'm not 5'8"?
Or taller.
Okay.
Okay.
But what does that have to do with the video?
Okay.
Do you remember what you said in the video?
Yes.
Okay.
Did you use the word possible?
I believe so.
I don't remember the exact quote.
Do you remember what you were talking about?
Um, no.
You were talking about a dead six-year-old.
Okay.
And you said it was impossible for that six-year-old's father to have held his son with a bullet hole in his head based on what you had read and received.
Okay.
My conclusion was not that that was impossible.
My conclusion was that the series of events that I highlight in the videos would indicate that there is an inconsistency there.
And I was more questioning Megyn Kelly in the instance.
And if you look at the exact quote, I'm not asserting that Mr. Heslund lied at all.
What I'm asserting is that Megyn Kelly never did a fact check and that That it was basically impossible, or that it was, I should say, what I should say is, and again, this is asserted in the quote, that because of the inconsistencies shown in this story, it's going to add to the conspiracy theories about Sandy Hook, which are a bad thing.
So my entire notion was that, hey, this is not good for conspiracy theories out there.
They're going to take this and they're going to run with it.
Will Megyn Kelly fact check it?
I understand you were saying you were asking questions, right?
And at the end of it, I think you say, you know, that people want answers to these questions.
You remember that?
Yeah, and again, I'm saying that this story is only going to add to the conspiracy theorists out there about Sandy Hook and that that's a bad thing.
And you're saying that because those conspiracy theorists are the ones asking the questions, right?
I'm not sure exactly what you mean.
You said conspiracy theorists have a lot of questions and we want answers, right?
Yeah, I would say people have questions and this story here is not going to stop people from asking the questions.
People like you?
I mean, I covered Sandy Hook for less than 10 minutes of my career.
So I'm not really one that questioned Sandy Hook.
I never said kids didn't die.
I never said Mr. Hesland's son didn't die.
I simply was covering a story that was claiming there were inconsistencies in the story and then saying Megyn Kelly wasn't going to fact check it.
Alright, I'm going to read you a direct quote real quick.
He's claiming, he is Mr. Heslin, the grieving father.
He's claiming that he held his son and saw the bullet hole in his head.
That is his claim.
Now, according to a timeline of events and coroner's testimony, that is not possible.
So, surely you can agree with me that a reasonable person would hear you say that and think that you are basing the possibility conclusion on the evidence that you are looking at, right?
Objection four.
I'm not sure I understand the question exactly, but what I'm saying is, according to the coroner, the coroner said that they didn't release the children to the parents.
Well, I'm gonna ask you this.
And you're basing that off of the clips that you played during the segment, right?
Yes.
In your affidavit, you claim Miss Kelly edited videos to slant Mr. Jones.
You remember that?
No, I don't.
Do you think she did that?
Yeah.
Do you think it's right for a journalist to edit clips for an agenda?
No.
Okay.
Do you think it's good journalistic practice for a journalist to take edited videos, not ask any questions, and run with them without fact checking them first?
Probably not.
Have you listened to the coroner, Mr. Carver, Dr. Carver?
Have you listened to his whole interview?
Because I'll represent to you the segment that you played cuts off immediately after he says he didn't release the children.
But I want to tell you that it keeps going and he says a lot more.
Did you know that?
No.
It's kind of an important fact, right?
Yes, I was unaware of that.
Especially if you were about to say what you said about a father who's still trying to get over the fact that he had to bury a child.
And that's awful and I understand and that's why I said it's impossible for Mr. Heslund to have a false memory of his dying kid because of how serious that would be.
That's the point I'm making is that he wouldn't have that false memory.
So according to the coroner, either the coroner is lying or Megyn Kelly's just not going to fact check it.
Or Mr. Schroyer didn't watch the whole coroner's interview and hear the coroner say That he didn't release them at first and later released the bodies.
Maybe that's the third option, right?
Well, sure, that can be true.
It can't be true.
It is true, Mr. Schroyer.
You understand that, right?
Objection form.
Okay.
You're being sued in multiple states by, I don't know, a dozen people, right?
I don't know about that.
How many people are suing you right now?
Two.
Okay.
How many plaintiffs are in the Lafferty suit?
I don't know the number.
Okay.
But not all of them are suing you?
Only one of them is suing you?
Again, I don't know the number.
So the answer to my question, how many people are suing you, is I don't know.
Yes.
That many people are suing you?
Yes, I don't know.
You think you got this story right?
What story?
The story that the coroner never released the bodies and Mr. Hesslin never held his dead son and saw a bullet hole in his son's head.
I could have been wrong about that, not knowing that there were further clips of the coroner.
You could have been wrong?
Yeah.
Have you spoken with Mr. Jones or Mr. Dew about this litigation at all?
Not too much, no.
Has no one On the dozens of people and lawyers, no one has come to you and told you that what you said was dead wrong.
No.
And that you messed up and used a clip that was highly edited for an agenda.
No.
And I didn't edit the clip.
I did not previously view the clip.
It was presented to me.
And you just went with it.
Yes, I just played it.
Right.
You called yourself a journalist earlier.
Does a journalist just go with something that someone hands them?
Well, I would say that that happens all the time.
But again, in this case, I'm not acting as a journalist.
It's not my first person reporting.
I'm doing journalistic commentary on somebody else's reporting.
So you were given an opinion?
No, I wouldn't even say that.
I was just presenting what I had in front of me.
Okay.
But you were presenting it as facts, right?
I mean, I just presented it as it was.
When you say, that is not possible, there's no light or bell or anything that plays for an audience member to know that you're no longer being a journalist.
Now you're just doing journalistic commentary, whatever that means.
What is your question?
Is there any way for a viewer or a listener to know when you switch hats?
I don't understand how that's relevant.
Well, I'm asking you this.
You said you're on air for three hours a day, right?
Yes.
Okay.
In those three hours, you do both journalism and journalistic commentary, what you call it, right?
Yes.
Okay.
How is the viewer supposed to know when you're being a journalist and telling the truth, or when you're just regurgitating things as facts and then doing commentary that comes off as fact, now that we're asking you under oath, You're saying, whoa, no, no, no.
I was just saying what someone else gave to me that someone else said that someone else said.
Objection form.
I'm not sure what the question was.
It was a really long one.
Sorry.
Well, hold on.
Let's wait.
Hold on one second.
What's your evidentiary objection?
One, it's a compound question, and two, it's very vague.
I'm not sure what you're asking.
What was compounding about it?
Well, you asked, you said, you put a lot of things.
Mostly, I didn't understand the question.
Okay.
Well, that's fine.
If you just said, hey, can you repeat that?
Can you repeat it for him?
The question's overall, I think, fine.
I just, I couldn't follow it.
Are you aware that Zero Hedge isn't even the outlet that wrote that article?
No.
Okay.
Who wrote it?
Zero Point Now.
Okay.
And Zero Point Now writes for Zero Hedge?
Or Zero Hedge republishes Zero Point Now's article.
Okay.
Do you know that Zero Point Now didn't write that article?
No.
Okay.
Do you know who wrote that article?
I guess not.
I would have assumed it was Zero Point Now.
Okay.
Zero Point Now is the one who published it, but iBankCoin.com Is the source that originally ran that story at 1.25 p.m.
Houston time.
Okay?
You go on at 4 and we know that you weren't handed that article until after 4 o'clock.
Correct?
So sometime between 1.25 and 4, Zero Hedge found it.
And republished it.
And we know that was at 2.25 Austin time.
So, from 2.25 to sometime after 4, someone from Infowars was able to see the article, read it, and cut a bunch of clips and hand it to you.
Right?
Yes.
Okay.
Does that sound like good journalism?
Again, I don't even know if I would call that journalism.
That's just live television.
Okay.
Give me another example of live television where that would be appropriate.
What exactly would be appropriate?
Well, I'm just saying, who vetted the story?
iBankCoin, zero point now, zero hedge.
Okay, who are they?
I don't know.
Do you know?
So, that's what I'm asking.
Who vetted the story, Mr. Schroyer?
I don't know.
That's the answer.
So, do you know?
I have a fairly good idea who Zero Hedge did.
Have they been sued too?
Let him ask you the questions.
Unfortunately for you, I get to ask the questions in this form.
I understand you want to.
Just let him ask you the questions.
But, let's just say this.
Mr. Schroer, you had no idea what those clips were, right?
No.
What if one of them was child pornography and somebody accidentally put it up on the air?
That would be real bad, right?
Yes.
Right.
See, because you need to look at things, review them, and vet things before you just throw them out to millions of viewers or potentially millions of viewers, right?
Mm-hmm.
Okay.
That's not done at InfoWars, is it?
We have never aired child pornography.
No, but you've accidentally produced it in litigation before.
Did you know that?
Objection form.
He didn't produce any of that.
No, I had nothing to do with that.
That was a spam email sent to somebody else.
Okay.
You understand that...
You're involved in the Connecticut suit, right?
Yes.
And there was a lot of talk...
About the child pornography that was transmitted from Infowars to the plaintiffs in that case, right?
A lot of talk.
I'm not aware of a lot of talk.
Well, it's safe to say that nobody vetted it or looked at it before you sent it to another individual, right?
Objection form.
He did not send anything.
He, Owen Schroer, did not send anything.
And what are we talking about?
Hold on one second.
Brad, if your client wants to tell me that, he's more than welcome to.
And I invite him to.
All right.
I understand.
But if you want to get sworn in, I'd love to do you next.
I don't want you to do anything with me, thank you.
But no, I'll go ahead and ask your questions.
All right.
You understand that the defendants in the Connecticut case, you of which are one of, Accidentally produced child pornography because nobody checked what they were sending out, right?
No, I don't believe that's accurate at all.
You're asserting that we produced something that was illegal, which never happened, and then you're saying that it was, I guess, sent to somebody else as a matter of discovery?
Let's back up real quick.
You don't know what I mean by produced.
You didn't make it.
You're not producing in your world, producing in my world.
Discovery requests were sent out and they're called requests for production.
So one side produces documents to the other side.
And when the production from the defendants, you are one of which in Connecticut, that production to the plaintiffs had child pornography because nobody looked at it.
Correct?
I cannot answer that question.
Sure you can.
On no earth could a lawyer or somebody at Infowars have seen that video and said, let's give it to the plaintiffs.
Right?
Well, I mean, let's put it into perspective.
If I get 10,000 emails in a day, And 5,000 of them end up in spam and I never read them.
How am I to know what's in those emails?
And if somebody requests my entire email account and I send them everything because that's what they wanted, And they get some spam in there that I've never opened.
How is that my fault?
I didn't make the email.
I didn't produce the email.
I was never aware of the email.
And this is still nothing even to do with me.
It wasn't even my email.
Well, I'll just say this.
You're right.
In that instance, it would probably be your lawyer's fault.
Because we do have to read everything and make sure it's responsive.
And this whole going down this road was just to show you what happens when nobody fact checks or double checks or reviews something before it gets sent out.
That's the danger of it.
You understand that now?
I don't think it's a fair comparison.
Okay.
That's fine.
But you understand it.
You understand what I'm saying.
Sure.
Right.
Okay.
Do you have some exhibit stickers by chance?
I'm just going to write it by hand.
Oh yeah, I bet they have some.
We've been going for an hour and a half, or an hour and five minutes on this.
Yeah, let's take a five and we'll go get some drinks.
Yeah, I've got to use the bathroom.
We're going off the record at 11.37am.
We are back on the record at 11.55am.
Mr. Schroyer, in front of you, I've handed you Exhibit 1. Do you recognize that?
Yes.
That is an affidavit that you executed on July 18th?
July 13, 2018, correct?
Yes.
I mean, this is being refreshed to me now, but yes.
And if you turn to page 5, that's your signature?
Yes.
And it looks like it was notarized by Mr. Frugge, Timothy James Frugge.
Yes.
All right.
Do you remember why you executed this affidavit?
I would have to refresh my memory, but, yeah, I mean, I'd have to reread the whole thing.
I don't know if you want me to do it now, but it just seems that this is an affidavit dealing with, I'm guessing, this case.
And an affidavit, you understand, that's you signing your name to those facts within it and swearing to God that they're true, right?
Yes.
Who wrote it?
I do not recall.
You didn't write it, right?
I don't believe so, no.
Did you read it before you signed it?
Yes.
Okay.
And it's all true?
Yes.
All right.
Let's go through this together.
Well, number one says you're Owen Troyer and that you're over 21 years of age and you've never been convicted with a felony or a crime involving moral turpitude, correct?
Correct.
You ever been arrested?
Yes.
How many times?
I'm not sure the exact number.
Okay.
But you have been arrested, you've just lost count of how many times?
Yeah.
Okay.
Is it common for you to get arrested?
Not common, but probably too much, more than I'd like to admit.
Okay.
When was the first time you were arrested?
I believe 2010. Have you ever been charged with a felony?
No.
All misdemeanors?
Yes.
Okay.
2010 you started getting arrested, so you were in college?
Yes.
Okay, what was that for?
Drinking while driving.
Okay.
And that probation or deferred adjudication of some sort?
We reached a plea agreement and I've completed all that probationary stuff.
So was it expunged off or did it never go on your record?
You know, that's complicated.
They say that stuff gets taken off your record, but I think, as we all know, it never does.
When I say off your record, I mean, the government can always see it.
But, like, your employers do a background check or something like that, they're not going to find it.
The plea agreement I remember reaching at the time was that, yes, it would be off my record, but ever since then I remember it always being on my record.
Sure.
Okay.
Was it involved in an accident?
No.
Okay.
After your DWI, what was the next time you can remember that you've been arrested?
It would have been probably my disruption of Congress in December of 2019, I believe.
Okay.
That was when you stood up when Jerry Nadler was talking and started yelling in front of everybody, right?
Yes.
What were you trying to make a point of in that?
That the Russian collusion narrative that we were sold about Donald Trump was a lie?
I think part of that is true, but, you know, I think reasonable minds could differ on the Ukrainian collusion side of it, you know what I'm saying?
No, I don't know what you're saying.
But I would say overall, I think Russian collusion, the narrative has been debunked by now, dismissed.
Okay.
And the reason we can say it's been debunked is we had an impeachment and he was not guilty.
So it's been debunked.
That's one element, yeah.
I mean, that's the ultimate deciding element.
Sure.
Depends who you ask, but yeah.
And the fact that they did the impeachment, the investigation and the hearings ultimately vindicated President Trump at the time, right?
Yes.
So it was a good thing, right?
Yes.
So why were you screaming?
I have a loud voice.
Right.
Well, let me ask this.
Why were you screaming an open session of Congress?
At the time, I felt that it was a serious problem.
Our president was dealing with made-up accusations.
It was occupying a lot of government time, money, and resources, and I figured that that was a bigger issue than the made-up narrative that Trump was somehow colluding with Russia.
Okay.
Surely we can agree that both sides waste time and money, right?
Sure.
I just want to make sure.
You have a fairly good idea where you lean politically based on what you do for a living and some of the things you said today, but I just want to make sure you're reasonable that both sides can do harm.
Let's switch to paragraph two here.
Actually, wait, let's back up.
After you got arrested for yelling while When Jerry Nadler was speaking, what was the next time you got arrested?
I believe it was January of the next month.
I was arrested for standing in the Capitol.
The judge threw those charges out.
Okay, so that was January 2020?
Yeah, I believe so.
Okay.
Or I may be getting my years mixed up.
But I believe it was the next following year after the Nadler arrest.
Okay.
And you were charged, those were thrown out?
Yes.
Okay.
And after you were arrested that time, when was the next time you were arrested?
I turned myself in to the FBI this summer.
Why?
There were charges made against me.
In regards to events that happened in Washington, D.C. on January 6th.
The January 6th riots when they stormed the Capitol?
Yes.
Were you there?
I was in D.C., yes.
Were you at the, I guess, what do you call that?
The rally?
We're not going to go into this stuff right now, the stuff that's pending.
We're not going to talk about that.
I'm sorry, I'm having...
I'm sorry.
He has a right to, a Fifth Amendment right, to not currently talk about anything related to any pending charges against him.
So, you know.
I'm just going to ask you a question, Brad.
Sure.
Are you asserting someone else's Fifth Amendment right right now, or are you instructing your client in a weird way to do it?
As his lawyer, I'm allowed to do that, yes.
No, you're not.
You're to instruct your client to do it, and if your client wants to take your advice, they can plead the fifth.
All right, fine.
Go ahead and ask your question.
Were you at the rally beforehand that wasn't inside the Capitol on January 6th?
Which rally are you referring to?
There was one where Rudy Giuliani and Donald Trump and a bunch of other people came.
I was at President Trump's speaking event, yes.
Okay.
And that's...
What did you do after that?
I'd rather just not comment.
Okay.
You can plead the Fifth Amendment if your answer is going to incriminate you in any way, or you have to answer it.
So...
I have ongoing litigation with that.
And I choose to plead the fifth as to not put any more commentary on that event right now as those litigations are proceeding.
Okay.
Who is paying for your lawyers?
I'm assuming you have lawyers for that slew of events, correct?
Yes.
Okay.
Who's paying for those lawyers?
This is coming out of the legal trust I have established via the Pattis Law Firm.
Okay.
Okay.
And when you marketed this legal trust to crowdsourcing, did you market it as just general, all of my legal costs for all this that I'm getting into, or was it for specific cases?
General.
Just general legal stuff.
Okay.
Had you ever done that before?
No.
Do you find it kind of odd that you have to ask strangers to pay for your legal bills for things that you do?
No.
The people that donate accurately view me as an innocent man.
I'm not a rich man with much money.
I wouldn't be able to afford these lawsuits without it.
And I think you're right in that they view you as an innocent man, at least unless and until or unless you get convicted.
That's the way you get guilty here.
But you're innocent in my eyes, buddy.
After you got arrested, after you turned yourself in, have you been arrested since?
No.
Okay.
And when you were arrested the last time, were you on probation?
For any misdemeanors that hold monetary fines.
I'm not aware of what you mean by monetary fines.
You can get fined if you have a misdemeanor infraction, you can get fined, correct?
I'm not sure about the consequences, but I had a deferred case, which was the Nadler case, which was deferred.
Okay.
Which would have been completed in the year 2020, but everything got backed up because of COVID. Okay.
And I'm assuming that's the community service aspect of it.
Yes.
And you knew when you were there on January 6th that you had not completed your community service, right?
Yes.
Okay.
And you still chose to go, right?
Yes, and I did not violate my deferred agreement being there.
Okay.
Until you, you know, were charged with an alleged offense.
Because that does violate the deferred, correct?
No.
Judges have even decided that that is not a violation.
Okay.
Learn something new every day.
So, how many criminal cases do you currently have pending?
Two?
I guess, yeah.
Okay.
What were you doing there on January 6th?
Covering President Trump's speech and covering a rally that was ongoing.
I'll mark this as Exhibit 2. Here, I'll give you that copy.
That's exhibit two.
I know it's in black and white, but there's a circle in the top right corner and there's an individual in the middle of it.
Is that you?
Yes.
Okay.
And is that a photo, to the best of your knowledge, taken at or near the time of that January 6th day?
Yes.
Okay.
Three.
What exhibit is this?
Six.
Sorry, here.
I've got all these paperclip documents.
There we go.
Don't need that.
I'll take that.
There you go, Brad.
This is going to be marked exhibit three.
Oh, here.
It's this one.
There's another on the back of this one.
Oh, okay.
Exhibit three that I've marked.
I've got a picture.
There's a circle of an individual under a gentleman wearing what he may consider to be a cowboy hat, and he's holding either a flag or some sort of pole or weapon, correct?
You know, I'm not sure what this has to do with the case.
I think I've answered enough questions as far as this is concerned.
I have pending litigation, so I'm just going to choose to plead the fifth on any remaining questions you have about January 6th.
Okay, so here's my thing.
My question was about this gentleman, what he was holding, but I think you were a little premature on your plea there.
There's an individual circled in this photograph.
Is that you?
Yes.
And do you know where this was taken?
I'm not sure.
Okay.
Do you know whether or not this photograph was taken the same day as exhibit I'm not sure.
Okay.
Let's go back to Exhibit 1, the affidavit.
but we'll go down to paragraph two, right?
It says, It says, "I have been a frequent critic of the government for using tragedies such as Sandy Hook to manipulate public opinion in order to, among other things, further restrict gun rights in this country." among other things, further restrict gun rights in this country." I read that correctly.
Yes.
Okay.
What do you mean by manipulate public opinion?
I mean, use I mean, just outright lies to deceive the public.
Okay.
And so this sentence, you're not saying the government used Sandy Hook to use outright lies to deceive the public.
You're saying that you are a frequent critic of the government for using tragedies to outright lie.
Yes.
Okay.
Like what?
Gulf of Tonkin getting us into the Vietnam War.
Lying about babies being thrown out of incubators to get us into the Middle East.
Let's back up real quick.
You're a frequent critic of the government for things that happened somewhere between 35 and 70 years ago?
Yes.
Okay.
When does that come up in conversation?
What do you mean exactly?
What causes you to be a frequent critic for things like the Gulf of Tonkin and why we got into the Vietnam War?
I mean, I believe it's an issue that's never been properly addressed by the American public or by the media.
I mean, we got lied to by our government.
Thousands of men died in Vietnam because of it, and there's just, it is what it is.
Nobody's ever faced any punishment for that, so it bothers me.
Okay.
So you just kind of walk around and just start conversations with that, or do you just find ways to bring it up in conversation with individuals?
No, I just think it's a good example of how Our government lies and manipulates us to further whatever agenda they may have.
At that time it was getting into a war with Vietnam.
When you say you're a critic, what do you mean by a critic?
In general, I would say I don't trust government, and I like to speak about that distrust.
Okay.
Who do you speak to that distrust to on the examples you gave me?
Gulf of Tonkin, Vietnam, Babies and Incubators.
Mostly just whatever audience I have when I do a live broadcast.
Okay.
So you bring it up whenever you're on air a lot?
If the circumstances are relevant to it, yes.
And the circumstances that would be relevant According to your affidavit that you swore to God that was true, is a frequent occurrence.
Correct?
I've rephrased the question.
Right.
You said, when the opportunity arises, and I said, right, and the opportunity arises so often that it is a frequent occurrence for you.
I mean, I would say the government lies to us frequently, yes.
Okay.
In the last, we'll call it, five years, What would be the government lying to us?
Donald Trump colluding with Russia.
Okay.
Who lied about that?
Politicians, members of the media.
It sounds like what they were doing is they were just asking questions.
No.
They've been on record, Eric Swalwell and others, on record, Adam Schiff, saying that they have evidence that Trump colluded with Russia.
They've never produced that evidence.
Okay.
And so somebody saying they have evidence of something is not asking questions, right?
No, that's asserting a fact.
So when Alex Jones says, I've got evidence, I've done the research, this is the way it is, he's asserting a fact, not commentary, right?
I may need a better frame of reference for that, but I would say, in general, yes.
Okay.
I've seen the evidence.
I've done the research.
This is phonier than a $2 bill.
$3 bill, excuse me.
You know, according to the logic you just gave me, when somebody says they've got evidence and they assert, you know, a position, that's a fact.
Like, you know, Congressperson Swalwell.
I'm not sure there is a I don't think there's some sort of oath or standard that you have as a commentator to present evidence that's the same standard as you would as a politician that's on record and runs committees.
Okay.
So you're saying that they're telling a fact because they have an oath to tell facts, and Alex Jones, he doesn't have to tell the facts.
I'm simply saying that Alex Jones doesn't have whatever he says on air.
He doesn't have the ability to subpoena people or indict people or bring up people for testimony to Congress, you know, based off claims he makes on air.
Right.
And that's exactly what we were going for earlier is they had hearings and they had a trial and he was not guilty.
That's what the Congress did.
In this case, in the example you gave me of the Russia collusion, it sounds like they were just asking questions.
I think saying to the nation when you're running a congressional committee that you have evidence that Trump colluded with Russia, that you then failed to present during the impeachment hearing, that you lost, that's not asking a question.
That's asserting a fact.
How do you know they weren't doing commentary?
I didn't realize that they were hosting a talk show.
Right.
You don't have to host a talk show to have an opinion, right?
No.
Right.
How do you know they weren't just asserting their opinion?
Saying that you have evidence is not an opinion.
I agree.
I agree with that.
And I'm glad that that's your position.
When you say you have evidence, it's a fact, right?
That's not an opinion, yes.
Okay.
And I ask that.
Because Mr. Jones has a completely different position than you do, and he testified differently.
So I'm glad you and I can agree on something.
So what did the government do in Sandy Hook to further restrict gun rights?
Okay.
I don't have an answer for that.
You swore to God in your affidavit that You're a frequent critic of the government using them to further gun rights, restrictions of gun rights.
Objection form and swear to God.
I assumed you swore an oath and you included, so help me God.
I apologize.
You swore under oath that this was true and you said that you used things like Sandy Hook, which is what I'm asking about, to further restrict gun rights in this country.
What did the government do and Sandy Hook Do you further restrict gun rights in this country?
Well, you're asking me to go back and provide an opinion or commentary on something that I didn't provide opinion or commentary on at the time.
I was not at InfoWars when Sandy Hook happened.
I did no commentary on it when it happened.
It was not even a relevant news story to me.
But what I recall is, and this seems to be the case most of the time, is whenever there's a gun tragedy, maybe less now than other times, There's politicians that go on TV and say we need new gun laws, we need new gun restrictions, and that seems to be a pattern of behavior.
Okay.
And I understand that you weren't there for the initial Sandy Hook coverage, but you swore under oath that this was your words, and you said that the government uses Things like Sandy Hook to manipulate public opinion to further restrict gun rights.
I'm just asking you how?
They take a tragedy, like kids getting shot in a school, and they say because of that event we're going to further infringe on your Second Amendment right for an event that you had nothing to do with.
When did they do that in Sandy Hook?
When did they do what?
Who said Sandy Hook happened, and we're going to restrict your Second Amendment.
Who said that?
Give me an example.
I couldn't give you an example.
Would you say at this point, after your involvement in this case for three years, and your affidavit, multiple affidavits, as well as your couple episodes on Infowars about Sandy Hook, would you say you're informed about Sandy Hook?
No, I've barely talked about Sandy Hook ever.
I didn't ask you if you talked about it.
I asked if you were informed about it.
That's kind of a vague question.
I agree.
And I ask you this because a number of times I've watched some of your YouTube videos of you walking around at rallies and asking people to name accusers of Donald Trump.
And you start naming them because you say, yeah, because I'm informed, I can name names.
So I'm just asking you to name names.
Name names of what?
Of any government official you claim used Sandy Hook to further restrict gun rights.
I'd have to go back in time to answer that question.
Okay, so right now, sitting here today, you are an uninformed citizen on Sandy Hook.
Objection form.
Correct.
I would say that if you could I catalog my entire career in media.
Sandy Hook makes up for less than 000.1% of my commentary.
In any way, was that responsive to my question?
I think it is very responsive to your question.
What was my question, Mr. Schroyer?
You asked if I would be informed on Sandy Hook.
Yeah.
You said, oh, it was only 1% of everything that I do.
Sandy Hook is not my bread and butter.
I don't know much about Sandy Hook.
So you're uninformed.
It's okay to say.
I'm not trying to trick you.
I'm just trying to see whether or not you think you're informed or not.
So I know whether or not I need to ask you any more questions on that topic.
Are you informed about Sandy Hook?
Again, it's a vague question.
Yes and no.
I'm aware of Sandy Hook.
But have I done deep research and am I very knowledgeable in the situation?
No.
Okay.
Do you know Mr. Heslin's son's name?
No.
Okay.
Kind of an important fact of this case, right?
Objection form.
I never had any intention to go after Mr. Heslin.
I never accused Mr. Heslin of lying.
I never meant to do anything negative to Mr. Heslin.
You took an interview that he did with Megyn Kelly and said, based on the coroner's report and based on this, because Megyn Kelly didn't say he held his son.
Neil Hesslund did.
So when you said it was impossible, you were calling him a liar, right?
No.
You were questioning Megyn Kelly?
I was questioning the coroner, and I was wondering why Megyn Kelly wouldn't fact check that.
More as, again, just Just because Ben Kelly was in studio, she was in the news, and it was just something that was relevant.
And she's a journalist, so that should be fact-checked, right?
Yeah, I mean, if she wanted to fact-check that and put the conspiracy theories to rest, she could have done it right there, and she didn't.
But if she didn't have a highly edited clip like you that made it look like the coroner said that the parents never saw their kids, why on earth would she prove that Neil Heslin held his son?
Mr. Heslin was gonna say, I held my son and I saw the gun wound, and Megyn Kelly's follow-up to that was like, yeah, because the coroner told us that he didn't give them to the kids at first, but then later did.
That's, I mean, how's this playing in your head right now?
You're kind of confusing me.
Yeah, I mean, I have no idea what Megyn Kelly had access to as far as if she'd ever seen the coroner saying that or not.
I have no idea.
Okay.
My assertion was that it was a bad thing That these stories were out there that would lead people to question Sandy Hook more.
I never questioned the events.
I never said nobody died.
I never said Mr. Heslin was a liar.
So you ran the Zero Hedge article to show everybody it's a bad thing that these questions are being asked?
I'm saying it's a bad thing that people aren't going to answer the questions, or Megyn Kelly's not going to answer the questions, because it's just going to fuel the conspiracy theories.
Let me ask you this, Mr. Schroyer.
When did you ask her?
I never asked Megyn Kelly.
Do you think Ms. Kelly frequents Zero Hedge?
I have no idea what Megyn Kelly does.
Okay, so then why on earth would you think she needs to answer questions?
Well, if she wants to do an interview with Mr. Heslin about that and she saw those stories out there and she wanted to address it or correct it, then she would have done it.
During the segment, and this is a transcript of the video, a direct quote here, Will there be clarification from Hesslin or Megyn Kelly?
I wouldn't hold my breath.
So when you say you weren't questioning Mr. Hesslin, that is very confusing now.
So can you clarify it?
Sure.
They never responded to the coroner's claims that I played in the video, so that's what I was saying.
So because they don't watch your show that you were filling in for on a Sunday for Alex Jones, because they didn't see it, hear your question, and respond, that's what you said?
I'm not understanding what the question is.
I'm not either.
You're saying, well, Megyn Kelly and Mr. Heslin, they didn't answer it, they didn't prove it.
How did they know it was in question?
In your mind, how do you get there?
I'm not Mr. Heslin or Megyn Kelly, so whatever is relevant to them is relevant to them.
So if they had a problem with the lies about Mr. Heslin or the accusations about Mr. Heslin, then they could have brought it up on Megyn Kelly's show, and they didn't.
You hadn't lied yet.
What you said came after his interview.
Your segment was about his interview.
It had to have already happened.
Otherwise, how are you talking about it?
Right?
Okay, so Megyn Kelly could have made a statement afterwards if she wanted to.
How would she know that she needed to, Mr. Schroyer?
Well, how are we here right now?
It's the same thing.
The information is out there.
Zero Hedge republished the story so she could have said, hey, I had Mr. Heslin in here.
He He did have his son, and this story is inaccurate.
How was she supposed to know that Zero Hedge wrote the article?
You're asking me questions I can't answer.
I'm not Megyn Kelly.
Right.
So I'm trying to figure out why you think that somebody's going to answer a question they don't know exists.
Well, they have to know it exists.
How?
Well, how am I here right now?
Oh, this and a culmination of other things is why you're here because when you said it and then it was republished two days later and then spread through the internet, then it started being talked about a lot more and Mr. Heslin had to relive the worst day a parent can ever live.
You would agree, right?
And I'm terribly sorry about that.
I never meant Mr. Heslin any harm at all.
Okay.
You would agree with my question though, right?
What's the question?
What were you just answering?
I'm simply saying that it's not my job to clarify Megyn Kelly's reporting.
Why would...
Right.
I agree.
Yes.
It's a great statement for you.
Is it your job to repost a repost from an anonymous writer to question Megyn Kelly?
I think that's just free speech.
Right.
Sure.
You know what isn't free speech?
Actually, let's back up.
You said free speech.
What does that mean?
The right to address grievances to government, the right to speak, you know, without inherent consequence.
Okay.
And that's across the board.
I mean, I think that, you know, any legal expert would agree that free speech, you know, is not universal.
Correct.
Like defamation.
Did you know that?
Yeah.
Okay.
So when you say, this is my First Amendment right, you know that the First Amendment protects you from the government from free speech, right?
Not other citizens.
You know that, right?
Okay.
Did you know that until I just said it?
I probably wouldn't have phrased it like that, but it makes sense.
Right.
And defamation, just like yelling fire in a movie theater, could cause a riot.
There's certain restrictions we have on speech, and everybody's okay with them, right?
I don't know about everybody being okay with them.
Are you okay with the restrictions on free speech?
Probably less than others.
Okay, like what?
I would say I'm more of a free speech absolutist, and unless, you know, I mean, the precedent, I guess, would be somebody yells fire in a crowded theater when there's not a fire and somebody gets trampled and dies, well then, okay, you know, maybe you look into somebody's speech causing violence.
Or if somebody said a lie about somebody and convinced a bunch of crazy people that it was true, and then they started threatening people, and ultimately one of them may have killed somebody, right?
Would that be far enough?
I don't think that's my place to judge.
I agree.
That's what a jury's for, right?
Sure.
Okay.
So, when you say you're an absolutist, I'm a free speech absolutist, which means the government shouldn't be able to tell me what I can and can't say.
But right here, no one in this room is the government.
You would agree, right?
Not that I know of.
So, we're not talking about the First Amendment, are we?
I'd say we are talking about the First Amendment.
How?
If it only talks about unprotected speech regulated by the government?
You asked me what free speech was, I answered the question.
Okay, so when you say free speech, you're not talking about the government.
You're not talking about the U.S. Constitution.
You're talking about Owen Schroyer's definition of free speech, right?
I'm just answering your question.
Do you know what the Constitution says?
Yes.
About free speech?
Yes.
What?
That you have the right to redress speech.
Your grievances with government, petition, freedom of religious expression.
Okay.
That's the First Amendment?
Yes.
Right.
Okay.
And all of that is involving government restrictions, right?
Okay.
So how are we talking about the First Amendment in this room right now?
Because you asked me about free speech.
Sure.
And I asked you that because you said, if I want to say what I said about Zero Hedge on air, that's my free speech.
And that's what confused me, because when you said free speech, I thought you were talking about the Constitution, and I got confused that the videographer in this room may be a government spy, and that's why we were talking about it.
Right?
No.
No, I'm just saying, I'm just doing news coverage.
I'm not making any accusations towards anybody at the time.
Let's back up real quick, because I want to clarify something.
You're not doing just news coverage.
You're doing news coverage and commentary.
And we need to make that clear from now on, right?
I mean, I do all kinds of things.
I do movie reviews, I do commentary, I do journalism, I do opinion.
Right.
So, I just want to make sure that we clarify that when we say, I do news coverage, because that's not what you do when you're on air.
You do multiple things.
It's one thing you do, but it's not just what you do, right?
Sure.
Okay.
So, with regards to paragraph two in this affidavit, you can't think of a single government action that was made to further restrict gun rights related to Sandy Hook, correct?
Not off the top of my head.
Okay.
Why'd you put it in your affidavit?
Put what exactly?
The first sentence of paragraph two that says, I've been a critic of the government for using things like Sandy Hook to manipulate public opinion in order to, among other things, further restrict gun rights in this country.
Why'd you put that in there if you can't think of an instance related to Sandy Hook where that actually happened?
Objection form.
I didn't say it had anything to do with Sandy Hook.
It says such as Sandy Hook.
So I'm not saying that there was anything following Sandy Hook.
I just meant as a general thing.
When there's tragedies dealing with guns, usually there's a follow-up Of a proposal of more gun legislation and restrictions.
But not in Sandy Hook?
Not that I'm aware of.
So if it didn't happen in Sandy Hook, why is it in this affidavit?
Because this entire case is about Sandy Hook.
Right.
But if none of this happened in Sandy Hook, why did you add it in here?
Why didn't you just go to the next sentence and start there?
Because this whole case is about Sandy Hook, and again, it says such as Sandy Hook.
So I'm not saying It is after Sandy Hook, I meant such as Sandy Hook, because this case is about Sandy Hook.
Okay.
So such as, you mean like, so when there's like mass shootings or something like that?
Sure.
Okay.
Name a mass shooting where anti-gun legislation is immediately followed.
I couldn't name off the top of my head.
You can't think of a single one, can you?
Not off the top of my head, no.
You know what a fun fact is?
I can't either.
Which is why I'm trying to figure out why this sentence is in there.
Because if I went back, I'm sure I could pull all kinds of TV commentary from politicians saying we need new gun laws in this country after the events of Sandy Hook.
You mean you're pretty sure?
Yeah, I don't have the evidence in front of me of that.
Right.
Okay.
So it's just an opinion that what you're saying is not fact.
I don't know it for sure, but I'm very confident.
Okay.
Because I don't want you guessing here.
That's the one thing I don't want you to do.
If you don't know something, you can say, I don't know, and I'll accept that answer.
I'm not trying to force you into answering these.
So now that we've agreed that although the first sentence of paragraph two is in there, you cannot think of a single reference with the dozens of dozens of mass shootings that we've had in the last, call it ten years.
True?
I can recall politicians going on TV saying we need new gun legislations whenever events and tragedies happen with guns.
When you say recall, what do you mean?
I remember it.
Okay.
Then give me an example.
Again, I can't give you an exact example.
I just know I've seen it.
In your head, you're just picturing like a man or a woman in a suit with like a news station banner under it?
Is that what you're saying?
Just a politician going on TV talking about the events and saying that we need new gun control because of it.
Okay.
Let's go to the next sentence.
Okay.
I believe the mainstream, because you were talking about the government in sentence one, right?
Sentence two, completely different topic.
Now we're talking about mainstream media used the Sandy Hook tragedy to utilize and transform the public's sympathy for the victims and their families into an issue of gun rights.
I read that correctly, right?
Yes.
Okay, give me an example.
I think it's the exact examples I just gave you.
Right.
You didn't give me any.
You couldn't think of any.
So now I'm asking you for this one, now that we're not talking about the government, talking about mainstream media, give me one example so that I can understand a little bit as to why this is even in here.
I don't have an example.
Okay.
You can't think of a single instance.
I would refer to the statement I gave you in the last question, which is, And, I mean, you can go any time after a gun tragedy.
There's always people going on TV saying that because of this, we need new gun control laws.
You know, you started this paragraph off with your frequent critic.
You can't think of a single instance, so we can agree, probably not that frequent, right?
I guess that would be a matter of opinion.
Sure.
In your opinion, do you agree with me?
I am a frequent critic of the government and the mainstream media.
No, you don't just say that though.
You keep going for a very specific reason.
But if you can't think of a single instance when the mainstream media or the government has done what you say they do in this, doesn't sound like you're a very frequent critic.
True?
No, I don't think that's true at all.
I don't have a briefcase full of evidence because I didn't know I was going to have to present that today.
Sure.
I was just asking, if you're a frequent critic, I assumed you could think of like one example.
And I'm not trying to quiz you.
I'm just trying to get an example.
It's fine if you don't have any.
When you say mainstream media, what's that?
Just any...
Cable news network that's familiar to most people.
Okay, so they have to be on cable?
Not necessarily.
Okay, what do you mean by mainstream media?
Big corporate media, been around for a while, well known to the public.
Okay, what do you mean corporate?
It has corporate sponsors.
Okay, so corporate sponsors that are a company that has corporate sponsors that Convey the news and are known to the public and have been around a while, that's how you define mainstream media?
That's one definition.
Okay.
When you say for a while, how long is that?
What are you referring to exactly?
Your answer there, you said that corporate sponsors, they've been around for a while.
What do you mean by for a while?
Are your words?
I would say they've been around long enough to have some sort of reputation and public recognition.
Okay.
So, Fox News, mainstream media.
Yeah.
OAN? No.
No?
Really?
They have corporate sponsors.
They're well known to the public, right?
I would say most people probably don't know about OAN. Really?
I would guess most people, if I asked them on the street, they probably are unfamiliar.
Definitely not like Well, let's back up a little bit and ask this.
If you were at, because you go to predominantly two areas to ask these questions.
You take a microphone and you try to find uninformed citizens to ask questions to.
I've seen a lot of your work, like a lot.
At a Trump rally, You think you could find a bunch of people that know what OAN is?
Yeah.
So they're well known to the public.
Trump supporters are members of the public, right?
Mm-hmm.
Okay.
So now that we know that OAN is known to the public, they have corporate sponsors.
They've been around long enough to have a reputation because you and I both know they have a reputation, right?
So OAN, consistent with your definition that you gave the jury, is mainstream media to Owen Troyer.
Right?
Maybe for me, because I'm involved in politics.
But for somebody that doesn't follow politics, they probably don't know who OAN is.
Right.
And for somebody that's deaf and blind, they probably don't know who CNN is.
Right?
They might.
More likely than knowing what OAN is, probably.
Or a non-English speaking citizen in the United States probably has no idea what CNN is.
Right?
CNN's international.
I mean, I don't know.
Right.
That's why I said in the United States.
So, I'm trying to flush out who all is mainstream media and who's not.
According to Owen Troyer so far, Fox News and OAN are mainstream media to you.
And I'm trying to figure out how far does that, how far does your umbrella go, you know?
Is Breitbart in there?
They've got corporate sponsors.
They're well known to the public.
They've been around for longer than OAN. Breitbart is mainstream media to you, according to your definition, right?
I would probably say No, I wouldn't consider Breitbart mainstream either.
Why?
I mean, this is all open for interpretation, but, I mean, another general thing of mainstream media would be entities that go along with the same narrative as everybody else, and I feel that Breitbart and OAN often veer Okay,
so your mainstream media, even if you're a news outlet that checks all of Mr. Schroyer's boxes of what he defined as mainstream media, if you have an opinion that's different than some other news outlets, then you're not mainstream anymore.
How different does it have to be and what's the frequency of that?
There's no measurable And I'm not asking for a hardline rule.
And you're right.
This is open to interpretation.
And I'm asking you what your interpretation is right now.
Because you gave a definition of what mainstream media is.
You've got entities that are conservative-leaning news outlets.
We can agree there's liberal and conservative-leaning news outlets, right?
Would you agree with that?
Yes.
Okay.
Is CNN... From mainstream media?
Yes.
MSNBC? Yes.
Fox News you said yes to.
Yes.
So are there any...
So let's go to OAN and Breitbart.
Are those...
Those are not mainstream media according to Mr. Schroyer, right?
I wouldn't consider them, no.
Okay.
And just because they say things that contradict everybody else?
And they're just nowhere near as big.
So size matters for mainstream media as well?
Yeah, I would say.
Okay.
So let's talk about this.
Prior to InfoWars and yourself being deplatformed from social media outlets, was InfoWars mainstream media?
No.
Okay.
They've been around a long time.
They have notoriety.
They have a massive audience that, I mean, dwarfs most of the companies that I just mentioned earlier.
Right?
And on every outlet that wasn't Infowars.com, there's corporate sponsors with ad generation.
And we have that.
I just want to know, InfoWars checks all of your boxes for mainstream media.
Why aren't they in your eyes?
I just don't agree.
They don't check all boxes at all.
In fact, I've never even agreed that there are boxes to check.
Given vague generalities of my definition of mainstream media, somebody else's could be entirely different.
I'm not asking for you to classify InfoWars for everybody else, right?
I'm asking what you think.
What's Owen's opinion?
And when I asked...
How Owen decides whether something's mainstream media, you gave me your criteria, and then I took Infowars, your employer, and it checks every single box.
But you're saying, no, no, no, we're not mainstream media, and I'm trying to figure out why.
Tell me why.
Okay.
How about this?
When news outlets lie about events that cause massive violence to happen, they don't end up getting sued or in court.
But when InfoWars covers events, somehow we always end up in litigation like this.
You ever seen defamation verdicts in the United States?
I'm not too familiar, no.
Okay.
I want you to Google it when you go home.
And I want you to see who those defendants are that paid them.
Okay.
Because their names are CNN, NBC, Gawker, paid a massive one to Hollywood Hall Cogan.
I mean, who do you think You think that CNN just makes stuff up and nobody notices?
I'm not sure the cases you're referencing.
Covington Catholic.
Surely you recognize that one.
Great example.
Right.
They all got sued because it wasn't true and it caused damages, right?
Yes.
So, okay, 0 for 1 under the Schroyer test for mainstream media.
Okay, what about when they lied about Michael Brown getting shot?
Who has standing for that?
Who's gonna sue for that?
How about the city of Ferguson that burned to the ground?
They don't have standing.
Okay, so they have no standing.
So CNN lies about Michael Brown.
Your city burns to the ground.
Nobody has any standing.
Yeah, that's illegal.
That's called justice.
It's a justice system.
Don't blame me.
Blame the United States Constitution and the Texas Constitution.
That's where we get our laws.
So if you're anti-Constitution for the state of Texas and the United States because of how they're written, hey man, run for Congress or call your congressperson.
Okay, well, I'm not really sure that you're understanding what I'm saying.
But, okay, so CNN can say, you know, Michael Brown got shot innocently, and then cities burn, and nobody can sue CNN. But that's, you're really just forcing me to go into depths to explain mainstream media, and it's just, it's open for interpretation.
Right, and I want to know your interpretation.
Let's ask it again.
Hold on a second.
Sure.
Please let him ask you the questions and answer his questions.
Otherwise, we're going to be here.
Forever.
So just...
We'll both have a conversation back and forth.
Please let him ask the question as you answer them.
Okay.
So far, we've established mainstream media as getting sued, having a big audience, having notoriety or reputation, and having ad generation.
Other than those four boxes, what else makes you a mainstream media?
I have no further answers.
I mean, this is what you do for a living, right?
You're an expert in media, true?
You know more than probably anybody you know, besides maybe Mr. Jones, right?
Okay.
Okay, so I'm asking you.
You got all this knowledge and we don't and we want to know what you know.
Other than those four things that you gave us, how is OAN and Breitbart and Infowars, who check all your boxes, Not mainstream media, yet everybody else who also checks the same boxes are mainstream media.
Well, the boxes that you're claiming are checked off, I do not view as concrete, for one.
Well, then that's what I was asking earlier.
What other boxes are there?
I don't know.
Okay, so let's just say this.
If I asked you what mainstream media is, you would agree with me.
Your answer sitting here right now is like, I'm not really sure.
Right?
Sure.
Okay.
Because here, you believe mainstream media used Sandy Hook tragedy to utilize and transform public sympathy.
And we just established, you don't even know what mainstream media is.
I would say relative to this sentence, it is CNN, MSNBC, CBS, ABC News, and all the people that reported on Sandy Hook and followed it up with politicians or further reports that knew gun laws were the answer.
Okay.
Who?
Out of the usual suspects you just named, which ones specifically are you referring to in this sentence?
I just told you.
So you have personal knowledge that every one of those outlets had reported this and then had congresspeople come on and say that we needed new gun laws?
Every single one of them?
I don't have that in front of me, no.
And frankly, sentence two, we're not talking about government anymore.
They don't have to have government officials come on and say that.
I'm just asking you, which mainstream media used this tragedy to turn it into a gun rights issue?
If you couldn't think of a single instance of any gun legislation even being proposed, how are they turning it into a gun issue?
I'm just trying to figure out.
I'm lost with this affidavit because I don't understand it, and it doesn't seem like you can think of anything in your head that would have made you swear under oath to these statements.
I've answered your question.
If I turn on CNN, and they're covering a Sandy Hook story, and they say, because of this mass shooting that resulted in children dying, we need new gun legislation, then that's who I'm referring to.
Okay.
Who said that on CNN? I don't have that in front of me.
I don't have the video tapes in front of me.
Sure.
But you remember, CNN definitely said that.
I can't say that for certain.
I don't have it in front of me.
Like I said earlier, don't guess.
So I'm not guessing.
If you can't say for certain, then don't say, CNN, they said it.
I don't have the tapes, but they said it.
Don't say that.
Just say, I don't know.
Okay.
Because if you said, I don't know, to what mainstream media is, we'd have got through that sentence real quick.
In the next sentence you say, I believe the mainstream media, and we'll put a hypothetical question mark over that term.
You believe the mainstream media, instead of blaming the shooter, portrayed all gun owners and gun rights activists as the cause of what happened at Sandy Hook.
Surely there's an event that you watched or saw where this happened that made you put this in your affidavit.
I can't recall.
Okay.
Because if this sentence that I just read were true, that's a big deal, correct?
What is a big deal?
That the mainstream media was portraying all gun owners and gun rights activists that don't even own guns as the cause of what happened at San Diego.
That's a huge deal if mainstream media was doing that, correct?
Yes.
Okay.
But you can't recall anything that made that a huge deal, right?
Not in exact detail.
Okay.
Not in any detail, right?
No, because you're putting me into an unfair position where I can't produce the evidence you're asking me to produce.
I'm glad you said that.
I'm going to mark this as exhibit, what are we on, four or five?
Four.
Four?
All right.
And I don't have a copy, Brad.
It's all right.
And it's going to be a video, and I'll email it to you, or I'll Dropbox it to you.
I found it on last night.
Sorry,
it took me a second to remember how I got it on my computer. - In DC right here, I got-- Miss Court Reporter, I will be sending you Exhibit 4 as well, so you'll have the audio if you can't hear it, okay?
I'm gonna turn my computer all the way up.
Alright.
This, you recognize this video?
Can you play it?
Sure.
I got slapped in the face by a young woman.
She said, Assault is not boy talk, MF-er.
Slapped me right across the face.
That's you, right?
That's your voice, correct?
Yes.
Okay.
And this is footage of a 2017 Women's March where you were assaulted, correct?
Yes.
Okay.
And I'm not saying that what happened was right or wrong.
I'm just saying I want to identify the video.
Let me get the time stamp on here.
All right.
I'm going to go to 17 minutes and 37 seconds.
All right.
Alright, that's close enough.
1734. Alright, I'm going to hit play.
I'm playing this video because of what your answer just was to my line of questioning.
You remember when you said, well you're putting me in an unfair position because you're asking me to give you evidence and I don't have it on me right now.
But I know it exists, right?
I didn't say I know it existed.
Okay, you think it might exist.
And that's unfair of me to ask you whether or not you even know.
Okay, let's watch this video.
Yeah, it's not good.
Free speech is said in this country.
They're trying to lie about us and have our speech on them.
Yeah, free speech about you guys lying about there being crisis actors, I'd say anything?
Okay, except that's not what happened.
And even if I wanted to say that, do I not have the free speech?
Okay, I'm going to pause it here at 18 minutes and 16 seconds.
So this is you at the Women's March in 2020, correct?
I'm going to represent to you that it is.
Okay.
And you're going with a camera person and a microphone and you're going and you're talking to people out there about why they're there and the reaction you get from these two individuals that we see at 18 minutes and 16 seconds, they brought up Sandy Hook to you, correct?
Yes.
Okay.
And early, you believe that you have the absolute right to use the N-word whenever you want, correct?
I didn't say that, but I believe that's totally legal.
Sure.
And saying what you said, legal in most instances, but there are some where it would not be.
And these individuals agree with you.
Yeah, if you want to say it, but you shouldn't, right?
Sounds like that.
Do you believe that just because you can say something, you should?
No.
Okay.
With what you know now, when we read some of those quotes, when I read some of those quotes from the video that you did about Mr. Heslin, should you have said them?
I mean, I think with any live broadcast, I mean, we don't have teleprompters or scripts that you're going to sometimes have words and phrases that come out that Aren't in the way that you like them.
And so I'm upset that my commentary that day is perceived as an attack on Mr. Heslin.
It never was.
That was never the intention.
When you said, think we're going to get clarification from Mr. Heslin or Miss Kelly, I wouldn't hold my breath.
You know what you did after that?
I think it went to break.
I'm not sure.
You chuckled in laughter.
That's what you did.
Did you find it funny?
No.
Do you find Sandy Hook funny?
No.
Do you find mass shootings funny?
No.
Do you find asking parents for clarification on things that are the truth?
Is that funny?
No.
So why are you laughing?
Sometimes it's just awkward when you go to break and you just kind of have an awkward moment and I guess in that moment it was a chuckle or maybe it was just because Megyn Kelly was just kind of a joke to me at the time, so bringing her up was kind of worthy of a chuckle.
But again, in no way, shape, or form was any of that commentary meant as a slight on Mr. Heslund.
I never accused him of lying.
I've never said that Sandy Hook never happened.
I've never said that his kid didn't die.
I never said any of that.
I never believed any of that.
Well, based on the coroner's testimony and the Timeline of events that you went over, it was impossible that he held his dead son.
You said that.
I'm saying that it's impossible for the clip that I played of what the coroner said and the clip that I played of what he said to line up.
I was insinuating as much that the coroner is lying and that Megyn Kelly wasn't going to Put away any of the conspiracy theories about Sandy Hook because of it.
That's all I was saying.
And the craziest part about this is those were your two thoughts.
Coroner's lying or Megyn Kelly's lying.
In reality, you were just wrong.
You were the one with the misinformation.
You were the one that didn't keep watching the coroner after it was cut, where he says, then he released the bodies of the parents.
Did you think the parents didn't have funerals?
I had no idea.
That was the clip that was given to me.
So then why are you sitting here accusing Megyn Kelly and Mr. Heslin of doing something impossible?
I wasn't accusing them of doing something impossible.
I said that the record wasn't going to be cleared up.
And you know why?
The record was already clear.
You just didn't read it.
Right?
I had no knowledge of it.
Right.
But that's not an excuse.
They were in the right.
The coroner was right.
True.
True.
I don't know.
Okay.
You have no reason to believe that the coroner didn't release the bodies, right?
I have not looked further into this.
Since, because it was never a big story to me.
It was something that was put in front of me.
I was told these are the clips.
Here's the story.
Here's the clips.
That was all the knowledge that I had.
You watched this video a few weeks ago, right?
Yes.
You understand this video ended up costing you a lot of money on legal fees that you've been gifted and crowdsourced.
And it's cost time and effort.
True?
Yes.
And you are now have been found by a court to have defamed Mr. Heslin.
Right?
Objection four.
I had no, again, I never accused Mr. Heslund of lying.
I never, that segment was never purposed as any sort of affront to Mr. Heslund.
Okay.
I'm not even sure if I knew who he was before that.
Okay.
So you didn't care who you were talking about.
I was just covering a story that was given to me.
And you would agree you covered it poorly, correct?
I covered what I had available to me.
No, you did not do that.
You covered what was selected by someone at Infowars and was given to you without any questions asked.
That's what you did, right?
Yes.
Because available was the whole coroner's press conference.
True?
Not to me, but it was out there.
Right.
Surely it was available to you.
Not in that exact moment, but the news isn't a race, is it?
Is it?
Up for interpretation.
Do you think the news is a race?
I don't view it as a race.
Okay, then the answer to my question is, no, it's not a race, Mr. Ogden.
Right?
I do not view the news as a race.
Okay.
Now that we've established that, you definitely had that coroner's press conference available to you, Mr. Schroyer.
True?
No.
All I had was that clip.
You know what the internet is, right?
Yes.
You can type little sentences and search sentences or words into a Google and it'll punch out a bunch of different videos and documents and websites.
You've done that before, right?
Yes.
Okay, so when you say it wasn't available to me in 2017, had you not discovered Google yet?
Is that what it is?
I'm trying to figure out how you think this wasn't available to you but was somehow available to somebody else at your company who cut it very strategically so that you would go on air and say something you shouldn't.
I don't know who edited that video.
Right.
It could have been someone in our house.
It could have been someone else on the internet that they found.
Right.
You know what we can't agree on?
Nobody fact-checked it.
Nobody just said, oh man, that's crazy.
When did he say this?
Google up the interview and watch it.
It's 20 minutes.
I didn't plan on covering the story that day, so I had no preconceived notion that I would even have to do that.
I know, Mr. Schroyer, you're here because you were a puppet.
You would agree with me, right?
No.
You don't agree with me that you know what a puppet is, correct?
Yes.
A puppet is an object that is used to convey a message, but somebody else is actually controlling the message.
You understand that?
Yes.
Right.
You were conveying a message, right?
True?
Yes.
Somebody else was controlling that message.
True?
No.
No.
Who was controlling the message that you were putting out?
Were you in control?
What was the message you're referring to?
That the coroner said he never released the children ever.
Because that's the story you ran with.
Who was in control of that information if you weren't?
Because you already said you weren't in control of it.
Who was?
Somebody has to be.
Whoever originally posted the video.
Right.
So someone else had control and you were conveying the message.
We just established that you were the puppet that day.
There's nothing wrong with that.
I'm not trying to be derogatory by using that term, but it's analogous to where we are now.
You would agree?
I think if anybody is being used as a puppet, it would be the people who are reporting their stories, and I'm just showing that information.
You were reporting the story, Mr. Schroyer.
You weren't showing the information, you were reporting.
So if I just pick up anybody's news source and cover it, does that make me a puppet?
If you don't fact check it, absolutely.
Okay, then I guess I'm a puppet of Zero Hedge in this case.
No, that's actually not true.
You're a puppet of iCoinBank.
Zero Hedge was a puppet, or excuse me, what was that?
Zero Point Now was a puppet, then Zero Hedge was a puppet, then whoever at InfoWars was a puppet, and then you were a puppet.
That's how many layers it took to get to you.
No fact checking.
Sound like good journalism?
No, but that was journalistic commentary.
Okay, does it sound like that's responsible journalistic commentary?
Because, would you agree with me, that sounds like you're just spreading misinformation.
That was never my intent.
I didn't say you intended to, but that's what happened, right?
I didn't lead anybody to any conclusions.
I left it open-ended with a question.
What's your degree in, from college?
Media Studies.
Media Studies.
In Media Studies, do you take any journalism classes?
Yes.
Okay.
You know what journalism integrity is, correct?
Yes.
Alright.
You know what moral fiber is, right?
Yes.
Okay.
Do you have those?
Yes.
Did you exercise them here?
I probably could have done a better job, but again, I wouldn't consider that none of this was my original reporting.
Okay.
My question is, should you be spreading information, whether it be commentary or news, That is completely un-fact-checked.
Yes or no?
That's way too open for interpretation.
I can't answer that question.
Okay.
I don't ever want to be dishonest.
Let me ask you this.
You're going through this process right now, and I know it's not easy, right?
Answering my questions has got to be frustrating.
I understand that, and I apologize.
I'm just doing my job.
But, sitting here today, when you go back to Infowars, are you ever going to just be on live, get handed a story with clips from someone you don't remember who it is, and run it?
Or are you going to make sure it's fact checked?
Well, I would say after this experience, I'm highly less likely to be handed a story or a video clip and air it without checking it myself.
The justice system is working.
Not all the way, but that's a big step forward for us.
I'm not saying that sarcastically, genuinely, for both you and I and my clients.
We appreciate that position.
All right, let's finish this clip.
1816 on Exhibit 4, going bold.
I feel for everyone.
I wish more schools would do like what Florida did and arm the teachers so that we don't have mass shootings in schools.
Okay, but that put aside, the solution put aside, do you think there are crisis actors in San Diego?
No, see, you make it all about San Diego.
No, I'm asking you.
You can answer my question if you want.
No, I don't think anything is better than mass shootings in San Diego.
Still not an answer.
Still not an answer to my question.
He's using the repressant actor that Stanley hooked the way Alex Jones playing.
No, and he clearly made public statements and said that's not true.
Not what the court said.
Okay, well maybe you should do more research.
But again, you're in a women's march, I'm asking you why you don't like Trump or why you aren't doing this.
Because I'm here to raise awareness for sex slave victims of Jeffrey Epstein.
Okay.
Well, I'm glad that you're now bringing that up.
Yeah, okay.
You guys didn't want to say F Infowars.
It's the first thing you said to me.
Yeah, it's hard to believe in you guys.
Well, Trump's pro-woman.
He has the best employment for women right now.
He's hired for women in the administration to be with the president.
So, this gentleman just told you, tell that to the dozens of accusers that have accused him of sexual harassment and or assault, right?
And you responded with, name one, right?
Yes.
Let's keep watching.
Name one of them.
Name one of their names.
I don't know their names.
So you say, but you have no names.
Again, you say, there are none.
And he said, what?
No, I just don't know their names.
He said, oh, you're saying there are some, but you can't think of a single name, right?
Yes.
All right, let's keep going.
I don't know the fucking names.
I'm not good with fucking names.
How about Paula Jones?
How about Kathleen Williams?
How about Juanita Broderick?
Do you know about them?
The accusers?
How about Virginia Jeffrey?
Do you know about her?
Okay, just because it's your job to know the names and, like, I know of the names, I can put a name on my ass.
So I'm informed.
Okay.
We're going to pause it here at 19 minutes, 55 seconds.
And that's you saying, I can name names because I'm informed, right?
Yes.
Okay.
But that's your job.
I'm studying psychology in college.
Do you know the victims?
I don't need to know everyone's fucking name to know it happened.
Well, you're at a women's march.
So who are the victims?
Name every woman.
Like, what the fuck?
Well, what are you out here doing?
Uh, protesting how bullshit it is in this country that we elected an asshole like Donald Trump.
So at a women's march, you're complaining about Trump?
Yeah, absolutely.
Why would I not complain about Trump?
Yes, that's why a lot of...
I know, so it's a fake women's march.
It's really an anti-trump march.
You Trump stories love that word, fake, fake.
Yeah, because if this was a real women's march, you'd be calling out the cover-up of the Epstein Sex Trafficking Network, but you're not.
Why do we have to talk about Epstein?
You're telling us what we have to talk about.
No, no, this is a women's march for me to take victims.
And talk about what they want to march about.
Come out here and talk about the women that are sex trafficked by Epstein and the people involved in that entire network.
We can talk about shit ton of stuff.
The point is, you're not here to march for people.
You're here to piss people off and to get attention for yourself and for InfoWars, for whatever you feel, whatever gets you off.
But you're not here for the right reasons, and a lot of these people are.
Well, let me explain something, because InfoWars, who you hate for some reason, has been covering the FTE sex trafficking for decades, okay?
For decades.
Mainstream media covered that up.
That came out.
Okay?
And so, we're the ones exposing sex trafficking of women.
Mainstream media is covering it up.
The same mainstream media that drugged you out here today.
The same mainstream media that's going to show this footage all across the news as anti-drunk news coverage.
You're pawns in an anti-drunk gang.
One last comment before we go.
Believe the women that have accused drugs even though I can't get every one of them.
Leave women that shut off.
Alright, so that was an encounter with some protesters, right?
Yes.
And you were asked, they had a position, right?
And you asked them for evidence to back their position up.
And you asked them to name one name of one of the Trump accusers.
And he said, I can't.
And you said, oh, I'm informed.
And you started naming Clinton accusers, right?
Yes.
Okay.
And afterwards, he goes, believe the women who accused Donald Trump, even though I don't know their names right now, even though I can't remember all their names, right?
Yes.
And you said, you can't even name one name, right?
Yes.
Okay.
Now, take what just happened here, how you approached that, and let's revisit the mainstream media and the government from your affidavit, because you couldn't name one.
And there's way more of those than Trump accusers, right?
I don't know, but okay.
You don't...
How many Trump accusers do you think there are?
I have no idea.
Surely you believe that there's more governmental entities and or congresspersons and or congresspeople, excuse me, and or mainstream media outlets.
All of that encompassing.
That's way more than Trump accusers.
True?
I'm sorry, I'm not understanding the framing.
Yeah, you couldn't name one congressperson, media outlet, or government entity that did what you said they did in your affidavit.
True?
Yeah, well, I don't think it's a fair comparison.
Let me just ask you, it's a true or false question.
True, you couldn't name one.
You're asking me on a sworn affidavit and under testimony to make statements versus somebody out there on the street.
It's a completely different precedent.
Why?
Because I'm not gonna say something, as you have said multiple times here today, I'm not gonna say something on record I don't know when I've testified that I'm gonna speak the whole truth.
So, yeah, I can't name names and stuff.
I'm under oath.
I'm not gonna make something up.
Okay.
And we already agreed you can't name a single victim from the Sandy Hook massacre, correct?
No.
Okay.
Can you kind of see how I got my question and answer format for the ones I asked you about your affidavit?
Thank you.
Because, spoiler alert, you would agree I stole them from you from that video, right?
Tip of the cap.
But, you know, isn't it more relevant to the case how even in that video I'm saying that everything they said about Sandy Hook and people dying is true?
So I never denied that that happened.
I never denied Mr. Heslund's son died.
I never called Mr. Heslund a liar.
Every case of me covering or talking about Sandy Hook, which is few and far between, I've accepted that it happened.
How many times have you talked about Sandy Hook?
To my knowledge, this is the third time you playing that video right there.
There's three videos.
I am aware of the video that we've referenced earlier today covering the Zero Point Now story.
I'm aware of the video covering in the Lafferty case, which you've brought up, and now you've brought this to my attention.
And as far as I'm concerned, that's it.
Okay.
In which each video I'm on record saying the events happened.
Okay.
Those are the only three you can remember though, right?
Yes.
But there are others.
You just don't remember them, true?
I feel like if they were, you guys would have seen them, but I can't recall any of them.
I can't see them.
You know why?
InfoWars didn't save them.
Y'all got deplatformed for violating regulations or rules of a private company and got deplatformed and they're all up in the air now.
Because when I asked you how many times have you discussed Sandy Hook on air or with regards to work, you only told me one.
That was your discovery response under oath in an interrogatory.
Did you know that?
When was that?
Let's see.
That's his indictment.
That was This will be easier.
It'll be easier to just go to the front.
Objection, Senator, 2nd Rocks, right?
Number 8?
Yeah.
There we go.
Alright.
Do you need a copy of this, Brad, or you got it on electronic?
No.
Alright, cool.
Alright, I'm going to hand you Exhibit 5. Exhibit 4 is that video that we played.
Which one is it?
You know, on top of your head?
Yeah.
- Yeah, there's not many requests.
- Yeah, yeah, you're right.
- That's the last one.
- Yeah, I love this.
- Yeah, and you did a great job.
Okay.
So I want you to flip to page four.
And I want you to look at interrogatory number four.
And before I asked you, do you know what an interrogatory is?
Interrogation question?
Kind of.
An interrogatory is a written question that one side sends to another, and the other side has to answer it, and then swear under oath to verify its veracity.
Okay?
And I asked you...
Number four, identify by date any occasions in which you have made public oral or written statements concerning the Sandy Hook shooting.
Any relatives of the victims, any were orally made on an InfoWars show, state the show and episode and the title, excuse me, state the show and the episode title.
If those statements were made on the InfoWars website, identify the title of the webpage and URL. If those statements were made elsewhere, describe the circumstances of that statement.
And then your response says, subject to and without waiving all the objections up top.
Plaintiff is seeking to have Defendant go through years of his comments, appearances, political activism, posts, and the like for at least the last nine years, which occur on a regular and almost daily basis from the time when Sandy Hook shooting occurred to the present, when Defendant is a reporter, host, and activist who makes a living off of providing newsworthy content to the public.
Defendant is simply unable to state with any specificity the occasions on which defendant has made any comments or statements of any sort which plaintiff would somehow deem responsive to this interrogatory.
As such, defendant at this time does not have...
Hold on.
There's supplemental ones to this.
These aren't the verified ones.
Oh.
Okay.
I didn't mean to interrupt you.
That's fine.
We'll go to those next.
Let's take a break on this.
Well, let me finish this real quick.
As such, defendant at this time does not have the requisite information to respond to this interrogatory as currently phrased by plaintiff, and it would force defendant undue hardship and burden to have to do so without and it would force defendant undue hardship and burden to have to do so without further clarification and appropriate boundaries Thank you.
Do you understand all of those words in that order?
Yes.
Okay.
So, the supplemental ones came.
No way she put those in here.
You might have to print them out in a second.
I'm not positive how they were served.
You don't have them?
We can take a break.
When did you supplement?
I've never served.
I don't know.
Probably on the day of the hearing.
No, not before that.
Okay, we can go all the regular.
Let's take a break.
Why don't we figure that?
Because I don't want to have the roll.
You don't want to break for lunch or you want to push through?
We're going off the record.
The time is 1.16 p.m.
We are back on the record at 2.19 p.m.
Mr. Shroy, we're back from lunch break and I'm going to hand you Exhibit 6. It's the supplemental interrogatory response.
And we went over Exhibit 5 right before we broke for lunch and you had supplemented your answer to identify the times that you've spoken about Sandy Hook in public, on air, or otherwise.
And here, at the bottom of page 5, starts with, in addition, that's the supplemented part.
You with me?
Sorry, the pages are mixed up here.
That's the old one.
Okay, got you.
Alright, I'm with you.
In addition, defendant, that's you, supplements his answer as follows.
To the best of defendant's recollection, he does not believe he has made any public, oral, or written statements concerning the Sandy Hook tragedy, relatives of the victims, the lawsuits brought by the victims, or the allegations in those lawsuits beyond the singular discussion, commentary, Provided by a defendant on or about June 25th, 2017, disputing the mainstream media's coverage of the plaintiff's account of the Sandy Hook incident.
The events at issue occurred long before a defendant became a reporter broadcasting with InfoWars and beyond the aforementioned commentary, Defendant does not believe he has provided any other coverage or commentary regarding any aspect of Sandy Hook.
I read that correctly.
True?
Yes.
Okay.
And you swore under oath that that was a true and full and correct statement.
Yes.
Okay.
Objection to the best of his knowledge.
Right.
And as we look at this, there was only one video, which is the five and a half minute video.
This answer doesn't include the video involved in the Lafferty case, correct?
Yes.
It doesn't involve video that's Exhibit 4 that we played earlier a piece of, correct?
Yes.
Okay, so I'm trying to figure out what happened here, and I've got two scenarios, and they might not be right, you let me know.
But what I conclude from is, one, This wasn't taken seriously enough to do an actual search to figure out how many times you'd said it in public.
Or two, you didn't care.
Or two, you just, you purposefully did not disclose these videos that we now know of that are at least three.
Which one is that?
Objection form.
It's neither.
I simply had no memory of those videos.
I didn't recall the video that you played.
And until it was brought to my attention in a separate deposition, I was not in remembrance of the Lafferty video.
Okay.
So you don't really speak with Mr. Dew or Mr. Jones at work about what's going on with the lawsuits?
No.
Do you think it's kind of suspicious that you are a named defendant and the judge granted default judgment against you personally in the lawsuit that Mr. Do has testified in and Mr. Jones is a defendant in, and they aren't discussing with you what's going on?
This is the first time I've been deposed in this case.
As far as discovery was concerned, I've met every request that was made to me, to my knowledge.
Sandy Hook was never anything that was a big deal to me.
It's not that I didn't care, it's just it was not a story I covered at length.
And as far as I can tell now, those are the only three times that I've ever talked about it.
So I wasn't even aware of that other video until, as I said, it was brought forward as evidence in the other deposition, just as I was not aware of the video that you presented today as evidence until you presented it.
Okay.
When you answered that interrogatory, did you go back and search at all, or did you just kind of close your eyes, think real hard, and say, I can only think of one?
To the best of my ability, in a separate discovery, I searched as much as I could from my electronic devices and the platforms that my videos go to, keywords like Sandy Hook, and nothing came up and it wasn't in my memory.
Hold on.
Can she hear?
Commander Corp. Porter, can you hear us?
I was on a roll.
I don't think she could hear us at all.
We're going off the record at 2.25 p.m.
We are back on the record at 2.26 p.m.
In this case, when you received this interrogatory that we're talking about did you go back and search to see if there were any other videos besides the one that you could recall?
Yes.
When did you do that?
I couldn't tell you a time or date but I went into our platforms where, to my knowledge, all of my videos are and just searched some of the key phrases like Sandy Hook or mass shooting or other words.
Again, I'm not sure exactly what the process was but I did not find any other videos.
And this request was sent to you back in 2018 so your search was a long time ago.
Correct?
I'm not sure.
Was it in the last few months?
That request was not sent in 2018. Sorry?
I said that request was not sent in 2018. No, those are subs, so yeah, those are later.
Oh, okay.
There's a reason you didn't know the answer to that, because I was wrong.
What platforms did you search?
Band.video and Infowars.com.
Okay, did you search YouTube?
I don't believe so, no.
I may have, but I can't recall.
Okay.
Because as you referenced earlier, they've pretty much, you know, deleted as much of my videos as they possibly have.
They deleted your account that had all the videos and some, but the one I played for you earlier that's Exhibit 4, I actually found that last night and all I did was type in the Google bar Schroyer in quotations and Sandy Hook in quotations and that video popped up on my Google search.
That's incredible.
It really was.
I wasn't expecting it.
The...
Oh, where is it? where is it?
Screenshot.
Three.
Yeah.
All right.
I'm going to hand you exhibit seven.
Do you recognize exhibit seven, Mr. Schroyer?
Yes.
What is it, Exhibit 7?
It is the Zero Point Now story that I'm guessing is just the republish of it on Zero Hedge.
As I see the top of the page now says zero hedge.
OK.
And your opinion was you were just reporting what zero hedge was reporting, correct?
Yes, or what Zero Hedge was republishing of someone else's report.
Okay, I want you to turn to the last page.
Because there was some verbiage in this document that you did not mention on air.
And if you turn your attention to, you see the box?
Yes.
Okay.
The paragraph right below that, it says, yet despite Jones's official position, he and Infowars have played devil's advocate along the way, presenting facts and narratives which disagree with the official story.
So, the article that you published, that you said all I was doing was saying what they said, that article itself says that Infowars was presenting facts to the public that disagreed with the official narrative.
True?
That's what the article says.
Okay.
And you have no reason to believe, at least when you published it, that the article wasn't true.
Otherwise, no chance you're putting that up on air, right?
Yes.
Okay.
Did you, I'm assuming you didn't read that part when you put this up, correct?
I don't believe so.
Okay.
And this article is slightly different than your reporting on this article, because in your reporting, you take what this article says and you say, you used the word impossible, right?
Again, I mean, I'm trusting you know what you're saying.
I don't remember the exact quote.
You either say impossible or that's not possible.
And that's a fact that you assert.
Whereas, if you turn to page 3, it says, in the first paragraph, while it's entirely possible that Mr. Heslin had access to his son after the shooting, giving the highly contentious nature of the Sandy Hood massacre in which Every aspect of the case has been poured over and dissected.
It was incumbent upon Megyn Kelly and NBC to familiarize themselves with all sides of the argument so they could have identified and explained Hesslin's statement.
Did I read that correctly?
Yes.
After I've read that, why do you think Mr. Hesslin went on Megyn Kelly's show?
I couldn't answer that.
Does this paragraph give you any idea?
No.
They went on Megyn Kelly's show to clear the truth and tell people the facts.
You then, and that's what this article says.
Because it's been so contentious and dissected, Miss Kelly and Mr. Eslin familiarized themselves with all sides of the argument.
So, they could have identified and explained Mr. Heslin's statement.
So, with that said, this is the only document that you had when you reported that it is not possible for Mr. Heslin to have held his son, correct?
No, that's not what I said.
I said it would be impossible based on the videos that I saw that those two narratives would be aligning.
But given the fact that there were elements of the coroner's report that I didn't see, upon knowing that information now, I understand how it is possible.
Can I have that back?
I gave you the wrong one.
All right.
I've got the video here, and we can watch it, and then we can see exactly what you said, because I think it contradicts what you just said.
All right.
That's good to go ahead.
All right.
That's fine.
Before we play it, I want to show you a screenshot.
This will be, and this screenshot will be Exhibit 8. I'll look over the screenshot.
All right, she didn't give me the screenshot.
Yeah.
This screenshot here, this is an image that was screenshot from the video that you, that was produced by InfoWars that you were narrating.
This is the article that you were going off of, right?
You're scrolling through the video and this is the article you're scrolling through, correct?
I believe I had the article printed off in front of me.
You did that.
You had that as well, but this was what you were going through on the screen.
Okay.
Yeah, I'm not in control of what goes on the screen.
Okay.
So you don't...
You're just looking...
Somebody else is on the screen.
Yeah.
But I do want to look at this.
This shows that...
And we're not sure where zero point now is.
They could be in the central time zone.
And so it could have been published at 3.35 p.m.
Central or at...
Or 445 if they're on the East Coast.
And this screenshot is from the video that you're on.
And you can see how many shares it's had.
Let me zoom in.
How many shares it's had at the time you put it up to the world?
What's that number?
Three.
Three.
So this article is not one that was getting shot around and these are what other Outlets are reporting.
Safe to say, at a minimum, if this has been up for at most an hour and it's got three shares, we're not dealing with the top brass of mainstream media here, are we?
No.
Okay.
Your audience is much larger than something that's been put up for an hour or two and only has three shares, correct?
I mean, I guess.
I don't know.
You know you talk to thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people every day that tune in to watch you and Mr. Jones, correct?
Okay, yeah.
Okay.
So, when a larger media platform, like Infowars, takes a smaller media platform article and puts it up, you can agree that disseminates that information to a way bigger audience.
In this case, probably, yeah.
Okay.
And your viewers trust that what you're telling them is the truth, correct?
Even with your commentary.
I can't make any assumptions about what my viewers think.
Some people tune in just because they hate me.
Fair.
But the people that believe this, they tune in to get information, correct?
Yeah, I would say people tune in to get information.
And they trust that you're telling them the truth.
Do you believe that?
I would say that some trust I'm telling the truth, some trust I'm lying to them all day.
Okay.
So I can't make an assumption about what an audience is perceiving from my commentary.
Do you hold yourself out to your audience to trust you that it's the truth?
Yeah, I'd like people to believe in me as a fair reporter.
Do you think this was fair?
I wish I would have done a better job.
I wish I would have vetted it better.
But none of my commentary was ever intended to do harm to Mr. Heslund or his family.
I never denied any of the events happening.
And again, I'm just going off of a story that was given to me that I just read on air.
Let's say this.
I know you didn't intend to, you know, put Mr. Heslund through The ringer, again, and kind of spawn another assault of true believers of what you're saying, of this conspiracy, into death threats and threats and online bullying.
You didn't intend for that, but it happened because of what you did.
True?
No.
You don't believe that?
No.
Based on what?
I'll ask you, based on what?
I don't know.
You know who Lucy Richards is?
No.
She's a woman on the East Coast that watched Mr. Jones' coverage of Sandy Hook, and she believed every word he said, even though most of it was wrong.
He didn't know it at the time.
He didn't intend for it.
At least that's what he says.
And she started making very serious death threats to Mr. Posner, and it was across state lines.
And she got convicted and sentenced to the federal prison system for believing that.
When she got out, one of the conditions was she can't watch Infowars anymore.
Did you know that?
No.
That's kind of a big deal, isn't it?
Yeah.
Don't you wish Mr. Jones or Mr. Dew, who definitely know about it, would have told you?
I guess, but I'm not sure how it is relative to me outside of this case.
Well, I just told you that people that listen to your show and listen to the Alex Jones show trust that that's the truth.
And so I was asking if you hold yourself accountable for when it's not the truth for the consequences that follow.
I wasn't the one that Ms. Richards listened to.
Oh, I'm using Ms. Richards as an example of when It was the Alex Jones Show, correct?
That you were filling in for, right?
Yes.
Okay.
Ms. Richards was watching the Alex Jones Show.
She was one of the listeners that believed it, even though it was wrong.
And based on that, she went and acted on it.
So I'm asking you, all of the threats and hate mail and death threats that Mr. Hesland got again, years after he's already had to relive this over and over again, Do you hold yourself accountable for any information that you got wrong because you didn't take the time to actually read that article before you put it out?
No.
I didn't encourage anybody to do anything to Mr. Heslund.
I never encouraged anybody to act on any of the things that I was purveying.
And I think it's clear in the video that I'm going off of original reporting from Zero Hedge or Zero Point Now or iBankCoin, whoever the original reporter is, and it's not my original reporting and my My assertion was that Megyn Kelly didn't do a good job to clear up the conspiracy theories of what happened in Sandy Hook.
But now that we've read that paragraph, you can now see that she, in fact, did.
And Zero Hedge says it's entirely possible that what Mr. Schroyer said is completely wrong.
No, he doesn't say that.
What's he saying?
Read it out loud.
He says, while it's entirely possible that Mr. Hesland had access to his son after the shooting, doesn't say my name anywhere, And it also says it was incumbent upon Megyn Kelly and NBC to familiarize themselves with all sides of the argument so they could have identified and explained Heslund's statement.
To my knowledge, still to this day, Megyn Kelly hasn't done that.
Right.
But we know that that's true.
With what we know now, do you still believe this?
Do you believe the stuff that came out of your mouth that we read earlier from the transcript?
What stuff?
From the video.
The transcript of the video that I've been quoting.
Which, can you give me a quote for a specific example?
Sure.
It's not, based on the coroner's testimony...
Sure.
He, Mr. Heslin, he's claiming that he held his son and saw the bullet hole in his head.
That is his claim.
Now, according to a timeline of events and a coroner's testimony, that is not possible.
That would be, with what you know now today, do you still believe that?
No, now that I know that there was more to the coroner's video that I didn't have information to at the time, I see how it is possible.
So it's Zero Hedge's fault?
Sure, you can say that.
So you're, you know, I definitely came out and spread this information to thousands of people, but Zero Hedge is the one that wrote it, and I just was, I didn't vet it and just gave it to everybody.
That's your position?
No accountability?
No.
Okay.
Accountability?
Or is that what happened?
Yeah, that's true.
That's a bad question.
Are you saying you take accountability or you do not take accountability?
I don't take accountability.
Okay.
For anything you do on air or just this?
I take no accountability for what Zero Hedge published in this article, and I take no accountability for whatever awful things Mr. Heslin had to go through because of this story and my covering of it.
Let's talk about it.
It's going to go down a little bit.
Yep.
I So, do you know who Lynn McDonnell is?
No.
Okay.
You used a clip from her interview in your five-minute video, five-and-a-half-minute video, and it cuts off right in the middle of a sentence.
Do you remember that?
No.
All right.
Well, let's watch it.
This is going to be exhibit nine or eight.
All right.
Right.
So, for the record, Exhibit 9 is going to be, the entire show was done on the 25th, the next day on the 26th, and then the following day on the 27th.
This 5, 4, actually, let me make sure I got it.
I thought it was five and a half minutes.
And it's this four minute and 52 second clip was republished both days.
Watch it.
So folks, now here's another story.
You know, I don't even know if Alex knows about this to be honest with you.
Alex, if you're listening and you want to, uh, or if you just want to know what's going on, Zero Hedge has just published a story.
Megyn Kelly fails to fact check Sandy Hook's, Sandy Hook father's contradictory claim in Alex Jones' hit piece.
Now again, this, this broke, I think it broke today, I don't know what time, but featured in Megan Kelly's expose, Neil Heslin, a father of one of the victims, during the...
Right here, I paused it at 51 seconds.
You recognize that's the screenshot from Exhibit 8?
Yes.
Okay.
You described what happened the day of the shooting, and basically what he said, the statement he made, fact checkers on this have said, cannot be accurate.
He's claiming that he held his son and saw the bullet hole in his head.
That is his claim.
Now, according to a timeline of events and a coroner's testimony, that is not possible.
And so one must look at Megyn Kelly and say, Megyn, I think it's time for you to explain this contradiction in the narrative.
So all that that you just said, Megyn Kelly, I think it's time for you to explain.
You're not getting that from the Zero Edge article.
That's you.
Well, it says it right here.
It was incumbent upon Megyn Kelly and NBC to familiarize themselves with all sides of the argument.
But it's more to my point that my intention was not...
I didn't know who Neal Heslund was.
I knew who Megyn Kelly was, and that's why the story was brought to me, because Megyn Kelly was relevant in the news at that time.
Let's take a step back, because I keep hearing this in your answers.
None of my questions care what you intended.
We're focused on the consequences.
Now you're intent.
Okay?
Now, with that said, are you now telling this jury that what you said in this article regarding Megyn Kelly and Neal Heslin, that Neal Heslin was just, that you didn't even know who Neal Heslin was?
I'm not sure I had ever heard of him before this.
You knew that it said, I held my son with a bullet hole in his head.
You knew that it said that, right?
Yeah, it's in the story, yes.
Who did you think was the photograph sitting with Megyn Kelly on that screenshot that you scrolled through and on the document you had printed out in front of you at the time?
I'm sorry, I don't understand.
Go to exhibit seven.
Okay.
Who do you think that is?
Well, that's Mr. Heslin.
Okay.
And did you not know that that's Mr. Heslin and we're talking about a father who held his dead son and you're saying that is not possible.
You didn't know who Mr. Heslin was?
I'm not sure I did at the time.
And again, I wasn't saying that his testimony wasn't impossible.
I was saying that based on the video I saw that I was given of the coroner, and based on the clip from the Megyn Kelly interview, that those two things were impossible.
Based on the video you saw that was given to you by Free Speech Systems.
By whoever was working that day.
By the company that you worked for, by your employer.
Not my employer, but yes, somebody I work with.
Not my employee, but somebody I work with.
Right, but they were acting in the course and scope of their employment, right?
It wasn't just some random person, right?
Okay, yeah.
Yeah.
So, what your testimony is now is that you're not accountable.
We already set that stage.
But you're saying, they're the one, you know, InfoWars and Free Speech Systems gave me this.
They're the ones that didn't give me the whole video, so it's on them.
Is that what you're saying?
No, I'm just telling you what happened.
I'm not asserting fault or blame or anything to anybody.
I'm just telling you what happened that day.
Well, now I'm going to ask you to.
Who do you think is responsible for this snafu?
I don't know.
Really?
If Zero Hedge never publishes the story, I'd never cover it.
So it's Zero Hedge's fault?
I didn't say that.
I'm just telling you that if Zero Hedge never published this story, I would have never covered it.
You know what, though?
Zero Hedge isn't the one that gave you a highly altered clip that completely misled you and all of your viewers.
I don't know who gave me that clip.
I don't know where they got it.
But you definitely want to find out, right?
When you leave here, you're going to go find out who was working that day, right?
Objection form.
Probably not.
You don't care?
Well, I imagine that you would.
And so, again, I mean, I'm not even sure if the people that were working that day even still work at InfoWars.
Same question.
What was the question?
Yeah, I am upset that Mr. Heslund had to go through any of this.
I'm upset that I'm being lumped into this.
Again, like, Sandy Hook was never my thing.
I never have ever doubted the events happened.
I never doubted that his son never died.
I'm doing commentary on a piece that was published by Zero Hedge or Zero Point Now or iBankCoin.
They would have never published it.
I would have never covered it.
Yeah, but...
But you were...
You were reporting on...
That was the...
Excuse me.
The Zero Hedge article got the story going.
But you, directly citing the coroner's testimony?
That's InfoWars.
That's not Zero Hedge.
That's you.
That's your company.
True?
I think it was a CBS interview with the coroner.
I don't know where the original interview with the coroner comes from.
What we do know is that you didn't know what was in it.
True?
Until I saw it that day, yeah.
And you said you're upset that you're lumped into this, and you're upset about Mr. Heslin.
You're not upset enough to go back to work and figure out who did this and put you in this position, made you betray all the people that trust you and watch you, and severely impacted Mr. Heslin's life again.
Right?
You're not that upset.
Objection form.
I just feel that that would be...
There's nothing that can really come of that for me.
Does the truth not matter?
Objection form.
Nobody ever was targeting any individuals by bringing me that thing other than to say, hey, look, Megyn Kelly's back in the news.
How do you know?
You don't even know who gave it to you.
How do you know they weren't targeting?
Okay, fine.
I guess I don't know then.
There you go.
That's all I needed.
You don't know why they did what they did.
You don't know why they clipped that video in the exact way that set you up to lie to thousands of people and drag Mr. Hesslin back through this.
You don't know, do you?
No, I don't know, but I didn't lie about anything.
You think that...
Well, let's finish the video.
We'll talk about the veracity of it afterwards.
We're going to start back up at 1 minute 30, where we pause.
Because this is only going to fuel the conspiracy theory that you're trying to put out, in fact.
So, and here's the thing, too.
You would remember...
Let me see how long these clips are.
You would remember if you held your dead kid in your hands with a bullet hole.
That's not something that you would just misspeak on.
So let's...
You proud of that one?
I stand by that holy.
So, surely Mr. Heslin remembered and was telling the truth.
You agree with that now, right?
Yes.
Alright.
Pull the clip first.
Neil Heslin telling Megyn Kelly of his experience with his kid.
At Sandy Hook Elementary School, one of the darkest chapters in American history was a hoax.
I lost my son.
I buried my son.
I held my son with a bullet hole through his head.
Neil Heslin's son, Jesse, just six years old...
Just so you know, the little boy that died that ultimately was the reason how this lawsuit became, his name is Jesse Lewis.
...was murdered, along with 19 of his classmates and six adults, on December 14, 2012, in Newtown, Connecticut.
I dropped him off at 9.04.
That's when we dropped him off at school.
With his book bag.
Hours later I was picking him up in a body bag.
I'm going to pause it right there at 2 minutes and 41 seconds and I want to ask you something.
Are you aware that before Sandy Hook coverage for InfoWish started, he was a fan?
No.
Okay, so making a pretty extreme claim that would be a very thing vivid in your memory, holding his dead child.
Now here is an account from the coroner that does not cooperate with that narrative.
We did not bring the bodies and the families into contact.
We took pictures of them, of their facial features.
It's easier on the families when you do that.
There is a time and a place for up close and personal in the grieving process.
But to accomplish this, we felt it would be best to do it this way.
- Yeah. - All right.
Well, let's finish this.
You can control the situation depending on your photographer, and I have very good photographers, but...
All right.
That is what...
You realize he was going, and he was about to say something else.
You would agree, right?
I had never seen the clip.
I'd never seen the full clip.
That is the only time I'd ever seen or known anything about that clip.
Let me back up.
Right there, what we just saw, you could hear him going, uh...
Continuing to make noise as the video cuts, correct?
I mean, you can play it back for me now, but I have no idea if I heard it then or not.
Okay, let's play it back real quick, just so we're clear.
Have you ever heard somebody into sentence with, but...
I have no idea.
Right.
He had no idea.
And...
When was that press conference held?
Couldn't tell you.
Okay.
So when he said there's a time and place for Up Close and Personal, what did you think that meant?
That I suppose in other situations that he's been involved in, they'll show you the bodies.
In some situations, they won't.
Okay.
And in this situation, how did you derive the conclusion that they were not going to show the bodies?
The clip that you just played.
Let's pull it back and listen to it again, because he says it's easier that way.
There's a time and place for up close and personal.
If there was no time and place in this instance for up close and personal, you would agree with me.
There's no reason for him to even say it, right?
I'm not sure I agree with that.
All right, well, let's watch it again real quick.
It's not long, and he's pretty direct on it.
That does not cooperate with that narrative.
We did not bring the bodies and the families into contact.
We took pictures of them, of their facial features.
It's easier on the families when you do that.
There is a time and a place for up close and personal in the grieving process.
But to accomplish this, we felt it would be best to do it this way.
So from that, you concluded that there was not a time and place in the grieving process here for them to be up close and personal and hold their children.
Yes.
Okay.
Alright.
Do you know what question he was answering?
No.
She asks, how did you identify the body?
You can sort of...
You can control the situation depending on your photographer.
And I have very good photographers.
But...
It's gotta be hard to have been able to actually see her.
Well, at first I thought that and I had questioned maybe wanting to see her?
We can agree that that clip was cut right in the middle of something.
True?
Wanting to see her?
That would be an assumption.
I don't know.
Okay, so just another question that people are now going to be asking about Sandy Hook, the conspiracy theorist on the internet out there that have a lot of questions that are yet to get answered.
I mean, you can say whatever you want about the event.
That's just a fact.
So there's another one.
Will there be a clarification from Heslin or Megyn Kelly?
I wouldn't hold your breath.
So now they're fueling the conspiracy theory claims.
Unbelievable.
We'll be right back with more.
Thanks.
Hold on.
He's talking to me.
He's the one taking the death out.
No, he's talking to me.
Yeah, we can confer, Brad.
I understand, but...
I promise I'll ask.
I know you will, but...
I'm not going to let him ask a question.
I'm sorry, I can't take you guys both at the same time.
I apologize, that's my fault.
When you say...
So, at the end of this segment, you say, are they going to clear it up?
These are questions that are being asked.
You're one of these people that's asking those questions, right?
No.
Okay.
Do you think you're a conspiracy theorist?
No.
What is a conspiracy theorist?
Somebody that theorizes conspiracies on how our world has become so corrupt.
Okay.
And what is the difference between that and what you do?
What does that mean?
Well, you in your affidavit said you frequently criticize Government and mainstream media on a number of events all the time.
What's the difference between you and a conspiracy theorist?
I have no idea.
That's open for interpretation, but you can clearly see in that video that I'm separating myself from the conspiracy theorists.
Okay.
Who is they?
When you say they have questions, Whoever published this article, whoever is making conspiracy theories about Sandy Hook, which is not me.
Okay.
Okay.
So it says, the last sentence on that video, you say, will there be clarification from Hesslin or Megyn Kelly?
I wouldn't hold your breath.
So now they're fueling the conspiracy theory claims.
Unbelievable.
Who is there fueling the conspiracy theory claims?
Megyn Kelly and Zero Hedge.
And Mr. Heslin?
No.
What did Megyn Kelly say?
That was false.
Because it sounded a lot like it was just Mr. Heslin talking.
Again, as far as my knowledge, the coroner's testimony was not brought up to Mr. Heslin in Megyn Kelly's interview.
And it may have been irrelevant, but that's what I'm saying, is that Megyn Kelly did not clarify that question.
She didn't know it was a question, man.
Nobody questioned her on the spot.
And she probably doesn't go to Your website or Zero Hedge?
It's a pretty fair assumption, right?
Okay, sure.
Okay.
So, there fueling conspiracy theory claims.
When you say there, you're saying Zero Hedge and Megyn Kelly, but not Mr. Heslin.
Correct.
Even though Ms...
Megyn Kelly doesn't...
Wouldn't Mr. Heslin be the one to clear that up?
I'm not the one that interviewed Mr. Heslin.
I'm not the one that was covering Sandy Hook.
If Megyn Kelly was covering Sandy Hook to clarify those things, then that would be on her.
And why did you say, will there be clarification from Heslin?
I would say that if he doesn't like these stories being published, then he would come out and make statements saying, you know, what he said in the video.
That's literally what he, in the video, he said, I held my dead son, to silence the conspiracy theories from your co-workers.
That's why he did the Megyn Kelly interview.
Do you understand that?
You're saying he did the Megyn Kelly interview because of InfoWars?
Yes, because of the five years before that interview, all of the torture that they put him through.
Over and over and over again.
180 times.
That's how many videos there are.
That we can count.
So, yes.
Did you not know that?
No.
Okay.
But, let me back up.
I've got one follow-up here.
You say, will there be clarification from Hesslin or Megyn Kelly?
I wouldn't hold your breath.
So now they're fueling the conspiracy claims.
You're trying to tell me that somehow in that statement you meant Zero Hedge and not Mr. Heslin?
Yes.
Why would you be talking about Zero Hedge here when you believed at the time that that was fact?
I don't understand.
What questions did...
What did Zero Hedge do in this?
They publish the story.
That you ran with is true, right?
That you thought was true?
That I covered.
Right.
Did you think it was true?
If I cover a story, people can believe it's true or not true.
I'm doing journalistic commentary on a story that I didn't wrote, on videos of interviews that I didn't conduct.
Okay.
Do you do journalistic commentary About fake news and misinformation often?
Yeah, I mean, it happens all the time.
Like when?
Look at Jussie Smollett faking a hate crime.
I came on air and I said, this looks like it's fake.
turned out that it was.
Okay.
Now, The parent, the female, with blonde hair, in that segment we just watched, that abruptly gets cut off mid-statement.
Do you know that that's Lynn McDonnell?
No.
Okay.
Do you remember that clip from your segment?
I mean, upon reviewing it, yes, but I could not have...
I would not have been able to recall it.
Do you agree that she is cut off in a mid-statement?
True?
Appears that way.
Okay.
Did it appear that way when you ran it?
It's hard to tell.
I'm sitting in studio.
I don't know what I'm watching.
I don't know what I'm hearing.
I don't know if somebody is in my ear telling me what to do, so I really, I don't know.
But the person that cut that video at Infowars, they definitely knew, right?
I can't answer that.
I have no idea.
But sitting here today, now that, you know, hindsight's 20-20, you watch what I just showed you, surely you're furious right now that they put that up and used you as the mouthpiece.
Yeah, I'm upset that this was brought to me and now it's being used against me.
You're not upset enough to go find out who gave you that video, right?
Objection form.
I don't even know how I could.
Right.
Do you sense You aired that live.
Have you gone back and watched the full interview with Ms. McDonald?
No.
Why?
I never had any interest in the Sandy Hook case.
It was never a story that I covered.
You just covered it.
Yes, because somebody brought it to me because Megyn Kelly was the relevant story at the time.
But you are now covering Sandy Hook and specifically you are covering statements made by Lynn McDonald.
True?
I'm not sure I did any commentary on Lynn McDonald's comments, and in that video I don't believe I even mentioned her name or recognized that statement she made.
So you were just hitting play and sitting back and letting the audience just kind of watch y'all take a clip, air a portion of it, and cut it off right mid-sentence for no reason?
I didn't hit play.
I didn't edit the clip.
I don't know who edited the clip.
When videos play and you're on air, do you have like a monitor that you can watch?
Sometimes, yes.
That was blatantly cut mid-statement.
True?
I don't know.
You just watched it?
Yes.
So when you were sitting up there on the stage with all the lights and American flags waving on the LED screens, you're watching the video clip that they show.
Surely you notice that wasn't the whole story.
Or at that point, do you not even care?
You're like, I trust my guys.
They would never do this to me.
I probably would have trusted my guys, but it looks like at the time, I mean, we're like two minutes from break, I probably have somebody in my ear counting down the video that I've never even seen before, and so I'm just trying to get everything that was put in front of me on the air before we go to a break.
Okay.
So you are not aware that right after that edited part cuts, Ms. McDonald says that she was in the room with her child's body.
She just didn't actually look.
You have no idea until I just said it that that was her statement.
No, I never heard that.
I was not aware of that.
And if that was her statement and somebody at the company you work for cut it there, they did it on purpose, didn't they?
No, I can't say that.
Mr. Schroyer, the video says, at first, I didn't have it in me and I couldn't do it.
I didn't want to remember my kid that way.
Cut.
But I was in the room with my child's body.
It's four seconds of audio more.
You don't think that that was strategically cut to fill in the narrative of the strategically cut video of Dr. Carver, the coroner?
Look at the entire scope of this, and you're going to sit here and tell this jury No way was this done on purpose.
Objection form.
Is that your story?
I absolutely cannot say that this was done intentionally.
Again, I don't even know who edited the video.
Okay.
But what you do know is that...
Let's do this then.
You would agree with me?
Whoever edited these videos did so with an agenda.
No.
I don't believe anybody ever had an agenda to do any harm.
That's fine.
I will let that answer stand for the jury.
Yeah, I only have like two more areas.
Let's go off the record.
Going off the record, the time is 3.11 p.m.
We are back on the record at 3.26 p.m.
Alright, we are back, which I can assure you will be our final break.
And I'm going to hand you...
Actually, I'm not even going to get to that.
So, we can agree you came onto the scene after the Sandy Hook coverage by InfoWars had started, correct?
Yes.
Okay.
But it hadn't concluded.
True?
True.
Okay.
And we know that because you've been in multiple videos we've seen today talking about it, right?
Yes.
And I won't count the Women's March because that was just kind of Collateral damage, you weren't there to talk about that, but the other two you were definitely covered.
Yes.
Now, you, correct me if I'm wrong, but you have never come out and said that Sandy Hook was a hoax, correct?
Correct.
You were not the person that's up there saying that No children died.
Correct.
You aren't spreading information that there's FBI, you know, out in the woods, correct?
Correct.
Port-a-potty showing up within minutes of the shooting.
That's not you.
No.
But you know what I'm talking about, right?
I'm vaguely familiar, but even at the time, I wasn't, I mean, I wasn't even really following Infowars at the time.
So, I mean, even when it was breaking, I didn't really know what was going on.
Okay.
I was still doing sports media at the time.
But when you got to InfoWars in 2016?
Yes.
You became familiar with some of the theories that had been, you know, being reported by InfoWars.
I was not unaware.
Okay, I'll take it.
You were the...
Kind of person for InfoWars that was out there and you were just asking questions.
You weren't taking positions, correct?
Yes.
Now, you would agree with me that there are other members of InfoWars that did at certain points take positions that turned out to be false, that did fuel a hoax or conspiracy theory to an extent for some amount of time.
Correct.
I can't confirm or deny that.
Okay.
Have you, in any way, educated yourself on some of the talking points that Mr. Jones had said at the very beginning and all the way up until 2018 and some of 19?
No, I would say for the most part I'm ignorant.
But if I tell you that's as phony as a $3 bill, you know exactly what I'm talking about, right?
You're saying that something is fake.
If I say, Mr. Jones says it's phonier than a $3 bill.
You know that was the last Sandy Hook video that he put out.
I don't know.
I don't relate the two.
Okay.
So you're not aware that Mr. Jones said it's phonier than a $3 bill?
No, I can't.
I don't recall.
Okay.
Are you aware that Mr. Jones claimed that Anderson Cooper's nose disappeared, so they're using a green screen?
Have you heard that theory that Mr. Jones peddled?
Perhaps, but I'm not aware if that's involved with Sandy Hook or anything.
Okay.
It is, but that's neither here nor there for this case.
But there are people outside InfoWars that spread some kind of vile messages.
Do you know who James Fetzer is?
Jim Fetzer?
Other than his name being brought up in a separate case, I am not aware of Mr. Fetzer.
And same with Wolfgang Halbig's character.
Yeah, correct.
gang Halbig, excuse me, H-A-L-B-I-G. Halbig, Fetzer, some of those fringe guys were fringe conspiracy theorists.
A Fetzer and a Halbig, do you put them in the category of conspiracy theorists, differentiated from you?
I mean, I'm not familiar enough with them or their work to classify them as anything.
Okay.
Who is a conspiracy theorist to you?
Somebody who...
Like, name one.
Give me an example of a conspiracy theorist.
A conspiracy theorist?
Yeah, a conspiracy theorist.
I can't name a conspiracy theorist.
Okay.
Put names into a category like that.
That's fine.
And I was just asking because I will say this.
There's some people in the public and some People that were experts in certain cases we're involved in that have claimed Alex Jones is a conspiracy theorist.
And Infowars is a conspiracy theorist website.
And so I was asking, I know you said that they weren't earlier, I was just seeing if there was, you know, an example of like an outfit that you did classify as that.
Well, I would say CNN is a conspiracy theorist, how about that?
Okay, I'll take it.
So, but You do differentiate Infowars and yourself and Alex Jones from a Jim Fetzer and a Wolfgang Halving and even a Dan Badandi who are out there, you know, crossing boundaries, crossing lines of appropriateness and really just morality.
True?
Again, I'm not familiar with their work other than what's been brought to my attention in these legal proceedings.
I don't follow their work, so I just don't know.
I don't know what it is they do.
When you say it's been brought to your attention in the legal proceedings, what do you mean?
I mean that the name Wolfgang Halbig has been brought to my attention.
In fact...
Oh, in the lawsuit?
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah.
But before that, the guys like that weren't really on your radar.
You were doing your own thing.
Yeah, no.
I've only got one copy, but I can hear Brad.
I'll email you the link.
You connect to the Wi-Fi?
Yeah.
All right.
Let me email you a link to the story.
That ain't it.
This is going to be exhibit 11.
I guess it's exhibit 10.
12, I already did 10, but maybe not.
So 10, let me hand that to you.
Have you ever seen that before?
Yes.
Okay, what is that?
This is a Media Matters story that was published in response to a video I shot discussing Sandy Hook.
Okay.
And the video embedded in that document Exhibit 10. That's the Lafferty video that we were talking about that you did not disclose in this case.
True?
Yes.
Okay.
Because I was unaware of it until my memory was refreshed.
Sure.
And it was years ago, so I get it.
When was the last time you watched the video?
About a month ago.
Okay.
I want to play the video for you.
Okay.
Nope.
There we go.
And ready to be fired at Dylann Roof when he took your mother's life.
Do you think she would still be alive today?
Hold on, let's restart.
Owen Troyer here for Infowars.com.
And I want to stand up for my boss, Alex Jones.
Not that he needs it.
But again today I'm seeing more attacks on Alex about this Sandy Hook thing.
Now this is coming from MSN, Washington Post, USA Today.
But the story I have here was a reprint of a story on MSN.com.
Talking about Lafferty, a woman whose mother was killed in the Sandy Hook massacre.
Now, here's the thing.
Lafferty has now become a major advocate for gun safety.
And I just have this message to you.
Why wouldn't you want a good guy on the scene with a gun when a bad guy comes?
I'm just missing this logic.
Don't you understand that if your mother had a pistol or a firearm, she could have prevented her death?
So if Miss Lafferty's mother had a...
I'm going to pause this video at 49 seconds.
You just made the statement that if Miss Lafferty's mother had a pistol or a firearm, that she could have prevented her death.
Correct.
How?
By shooting her assailant before the assailant shot her.
Okay.
How did...
Did the deceased, Mrs. Lafferty's mother, did she see the assailant coming?
I have no idea.
Did she have the ability to get to a purse or a lockbox to get the weapon to defend herself?
I would assume not.
Okay, so then why are you representing to the public and directed to Mrs. Lafferty, who lost her mom, that if she had a gun, she could have prevented this?
Because I believe if she would have had access to a gun, she would have used it to protect her life and the lives of others.
Right.
She could have also used that gun and taken steps to put herself in further danger.
True?
I mean, yeah, if you're going to approach an armed assailant, then you do put yourself in further danger.
She could have missed and hit a child.
True?
Yes.
Or she could have died...
Without ever even seeing it coming from behind.
She could have been the first one that went down.
True?
She could have been.
I don't know.
So this conspiracy theory that you have, which is if she had a gun it would have been prevented, that's just kind of, you're just kind of guessing and really you and I can agree you're making this a gun issue here, right?
Objection to form.
No, I believe the gun issue was made With whatever story I'm covering, like I said, whatever the story is that I'm covering, they're saying that new gun legislation is the answer, and my proposal is that having a gun to protect yourself is a better answer.
Are you sure that that's what she's saying?
Because I will say this.
You do say that she is a high-profile gun advocate now, but that's not what this is about.
This is about her telling President Trump that he needs to distance himself from Mr. Jones.
You understand that, right?
I know that that is mentioned in the article.
You're the one that actually makes this a gun issue.
Arming teachers, that's your gun issue.
I am of the logical conclusion that having armed security would stop a mass shooting.
Based on what?
Common sense.
Okay.
And if it was based on common sense, wouldn't this been the law, I don't know, 100 years ago?
No.
Let me ask you this.
Do other countries arm teachers?
Perhaps.
Like when?
Like, give me a country.
I can't give you an answer to that.
Right.
So you're uninformed.
Because you can't name one.
I mean, if you had a situation where you had 30 police officers outside of a school that were armed, Do you think, I mean, the odds would significantly decrease that there's going to be a mass shooter there?
What are you basing that on?
Common sense.
You're telling me that 30 police officers with a gun outside of a school wouldn't prevent a mass shooting?
You're not talking about police officers, you're talking about arming teachers.
Okay, let's say 30 armed teachers then.
Okay.
Back to my question is, we can agree you're making this a gun issue, right?
I'm saying my stance on...
It's a simple question.
You're making this a gun issue in this video, not Ms. Lafferty.
She's calling on President Trump to denounce Alex Jones.
Correct?
I'd have to refresh my memory.
We'll watch the rest of it.
I was just seeing if you knew.
The second part of my question is, is the guns not the issue for all these mass shootings that are happening in the United States?
Can you rephrase the question?
Yeah.
Is the amount of guns and the ability to carry and have firearms in the United States, is that not the issue or one of the issues surrounding why we have so many mass shootings?
I mean, that's just a matter of opinion and perception.
What's your opinion?
I would say that that is the lesser of the issues.
What's the more, bigger issue?
I would say Violence being promoted in the youth, I would say overstimulation with violence, overstimulation with drugs at a young age is more of an issue, and a lack of armed security.
So you're not even going to go with the mental health issue like the other conservative talking points?
Well, I mean, when you talk about being desensitized to violence or being addicted to prescription pills at a young age, I think that that's a moral health issue.
What are you basing that off of?
Well, if you have some sort of a mental health problem...
No, no, no.
What are you basing your assertion that the United States has more so of an issue than other countries with prescription pills in young adolescents?
Well, I don't have the numbers in front of me, but I'm pretty sure that the United States leads the world in prescription drug overdoses.
So you're not sure?
Again, I don't have the numbers in front of me.
Right, so you're not sure.
Like I said, I don't want you guessing up here, because you're under oath.
And you raised your right hand.
You know who's watching.
So, I'll ask again.
You're not sure if prescription drug use within the youth of the United States is a major issue more so than guns?
It's okay if you don't know.
I want to make sure it's clear for the record.
I'm not sure exactly what you're asking.
Okay, you said guns is a minor issue, but the bigger issue is Promoting violence and prescription drug use within minors and adolescents.
I'm not sure what the relevance is to why this line of questioning is relevant right now.
Sure.
And you have a phenomenal attorney.
He'll object for you if it's inappropriate.
I'm just trying to decipher what it is you're asking me.
Okay.
You said a bigger problem than guns Related to mass shootings in the United States, and you listed one of the bigger problems than guns is prescription drug use within youth and adolescents in this country.
And I said, what are you basing that on?
And you said, I don't have anything in front of me.
I would assume something.
And so I said, so you don't know.
You don't know whether or not prescription drugs is a bigger problem than guns.
That's all I'm trying to clear up.
It's a matter of opinion.
Who could know that answer?
Well, you just said you don't have the numbers in front of you, so I don't know.
Any intelligent person that has the numbers in front of them would know?
Well, what would you, I mean, how would you base the numbers versus here's how many minor Americans shoot somebody versus here's how many minor Americans are on drugs?
I mean, what's your metric?
Let me just do this, Mr. Schroyer.
I'm not making any inferences here.
I'm literally, I'm just taking what you say and asking you what you mean.
Okay?
You said, I don't have the numbers in front of me, which implies if you did, you could tell me.
So then I said, well, every person that has the numbers would know, but you don't, so you don't know.
You understand that?
You're asking me my opinion on Gun rights or, you know, gun violence in this country.
And I'm just not sure what that has to do with this case right now.
You brought it up in the video.
Well, yeah, I'm saying my logic is if there would have been armed security at the school that day...
It's not your position.
Armed teachers.
Okay.
Well, teachers can be security.
Okay, sure.
So if there would have been armed teachers, I would stand to reason that...
The mass shooter that day would have been stopped before the mass carnage happened.
And that's just based on your opinion and you don't have any real facts or evidence to back it up.
True?
Objection 4. How could one prove that?
My same question.
That's your opinion.
You have no facts or data to back up that assertion.
True?
No.
No, it is not true.
Or, yeah, it's true or false.
Do you have any facts or data to back up your opinion?
I've answered your question.
I'm just trying to get clarity.
Brad, I'm not trying to get out of here.
He answers the question.
He gave the answer he's given you.
Okay.
I'll take it.
A good person with a gun could have stopped a bad person with a gun and saved lives.
Why does this logic escape you?
I'm not trying to be rude.
I'm not trying to be insensitive.
I'm just explaining how your logic doesn't work and it failed your mother.
Now, She talks about Alex being someone that denies the Sandy Hook massacre even happened, saying that Alex is a conspiracy theorist, and then tying Alex to Trump.
That's the big thing now, to try to tie the two together.
Okay, so you just went through and you said that she claims that Alex said that this is fake.
And what I get from watching this is that you disagree that Alex said that.
Is that your position?
No, I disagree that it was fake.
I disagree that there was a hoax involved.
Okay.
And if Mr. Jones has testified, now twice in this case, that he did believe it was a hoax multiple times throughout the past six and a half years, then you would differ in opinions than him.
True?
Can you restate that?
Yeah, you just said you've never thought that it was a hoax.
Mr. Jones, he definitely thought it was a hoax a few times.
Did you know that?
Yes.
Okay.
How?
By reading stories like this.
Okay.
Here's the thing.
This story goes on and they're not even quoting Alex.
They're quoting other stories that aren't quoting Alex.
So they're just basically using hearsay against Alex What's hearsay?
Hearing somebody say something and then saying it yourself.
Okay, that's the layman's term.
You're not using hearsay in the legal sense.
You're just saying someone else said this.
Yes.
Okay.
Why is that not okay?
What do you mean?
If you're not using it in the legal sense, what's wrong with hearsay?
Did I ever say anything was wrong with hearsay?
I'm just pointing out that it's hearsay.
Yeah, you say that hearsay is not actual proof.
That's where you say it.
Okay.
So, in a court of law, you might have a little bit of an argument, but here, you just said you weren't using it in the legal sense, so I'm trying to figure out why you think it's not evident.
I don't think I make an assertion as to whether it's evidence or not.
I'm just making an assertion that it's hearsay.
Let's pull it back a little bit.
Oh, man, I think I just exited it out.
Nope.
Nope.
There it is.
Sorry, I exited out of the webpage.
Nope, it's the New York Times.
Don't worry.
Yeah.
Okay, give me a little second.
I found it.
Owen Sawyer here for Infowars.com.
That's the big thing now, to try to tie the two together.
But here's the thing.
This story goes on, and they're not even quoting Alex.
They're quoting other stories that aren't quoting Alex.
So, they're just basically using hearsay against Alex without any actual proof.
Okay.
So, now that you had a chance to listen to it again, if you use a story that's A story about Alex.
To you, you're like, ah, it's not evidence to me.
Is that what your position is?
I'm not sure on my position.
Well, I'm just asking because it's kind of like somebody running a story that was given to them by someone they don't know or remember who got it from an anonymous source.
Do you know where I'm going with that?
I'm not sure, but I'm, you know, this is a, what is it, a four-minute video here, I think?
You can find some change.
So, I pick up a story, I cover it, and that's it.
There's no bigger agenda, there's no deep dive, there's no follow-up.
It's, here's a story, I'm covering it, and that's it.
And you're the new kid on the block when this is going on.
This is 2016, you're fresh, you know, you just got to InfoWars, true?
Yes.
When you got there, did you try to make a name for yourself?
I'm not really sure what you mean by that.
I mean, I try my best to be successful.
I don't want to flatter you, but by far you're the second most famous person in that building.
I don't think most people in the world could even name a third.
So when you got there, I was asking if you were making a name for yourself to get you to where you are today.
No, I just wanted to work hard and try to host my own talk show someday.
That's So, I mean, you could say making a name for myself, being a success, I just wanted to just do a good job.
Do you think you're famous?
That's a matter of interpretation.
I'm asking your interpretation.
Do you think you're famous?
No.
Okay.
Now, again, Lafferty said this in her op-ed with USA Today that She's demanding that Donald Trump will denounce Alex Jones.
This is not going to go well for you.
This is going to provide more attention to Alex Jones, and again, I'm asking you Why are you so upset with Alex Jones?
He's looking for the truth, folks.
And he's not the one that's denying Sandy Hook ever happened.
He's going off other reports.
He's going off other evidence.
He's going off research done by Wolfgang Halbig, who perhaps has done the best reporting on this and has 16 questions available online that still have not been answered.
Let's stop there.
Because earlier I asked you some questions about Wolfgang Halbig and you said, no, he's the radical one.
I don't know anything about his work.
I can't opine on what he does.
You remember when you told me that?
Yes.
In fact, you said...
You said, I'm not familiar with his work enough to have an opinion.
You remember when you said that?
Yes.
And then you went on to say, then you also said that Jim Fetzer had nothing to do with this particular case.
Remember when you said that?
I remember talking about him.
I don't remember the exact context.
Okay, but did Jim Fetzer have anything to do with this particular case we're here for today?
I don't think...
I'm not sure.
Maybe.
Okay.
And so...
Here you are, telling the InfoWars audience, which is thousands.
In fact, y'all are on your way to helping get President Trump elected at this time, right?
It's a matter of opinion.
Well, I think, I mean, most people tip their hat to you guys for what you did to get him elected.
I mean, it's not really an opinion, kind of a fact.
Well, I guess we can thank Media Matters for republishing all of our reports for that, then, too.
Exactly.
So, but here you are telling these thousands, if not millions of people that saw this video, they see you talking directly to a woman who lost her mother.
And you're saying, She died because her logic was not to give guns to teachers.
True?
No, I would say that...
I mean, if I have to make a cemented statement, it would say I think that people died that day because there was no armed security, there was no layer of protection to stop the shooter from going in there and killing people.
You didn't stop at people.
You named Miss Lafferty's mother, particularly, would not have died if she had a pistol or a firearm.
You said those words.
True?
Yes.
Okay.
Then you went on to say, you know, Wolfgang Halbig He's a good guy.
He's done the best reporting of anyone on Sandy Hook.
He's got 16 questions.
Remember when you said all that?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Sounds like you're a big fan of Wolfgang Halbig right here.
I wasn't.
I'm not sure.
I mean, my guess is when it comes to Sandy Hook, that was probably the only name that I ever saw brought up about it, and that's probably why I referenced it.
But to say I was a big fan of Wolfgang Halbig is inaccurate, and I don't believe I ever described him as a good person.
Okay.
Why did you tell thousands if not millions of people here Wolfgang Halbig did the best reporting on Sandy Hook out of all the reporting and this was a highly reported incident in the world?
Probably because that was just the only name that I had associated with Sandy Hook for whatever reason just because I never researched it and that was the only name I ever saw associated with it.
You know, Anderson Cooper was there.
You know, all the big CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, Breitbart covered it.
You know, tons of people covered it.
But you, did you choose Wolfgang Halbig because he fit your narrative here?
I didn't have a narrative.
Again, I wasn't following Sandy Hook at the time.
I wasn't following politics or current events at the time.
You were just upset because what Ms. Lafferty said about Trump and your boss upset you and you needed to stand up for him.
I just wanted to cover an article and respond to statements.
Did you get good feedback from Alex Jones after this?
Did he say, hey, I appreciate you, new kid?
I have no idea.
Okay.
I doubt there was any feedback.
Back here, you're just now getting into this type of kind of political commentary.
True?
Yes.
Did you really have any idea what you were doing right here?
Yeah, I was covering a story and uploading a video to Wherever it was published.
Did you do a good job covering this story that we're watching right now?
Probably could have done better.
You know, kind of cut all the Wolfgang Habakkuk stuff, right?
Yeah, I probably wouldn't have mentioned him at all.
Why not?
Because it's being used against me, and I didn't know enough about the individual to know how or why it would be used against me.
Okay.
Isn't that a question that you do before you report it to hundreds of thousands of people?
You learned that in J school, right?
I don't know.
You don't know or you don't remember?
What's your question?
At any point since, you know, from 2016 we see it.
We saw it in 2017. We've seen multiple times where you're just throwing stuff out there without any fact-checking.
At any point did you learn how to fact-check?
Sure.
When?
Throughout my career as a journalist or in college.
Okay, so in college you learned.
When did you start applying it to your profession?
I don't know.
I apply it every day.
Okay.
What reporting did Wolfgang Halbig do that was good?
Thank you.
I'm not sure.
How did he become the best, in your opinion?
I would say I misspoke in that video, or as I said earlier, it was just the only name that I'd ever heard associated with Sandy Hook at the time.
You saw this video a couple weeks ago?
Yeah, about a month.
About a month ago.
Okay, in the last month have you gone on air and clarified to all of your audience that you were wrong?
Because now it's got us asking questions.
I don't want to touch anything Sandy Hook with a 3,000 million foot pole.
Yet here you were, before our last break, saying Megan Kelly needs to come clarify.
This was years ago.
So?
If I had any idea...
Actually, wait, back up.
When was the Megan Kelly interview?
I don't know.
More than three years ago.
Okay.
And what's your timeline for when you don't need to go back and correct your Yourself to your audience.
How long has to go by before you're like, ah, I'm not going to correct it.
I'll just let them believe it.
When I make a mistake on air these days, I come back and correct it immediately.
When you find out.
Yeah.
Okay.
Well, you found out a month ago about this.
Did you immediately go correct it?
What do I need to correct?
You told everyone Wolfgang Halbig was the best reporter on Sandy Hook.
Then you admitted here today, I don't know, 90 seconds ago, that you were wrong, and that was the only name you could think of that you associated with Sandy Hook.
So that would be what you should correct.
I mean, I could go on air and say, everybody ignore Wolfgang Halbig, he's a bad person, but I don't really see what that serves, and it would just draw more attention to him.
I think it would serve your...
You know, credibility, one, of saying, you don't have to say that.
You say, hey, I made a video, and when I made that video, I was calling out a woman who lost her mom.
Her mother was gunned down in a massacre.
And I made a video to that woman's daughter.
And in that video, I cited Wolfgang Halbig.
He's one of the best reporters.
Why aren't you listening to him?
And I shouldn't have, ladies and gentlemen.
And I wanted to correct that mistruth, that wrong that I made.
Why can't you do that?
Projection form to the entire sidebar before that, but okay.
It was all a question.
I could do that.
Could you put a question mark at the end of the sentence?
But Sandy Hook is not a story that I'm really bigly affiliated with.
I mean, you're talking about somebody who's been at Infowars now for four plus years, done hundreds if not thousands of hours of broadcasting, And you have three videos of me talking about Sandy Hook, none of which do I insinuate that it was a lie or a hoax or nobody died.
I was just going to tell you this, Mr. Troy.
We've got three right now, but now I know where to go look.
You won't.
We had to find two of them.
You conveniently forgot the others.
Objection and sidebar.
Let's finish this one.
And are being refused to even get addressed.
But again, then they finally do quote Alex, and they say that he admits he doesn't know what really happened at Sandy Hook.
And they just say the official story has more holes in it than Swiss cheese.
So again...
What holes are you talking about?
I have no idea.
Okay, then why are you talking on air?
Because I'm covering a story.
You're defending your boss because someone said he said this, but all he said was there's holes.
And that's all he said.
What did he say?
I don't know.
Okay.
Prior to going on air, did you do a bunch of research to fact check any of this?
No.
Okay, you just took somebody else's article, went on air, and started talking.
Uh, yes.
It's kind of like your modus operandi, right?
Objection form.
No, but that's the case in this video.
And that was also the case in the last video we watched, right?
The one we're here for today with Mr. Hesslin at Zero Hedge.
That was the case then, right?
Same thing.
True?
I've answered the question.
I don't think you have.
Is it true that this instance is very similar to the instance in this case when you talk about Mr. Hesslin in the Megyn Kelly interview?
Yes or no?
Yes.
All right.
When they actually quote him, they can't quote him denying that it happened.
That's just hearsay they use from other reports.
Now, again, Lafferty said this in her op-ed, which to me, I don't understand, and I think she needs to explain.
She says, I've faced...
Another trend I keep seeing in these videos that you're making is you just keep telling everybody else they need to explain.
But whenever I just asked you, like, oh, the how big stuff, are you going to go explain that?
You're like, nah.
Why do you get a double standard?
I'm simply responding to people who put themselves in the public square.
Okay.
You're putting yourself in the public square here.
And people are welcome to respond.
People respond to my reports all the time with negativity, death threats, everything.
Well, that's like me saying, Oh, Mr. Schroer, you need to explain, you need to explain, you need to explain, and then you say, well, what about this?
And I'm like, I don't need to explain.
You can see the double standard here, surely?
No.
Okay.
I'll let that one stand, too.
The cold hard truth of the murder of my mother, and it's time for Trump to face one of his own, wrote Lafferty?
I'm not sure exactly what she's calling for here, but, I mean, to me, that sounds like she's calling for Trump to have to face Someone, a loved one, dying from gun violence?
How did you draw that conclusion?
I think it's pretty apparent with the video you just played.
Let me ask you this.
From Ms. Lafferty saying, I think it's time for Trump to face one of his own, could a reasonable person draw from that that Donald Trump needs to face one of his supporters and condemn that remark?
Could a reasonable person get there from that?
Maybe.
That's just what it sounds like to me.
If that's what she's advocating, how could she demonize Alex Jones for wanting to find out the truth behind Sandy Hook?
She said this, I'm asking conservatives and all Americans to join me in telling President-elect Trump this, Alex Jones represents the worst of our country.
It's time to disavow the man who calls my mother's desk death a hoax and do not appear on his show.
Again, I would say you need to address Wolfgang Halbig and What are Wolfgang Halbig's 16 questions?
I don't know.
Why were they so important to you in this video you mentioned it twice?
I think it was more of a matter of, from my perspective, Alex Jones was catching all this flack for Sandy Hook, but the other people that were questioning it weren't, to my best knowledge.
Who do you mean other people?
Wolfgang Halbig.
Anyone else?
Not that I'm aware of.
Okay.
Alex Jones done.
He's not the one that shot up your school.
He's not the one that writes the legislation for gun-free zones so that innocent people die.
All Alex Jones wants is the truth.
All Wolfgang Halbig wants is the truth.
Why are you butting heads with people that want to find out the truth of what happened to your mother?
That's what I don't understand.
But then, the final hit against Donald Trump in this story, Trump is now falsely claiming that millions of people illegally voted for Hillary Clinton and there was serious voter fraud.
But wait a second, they're recounting the election.
So, why is Trump crazy for doing that?
So again, this whole thing is a hit job on Alex Jones, a hit piece on Trump, trying to tie the two together and demonize them, but I reach out an olive branch.
To Lafferty.
I feel for you losing your mother.
I feel for whatever happened to Sadie Hook that day.
But I'm telling you, Alex Jones is not your enemy.
Wolfgang Halbig is not your enemy.
You still believe that?
That Wolfgang Halbig is not her enemy?
I don't know enough about Wolfgang Halbig to say that.
Did you forget or did you ever know?
I never knew.
Okay.
He's not your enemy.
We are just looking for truth.
And some of the things that you've said in your op-ed are just inaccurate and inappropriate.
And again, I would say as...
Can you tell me what you found to be inaccurate?
No.
Okay.
At the time, did you know what was inaccurate?
I'm sure, but I can't get into my headspace from that day.
Sure.
You are now an advocate for gun legislation or gun safety.
I ask you, if your mother had a gun, Ready, aimed, and ready to be fired at Dylann Roof when he took your mother's life.
Do you think she would still be alive today?
This is Owen Troyer for Infowars.com.
How do you think that last little part went over with Ms. Lafferty?
Objection form.
I don't know.
Okay.
If you could redo this video, would you keep that last part in?
I just wouldn't do the video at all.
Why?
Because it's now being used against me.
So you're saying that the words that you said prior to today are now being used against you?
Ms. Lafferty writes a public piece that I do commentary on.
I mean, am I not allowed to do commentary when somebody writes a piece?
I mean, that's all I did there.
I even say in the video, I feel for you.
I reach out an olive branch.
I'm sorry this happened.
There was no ill will towards Ms. Lafferty.
I'm making my stance as somebody that believes having armed security prevents mass shootings.
Why do we put armed security at banks?
Okay.
I ask that only because if...
Are both your parents alive?
Yes.
Okay, if you lost one and...
And somebody that you didn't know made a video about this to you.
How do you think you would receive it?
No idea.
I receive hate mail, death threats all the time.
And I accept that comes with my position as a public figure.
If Mr. Halbig directly harassed parents from the Sandy Hook Massacre, And you promoted him as you just did.
You can see why that would be upsetting to someone, true?
Yes.
Okay.
And looking back, do you wish that you would have vetted Mr. Halbig a little more before you started throwing support behind him?
Yes.
Okay.
Have you ever received any Documentation from Mr. Halbig or from another person who received it from Mr. Halbig?
Not that I'm aware of.
Okay.
When did your opinion of Mr. Halbig change?
I can't, I don't know.
Was it recently during the lawsuits or prior to that?
I can't, I don't know.
After this video, did you really even hear much from Halbig?
Ever again?
No.
Okay.
But in the lawsuit that you're being sued, or you're not named, but the lawsuit you're involved with in Connecticut, and this video specifically, Mr. Halving got brought back up.
True?
Yeah, and I'm not a defendant in that case.
Right.
That's why I said you're involved, but I said you're not being sued.
I'm not trying to make that clear.
And I want to give you just this document because it's kind of surprising.
Twelve?
Eleven.
11. That's an email to you from your dinner buddy, Rob Dew.
Do you remember getting this?
No.
Do you know who Christopher Winter is?
No.
Do you know why Rob Dew would send you this?
No.
Is this something that you find entertaining?
No.
Did you ask Mr. Dew, hey, why on earth would you send me this?
I'm not even sure I ever opened this email.
Are you a Holocaust denier?
No.
Have you ever shared any anti-Semitic statements or conduct in the workplace?
No.
Are you aware of anybody in Infowars being accused of that?
No.
The people at Infowars, for the most part, what do they like?
They're not asking in a better way.
Do you like your co-workers?
For the most part.
Okay.
Why is that?
They're just regular people.
Do you all share a common viewpoint or goal?
We have similar ideologies.
Let's go.
Do you know Paul Watson?
I know who he is.
Are y'all friends?
I've met him maybe once, but we don't, I wouldn't say we're friends.
Okay.
Why did you become friends with Mr. Dew and not Mr. Watson?
Well, Mr. Watson lives in Europe.
Mr. Dew lives in Austin.
Oh, okay.
Do you go, have you been to Mr. Dew's home?
No.
I know that I've been to a previous home that he lived in, but I believe he's moved and I've not been to that home.
Okay.
Are you aware that Mr. Watson sent an email regarding Sandy Hook in the midst of Infowars covering Sandy Hook in the way that they were doing it?
Am I aware of an email sent from Watson?
Let me just ask you this.
Have you seen Mr. Watson's deposition on YouTube?
No.
Have you seen Mr. Dew's depositions on YouTube?
No.
Have you seen Mr. Jones' depositions on YouTube?
Some clips, not in its entirety.
Okay.
Who's Buckley?
Buckley?
Yeah.
I believe Buckley...
I'm assuming you're speaking of an individual who worked at InfoWars when I first started, but I don't believe he was there for too long after I was hired.
Okay.
This is an email that kind of came to us.
And I just want to know if this similar message It says, Mr. Paul Joseph Watson wrote Buckley, sent this to Alex.
This Sandy Hook stuff is killing us.
It's promoted by the most batshit crazy people like Renzi and Fetzer who all hate us anyways.
Plus, It makes us look really bad to align with people who harass the parents of dead kids.
It's going to hurt us with drudge and bringing bigger names into the show.
Plus, the event happened three years ago.
Why even risk our reputation for it?
And that was sent in December of 2015. You see that date?
Yes.
Buckley says, I agree with you 100%.
We think it hurts our credibility significantly.
I'll do what I can to head away from it as much as we can.
What was the latest incursion?
I missed it.
Mr. Watson responds, same day.
Adam wrote another article implying that Posner, that the Posner guy's son didn't die.
I think Alex had it out with him and put a ban on future Sandy Hook stuff.
That was in 2015. But here you were in 2016. Talking about Sandy Hook again, right?
Yes.
And then we saw a video from 2017 where you're talking about Sandy Hook again, right?
Yes.
Doesn't seem like Mr. Jones put it to bed, correct?
I wish that was the case.
I wish somebody told me never to cover Sandy Hook.
Okay, so Mr. Jones never told you not to cover Sandy Hook?
No.
Okay.
If Mr. Jones announced to the entire company, do not run another Sandy Hook story, Would everyone follow that instruction?
I can't speak for everybody, but for myself, absolutely, I would have not covered it.
Does anyone at the company have the standing to disobey that order from the only owner?
I mean, anybody could obey or disobey an order.
And are there consequences at InfoWars if you disobey?
Sure, just as there might be anywhere else.
I mean, if Alex said, don't go on air and discuss Sandy Hook, and then the next day I go on air and discuss it, I probably would have been terminated.
Okay.
So, what I get from this email exchange is that Mr. Watson sent this to Alex, and it looks like Buckley said that, or excuse me, then it says the third email that, Alex had it out with Adam.
Who's Adam?
I'm not sure.
I think it's a typo for Adon.
Oh yeah, Adon.
Adon Salazar, you know who that is?
Yes.
Okay.
But it doesn't sound like the ban on future Sandy Hook stuff was company-wide.
True?
I'm not sure what process Or what, you know, statements were made from Alex or Buckley or anybody.
I wasn't at the company at the time, so I don't know.
Well, let's just do this.
I got one from 16 and 17 with you in it, talking about Sandy Hook, so it doesn't sound like Mr. Jones put a ban on it.
If he did, he didn't tell you, right?
Yes.
All right.
So, in this video that we played, exhibit...
Oh, the first video where you talk about Mr. Hesslin and the coroner.
That video relied on some information from Wolfgang Halbert.
True?
I mean Jim Fetzer.
James Fetzer.
True?
I'm not sure.
Okay.
Oh, I got it.
No, I took it out.
Well, I took it out because you said I took it out because you said nay.
Let's see here.
Let's clean this up real quick.
Find exhibit two.
Yeah, I can't find the other copy.
All right.
We're going to talk about exhibit one.
I want you to flip to page 3. And in this, you swore an oath that everything in that affidavit was true, correct?
Yes.
Alright.
On page 3. Let's go to paragraph 8. Can you read that out loud, please?
Both of these articles had been published before my broadcast and both quoted Jim Fetzer, professor at University of Minnesota, who had written a book about Sandy Hook being a conspiracy, and saying that Heslund's statement on NBC's broadcast after holding his son could not have happened.
The articles further described other facts about medical examiner's statements and an interview of some of the parents who lost children as bases for Fetzer's iBank coins and Zero Hedger's opinions that they contradicted Mr. Heslund's statement on NBC. Okay.
So, at least when you wrote that affidavit in 2018, you were aware that the videos that you published We're citing James Fetzer, correct?
Yes.
And in your affidavit, you make him sound meritorious with saying that he was a professor emeritus at Minnesota.
True?
Yes.
Do you know what a professor emeritus is?
No.
Have you ever seen anyone use Professor Emeritus in a context to bolster credibility?
I may be familiar with it, but I'm not sure what it means or why it would be used.
Okay.
Why'd you use it in your affidavit?
Because, again, and this is going back, but I assume that that's how his name was either listed or quoted in whatever reference we're making here.
Okay.
What would it surprise you to know that a professor emeritus is a person who used to be a professor?
So a former professor?
Yeah.
Do you know why Mr. Fetzer is a former professor?
No.
Probably Google that before you bolster someone's credibility like that again.
Okay.
Objection form.
It's a sidebar.
That's not a sidebar.
That's a question.
Yeah, that's not even a question.
You said you should probably do that.
Brad, how did he answer it?
You tell me that and...
He said, okay.
I'm just telling you, if you could just ask your questions so we could finish this, that would be great for everybody.
I'm working on it.
We did a 20-minute Q&A from your client to me.
I mean, I don't know what you...
You weren't objecting when that happened.
Yeah.
Yeah.
James Fetzer, no longer a professor at Minnesota, and there's reasons for that.
I'll let you find those.
This is exhibit 13.
Oh, yeah, I did.
Yeah.
Do you understand?
Did you know that Mr.
What prior to today?
Did you know that Paul Watson was deposed in this in this litigation?
No.
Okay.
Can you think, when you see Sandy Hook or Parkland or these type of shootings, what do you call them?
A mass casualty event?
A massacre?
Mass shooting?
What do you call them in your, you know...
As you report them.
There's no universal or uniform words or phrase.
Would you agree with me that for all intents and purposes of this deposition, I'm going to call them mass shootings.
When I say mass shooting, I'm referring to that.
Can you think of a mass shooting that Infowars Did not say it was a false flag and or a hoax.
Yeah, there was just one at a high school in Michigan this week.
Okay.
Prior to, yeah, actually, prior to this lawsuit being filed, can you think of one?
No.
Neither could Paul Watson because Columbine, Infowars, false flag, or brainwash, the government brainwash program.
Boston bombing, Gabrielle Gifford shooting, Parkland shooting, Aurora, Sutherland Springs Church shooting, El Paso, 9-11, Oklahoma City, San Bernardino, all false flag or hoax.
All claimed by Infowars.
So earlier when I asked you if you thought InfoWars was a conspiracy theory website, you said no.
Now that I just went through those, you still holding on to that opinion?
There's way too much to unpack there to make a broad statement about 20 different events and then just make a blanket statement of conspiracy theory.
I gave you all 20 events, right?
Or however many.
Which one of them was a hoax?
Which one of them was a false flag?
You tell me.
I have no comment on that.
Right, because there's no, you can't name one, right?
I didn't say that either.
Okay, then name one.
I don't see the relevance of me talking about other cases.
I've never claimed, I never even claimed Sandy Hook was a false flag or a hoax.
No, but you said that your employer was not a conspiracy theory website.
And so I'm asking you, If they're not a conspiracy theory website, which one of those did they get right?
I have no comment on that.
Because you can't, or because you just for some reason refuse or won't?
I have no idea the covers at the time.
I have no idea the context of what you're saying.
I wasn't at Infowars for that, and so I'm just not going to go on record making statements about stuff that I don't know about.
Since the turn of the millennium, can you think of Actually, let's say, in the last 10 years, can you think of a single hoax or government or a false flag event?
Well, sure.
I mean, I named one earlier, Gulf of Tonkin, but we just got documents.
When was that?
In the 70s.
Okay.
The last 10 years.
Documents get declassified by the government all the time.
Did you know that Mr. Jones, your boss, has been talking about the Gulf of Tonkin since 1999?
I'm unaware of how long Mr. Jones has been talking about anything.
Okay.
So then, in the last ten years, can you give me a hoax and or a false flag?
One.
Yeah, I was answering the question.
question.
Just a few years back, Donald Trump declassified the JFK assassination papers in which it clearly states that there was a cover-up of the assassin of JFK and that the CIA was involved.
Okay.
Other than JFK, it being proven that the CIA killed JFK.
The CIA was involved with killing the United States president, arguably one of the most treasonous things someone could do to the country.
Didn't say that either.
Sorry.
You said the CIA was involved, right?
I said that there were declassified documents involving the JFK assassination that led a lot more to the story that was not covered at the time, including the CIA withholding information.
Okay.
What about that is a hoax and or a conspiracy?
I mean, a hoax and or a false flag?
I'm not sure.
You just asked me, name an event, and I'm saying that, okay, declassified documents show that the CIA was withholding information about the JFK assassination.
When did President Trump declassify it?
I believe 2017 or 18, but I mean, how about, okay...
So, Ronald Reagan.
He's part of it.
He didn't declassify him, so he's part of the cover-up, right?
Never said that.
Wait, back up.
President Trump, he declassified, right?
Yes.
The president has that power, right?
In some circumstances, yes.
In this circumstance, for sure, because it happened, right?
Yes.
Ronald Reagan, he was president, right?
He was president, yes.
Twice as long as Trump, right?
Yes.
He didn't declassify it, did he?
No.
Okay, and that was 20 years after JFK was killed?
So, John, based on your logic, Ronald Reagan is part of the cover-up of JFK's assassination, at least to the CIA's involvement in the cover-up.
True?
No.
Yeah.
Again, anything that has happened in the last 10 years.
Yeah.
Okay, Jussie Smollett fakes a hate crime.
Entire media runs with the story.
Okay, how's that?
A hoax or a false flag?
It's literally both.
It was one person.
But was it a hoax?
Yes.
Was it a false flag?
Yes.
So wait, you're saying that media outlets got information and reported it, that information, and it was wrong.
Therefore, it's a hoax.
If that's the case, What do you call what we discussed today in your video from 2017?
Objection 4. You asked me to name an event that was a hoax and I answered the question.
When I asked the question, you might have forgotten.
I was in a mass shooting.
I was focusing on mass shootings because anything that we question isn't going to be relevant.
But to this case, how you guys react to mass shootings is relevant.
So, that's what I'm asking for.
Can you name one?
Because I gave you a long list, and I just said, did you get any of those right?
Hold on.
Objection form.
I don't want to go back all the way through the record, but you listed off a number of things that are not mass shootings.
So, you just said you're only focused on...
I'm just trying to make sure we're clear on this question.
Which one was not a mass shooting?
September 11. Oh, 9-11.
You're right.
Sorry.
A mass casualty event.
My bad.
Okay.
Well, there's obviously a difference.
No, you're right.
I'm taking 9-11 off that list.
Every single one is labeled a hoax and or false flag immediately by InfoWars.
The day of, on every single one that I just listed off, did they get any of them right?
I mean, I'm basing an answer off of an assumption that you're being completely honest.
I don't know what you're talking about.
What events did I cover of those events that you listed?
Well, so here's the thing.
You didn't cover any of these, but you did say that Infowars is not a conspiracy theory website.
So if they're a website that labels all of these events as false flags and or Government cover-ups or hoaxes, and none of them are right, what does that make InfoWars?
It's a matter of opinion.
I'm asking, what's your opinion?
Objection form.
I have no opinion on the matter.
Okay, so when I tell the jury an opening statement, I asked Mr. Schroyer if he thought InfoWars was a conspiracy theory website.
He did not say no.
That would be the truth, correct?
Okay.
Is that the answer that you want to hold?
Or do you want to say why you don't believe all of these events that are just wrong?
Again, label InfoWars whatever you want.
I'm not going to Put a label on it, the jury wants to say it's a conspiracy theory site, fine.
The jury wants to say it's the most factual site they've ever seen in their life, fine.
I'm not going to provide an opinion.
Aliens.
Conspiracy theory?
Well, prior to like a year ago.
No comment.
Okay.
What did we call and what did you consider individuals?
Actually, we'll step away from that.
I was asking you earlier about some of the personnel at InfoWars.
Are you friends with a number of your co-workers or are you in a small group?
You have friends outside of work?
Can you rephrase the question?
I'm just not sure what you're asking.
Who have we opposed?
Zimmerman, what's his name?
What's his first name?
Michael Zimmerman.
Do you know who he is?
Yes.
Are you friends with him?
I would say we're friends, but, I mean, we don't hang out or talk that often.
Sure, but you're a friend.
You have a somewhat professional and personal...
If I saw him in public, I'd go say hello.
Sure, okay.
Does he seem like a good guy?
Yeah.
And I'd oppose him.
He came off very respectful.
He was shockingly nice.
Has he ever shared any of his opinions or views on mass shootings with you?
Not that I can recall.
Were you aware that...
Do you remember the Christchurch shooting?
New Zealand?
Yes.
Christchurch, New Zealand shooting?
It was live streamed?
Yes.
Brandon Tarrant was the shooter.
He executed a bunch of Muslims at a mosque.
Yeah, you're refreshing the details of the event for me right now.
Do you know whether or not anyone at InfoWars claimed it was a false flag?
No, I'm unaware.
Okay.
Did you know that some individuals at InfoWars liked that shooting?
No.
Did you know, you understand that Michael Zimmerman handles the IT stuff for InfoWars?
Objection form.
I know that he was doing IT. I'm not sure if that is still his role.
Did you know that on March 14th, 2019, Mr. Zimmerman registered the domain tarrantmanifesto.com?
No.
Did you know that he registered the website shooterchan.org?
No.
Did you know who Timothy Thrift is?
Yes.
Do you have a personal relationship with him?
Work acquaintance.
Okay.
Did you know that he registered the website sttarrant.com?
No.
After the shooter Brandon Tarrant?
No.
How do you feel about the people that you work with who you have somewhat of a personal relationship registering these type of websites immediately after a mass shooting that was live streamed to the world?
Pretty surprised.
Is that something you're okay with?
I have no idea of the context or what it even is.
I mean, you're just bringing this to my awareness now.
Sure.
Is it something you would want to have a talk with them about?
Probably not.
I don't want anything to do with that.
Okay.
You're just going to keep working with them?
I barely even work with them.
Okay.
That's fine.
I'm not accusing you that you work with them all the time.
I was just asking, hey, if Infowars employees, because it's a smaller company, It feels like it's kind of small enough for a familial feeling around the office.
I was wondering if you found out that this happened, would you go talk to these guys about it and ask them why?
I mean, there's obviously questions there.
Like what?
Why did you do that?
But that's not anything to do with me.
I had nothing to do with that.
I have no idea why they did it.
I didn't even know why they did it.
So they can answer those questions.
It's an honor.
Okay.
Let's take a five minute.
Let me look at my notes.
I might be done.
Going off the record, the time is 4.35 p.m.
Okay, we are back on the record at 4.41 p.m.
Alright.
Took a short break.
I looked over my notes.
I don't have much more.
Famous last words.
It's a little bit, but not much.
I didn't say I only have one more question.
Okay.
Okay.
Your affidavit, Exhibit 1.
You said that Megyn Kelly aired a highly edited piece that slanted in a way to create a false impression to Alex Jones's viewpoints.
Correct?
Yes.
What are his viewpoints?
I would say, at the time, my best memory is, at the time, Alex had been on the record saying that he believed the events that Sandy Hook happened.
And that he was under the impression that Megyn Kelly was not there to talk about Sandy Hook.
And then the entire interview ended up being about that and about the things he said in the past before I ever joined InfoWars.
Okay.
Did you know that October 1st of 2021, Mr. Jones was on air and he said, you know what?
Maybe Sandy Hook was a hoax.
No.
Would that surprise you?
I mean, I feel there's more context necessary for me to provide an opinion on that, but yeah, that surprises me.
Okay.
I'm going to mark this entire document as my last one.
Okay.
What number am I? Thirteen.
Thirteen.
It's just a copy of the order discovered from the judge.
And I'm handing you Exhibit 13. I only have one copy, but that's all we're going to need because all the lawyers know exactly what's in it.
And...
And earlier you said you didn't know who Neil Heslin was at the time you made these videos.
And until today...
Even when you were looking at it, you said, I didn't know that was Neil Hesslin.
And you also said that you did not have the Dr. Carver video available to you.
Remember that?
That's the coroner?
Yes.
Just the clip that was presented.
That's all I ever saw of it.
Is there a file system where you can go into a file and see what InfoWars has in their database?
I know there's a Sandy Hook file.
I'm not sure because I have my computer and that's really the only database per se that I have access to.
So I don't know what's on other people's computers.
I don't know what they archive and what they don't.
So there's not a central database at Infowars?
Everybody has their own stuff saved on their own computers?
I mean, there's some form of a centralized database, but I'm not too familiar with how it works or anything.
I have my computer, that's where I keep my stuff, and that's pretty much it.
Okay.
And so, this is all going to be Exhibit 13, and it's one large document that starts on this first page.
We'll go through it together.
Which is a signed order by the judge back in 2018, and it is ordered discovery by the judge to defendants.
And this is the discovery ordered, and that's your name, right?
Yes.
Okay, so that was ordered by the judge for you to answer these requests directly to you.
And if we go to the request for production, We see the request for production 1. Can you read what that says?
All communications, including letters, memoranda, emails, text messages, instant messenger logs, or other electronic communications in which the following topics are referenced.
Neil Haslin or his son, Dr. Wayne Carver, Zero Hedge, Jim Fetzer.
And that was ordered by the court.
That wasn't just sent by us.
It was sent by us, not answered, and then brought to the court, and the court ordered you to do that production.
Okay?
Okay.
To this day, you have not answered that.
As we sit here.
And...
Correct.
I was unaware of this.
Okay.
And you would agree that some of the exhibits that we've gone through today would be considered communications about Dr. Carver, Neil Heslin or his son, and Zero Hedge, correct?
Yes.
You did not produce any of that to me.
We had to get that elsewhere.
You would agree?
Like I said, this is the first that has even been brought to my attention.
In the other case, as soon as this request was presented to me, I produced everything.
Okay.
And I understand that Mr. Reeves represents you right now.
And this next question is in no way a reflection of Mr. Reeves.
Because I will represent, he's the best you've had so far.
But when we look into your net worth, I want to know whether or not you have discussed or contemplated, not with Mr. Reeves, but with anybody else, legal malpractice.
Lawsuits against your prior counsel for multiple failures over the course of three years to entertain responsive discovery to the point where you've now been sanctioned with a default judgment by the judge.
Can you just try to simplify that for me so I can answer?
Have you discussed or contemplated suing your lawyers because they, you know, Did not tell you any of this had come to them, that you were ordered by the judge to answer, and because of that, along with other conduct by them, default judgment was granted.
Objection four.
I have not had any discussions about that, no.
Okay.
I will say this.
I think you should.
And the reason I say that is because those claims are an asset.
And at some point, Those assets were probably going to be evaluated at the end of this lawsuit.
Because I'm sure you've had conversations to an extent with your lawyers, but I will say this.
Are you aware that as this case stands right now, the judge has taken away any ability you have to defend yourself?
I understand that now.
Okay.
And that was not based on You know, conduct solely from Mr. Reeves whatsoever.
If we could please make sure we're clear on the record there when you're going to ask about legal malpractice questions.
No, yeah, and I tried to make it clear before.
I appreciate that.
You know, that's between y'all.
But my focus on this question is the other six lawyers that represented you.
When that time comes, I would, you know, put it on the record that make sure you understand To supplement your responses to us so that we can have that information.
Because that might be something that we need to discuss amongst the parties afterwards.
Do you understand that?
Honestly, I don't.
I'm not really sure.
Let me say this.
You'll have conversations with people.
About legal malpractice and what happened before this case to get you to where you are, because I don't think it was you who put yourself in this position.
I think it was the lawyers that you were paying and that represented you and had duties.
And so when you have that conversation and you decide whether or not to pursue legal malpractice claims, I would ask that you supplement your discovery responses on your net worth that are coming in on Monday.
And once we get those, we can reevaluate your asset situation.
I'm trying to...
So basically, is it that...
Hold on.
I'm going to answer his questions if he's got questions.
Yeah, mine was, do you understand?
I asked that if that does happen, you supplement your discovery responses on your net worth.
Because that will be an asset they will owe you.
If it is found.
And if they do, that is an asset that could come into play with regards to the end of this lawsuit when we get past the damages phase with a jury.
Objection form.
You can't ask him to commit to anything like that.
To commit to supplementing discovery?
First of all, that's your own determination whether or not you have to be considered an asset.
We will be responding to discovery.
According to non-exempt property, that is 100% of potential asset which falls under 140031. So...
One, that's a legal determination that would have to be made.
And two, at this point in time, he's already said he hasn't contemplated it.
No, that's fine.
I just said, if that happens, all I would ask is that he understands to supplement his discovery.
I'm not trying to be in any way negative towards you.
I'm not even being negative towards Mr. Brooks.
I really am not.
I'm not telling you.
What I'm telling you is this.
There's six guys you hired, weren't very good, and put you where you are.
And Mr. Reeves has worked really hard to get you out of the hole, and he couldn't.
But that's not because he worked way harder than any lawyer you've had.
And he tried.
That's all I'm saying.
So have those conversations.
I encourage you to have them with counsel.
You can have them with anyone you want.
But if you do to make that determination, all I ask is you let us know.
That's all I was going to stop with.
Okay?
You understand that?
I understand.
Okay.
My last question.
Do you have any remorse for Any of the contributions you made towards the impact Mr. Heslin had from the reporting that you were involved with in Sandy Hook?
I would say I do.
I would say that I wish I'd never commented on any of it.
I would say that I wish I understood whatever reporting Mr. Halbig was doing at the time better before referencing him.
My one regret is that I just should have never even covered it, never should have talked about it.
And having said that, and just not to be redundant, but I think it bears repeating, I never said anything about Mr. Heslund being a liar.
I never said anything about his son not dying.
I never said anything about Sandy Hook being a hoax.
I never had any intention of any ill will towards Mr. Heslin in anything.
If I had thought that there would have been such consequence to eight minutes of my career on air because of these videos, then I would have not done it.