Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool

All Episodes

Previous Next

Feb. 17, 2022 - Depositions & Trials

04:01:50

Deposition of InfoWars Editor Kit Daniels

Large

Audio Only |

Scroll

Time	Text
	This is the deposition of Kit Daniels.
	Today's date, February 17, 2022. The time is 9.58 a.m.
	You may swear in the witness.
	My name is Stephanie Harper, a certified shorthand reporter for the state of Texas.
	I'm located in my home office in Cypress, Texas.
	It has been represented to me that the witness is currently located in Austin, Texas.
	Will counsel please state their appearance, who they represent, and if you would like to order a copy of the transcript, would you like all electronic, paper, or both?
	Bill Ogden for the plaintiff, and I will take electronic.
	Jacqueline Blot on behalf of the defendants, and I will take both.
	Sir, can I get you to raise your right hand, please?
	Do you solemnly swear or affirm a testimony you're about to give will be the truth, whole truth, and nothing but the truth to help you God?
	Yes.
	Thank you.
	Please introduce yourself to the jury.
	My name is Kit Daniels.
	Mr. Daniels, how old are you?
	37. Where do you currently reside?
	64460 Main Street, Angie, Louisiana.
	7426. How long have you lived in Louisiana?
	About two months.
	What brought you to Louisiana?
	I just wanted to change the scenery.
	Where were you before that?
	Austin.
	Okay.
	I think it's just his coffee.
	You can bring it in.
	Thank you.
	How long have you lived in Austin?
	Not very long.
	I had a short-term lease.
	How long was that?
	Oh, since July.
	And before you?
	I was in Lampasas, Texas.
	Lampasas, Texas.
	And how long did you live in Lampasas?
	Oh, let's see.
	A little over a year.
	And before that?
	New Braunfels, Texas.
	How long were you in New Braunfels?
	I believe a year.
	And before that?
	Austin, Texas.
	How long?
	About seven years, I think.
	Okay.
	Where are you originally from?
	That's really hard to peg, to be honest.
	I've been all over the place.
	When somebody says, where are you from, what do you say?
	Usually Lampasas.
	Where did you graduate from high school?
	I have a GED. How many high schools did you attend?
	Just one.
	Which one was that?
	land passes high school what's your current employment what is your current employment Free Speech Systems.
	How long have you worked with Free Speech Systems?
	Since May of 2013. And prior to Free Speech Systems, where did you work?
	I worked for an oil and gas firm.
	It was a civil engineering firm, but I worked in the loan and gas department.
	Did you attend college or university?
	Yes, I did.
	Where's that?
	Texas A&M University College Station.
	Did you graduate?
	Yes.
	What's your degree?
	Bachelor's of Science in Economics.
	When did you receive your degree in economics?
	May of 2010. How long do you remember the civil engineering firm that you worked in the oil and gas department?
	Carlson Brigginson Deering.
	How long did you work there?
	About a year and seven months I believe Prior to that I worked for Agrilogic Consulting.
	What did you do for them?
	I was a research analyst.
	And how long did you work there?
	About a year and five months, I believe.
	Where did you work before AgriLogic Consulting?
	I did odd and end jobs in college.
	Okay, so coming out of school, Grilogic was your first.
	Have you ever given a deposition before?
	Yes.
	When?
	The last one was in, I think, November 10th.
	Okay.
	Approximately November 10th.
	Where was that?
	I did remote.
	Do you remember what lawsuit it was for?
	That was for the Connecticut Sandy Hook case.
	Okay.
	You said the last one, so I assume there's more than one.
	Yes, before that I did a deposition around October, mid-October.
	And I don't remember the lawsuit name exactly.
	it was maybe Brendan Gilmore other than the Lafferty and Gilmore lawsuit depositions have you given a deposition prior to that No.
	I won't go over the rules since you've been deposed twice already.
	The only thing I will ask is if you'll let me finish my question, I'll let you finish your answer.
	That way the court reporter doesn't throw stuff at her screen at us.
	Get on there for a job too hard.
	What is your current position at Free Speech Systems?
	Editor.
	Chief Editor, regular Editor?
	Managing Editor.
	Managing editor.
	When did you become the managing editor?
	I think around summer of 2018. Prior to becoming managing editor, what was your position?
	associate editor and prior to becoming an associate editor did you have any other positions at the company uh Not really.
	Okay.
	So from May of 2013 to the summer of 2018, you were an associate editor?
	Approximately that, yes.
	And then after that, you were promoted to managing editor?
	Something like that, yes.
	When you say something like that, what do you mean?
	We don't really have a culture at Infowars of job titles.
	What is the culture at Infowars?
	Well, what I mean as far as like some companies you would have like, oh here's your new job title, maybe it's in writing.
	That hasn't necessarily been the case compared to my other positions at other companies.
	When you became managing editor in the summer of 2018, did you receive a raise?
	No.
	How much do you currently make?
	anywhere from 75 to 90,000 a year?
	It's based on the range I think.
	I assume it's not a salary position.
	It is a salary position.
	I think 75 is my base salary.
	It can go up to 90 based on performance bonuses.
	Okay.
	What was your salary as an associate editor?
	I started at $38,000.
	In the summer of 2018, before becoming managing editor, what was your salary?
	$75,000.
	As an associate editor, do you have performance bonus incentives as well?
	Yes.
	What are those incentives based on?
	Quarterly bonuses.
	What are they based on?
	Mainly how the company's doing at the time.
	So it's based on the health of the company, not necessarily your performance?
	That would be my assumption.
	Okay.
	Is your understanding, did you get a bonus last year?
	I believe so.
	Do you remember how much it was for?
	I think it was around $3,000 before taxes.
	For the whole year?
	Yeah, I believe so.
	Okay.
	I think it was early in the year.
	My memory's a little foggy on that one.
	Okay.
	And...
	Did you receive a bonus in 2020?
	2020. That would have been last year, correct?
	I don't know, two years ago.
	Yes, I did.
	Do you remember what that bonus was?
	That was probably approximately, for the year, $12,000 to $13,000.
	Seems like the company was doing...
	The performance of the company was better in 2020 than 2021?
	Something like that, I would assume.
	Okay.
	What about 2019?
	Do you remember?
	It was approximately the same as 2020. Okay.
	And 18?
	It's been a while since I've looked at my W-2 for 2018. Sure.
	But if we wanted to find that information out, it would be in your W-2s?
	Yes.
	Have you ever had a year where you did not receive a bonus?
	I don't believe so.
	Are you aware that Free Speech Systems is, as they state in this lawsuit, over $50 million in debt?
	No, I wasn't aware of that.
	Do you think people should be getting bonuses if that's an actual real debt?
	I wouldn't be the person to make that judgment.
	If you were running a company that was that indebted, would you be giving bonuses to people?
	Possibly not.
	Okay.
	Who's your boss?
	Alex Jones.
	Okay.
	What are your duties as a managing editor?
	I supervise content on the website, as well as writing my own content.
	When you say supervise content on the website, what do you mean?
	I look over work, mainly checking for typos and whatnot.
	I hired a Several contract writers.
	One is still with the company.
	The other one I promoted to a staff writer.
	So you have the ability to promote people?
	Yes.
	Who did you promote?
	Jamie White.
	My understanding is Jamie is a male, correct?
	Yes.
	How many writers are there?
	Let's see.
	I have to count.
	I think five in house and three that are not in house.
	Who is not in-house?
	Dan Lyman, Paul Joseph Watson, and Steve Watson.
	And although not in-house, those are employees of InfoWorks?
	That is not my understanding.
	Dan Lyman is a contractor I am not 100% sure of the status of Steve and Paul Watson.
	I believe they're also contractors.
	So they would not be receiving W-2s.
	They'd be receiving 1099s.
	Well, Paul and Steve are based in the UK, so I'm not sure about that.
	Right.
	Maybe they would get an equivalent of that.
	But they're riding...
	Let me, I guess, let me put it this way.
	They wouldn't be on salary.
	Oh, that's my impression.
	Yes, they are not.
	Yes, that's my impression.
	Okay.
	Yeah, Dan Lyman gets an invoice every, sends in an invoice every month.
	Do you know what, do you know if Paul Joseph Watson has held any titles at Infowars at all?
	I've heard the phrase editor at large at one point.
	What about chief editor?
	I don't think I've heard that as far as the title associated with Paul Watson.
	So if Mr. Watson had been deposed and testified that his position was chief editor or manager or editor-at-large, whatever he testified would be the best answer?
	Possibly.
	Okay.
	When you say possibly, are there other...
	I'm just not that familiar with the work arrangement between Paul Watson and Alex Jones.
	Okay.
	Mr. Jones, he owns the company, correct?
	That is my assumption, yes.
	And he does not have a boss, true?
	That's my assumption, yes.
	Does anything happen at that company without him knowing about it?
	I'm sure there is, just like at any company.
	Like what?
	I mean, let's say the coffee machine broke at one point.
	I don't think he was aware of it.
	Just kind of things like that.
	Who would be in charge of getting that replaced?
	That's a good question.
	I think Wes Perkins is the one who finally got it fixed for us.
	That's not necessarily his job.
	The only reason I'm asking is because you said you're sure that Whenever I asked if anything happened without Mr. Jones knowing at that company, you said you're sure that there was.
	So if you're sure, then I was going to ask you some follow-up questions to kind of flush out what that meant.
	What's your understanding of why you're here today?
	I'm doing a deprecation on the Fontaine matter.
	When you say Fontaine matter, what does that mean?
	The Fontaine lawsuit.
	Do you know what the Fontaine lawsuit is?
	Yes.
	What's that?
	It was a defamation claim against me and the company.
	Over a photo posted on the Infowars website.
	Okay.
	Just going to mark this as Exhibit 1.
	Let's try that again.
	I'm going to hand you Exhibit 1.
	Okay.
	Do you recognize it?
	Yes, I do.
	Tell us what it is.
	This is a rolling update article I wrote in February 14, 2018 regarding the breaking news on the Florida shooting.
	When you say the Florida shooting, you mean the Parkland?
	Yes.
	Florida high school shooting?
	Yes.
	Who published the story?
	I did.
	Did anybody help you?
	No.
	When you write a story and publish it, you have the ability to upload it to the website on your own?
	Yes.
	Who all has that capability?
	The writers that I just mentioned, except Dan Lyman usually submits his stories for one of the staff writers to publish for him.
	Do you as The managing editor have to put eyes on every story that goes up?
	That is my practice.
	Is that a requirement?
	It's not necessarily a requirement, but that's something I do in practice.
	Have you always done that?
	No.
	Why not?
	It's just kind of something that after all these lawsuits and litigation, I kind of decided for myself that that was something I needed to do, take more responsibility.
	What did you do to prepare yourself for today?
	I worked with my counsel for about 12-13 hours over the past couple of days.
	We looked over all the discovery requests, requests for production.
	Did you review any documents?
	Yes.
	What did you review?
	Just about everything in the discovery.
	Okay, how many pages is that?
	Gosh, it's like almost a binder full.
	Dozens and dozens of pages would be my guess.
	Would you be more closer to 500 pages or closer to 1500 pages?
	That's a good question.
	500 maybe?
	Okay.
	When you publish an article, who does the research for it?
	If it's an article I'm doing, typically myself.
	Okay.
	What's your training in journalism?
	I took some classes in...
	Well, first off, I've used the word journalism maybe out of ignorance before.
	I kind of see myself more as a social commentator.
	Since when?
	I think my whole career at Infowars has been more about social commentator.
	When did you start?
	Characterizing yourself as a social commentator.
	I think I started reading some Glenn Greenwald articles the past couple of months and kind of made me realize the way he approaches things is a lot different than the way I approach things.
	But you would agree with me that you've held yourself out as a journalist since at least May of 2013 up until you started reading Glenn Greenwald.
	I use the term video journalist.
	What's a video journalist?
	That would mean I'd go out into the field and shoot reports and do interviews with people.
	Okay, so you don't...
	Earlier when I asked what your position was, you said chief editor and writer and that you were in charge of managing the website content.
	Yes.
	You also go out into the field and do...
	I have done that in the past, but it's been several years since I've done that.
	Okay.
	I just want to remind the witness to make sure that the question gets fully out before you begin your answer so I can take everything.
	Okay.
	I'm sorry.
	Don't worry.
	worry, I'm going to do it too.
	And she's going to get on me.
	So, um, when you're out in the field doing video journalism, that's not social commentating.
	You're actually taking footage, correct?
	A lot of times it was social commentary, but a lot of times, let's say I went to the Democratic National Convention and I went out and interviewed Bernie Sanders supporters who were protesting Hillary Clinton.
	I was actually going out and interviewing people out in a park that were Bernie supporters.
	And when you're writing a story for the website, you're doing your own research, correct?
	The majority of the stories I've written on InfoWars has been basically things that have already been reported in the news.
	So let's say there's an article that I saw in a German newspaper that I thought would be of interest to an American audience.
	So I'd probably do a report on that.
	Or if something like Joe Biden said in a press conference I thought was newsworthy, I would do a story on that.
	Okay, so if you watched a press conference of Joe Biden, then you would write a story on that press conference?
	Yes, if I felt like he said something that was newsworthy.
	You would agree with me, that's journalism.
	It's more like news analysis.
	What's the difference?
	To me, a journalist would be someone who is, you know, talking on Signal, talking on Telegram to sources, and then kind of crafting a story, like a news story that's never been reported before.
	So, for instance, a journalist would attend a press conference, listen to it, and then write a story about it.
	My impression of journalism is like, say, I remember the Deep Throat during the Nixon administration.
	They were going out and meeting this informant out in the parking lot.
	They saw him as a source, and they crafted the story based on his source.
	To me, that is definitely journalism.
	Sources of information can come in many forms, correct?
	Yes.
	They can be confidential, correct?
	Yes.
	They can be video footage that you come across, true?
	Yes.
	Yes.
	They can be audio recordings?
	Possibly.
	Okay, so when you sit there and watch a Joe Biden press interview and then you write a story on it, again, how is that not journalism?
	There's a lot of times when we take something that Joe Biden says and we might disagree with it or we might point out the contrast of what he said versus what he said maybe three months ago.
	Right, that's journalism.
	To me, that's more social commentary.
	If you're taking one fact, then using a fact that was priorly given in time, comparing those and writing an article on it, how is that not journalism?
	Well, it's more like what Tucker Carlson does, or who's that lady with NBC? I can't think of her name.
	You know, they're taking things that are already in the news and they're commenting on it.
	They're analyzing it.
	They're giving their take on it.
	Okay.
	Do you understand that Tucker Carlson considers himself a hybrid of both political commentary and journalism?
	No, I did not know that.
	Okay.
	So when you compare yourself to him, now it's even more confusing for me.
	You see how that works?
	Yeah.
	I mean, that's the thing that I, even when I first started InfoWars, it is very confusing.
	So I understand your frustration with it, too.
	It's just this...
	Let me ask you this.
	Maybe this will be easier.
	What's the difference between you and a journalist?
	I don't go out and talk to sources one-on-one.
	I'm not going to go get a news tip from somebody and talk to them on Signal.
	Let me ask you this.
	Did you go out to a Bernie Sanders protest and talk to people?
	Yes.
	Those are sources, true?
	I don't know if I'd call them sources.
	I would just kind of give them an opportunity to vent their frustrations with what was going on.
	So you were there as a therapist?
	No, as an interviewer.
	Right.
	You're interviewing people for information, correct?
	What their opinions were about the matter.
	And then you took what you gathered from those sources of information and then you wrote articles or made videos about it.
	I don't remember writing articles.
	Let's slow down.
	Okay.
	Let me finish my question.
	I'll let you finish.
	I'm sorry.
	It's okay.
	So when you get information from sources and then you go and write about it, how is that not journalism?
	Well, as far as Bernie Sanders, I just shot a video.
	I don't believe I even wrote an article about it.
	Do social commentators, that's what you consider yourself?
	Social commentator?
	That's what I'd say I lean more towards.
	That and news analysis.
	Social commentator, my understanding from what you testified, is somebody who takes somebody else's work and talks about it.
	Yes.
	Okay.
	So let's say, for example, I see something in CNN that's been reported on CNN and I might write about it and kind of say, well, this is what they're saying.
	Here's my take on it.
	Or here's what someone else says that may be in contrast to what CNN is saying.
	Okay.
	When you look at somebody like Alex Jones, is he a journalist or is he a social commentator?
	I would say he's definitely a social commentator.
	So if he sat in that same chair where you're at right now and raised his right hand and swore to God to tell the truth and told us that he does both journalism and social commentary, he'd be lying?
	I don't know.
	That would be a question for him.
	So if I ask you how you characterize Alex Jones, what would your answer be?
	In my opinion, he's a social commentator.
	Okay.
	But if he says he's also a journalist, then we should take his word for it.
	I don't know.
	That'd be your judgment.
	If Mr. Jones tells us that Infowars.com is a website that does both journalism and social commentary, would you agree with that?
	That would be a question for Alex Jones.
	Well, I'm asking if you would agree with it.
	I'm asking your opinion.
	Well, I'm so compartmentalized in the company that I just kind of focus on what I do.
	Well, and reading and editing everybody else that writes it.
	Yeah, my department.
	And your department is a pretty big department in the company, true?
	No, it's actually one of the smaller departments.
	Okay.
	Do any other departments gather facts and create news stories on them?
	That would be a question for them, unfortunately.
	I'm not too familiar with how they're processed.
	Okay.
	Let's go to Exhibit 1. When you write an article like Exhibit 1, do you intend for your audience to trust that you're telling them the truth?
	To the best of my ability.
	Do you say that in your article?
	This is true to the best of my ability?
	I did use the word alleged several times, I believe.
	When someone says they're providing people with the news, what does that mean to you?
	The current events.
	But is a person providing news to people, are they tasked with telling them the truth?
	To the best of their ability.
	What does that mean, to the best of their ability?
	Well, unfortunately, a lot of times when there's a story that's breaking, there's a lot of details that are a little bit muddy.
	So it's kind of, you have to do the best that you can to try to be as accurate as you can be.
	But sometimes, unfortunately, there's things that are being reported on in the news that turn out not to be accurate.
	I asked Mr. Schroyer the same question that I'm about to ask you, which is, do you believe it's more important to get the news right or to be the first to report the news?
	I think it's both.
	Really?
	Yes.
	You don't think that the veracity of a story, far Is far more important than it being reported before anybody else?
	No.
	What I believe is that you want to be as accurate as you can be, but at the same time, you want to be timely.
	Do you want to be as accurate as you can be, or do you want to be accurate?
	I want to be as accurate as I can be considering the circumstances.
	Okay.
	When you wrote Exhibit 1, was there any rush to put this article out?
	Yes, it was a breaking story.
	Why does that make it a rush?
	Because this shooting just occurred within a couple hours and it was in the public's interest to kind of figure out what the motivations for the shooting were.
	Why do you think the public needed to know the motivations immediately?
	That's how the news cycle works.
	Unfortunately, people don't want to know things two, three, four days later.
	Okay.
	At Infowars, since they're not journalists and there's no race, wouldn't they have plenty of time to make sure what they're providing the people is true?
	Well, unfortunately, our audience kind of dictates our time frame.
	How so?
	Well, they're just not going to be interested in a story that's four or five days old.
	Why do you think that?
	Because the public tends to, if they have their eyes set on a pretty particular story that happened at that moment in time, that's where their eyeballs are going to be at.
	So because your audience wants the story quickly, sometimes that can be as or more important than whether or not the story has had time to flesh out the truth.
	Can you rephrase that?
	Your audience dictates when a story needs to go out, right?
	Yes.
	And because of that, sometimes that rush can get in the way of taking your time and making sure what you are providing the audience is true.
	That can be the case.
	Okay.
	What's the, can you read the title of your article?
	Yes.
	Reported for the Shooter Dressed as Communist Supported ISIS. When you say, all right, let's go here.
	Page one, there's a caption Right below the first, the page one, right below the picture, yeah, there's a little caption, there's a paragraph there, you see that?
	Yes.
	The last, the sentence...
	I just want to clarify, that's not necessarily a caption, that's the lead sentence of the article.
	I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
	Y'all want to talk to you at the same time?
	Oh, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
	I didn't get the question and I didn't get...
	Okay, I'll re-ask it.
	Yeah, let's do it again.
	Alright, so this first sentence is the first sentence of the story, correct?
	Yes.
	And it ends with, voter records suggest 19-year-old Nicholas Cruz was a Democratic voter.
	Yes.
	Okay.
	Where did you get voter records?
	If I remember correctly, I did a search.
	I think Florida has a...
	I think voter records in Florida are public.
	Okay, so for this story...
	You weren't reporting on what other people were saying.
	You went out and found voter records on your own.
	Yes.
	That's journalism, true?
	Bleh.
	Can't really commentate on what's happening in the media if you're reporting something that nobody else has reported.
	Sorry, my memory's a little bit fuzzy.
	Unless this is something I found somewhere else.
	But I do remember that I believe that Florida's...
	My understanding was Florida's voter registration is public information.
	Okay.
	Although this might have been a screenshot I found from somebody else.
	Okay, so you don't even know where it came from.
	Well, my understanding is it came from Florida.
	I probably did go back and verify it to make sure this is not just something completely made out.
	Okay, so you do go and verify things.
	Yes.
	Isn't that journalism?
	It's just something that's good practice.
	For who?
	For the audience.
	Okay, so you go and verify things for the audience.
	Yes.
	To the best of my ability.
	Page one, if we flip back.
	Right under Florida, shooter dressed as communist supported ISIS. Yes.
	You've got a subtitle.
	MSM already covering it up.
	What does MSM mean?
	Mainstream media.
	Okay.
	How was the mainstream media already covering it up?
	Unfortunately, I don't remember exactly since this has been a little bit over four years ago.
	But I think maybe it had something to do with the fact there wasn't a lot of information coming out, although his Instagram account was all over social media.
	Okay.
	So because journalists weren't running the story as fast as Infowars, that meant they were covering it up?
	I don't remember.
	You put it in your article.
	I don't remember exactly why I put it in the article, unfortunately.
	You're here testifying under oath to the jury that you have evidence that mainstream media was covering this story up when it went out.
	I didn't say the story per se.
	What was mainstream media covering up?
	Possibly the Instagram account.
	Okay.
	The Would you agree that journalists have a duty to be right?
	Would you agree with that?
	That's what journalists do.
	Right.
	So if journalists weren't reporting an Instagram account, it'd be fair to say since this was within hours of the shooting, they were verifying.
	Well, unfortunately, that's what you and me would like to believe.
	And growing up, that's how I always thought of traditional media.
	But unfortunately, I saw an article in Axios recently.
	In my opinion, Axios is a little bit left-leaning.
	They pointed out that the trust in traditional media is like plummeting.
	I agree.
	But let me ask you this.
	How did that answer my question?
	What was your question again?
	My question was that journalists Could easily have been still verifying information and that's why it wasn't being reported yet.
	That's in theory.
	Right.
	But you have no idea whether or not it was in theory or if it's the facts.
	Well, I'm not in the newsrooms of some of these organizations.
	Right.
	So you shouldn't really have an opinion one way or the other as to what they're doing.
	Well, it's not my opinion when I say that Axios reported that public trust in the media is at all-time lows.
	And that was a sample of the general public, correct?
	I believe so.
	Okay.
	You don't know who they sampled, correct?
	No.
	You don't know how many people?
	Well, if it's over, my understanding, being an economics major, if it's over 30, it's maybe statistically important.
	I mean, there's at least seven more variables that are absolutely necessary for it to be reliable, not just over 30. Geographical, age, gender, all of those go into it to make sure it's objective, correct?
	That's what you're saying.
	I don't know that.
	Right, but you're citing statistics, and so I'm citing the statistical principles.
	Okay.
	Do you know them?
	No.
	Okay, then let's not talk about statistics, okay?
	Would you agree with me that reported Florida shooter dressed as communist is false?
	If the headline had to do with Fontaine's photo, then yes, I would agree with you.
	Would you also agree with me that reported Florida shooter dressed as communist, supported ISIS, that's also false?
	I don't know, because if I remember correctly, his Instagram account said things like Ali Akbar.
	And these photos in the Instagram account just looks like something I would expect an ISIS fighter in Iraq to dress like.
	What had the mainstream media reported at the time of this article that was untrue or that was not the whole story?
	I don't remember.
	But they were covering something up, correct?
	I don't remember.
	Why'd you put it in the article?
	I don't remember.
	And more importantly, why'd you make it a subtitle, which is the second thing your audience would read?
	Unfortunately, I don't remember.
	You would agree with me that an audience member reading this could reasonably infer that the mainstream media is lying to them?
	About this specific story?
	If you mean by lying by omission, possibly.
	Yeah, lying by omission or by contradiction?
	Possibly.
	Okay.
	Do you oftentimes put subheadings that would lead an audience member to believe that they're being lied to by mainstream media?
	I mean, it's possibly happened in the past.
	Okay.
	Did you have any real reasonable basis to allege that the mainstream media is covering it up?
	I don't remember, unfortunately.
	Sitting here today, now that we have almost all the facts, did the mainstream media cover anything up on this story?
	I don't remember.
	If they did cover it up, it definitely wasn't important enough for you to remember sitting here today, correct?
	I don't remember.
	Oh, actually, I'll save that. I'll save that.
	turn to page two on exhibit one you said that the shooter was dressed as communist and supported Isis does any and then when we look at page two the article that you wrote says
	additionally, the shooter's garb is very similar to the style worn by ISIS fighters in Syria.
	Did I read that correctly?
	Yes.
	Okay.
	When we look at the image that you included in this article, there are five pictures of allegedly Nicholas Cruz, correct?
	Yes.
	Okay.
	And is this the...
	The collage of photos that you drew the ISIS fighters in Syria comment from?
	I believe so, yes.
	Is it normal for ISIS fighters in Syria to wear United States Army hats?
	Well, I was looking at the masks that they were wearing and the kind of the knives, how he's holding the knives.
	And Ben, you say the United States Army.
	I mean, I do remember that there was a big controversy where ISIS fighters, I believe it was in Syria, were using a pickup truck from a plumber in Houston that still had his logo on it.
	So there's no telling.
	I mean, yeah, possibly.
	So it's based on your analysis.
	It's fair that the videographer here is dressed as an ISIS member fighting in Syria.
	No, he's actually pretty dressed pretty well.
	Well, I know plumbers in Houston that dress like that.
	Well, I was talking about the plumber's truck.
	Okay, so if the videographer here was wearing a U.S. Army hat, you could infer from that that he was dressed as a fighter in Syria.
	Well, it wasn't the hat that I was looking at specifically.
	It's just the whole collage of the image, the whole thing, the fact that the guy's wearing a mask.
	Which is definitely, I've seen lots of photos of ISIS fighters and they definitely like to wear masks for whatever reason.
	Have you ever seen pictures of people wearing masks that weren't in ISIS? Yes.
	Okay, so we can throw that one out as reliable.
	Anything else you got in here that's reliable as far as somebody dressed like an ISIS fighter in Syria?
	Well, the photos I have seen of ISIS fighters in Syria were definitely very similar to how he's dressed, his mannerism.
	How many photos of ISIS fighters in Syria have you seen?
	A lot.
	Okay.
	And based on that, Nicholas Cruz right here is dressed like that?
	Yeah, I mean, it could pass off as a Halloween costume.
	It could also pass off as a bank robber in the United States.
	Well, I've never seen a...
	When I think of bank robber, I think of someone wearing a presidential mask like in that movie Point Break.
	Okay, other than that very specific and extremely random comment, we'll go on to, have you ever seen photos of Taliban forces in Afghanistan?
	Yes.
	Any of them wear masks?
	Possibly.
	We didn't add that in the article.
	Well, Taliban was...
	I don't even think the Taliban was in the news at the time.
	It was mainly ISIS. Well, you don't think or you don't know?
	I don't remember.
	Okay, well then we can dismiss that comment and you can answer my question.
	Okay.
	Why didn't you add Taliban forces in Afghanistan?
	Because in the news cycle at the time, it was ISIS. Is it extremely popular and sometimes often required for members of the Tamil Tigers to wear masks exactly like that?
	The who?
	Tamil Tigers.
	I'm not familiar with that.
	It's the second largest terrorist organization in the world.
	No, I'm not.
	Okay.
	What about any terrorist organization member in any country other than Syria in the world?
	Is it common for them to post pictures of themselves on the internet in masks?
	I'm not aware of that.
	You're not?
	No.
	It's your understanding that terrorist forces post selfies of their faces all over the internet all the time?
	The ones I've mainly seen have been ISIS. Or so they claim they're affiliated with ISIS or Al-Qaeda.
	Okay.
	So based on the ones you've seen, and it's fair to say you don't know a lot about terrorist organizations other than ISIS in Syria.
	Yeah, that's fair to say.
	But based on your knowledge, this looks like ISIS in Syria.
	It's what it reminded me of.
	Do you think that's very reliable of you to write in an article?
	Well, I said it was very similar to the style worn.
	I asked you if you thought that this sentence is a very reliable one for you to have put in this article.
	In my opinion, it was very similar to the style worn by ISIS fighters in Syria.
	And here you did say the shooter's garb is very similar, right?
	Yes.
	But when we look at page one, you say he supported ISIS. well there was a uh if i remember correctly in his instagram account he said something about ala akbar turn to page three okay do you see the screenshot on page three of his of nicholas cruz and the voter registration yes Okay.
	You see the caption on the Instagram post?
	Yes.
	Can you read it?
	I believe it says, well, at least we now know what it means when a Sandurka says Allah Akbar.
	Does that sound like anyone in the world that would support ISIS? I have no idea.
	Do you know what a Sandurka is?
	No.
	Okay, then why on earth would you derive your headline from a sentence that you don't understand?
	Well, I don't believe I derived it from this.
	I believe I've derived it from something Cruz said on his Instagram account.
	This is his Instagram account.
	Yeah, it might have been another comment he made on another post on the Instagram account.
	Surely you would have included that in your article since your headline said he supported ISIS. Possibly.
	Okay.
	But you didn't.
	I don't remember.
	Maybe I had an issue embedding it.
	I don't know.
	Okay, so if you have an issue embedding it, you don't put it in, but you keep the headline the same, right?
	Well, I looked at his Instagram account.
	The headline for this story was designed to be clickbait.
	You'd agree?
	No.
	Everything about it is wrong.
	But it's exciting, isn't it?
	I wouldn't call it exciting.
	I don't think it's exciting when it comes to the mass shooting.
	No, you're right.
	But this has nothing to do with a mass shooting.
	This has stuff to do with a person who did a shooting and details about them that are completely not true.
	Well, I was trying to find the motivations for why he committed what he did.
	Okay.
	Did you say possibly motivated by this?
	No.
	No, you didn't.
	You said he dressed as a communist and supported ISIS. Definitively.
	Based on what I saw on his Instagram.
	Right.
	But that wasn't important to you, correct?
	Oh, sorry.
	What was the question again?
	Based on his Instagram, what was in his Instagram wasn't important to you.
	Well, based on his Instagram, at the time, the shooting just occurred.
	And unfortunately, that's kind of all we had to go with to kind of try to figure out what this man's motivations were.
	So maybe...
	The suspect's motivations were...
	Okay.
	Because information was so limited, maybe it should have slowed down, huh?
	Well, it was a breaking news story.
	For you?
	No, it was for the audience.
	So the audience said, tell us the motivations.
	Yeah, it was all over the news at the time.
	Who at Infowars got a call from the audience that said, we want to know right now?
	Well, that's just standard practice.
	If the news cycle was, if you see in every single news outlet and on social media, they're all talking about this mass shooting.
	That's where the audience's eyeballs are at.
	Okay.
	Where did it come from that the audience needed to know the motivation immediately to the point where you just start throwing darts in a dark room?
	Well, it's kind of in the public's interest.
	That's what people are asking.
	Sitting here today, looking back at the veracity of your article, do you really think this article was in the public's interest?
	It was in the public's interest to try to determine what the motivations were behind a mass shooting.
	You would agree with me that one thing that is never in the public's interest is somebody who is disseminating false information.
	Well, I mean, with malice, maybe.
	What does that mean?
	Well, it's like I'm not trying to say this guy is this, this, this, and that intentionally.
	So you unintentionally said he's a communist and supported ISIS? That's what my belief was at the time.
	Based on very, very little.
	Based on his Instagram.
	Right.
	And you say based on his Instagram.
	You didn't even include anything in his post that remotely supports ISIS. If anything, there is an extremely derogatory term used Against people from that region and then quote unquote mocking a statement that holds a religious belief in that region and then crying laughing emojis.
	From that, that's all of the information you gave your audience to derive supported ISIS. Do you think if there was a mass shooting in this country and every mainstream news organization immediately said it was ISIS, do you think that would cause concern to the public?
	Could you rephrase that question?
	Sure.
	If every mainstream media organization took an event and said ISIS did it, Do you think it's reasonable for the public to start getting scared and be in fear of more ISIS attacks that are following?
	Or additional ones?
	Or maybe there was more ISIS people involved in an incident?
	That's reasonable.
	That's possible.
	Is it reasonable?
	Anything's possible.
	Is it reasonable?
	It just depends.
	On what?
	On if anything else has happened like that in the past.
	Nothing like that had happened before 9-11.
	Nobody had flown airplanes into the towers of New York City until 9-11.
	Well, Alex Jones did show me a source during the Las Vegas shooting where it basically had some connections to ISIS. That happened maybe five, six months beforehand.
	Okay.
	But this incident that we're here for, no relation to ISIS, correct?
	That's what it looks like.
	Correct.
	You have no reliable information whatsoever to say that ISIS was involved in this in any way?
	Except for what I saw from Nicholas Cruz's Instagram photos.
	Okay.
	And again, that's important information, correct?
	If he did support ISIS and you found information about this?
	Yes.
	Okay.
	And frankly, I think it's a little weird, his photos.
	I mean, why would your Instagram account just be nothing but photos of you wearing masks showing knives?
	Well, I mean, I think you're trying.
	Let me back that up.
	Are you trying to make sense of an individual who brought guns to his high school and killed a bunch of people?
	I wouldn't say sense, maybe like motivation.
	Okay.
	Why?
	Why did you have to do it right then and there?
	Because that's where the audience was paying attention to at the time.
	Right.
	So this is clickbait.
	It's unreliable information about a story the audience wants to read about.
	That's clickbait, right?
	That's your opinion.
	Okay, but what's your opinion of clickbait?
	When I use it, what do you think it means?
	Well, I don't really engage in clickbait, so I don't really have an opinion on it, to be honest.
	What's the term mean?
	You just used the term clickbait.
	What'd you mean by it?
	I think clickbait is something like, when you see an article on social media, it's like, click here to find five household products that will clean your house, pick and span.
	Right.
	So it's like, click here to find this out, and then you click on it, and there's no real information about that?
	Yes.
	Okay.
	So when this says, he supported ISIS, and somebody clicked on your story, where in here would they find that he supported ISIS? Just based on what I saw on Instagram.
	No, point in the story where your readers would find the information that he supported ISIS. Just the Al-Akbar comment.
	Okay.
	Which you have no idea what it even means.
	I mean, I know that's a phrase ISIS fighters use a lot.
	It's also a phrase that every Muslim in the world uses.
	Did you know that?
	Not necessarily.
	I'm not too familiar with...
	You didn't know that Alu Akbar is a Muslim phrase that is used literally every day multiple times by every Muslim in the world.
	I'm just not that familiar with the Muslim ideology.
	And unfortunately, and that's the problem when you have radical sex of Islam like ISIS is they take something like that that's really not meant to be something glorious for their religious beliefs And they take it and they turn it into like a chant, like a football slang.
	Okay.
	Surely, let me ask you this.
	When you wrote this article, it was your belief that Alu Akbar was something that only people in ISIS say?
	That was my belief at the time.
	Okay.
	And since that time, you've been promoted?
	As managing editor.
	True, right?
	Now that I've informed you that Alu Akbar is definitely not exclusively for ISIS, are you going to go back and Google it?
	See what it means?
	Possibly.
	Don't you think you should have looked at what it meant before you put an article on the internet that your readers trusted you of?
	It's possible, but like I said at the time, every time I'd hear Alu Akbar in the news media, It was always somehow...
	It's always somehow, you know, tied to ISIS. You had never heard of Al-Akbar before 2000...
	I've never heard...
	No, hold on.
	Let me finish my question.
	Okay, I'm sorry.
	I'm sorry.
	You had never heard of the term Al-Akbar before 2009?
	Not that to my knowledge.
	I was a college kid at the time.
	What news media are you talking about?
	Just about every mainstream traditional news media.
	You watch them regularly?
	I try to.
	Sometimes I don't want to.
	Sure.
	Sometimes you get burnt outlets in the media all the time.
	So it's your position that mainstream media has weaponized the term Alu Akbar?
	I don't know if I would say that, it's just that every time I read a news cycle back then or something in the news and had something to do with Allah Akbar, unfortunately it was always tied to some random guy running people over in his pickup truck and yelling Allah Akbar.
	Or there's a knife attack in say Germany and he's yelling Allah Akbar.
	Unfortunately, that's what I'm talking about is that you take these radical sects of a religious denomination or ideology and they tend to co-opt that term to mean something more radical than what you're saying it means.
	What do you think?
	What do you think ISIS members who say Al-Akbar mean?
	I don't know.
	Don't you think you should have?
	If that term was the reason for you to name a headline, he supports ISIS, surely you would have Googled what it meant, right?
	I don't know exactly.
	Maybe I did.
	I don't remember.
	I can assure you if you had, you wouldn't be sitting here today saying what you're saying.
	Also you would agree with me that radical religious sects who commit terrorist attacks are not exclusively in any way Muslim.
	I would just say that, yes.
	Okay.
	You also included a screenshot of the Florida voter registration.
	Yes.
	Did you even realize that the name isn't even spelled the same?
	Not at the time it did not.
	It's not even the same person.
	Yeah, well I did blurt it out for that contention.
	Yeah, but the name doesn't even match up and you overlooked that?
	Now that I remember that, there was an instance where there was, if I remember correctly, there was two reported instances of his name in the media at the time.
	And it wasn't until the next morning of the 15th where his correct spelling of his name was more prominent in the media.
	So when you wrote this story alleging that this person supported ISIS and was a communist, you weren't even sure how to spell his name.
	Just because the media at the time was reporting like, I think, two different spellings of his name.
	Why'd you pick the one that you picked in this story?
	I don't remember.
	You just picked one and said, ah, we'll go with it.
	I don't know if I did that.
	I just don't remember.
	Does that sound like good reporting?
	I just don't remember.
	Does it sound like good reporting is what I asked.
	Well, unfortunately, when there's something, a news that's breaking, the details tend to be a little muddy.
	Right, and they're muddied by individuals trying to pull full stories out of details that are not yet developed, correct?
	Well, I'll give you an example.
	Just answer my question first, correct?
	What was your question?
	Okay.
	The reason it's muddy is because all the news organizations are chasing after the story and the details haven't been flushed out enough yet to report the whole story, so it gets muddy.
	Right?
	Something like that.
	Right.
	You realize you're part of the problem.
	Do you realize that?
	Maybe in this instance.
	I'm just saying.
	Well, you seem like you're sitting here today saying what you did in this story was okay.
	Do you think it was okay to do?
	No.
	Okay.
	So you realize you were wrong.
	Yes.
	Okay.
	And you realize you could have been way better.
	Yes, absolutely.
	Okay.
	You realize nothing about any of these photos has anything to do with communism or supporting ISIS. I understand that now.
	Yes, definitely.
	When did you start understanding that?
	I don't remember.
	How did you realize it?
	Well, what you told me gave me good insight as far as the ISIS. So before I just instructed you on, one, anybody who actually supported ISIS would never use the term Sandurka.
	Yeah, I wasn't aware of that term.
	You didn't even know what it meant?
	You didn't Google any of this?
	You just saw it and said, oh, I recognize two of those words.
	Must be ISIS. Well, it was a breaking news story at the time.
	For you, I would assume so.
	But it wasn't exactly news.
	It was just breaking lies.
	True?
	This isn't news, is it?
	What I was trying to do...
	My question was, this is not news, is it?
	Well, like I said, I'm more of a social commentator.
	Well, you just told me it was breaking news.
	This isn't breaking news.
	This article is not breaking news, is it?
	That's your opinion.
	What's your opinion?
	Do you think it's breaking news?
	It was breaking news in the sense that the Florida shooting just happened within the last couple hours.
	It was breaking news in the sense that the shooting had happened within the last few hours, and you needed a story that no one else was writing about, so you pretty much fabricated one.
	I didn't fabricate it.
	Not on purpose, but you definitely fabricated one sitting here today.
	We can agree, right?
	Not on purpose.
	Regardless, on purpose or just pure ignorance, it happened.
	True?
	I would say so.
	Okay.
	Do you think somebody who wrote this story in the middle of what was still possibly a crisis should then in the same year be promoted?
	Well, I got promoted not because of this story.
	I didn't ask you that.
	I asked you, anybody that put this out with InfoWars name on it, should that person in the same year be promoted?
	It depends on the circumstances.
	Would you promote them?
	It depends on the circumstances.
	I just gave you the circumstances.
	Well, let's say you have a quarterback who generally does a good job and he just happens to throw three interceptions in a football game.
	Are you going to, like, bench him for the rest of the season because of that one performance?
	No, but I'm not going to pay him a bonus for that game.
	That's a question for Alex Jones.
	So, because he has a shirt tied around his face, Isis.
	And because he's got knives between his fingers, Isis.
	Because he's got an extremely derogatory That was my conclusion at the time.
	Do you think you're pretty informed about ISIS? I was at the time.
	Okay, would somebody who's informed about ISIS have zero understanding of the second most used term by every Muslim on the planet?
	I had more knowledge about ISIS in particular than Islam as an ideology.
	I swore earlier, and correct me if I'm wrong, that you said ISIS was a radical religious sect.
	That would be my understanding.
	Maybe it's not accurate, but it would be my understanding.
	So you say you had an understanding of ISIS. Surely you would have an understanding of ISIS's motivation for doing what they do, right?
	To a limited extent.
	Very limited, you would agree?
	Yes.
	So when I ask if you were informed, would you say you were informed or you knew a couple things?
	Informed in what regard?
	I don't know.
	Instead of actually reading about what their ideologies are and their motivations, it seems like you were just scanning the internet for pictures of people in Syria.
	Is that what you were doing?
	No, I was doing news stories on what was going on in ISIS at the time.
	It's mainly my analysis of what was going on.
	Do you think, with what I just informed you of, do you think your analysis was good on it?
	It was better than this article.
	Kind of a low bar though, huh?
	Possibly.
	This article is a very low bar to compare with anything else that's ever been written in any story of journalism.
	True.
	I would say so.
	Your other headline said that he was a communist.
	You got that from the picture of my client, correct?
	That was my understanding at the time.
	There was no other information that you had leading anyone to believe that the Florida shooter supported communism.
	Well, Jones back during the Las Vegas shooting, he showed me a text from one of his sources that was somehow tied to the FBI hostage rescue team during that shooting.
	That said that there was a bunch of Antifa paraphernalia all over the hotel room.
	So that kind of got me into that line of thinking.
	So now just anytime anyone fires a weapon off near you, you just immediately look for something that looks Antifa-like?
	No, that was what the source said.
	Okay, what does that have anything to do with this story?
	That just kind of put me in the mindset.
	So you were brainwashed by Mr. Jones?
	I wouldn't say I was brainwashed.
	It sounds like he showed you something from a source and from there on out you were in a mindset to assume and look for Antifa.
	Well, I wasn't going to disclude it.
	What does Antifa stand for?
	Anti-fascist, I think.
	Okay.
	Does everybody that's in Antifa support communism?
	I don't know.
	You didn't put anything about Antifa in your story, did you?
	Well, the photo of Mr. Fontaine, if I remember correctly, looked like a communist shirt.
	Flip the page, it's in front of you.
	It looks like a communist shirt.
	If you look closely, do you recognize that shirt as a parody on the Communist Party?
	Where certain Communist individuals that are famous are having a party.
	For instance, Lenin has a lampshade on his head and people are drinking.
	Did you even realize that?
	No, I did not.
	You just saw a red shirt.
	With the hammer and sickle.
	And you said, gotta be communism.
	That was my assumption at the time.
	Especially considering his...
	Fist like that.
	Is somebody raising their fist like this?
	Has that been used for any other movements?
	Possibly, but in this photo, that combined when I see a red shirt with a hammer and sickle.
	Bam!
	Gotta be communism in your eyes.
	Well, that was my assumption that it looks like something like a communist.
	Okay.
	In the headline, it doesn't say, my assumption is that he might be communist.
	Did you say that?
	No.
	Okay.
	One out of ten.
	Rate your performance on this article.
	I'd say about a two or a three.
	Really?
	You got to two?
	What part of it got you to two?
	It's about kind of everything you said.
	If I had this to do all over again, I wouldn't have done it this way.
	Frankly, I think this is one of my worst performing articles I've ever done.
	Okay.
	To write this article, you had to get tipped off, right?
	Sorry, I don't understand the question.
	Actually, let's do this.
	two all right looks like you've changed your tune a little bit here on the headline right the portfolio is just going to offer Well, I don't know if I did this headline or not.
	It's got your name on it.
	Yes, it does have my name on it.
	It might have been something that Paul Watson went and edited the headline.
	And was that because you got everything wrong in the first one and he had to clean your mess up?
	I didn't talk to Paul Watson about it.
	Okay.
	And in this one, someone, and we assume it's Paul Watson, wrote that you were completely wrong and that they regret your behavior.
	Oh, what were you referring to?
	This paragraph under the- The retraction?
	Yeah.
	That was written, my understanding was written by lawyers.
	Okay.
	And those lawyers work on behalf of the company?
	Yes.
	And the company regrets your behavior.
	Last sentence.
	Me and the company.
	You made the error.
	Nobody else, right?
	Yes.
	So the company regrets you doing this.
	When I say we, yeah, we and the company, we try to do a better job.
	Right.
	But with this sentence, it's only talking about you.
	Company didn't do anything wrong in your eyes, did they?
	Well, let me back that up.
	The only thing that Free Speech Systems did with regards to your article is give you access to upload it without somebody checking your work.
	True?
	Possibly.
	Not possibly.
	It's true or false.
	Anything is possible.
	Could you rephrase the question?
	Right.
	The company, at least on February 14, 2018, should not Have allowed you to have access to upload stories without someone else double-checking to see what you're putting out there.
	Yeah, if I had to do it again, I definitely would have got someone.
	Did you tell anybody at the company you don't even know what Alu Akbar means?
	No.
	Did you tell them that when you published the article, did you have any conversations with people afterwards?
	Not to my knowledge.
	Before you pulled it down, you didn't talk to anybody?
	Not that I remember.
	Would it surprise you to know the company testified two days ago and they said something very different?
	It would surprise me.
	Okay.
	You would agree with me that in Exhibit 1, the only photograph of the alleged shooter, the only photograph with an unobscured face is Mr. Fontaine.
	Yes.
	So when you started spreading photos of the shooter, the only one that anyone can see a face isn't even the right person.
	Correct.
	You know what a reverse image search is, right?
	I'm familiar with it.
	Okay.
	Did you do one?
	I remember typing in Nicholas Cruz on Google Images.
	And unfortunately, the photos that were coming up were of Mr. Fontaine.
	Okay.
	I didn't ask that question.
	I know, but that's just me clarifying.
	I asked you whether or not you did a reverse image.
	I don't remember.
	When the shooter, when this article went out, they had already released the shooter's name, correct?
	They released the two different versions of his name.
	But they only released one birthday, correct?
	I don't remember, unfortunately.
	If you had remembered, you would realize that the voter information that you got that's public knowledge would have included the birthday and you could have cross-referenced it.
	Did you know that?
	No.
	Okay.
	Exhibit 3.
	You recognize exhibit 3?
	Uh, let me look at it really quick.
	June 5th, 2018. Yes.
	Who wrote it?
	It was me on the, uh, with help with council at the time.
	Which council?
	Uh, Waller Law.
	And that would be Mr. Taub or Mr. Brown?
	Yes, it was Mr. Brown, I believe.
	Did you, prior to Ms. Blott representing you, who was your lawyer?
	Sorry, Brad Reeves.
	And before Mr. Reeves?
	It was Kevin Brown.
	Kevin Brown, not Eric Taub.
	Yeah, I don't think I had much, if any, interaction with Eric Taub.
	Did you know that the Waller Law Firm Withdrew from this case and represented to the court that further representation in this case would cause them to violate ethical rules.
	Did you know that?
	Not to that wording precisely.
	I was told there was some sort of conflict of interest and I didn't quite understand at the time.
	And surely, since you didn't understand, you asked what the conflict was?
	Well, I tried to ask Kevin Brown, but what he told me was so much an illegalese that it was very hard for me to understand.
	Okay, and you didn't say, I don't know what that means?
	I did, and you just started spewing more illegalese.
	So you have no idea why your lawyers said they couldn't represent you anymore because that would force them to violate ethical rules?
	Yeah, I wasn't...
	This is the first time I heard the phrase ethical rules.
	I was told a conflict of interest somehow.
	Okay.
	Does Mr. Reeves still represent you?
	As far as my knowledge, he does not.
	Why is it?
	When did you get that knowledge?
	Let me ask you a better question.
	Did you fire him?
	No.
	Okay.
	Has he gotten your consent to withdraw?
	Not to my knowledge.
	What makes you think he no longer represents you?
	Because he sent me a text on Monday.
	What did it say?
	It said that it wasn't your fault, but I can no longer represent you in the case.
	Okay, what did you respond with?
	I didn't respond.
	How much did you pay Mr. Reeves?
	It was the company paying him.
	Okay, the company's paid for all of your legal services?
	Yes.
	Are you going to report anything over $15,800 as income for the year?
	What's that?
	The company, are you going to claim for the 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021, any legal services provided to you over $15,800, are you going to claim as income?
	I don't know.
	Okay.
	Has anybody talked to you about that?
	No.
	Okay.
	I'm assuming based on your answers, you did not claim any income for the last three years?
	I'll have to go back and look.
	okay are you paying this block My understanding is the company is paying Ms. Blott's services.
	Okay.
	Have you had, prior to the last couple of days prepping for this deposition, have you had a lot of communication with Ms. Blott?
	I met with her for four or five hours on Saturday.
	And that was the first time?
	What's that?
	Was that the first time?
	Yes, it was.
	Okay.
	Did you actually hire Ms. Blott or was she just kind of assigned to you?
	I think the company hired her.
	You didn't have any say in it?
	No.
	Okay.
	Let's look at your affidavit.
	Okay.
	At some point that it's convenient.
	What time is it?
	13 after 11. Yeah, we can take a break.
	Are you sure?
	Yeah, before we dig into this.
	Okay.
	The time is 11.13 a.m.
	We are off the record.
	The time is 11.25 a.m.
	We are on the record.
	There she is.
	Thank you.
	The image that you used of Mr. Fontaine in your article, where did you get it?
	I first saw it on social media, and I believe I took the screenshot off of 4chan.
	Okay.
	I screenshot what?
	Off of 4chan.
	Why'd you go to 4chan?
	Because initially, I saw the photos of Nicholas Cruz's Instagram account on Twitter, I believe.
	And unfortunately, I couldn't find the link to his Instagram account on Twitter, so I had this assumption that maybe I could find it on a site like 4chan.
	You couldn't find it on Twitter?
	Yeah, it was weird.
	So I went on 4chan, and sure enough, there was a link to his Instagram account.
	Okay.
	No, the image of Mr. Fontaine is what I'm talking about.
	Yeah, and then when I was on 4chan, I saw the image of Mr. Fontaine on social media, but it was also on 4chan as well.
	Okay.
	Why did you go to 4chan for that one?
	For the image?
	For the image of Mr. Fontaine.
	I think it was because it was a higher quality photo than what I could find on Twitter.
	What is 4chan?
	It's a message board.
	Okay.
	Is it anonymous?
	I've been told that.
	I don't use 4chan a lot, so...
	Your declaration in front of you.
	Yes.
	If we look at paragraph two, it says you're a video journalist, and you use the term journalist.
	Video journalist.
	Right.
	Journalist, though, is used.
	As in the context of video journalism.
	Correct.
	What's the difference between regular journalism and video journalism?
	I use the term video journalist because I really didn't know how to describe myself To the best of my ability as far as going out and shooting videos, interviewing people.
	And then writing stories about those videos?
	I didn't do that very often, if at all.
	Okay, so you would just shoot videos and then give them to somebody else?
	No, I'd shoot videos and upload them to the website.
	Okay, and you wouldn't write anything at the bottom or a story with the video?
	Typically not.
	I generally never had time to.
	I would just shoot a video and just upload it to YouTube and then we'd embed it on InfoWars.
	Yeah, so you'd be a news reporter.
	You'd be like a, you know...
	I never...
	I mean, normally in the company we use the phrase reporter for on-air talent.
	Right, but you were taking videos, doing interviews, and uploading them to the public, right?
	Yes.
	So when you see news cameras out, In the field in their little vans and they pull over and set up the camera and do an interview.
	There's nothing different from that and what you were doing.
	Well, they had a lot more equipment and they had a van.
	That's fine.
	You don't have a van or that equipment, but you got a camera and you have a mouth, correct?
	Yeah, but unfortunately, there's a lot of interviews I couldn't do because it seems like when you have a small camera, people think you're small time, so they're not going to interview you.
	Why do you say unfortunately?
	What's that?
	You keep saying the word unfortunately in this deposition.
	I'm asking you, why do you keep saying unfortunately?
	Because I would.
	I mean, it just hurts to get rejected by somebody who you're trying to interview, and they're like, oh, you seem like you just have an iPhone, you know?
	But you did the interviews.
	And you uploaded them.
	I did what interviews I could.
	And there's no difference between that and what The local news does when they go out in the field.
	Well, like I said, they normally have a big news van.
	They have a production crew.
	They have a lot bigger cameras.
	When you break it down, it's a reporter finding people and asking questions on video, correct?
	When you really break it down.
	Yeah.
	So at the bare bones of this, you were doing the exact same thing.
	You just had way less of a budget.
	Well, way less equipment.
	Unfortunately, it affected me a lot of times.
	But the job was the same.
	I mean, I'm not, like I said, the job would be a lot easier if I had a bigger camera.
	I didn't say if it was easier or hard.
	It's the same job.
	Go get information and video it.
	Talk to people, get information, and video it.
	It's the same job, right?
	That's what you say.
	What do you think?
	I don't think it's the same job.
	How's it different?
	Well, like I said, I think if you have a bigger camera, you're going to get a hell of a lot more stories, a hell of a lot more interviews.
	I'm not asking you about the quality of your stories or the quantity of your stories.
	I'm asking you just about the job.
	Well, you get better interviews with people you otherwise won't be able to interview.
	Saying better interviews is no different than saying quality of the story.
	Same question I have.
	The job is the same.
	The outcomes may be different because they have more money and more equipment, but at the end of the day, you're doing the exact same job, correct?
	No.
	How's it different?
	Because I'm not going out and saying, oh, here's a fire that just happened down the street.
	Let's report on the fire.
	What are you doing?
	I go to a political rally and I put a camera in front of somebody.
	Here, why are you here?
	What's your take on what's going on?
	What's your opinion on the political situation?
	Yeah, and when you're at those political rallies, you see news companies there.
	Yeah, but normally, from what I've seen, they don't normally just go out and start interviewing people, random people, what's your opinion on this subject?
	You know what the internet is, right?
	Yes.
	Surely you've seen multiple news organizations out at rallies interviewing people.
	Rallies I've seen, the news organizations tend to stay in the media center.
	And they tend to report on, let's say it's at a Trump rally.
	What I've seen from the media is that they'll stay in their media center and they'll report on something Trump just said.
	So you're not aware of the however many videos there are out there of news organizations out in the field talking to people at, let's say, a political rally?
	No.
	Okay.
	In your, sometimes you produce social commentary, right?
	And then other times you produce editorial content, correct?
	I'm sorry, I don't understand the question.
	What do you mean by editorial content?
	What does editorial content mean?
	To me, when I hear editorial content, I'm thinking maybe more like op-eds.
	Okay.
	Is that what you meant in this sworn declaration?
	We're at, as far as social commentator?
	It says, as part of my duties, paragraph two, and regularly contribute editorial content.
	Okay, when y'all talk over each other, I cannot.
	I'm very sorry.
	I don't mean to do that.
	Editorial content is mainly I update the website.
	I put third-party articles up on the website.
	I contribute my own content to the website.
	Right.
	What's editorial content?
	That's how I'd kind of defined it.
	Just anything that goes on the website?
	Pretty much.
	Okay.
	You turn the page to page.
	Paragraph three.
	Yes.
	It says, I've published an image of a man that I had obtained from the popular image and web board entitled 4chan.
	It says, I went to the 4chan website after I had seen the challenged image trending on social media.
	Yes.
	Okay.
	How does an image trend?
	When you see it all when you go on like your Twitter news feed and you just see it all over the place or even maybe your Facebook news feed it's just everywhere and under oath right now to this jury you're telling them that you saw Mr. Fontaine's photo all over your news feed that's my understanding if i recall correctly okay do you know how many times at the time the article was published do you know how many times how many times that image had been posted on twitter No.
	Do you know how many times you've been posting on Facebook?
	No.
	Would it surprise you a lot to know that it was less than a dozen?
	What time frame?
	Between the shooting and your article going live?
	Does that sound like it was trending?
	Well, maybe I just happened to see all of them on my news feed.
	Maybe, but you can't tell us because you didn't save any of that info, did you?
	As far as social media?
	As far as anything that you used to support the story.
	Could you rephrase that a little bit?
	Right.
	When you put content in a story, do you save the sources of where it came from?
	I mean, I did screenshots of the sources.
	And you saved those?
	Yeah, that's what I included in the discovery process.
	The websites?
	What's that?
	In the screenshots, they don't have the actual website.
	It's just a screenshot of whatever's on that page, correct?
	I believe so.
	So if I asked you, give me the website that you went to to see this, you have no idea.
	Yeah, at the time, I mean, I was seeing it on social media.
	I didn't have any reason to screenshot every instance of Mr. Fontaine's photo I saw on social media.
	Okay.
	Topics trend on social media, correct?
	Yes.
	Hashtags trend.
	On Twitter, mainly.
	Right.
	Photos, they don't trend.
	They can sometimes.
	How?
	I mean, if it's got a hashtag to it.
	I'm saying photographs, generally.
	No, I'm not talking about hashtags.
	Photographs do not trend.
	Correct?
	I disagree.
	Okay.
	How do they trend?
	If they're associated with something in the news and it's a hashtag...
	I just told you, we're not talking about hashtags.
	Well, I mean, if the photo has a hashtag under it, kind of like a caption.
	Did Mr. Fontaines have a hashtag?
	I don't remember.
	No.
	Have you seen anything during this process that has shown you that there was a hashtag associated with that photo?
	I don't remember.
	So when you say it's trending, what do you mean?
	At the time, I was seeing Mr. Fontaine's photo on Facebook and Twitter.
	So it was trending to you, but that in no way is representative of trending in the mainstream media, correct?
	Possibly.
	I didn't say possibly.
	And you keep saying possibly.
	And that's not an answer.
	You realize that, right?
	Well, I'm trying to do the best of my ability.
	Okay.
	It's been four years ago.
	Best of your ability?
	Here, let me give you a tip.
	You can answer yes, you can answer no, or you can say I don't know.
	But when you say possibly, no one has any idea what you're talking about.
	Okay.
	So, you say the image was trending on social media.
	Yes.
	Okay, on your social media.
	On the news feeds that were available to me on social media.
	Right, your personal news feeds.
	I believe so.
	In paragraph three of your declaration, you also talk about Laguna Beach Antifa.
	You see that?
	Yes.
	Okay.
	You relied on Laguna Beach Antifa's tweet, correct?
	No.
	Would it surprise you to know that it was the only original source at the time that had posted it and all others that you would have seen would have been reposts?
	That would surprise me.
	Okay.
	I'm sorry, did you say that would surprise me?
	Yes.
	Now that we've established that, your testimony in this affidavit is that the Laguna Beach Antifa Twitter post was at 2 37 p.m.
	hours before I posted the challenged image on the Infowars website.
	You see that?
	Yes.
	2.37 p.m., what time zone?
	I believe that would be central time.
	Why would you think that?
	Because that's the time zone I'm in.
	Would it surprise you to know that if you go to the Laguna Beach page, that doesn't correlate.
	And it correlates with California time.
	I was under the impression they were out of Florida.
	Would it surprise you?
	You think Laguna Beach is in Florida?
	I thought that was where it was at.
	Would it surprise you to know it was in California?
	Yes.
	Okay.
	Let's take your understanding.
	Okay.
	Let's say they are in Florida.
	So it's 3.37 p.m.
	What time did you post the article?
	It was approximately 4 p.m.
	or after.
	So about 23 minutes.
	It had been up on Laguna Beach Antifa's page for 23 minutes.
	How long had you been following Laguna Beach Antifa on Twitter?
	I wasn't following them on Twitter.
	How did you get to it?
	I did not.
	What's it doing in your affidavit?
	So Kevin Brown went and found an example of Fontaine's photo on social media That predated when I put it up on InfoWars.
	Why didn't you just go get the original?
	I didn't remember.
	I couldn't find the original, unfortunately.
	How long did you look?
	Gosh, 30-40 minutes.
	That's it?
	I mean, maybe longer.
	Maybe or was?
	Well, I couldn't find it.
	I went back and looked at where I screenshotted it for Fortune.
	I could not find the thread.
	I do remember looking for it on social media and unfortunately a lot of people were deleting it by the time I was looking for it for the discovery process.
	Why were they deleting it?
	I don't know.
	Because it was wrong?
	Possibly, yes.
	Or because there were a bunch of Twitter pages set up quickly that posted this image as troll pages to see if any news media outlets would pick it up and run the story?
	That's a possibility.
	Do you believe you're a victim of some internet trolls that just got the best of you because you weren't paying attention?
	I think I was duped, definitely.
	I think you were too.
	Is it common for employees of free speech systems to get duped on the internet?
	I can't speak for everybody.
	I mean, I'm sure it happens every now and then.
	Has it happened to you before?
	Well, it happened this instance.
	Has it happened other than that?
	I don't remember.
	We'll get to that.
	Attached to your declaration was a 4chan post.
	I don't see it on this one.
	It's in paragraph 3. It says, attached as Exhibit 4 is a true and correct copy of an example of, or excuse me, that's a Twitter post.
	Halfway down the paragraph of three attached as exhibit one is a true and correct copy of a web page from 4chan website where one of several iterations of the challenged image appeared.
	See that?
	Yes.
	So you couldn't even find the original.
	No.
	And I looked and looked and looked.
	So the only
	source that you can really show us of the photo that you saw putting this article together is the one from Laguna B. Jantifa?
	I can't say that I saw the photo.
	Like I said, Kevin Brown, my counsel at the time, he used the Laguna Beach Antifa Twitter photo to point out that this photo was circling on social media before I saw it.
	Okay.
	Is it, if you find something on 4chan, do you think that's reliable?
	In this context, I found the link to the Instagram of Nicholas Cruz on 4chan that turned out to be the case.
	But you used the information from Instagram in your article, not from 4chan, right?
	Correct.
	But with Mr. Fontaine's picture, you used 4chan.
	Yes.
	Do you think that's reliable?
	At the time when I saw the link on 4chan to his Instagram account, I thought whoever posted that link might have found some other photos of Nicholas Cruz.
	Okay.
	Go on.
	That's all I have to say about it.
	So because somebody found his Instagram link, you assumed everything else they were posting was true?
	At the time, yes.
	Okay.
	Do you think that's responsible reporting?
	Looking back, no.
	When you wrote this affidavit, did you think it was responsible?
	I don't remember.
	Unfortunately, I wrote this after David like four years ago, but I would say yes.
	Yes what?
	That it was not responsible reporting.
	Okay.
	If you go to the next sentence, it says, As such, as part of my posting, I added the following text that immediately preceded the challenged image.
	Quote, And another alleged photo of the suspect shows communist garb, end quote.
	Parentheses, together with the challenged image, the challenged, comma, the challenged publication, in parentheses.
	Then that's next sentence.
	In doing so, I accurately reported on the Infowars website what the 4chan original poster had reported.
	You still think it was accurate?
	I accurately reported what a third party was reporting.
	Who's the third party?
	The 4chan website.
	Someone anonymous that you have no idea of and you didn't do anything to verify, right?
	Well, I did try to verify by looking up Nicholas Krizon, his photo on Google image search, and all I could find was photos of Mr. Fontaine at the time.
	Mr. Fontaine's photo was pulled from 4chan from an anonymous source, correct?
	That would be my understanding.
	That's terrible reporting.
	You would agree?
	I would say so.
	I wouldn't do it again.
	You would agree that if somebody was accused of massacring a bunch of children at a high school that could cause them some damage.
	Correct?
	Well could you rephrase that?
	Yeah.
	Sorry I blanked out a little bit.
	Anybody that is randomly accused of being a person that slaughtered a bunch of children at a high school in a shooting If they were alleged to be that shooter and they weren't, that could cause them some injuries, some damage.
	I mean, it depends if you point at someone and say this person did that.
	It depends?
	Yes.
	That's the testimony you want this jury to receive?
	Well, I didn't say Marcel Fontaine shot kids up out of high school.
	Nope.
	But you used his photo.
	Yes.
	And you know what happened when you used his photo?
	What's that?
	People found his name.
	You know what people did when they found his name?
	What was that?
	People started messaging him and commenting on photos of him on the internet.
	You know what they said?
	What was that?
	Not nice things.
	Yeah.
	Do you know any of that?
	No, but I can sympathize with it.
	You know, earlier I just asked you if it could cause somebody injury, and you said, oh, it depends.
	Well, I didn't know exactly what you're referring to.
	So because you can sympathize, what did you mean by that?
	Well, I've gotten death threats before.
	How did it make you feel?
	I made it feel really bad.
	Were you terrified?
	I don't know if I was terrified, but that definitely made me feel uncomfortable.
	Made you feel uncomfortable, and it doesn't just go away, right?
	I mean, over time it will, for me at least.
	When you hear noises outside at night, that can spook you a little bit, right?
	Well, not for me necessarily.
	Okay.
	How did it scare you?
	It didn't scare me, it just made me feel really uncomfortable.
	What do you mean uncomfortable?
	Well, you don't like having someone being in the spotlight.
	And people telling you things that like they hate you or they want to see you dead or this and that.
	Right.
	Why not?
	It's just not something people would want to go through the experience.
	I've experienced it myself before and it's not very comfortable to know that.
	Explain the feeling.
	Excuse me?
	Explain the feeling that you got.
	It was a feeling of discomfort and it's a feeling that It's not something I'd wish on people.
	And the people that sent you death threats, if you found who they were, you would want them to be held responsible, correct?
	I would...
	I don't know.
	Let me ask you this.
	If CNN posted your photo and said that you were the Vegas shooter, you were the actual Vegas shooter, a bunch of people started giving you death threats, would you want CNN to be held responsible?
	I don't know, because obviously Marcel Fontaine was not the shooter.
	He was not Nicholas Cruz.
	Not obvious to you.
	You threw his photo up in your article.
	Yeah, because I didn't even know who it is.
	I didn't know it was Marcel Fontaine at the time.
	You didn't even know how to spell Nicholas Cruz.
	No, like I said, there was two different spellings of his name reported in the media at the time.
	Right, so you didn't even know how to spell Nicholas Cruz.
	Same question.
	True?
	Well, I had two different spellings of it.
	And you didn't know which one was the correct one.
	I don't remember.
	Maybe I had the correct one, maybe I did not.
	If you had the correct one, then you just blatantly missed the voter registration image that you put into your article.
	That would be just reckless and careless, right?
	I don't know if that would be reckless or careless.
	I'll let that answer stand for the jury.
	I'm sorry, what was the last question?
	I said, I'll let that answer stand for the jury.
	Going to paragraph four of your declaration.
	Yes.
	It says, the challenge publication was published on the InfoWars website around 5 p.m.
	Central Time on February 14, 2018. Yes.
	Why can't you tell me an exact time?
	Because I don't remember the exact time, unfortunately.
	I know it was very late in the afternoon.
	It was around 4 or 5 p.m.
	One thing we can agree on is that best case scenario for you is you saw Mr.
	Fontaine's photo about less than 30 minutes before it went up on the Infowars website.
	True?
	I would say so, yes.
	Okay.
	What exhibit are we on?
	Four?
	We are on Exhibit 3. Yes, the next will be four.
	Okay.
	Exhibit 4 is from yesterday, two days ago.
	Have you ever seen anything resembling Exhibit 4 before?
	Yes.
	Okay, what is that?
	That's a screenshot of our SQL database for the article in question.
	And it keeps track when articles go up and when they're altered, correct?
	Unfortunately, no.
	This will only show the last time it was modified.
	When that modification right there, that's the Paul Watson modification with the retraction, correct?
	Well, that was, I don't, I think I was the one that posted the retraction.
	This might have been the, uh, leaning up for typos.
	No, that was the article we just went over.
	That has the correction and retraction in it?
	Well, what I said was Paul Watson, before the retraction went up, Paul Watson may have changed the headline.
	Okay, but that document Exhibit 4 is the information that was there after the retraction was posted, correct?
	I'm sorry, what was that again?
	That's from when the retraction was posted, Exhibit 4?
	Yes.
	Okay, so whoever actually uploaded the retraction online Could have gone and gotten the information from the original post before it changed, correct?
	I'm sorry, could you break that down a little bit more?
	Do you know what program is used for that?
	This is MySQL.
	And prior to posting the retraction, Somebody could have pulled up MySQL and seen when the original was posted, correct?
	In theory, yes.
	Okay, so if somebody had a letter from my law firm telling them that we were requesting a retraction, and then after they got that letter, they posted a retraction, they could have gone and gotten the information of when it was originally posted.
	True?
	I'll tell you what I do know.
	I'm sorry, I'm not an IT person, so it's just kind of a little bit over my head.
	But I went, during the recovery process, I went to the IT department and asked to see if we could pull out the dates, the revisions, when the post originally up, if we could get the date for that, and any subsequent revisions.
	And fortunately at the time, the way they had the thing set up, they weren't recording that.
	So the only thing I could get was the last time the post was modified.
	And you were the person that did the search?
	No, I wasn't.
	It was the IT department.
	I don't have experience doing SQL searches or the ability to.
	But you spoke to the IT department?
	Yes.
	Who from the IT department did it?
	Unfortunately, I don't remember and I don't remember who I spoke to because we've had several different IT personnel since then.
	But I do remember going and asking them why we can't pull up the revision dates and the original date this was posted and they basically told me they had revisions turned off because it was taking up too much server space.
	When did you ask?
	This was probably Unfortunately, I don't remember.
	I'm just taking my best guess.
	this is probably like early April 2018 maybe.
	Why in early April 2018 were you asking for revision history?
	Because a lawsuit was filed at that time, I was doing discovery.
	I thought that would be pertinent information.
	So in sum for your article, we don't know what time it was posted.
	We know approximately when it was posted.
	What time was it posted?
	Approximately around 5 p.m.
	So we don't know what time it was posted.
	Not exactly, no.
	Okay, so we don't know what time it was posted.
	We don't know what 4chan post you relied on, correct?
	It was deleted.
	We don't know what Twitter Tweets you saw and relied on, correct?
	Yes.
	We do?
	We do not.
	None of what you reported has anything to corroborate with, correct?
	What do you mean by that?
	Everything in your article, we can't really corroborate.
	I've been using the web archive.
	Okay.
	Now, Fontaine's photo did not appear in the original version of this article when I published it.
	So you went and added it?
	Yes.
	Okay.
	So the article may have went up around approximately 4 p.m.
	and then later on I added Fontaine's photo around 5 p.m.
	Okay.
	So there's a chance that your article went up before Laguna Beach Antifa posted it.
	I don't know.
	But there's a chance.
	I don't know.
	If you went up at 4, it's 5 their time and If they posted at 3.30 or 4.30, it'd be before that.
	I don't know.
	All right.
	Because like I said, I did see Fontaine's photo circulating on social media.
	All right.
	Earlier you said that you rushed this article because your viewers wanted to know the information, right?
	Yes.
	Okay.
	What's Marcel Fontaine's photo being added after the story's out?
	Have anything to do with that?
	It was a rolling update article.
	So I was adding to the article the more information we knew about the shooting and try to figure out the motivations of the shooter.
	The only thing he got from his photo was that he didn't even understand the t-shirt he was wearing.
	What motivation did you add to the story with?
	Well, it was hard to understand that the t-shirt he was wearing just kind of looking at it.
	I mean, it had a hammer and sickle.
	It was red color.
	At the time, I couldn't tell it was a parody shirt.
	- Okay.
	What did his photo add to your story?
	Well, like I said, I was told in a Las Vegas shooting that there was Antifa paraphernalia all over the shooter's room.
	That got me in the mindset to consider that there might be some sort of communist Antifa link to some of these shootings going on.
	Okay.
	What did Mr. Fontaine's photo add to the article?
	I thought it was a photo of Nicholas Cruz at the time.
	And you believe that everyone in Antifa supports communism?
	I don't know.
	Then how'd you get to, oh, I saw a hammer and sickle and it was red.
	Because normally, when I see a hammer and sickle in a red shirt, I think of communism.
	Okay.
	How do you get to Antifa?
	What's that?
	How do you go from communism to Antifa?
	Just from what I was told about the Las Vegas shooting.
	So, Alex Jones is the reason why you assumed everyone in Antifa supports communism?
	I never said that.
	You added the picture of Mr. Fontaine because he had a communism shirt on, in your eyes?
	Yes.
	Okay.
	You added that because Mr. Jones showed you some information that led you to believe there might be an Antifa-related Ideology behind these shootings.
	Yes.
	How do you get from communism with Mr. Fontaine's shirt to him being Antifa?
	It's in the same spectrum, politically.
	Of what?
	I mean, Antifa is typically left-leaning.
	Communism is typically left-leaning.
	That's how you got to the headline of your story?
	Yes.
	And it wasn't the headline originally.
	You went in and changed it.
	Yes, as more information was developing with the story.
	Was it really developing or were you inventing it?
	I wasn't inventing it.
	How did communism come out at all then?
	Because like I said, it's...
	I was told during the Las Vegas shoot there's Antifa paraphernalia.
	That's in the same ideological spectrum as communism.
	So because someone...
	told you that there was Antifa material with the Las Vegas shooting.
	Youths made the connection that Marcel Fontaine's communism shirt must be Antifa.
	That gives motivation for a Florida shooting in a different year?
	I'm sorry.
	I'm missing.
	You're right.
	I'm completely lost too because your thought pattern...
	No, I didn't hear...
	Hold on.
	Let me finish my question.
	I'm sorry.
	Your thought pattern here has a ton of fallacies in the logical leaps that you're making.
	So I'm trying to clear it up.
	Vegas had Antifa materials.
	Well, let's back that up.
	Someone showed you the Vegas shooter might have had Antifa materials, correct?
	I was told there was Antifa materials in the hotel room of the Vegas shooter.
	Okay.
	By who?
	Alex Jones showed me a source that he was talking to.
	Okay, but you didn't talk to the source.
	No.
	So it's just pure hearsay.
	No, he showed me the text message.
	Right.
	But you don't know who was writing it?
	Right.
	Could have been a troll on 4chan duping someone.
	I doubt that.
	Do you?
	Yes.
	Okay.
	Well, let's break it down this way.
	How come you didn't say Barack Obama Involved in the Florida shooting.
	He leans left.
	Antifa from Vegas is left.
	Based on your logic, why wasn't Obama in your article?
	I don't understand your question.
	Right, because it doesn't make sense.
	The logic doesn't follow.
	There were Antifa materials in the Vegas shooter's room.
	That's your understanding, correct?
	Antifa is typically left-leaning, correct?
	I've been to...
	Correct?
	Yes.
	Barack Obama, left-leaning, correct?
	Yes.
	Why didn't you put Obama in the story?
	I've been to Communist and Antifa rallies here in Austin, Texas.
	I'm going to stop you right here and just ask you to answer my question.
	Why didn't you put Barack Obama in your story?
	I mean, I am answering the question.
	No, you said I've been to something here or the other.
	I'm giving you my mindset, so maybe this will help clear it up.
	But I've seen Antifa in Austin dressed up as communists.
	What is a communist dress as?
	Hammer and sickle, like, red shirt.
	I mean, actually, I was friends with a straight-up communist here in Austin about 10 years ago.
	This guy would wear, like, red shirts, hammer and sickles, like hammer and sickle belt buckles.
	Okay, so you saw a bunch of Antifa people with hammer and sickle jewelry on?
	Or they were flying hammer and sickle flags.
	Okay, where?
	In Austin.
	Just randomly flying them behind their cars?
	These are like May Day demonstrations.
	Okay.
	So you went to a communist demonstration in Austin and assumed that's how communists dress.
	No, I'm not a communist.
	I'm trying to figure it out.
	What does this have anything to do with why you didn't put Barack Obama in your story based on your logic?
	I don't understand your question, unfortunately.
	Okay.
	Marcel Fontaine had what you thought was a Communist Party shirt, correct?
	Yes.
	Communism is left-leaning.
	Okay, let me, let me...
	Just answer my questions.
	Okay, I am.
	I'm trying to.
	Communism is left-leaning.
	Yes.
	The Vegas shooter had Antifa materials, possibly, in his hotel room, correct?
	Yes.
	Antifa also left-leaning.
	Yes.
	So that's where you bridged these two different things, Antifa and Communism, right?
	They're both left-leaning.
	So I took another left-leaning person and said, why didn't you draw that bridge over there too?
	In my view, Antifa and Communism is more of a radical left ideology, way more so than a Barack Obama.
	Okay, then why didn't you draw the line to Bernie Sanders?
	Because I think he claims he's a socialist.
	Aren't they the same thing in your eyes?
	No.
	You've never written an article that said that communism and socialism are the exact same thing?
	I don't recall.
	Yes, you don't recall?
	Because earlier I said they're not the same.
	You said no, definitively.
	I don't remember even saying that, unfortunately.
	I just asked you, you don't think they're the same and you said no.
	In my view, socialism and communism are two different things.
	Okay.
	Do you still think that there's some sort of left-leaning ideology linking mass shootings?
	It depends.
	Sitting here today, you still believe that?
	It depends.
	On what?
	On the particular shooting.
	Okay.
	For instance?
	I mean, I haven't really been following mass shootings lately.
	Okay.
	Haven't been very many, have there?
	I don't know.
	It's as if, you know...
	An election happened and people stopped shooting so much.
	I don't know.
	I don't know.
	When did you learn what a reverse image search was?
	I don't remember, unfortunately.
	Okay.
	Was it, you know, six months ago, six years ago?
	I don't remember.
	Have you known about it for a while?
	I would say so.
	Okay.
	And have you run one on this image?
	I don't remember.
	Standing here today, have you run one ever?
	I've done it in the past, yes.
	On this image?
	On the Fontaine image?
	Yes.
	I don't remember.
	Okay.
	It's not hard to do, right?
	It depends.
	How do you do a reverse image search?
	Sometimes I use 10i.com.
	Sometimes I try to use Google.
	Okay.
	Both of those you just copy and paste the image in, right?
	Yeah, but Google tends to be kind of finicky.
	Regardless, it's not hard to do.
	Right?
	Yes.
	And standing here today, did you know that if you do a reverse image search, you'll find Mr. Fontaine's photo, the exact one, with the exact same commentary at the bottom, posted four days before the shooting ever happened.
	Did you know that?
	No.
	It's kind of an important fact, right?
	Especially if you could have done a reverse image search before spreading his photograph all over the nation, alleging him to be a mass shooter.
	Right?
	I don't know.
	Right?
	Right? Right?
	It's kind of a leading question, though.
	It is.
	That's what cross-examination is for.
	That's what this is.
	Okay.
	Correct?
	What was the question again?
	It wasn't hard.
	You could have done it and found out that that photo is four days old and the shooting was day of.
	So it was...
	He couldn't have been the shooter.
	From that photo, it wasn't a commie.
	They'd been trolling him forever.
	I get you.
	That wouldn't have been hard, would it?
	No.
	But you didn't do that.
	I don't remember doing it.
	Because if you would have done it, you wouldn't have ran his photo, correct?
	That's a very good possibility.
	But it's not an absolute?
	Well, I did search on Google Images.
	I remember Nicholas Cruz's name and Fontaine's photo was like several of the top results.
	We're talking about reverse imaging.
	I understand that.
	I'm just telling you what I do remember doing.
	Okay, so if you would have done a reverse image search and seen that the photo that you posted was from four days before the shooting, you wouldn't have posted this photo in your article?
	I would say yes.
	Okay.
	And we established reverse image searching isn't hard.
	No.
	Take a little more water.
	Excuse me.
	Go ahead.
	Hmm.
	Okay.
	Okay. Okay.
	Okay.
	Okay.
	Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay.
	I vaguely remember writing it.
	Okay.
	In this article, you talk about how reckless it is for people to not run reverse image searches, don't you?
	Uh, where does that say that at?
	Let me pull this.
	Oh, let's back up.
	The article is dated November 5th, 2016. Correct?
	Oh, sorry.
	Uh, yes.
	And that's Over a year before you did, you published Mr. Fontaine's photograph to the world.
	And the headline says, Law enforcement begs world, read Hillary's email, Hillary emails to find child rape evidence.
	And then it says, Hillary linked to child sex ring, comma, emails suggest.
	Yes.
	Okay.
	we flip to page 8 here we go.
	That's where I put it.
	Okay, my page is wrong.
	It's right here, I think is what you're referring to.
	Page 8, second paragraph, I believe.
	Yeah.
	There it is.
	It says, the seller attached a picture of a Beanie Baby collection to the email, but using a reverse image search, the image appeared to be a publicly available photo that appeared on several blogs as far back as October 2014 and perhaps even earlier.
	The seller's email was dated June 2015. I read that correctly.
	Yes.
	So you knew what a reverse image search was.
	At the time, yes.
	You'd done these before you posted Mr. Fontaine's photo to the world.
	Yes.
	Why didn't you do one?
	I don't remember, but if I didn't do it for Montaigne's photo, I regret not doing it.
	It doesn't take very long, does it?
	No.
	Just flip to the next page, page nine, the second full paragraph.
	It says, "Other strange emails sent to Podesta include cryptic references to pizza, hot dogs, pasta, and walnuts, which are fueling speculation they are code words for criminal activity, including child molestation." I read that correctly, right?
	Yes.
	This is a bunch of Pizzagate nonsense, right?
	I don't know if this was necessarily involved with Pizzagate.
	My understanding of Pizzagate had to do with the Comet Ping Pong Pizza.
	Right.
	And where did all of that start?
	Podesta emails with cryptic references about pizza and child molestation.
	You know that, right?
	I wasn't involved with the Comet Pean Paul, as far as I remember.
	Yeah, you wrote an article about linking Hillary Clinton to a child sex ring.
	If I remember correctly, I think Alex Jones gave me the headline and the sub-headline for this article.
	Who gave you the content in the article?
	I think I worked with it with Jones.
	Okay.
	But I don't remember, unfortunately.
	One thing we do know is that here you are again writing about a story that turned out to not only not be true, but people acted on it, right?
	What are you referring to?
	A gentleman with an AR-15 walking into a pizzeria and firing his weapon because he was convinced there was a child sex ring being run out of it.
	Did I say anything about a pizzeria in this article?
	No, I'm saying you're reporting on the information that led to that pizzeria.
	Are you sure about that?
	Where do you think the name of that pizzeria came from?
	I have no idea.
	Podesta emails.
	Like I said, I wasn't that involved with the comment fiendfall stuff at all.
	No, but you were involved with spreading the disinformation about these non-cryptic messages in Podesta emails.
	True?
	It was Alex Jones that told me that pizza, hot dogs, pasta, walnuts were all code words.
	And I believe that was also FBI. Symbolism.
	For what?
	For child molestation.
	Do you still believe that?
	I don't know.
	I was just trying to vaguely remember.
	This is from 2016, so my memory's a little bit fuzzy.
	Why on earth would you believe that?
	The FBI had code words like that for child...
	Well, because the FBI would point out, hey, if you ever hear these code words, this could be a signal for child molestation, so be on the lookout for it.
	Where'd you learn that?
	I believe it was in a bulletin, FBI bulletin.
	You sure?
	That's what I remember.
	Let me back up.
	Are you sure that what you're referring to is an actual real FBI document?
	I vaguely remember seeing one.
	But I cannot be 100% sure because my memory is a little bit fuzzy.
	You would agree with me that Infowars writes, publishes, and has videos on stories that most would consider conspiracy theories.
	True.
	That depends.
	Do you think Infowars is a conspiracy theory website?
	My understanding of the word conspiracy theory was it was a term created by the CIA in the 1960s to discredit people who were questioning the official story on the GFK assassination.
	You think conspiracy theory was coined in the 60s?
	That's my understanding of it was.
	That's when it came to prominence, is my understanding.
	It was pushed by the CIA, I believe.
	I believe it was in the CIA report.
	Do you know what a conspiracy theory is?
	It's a theory that people are conspiring to do something.
	Right.
	Do conspiracy theories happen all the time?
	I mean, let's say you have two, three people that are conspiring to rob a bank.
	And the detective ahead of time thinks that's going to be the case because he sees these guys casing the bank a week before they bust the bank.
	So the police officer would be a conspiracy theorist?
	I mean, in the broadest sense of the term.
	I'm asking what your understanding of the term is.
	Don't give me the broadest sense.
	Give me what you believe.
	I believe the term means that you have a theory as far as more than two individuals conspiring to do something else.
	So conspiracy theory to you means the legal sense of the term and nothing more.
	I'm not a lawyer, unfortunately.
	Okay.
	That's personally how I would define it.
	That's not how the CIA defined it in the 60s.
	Is it?
	No, it's not.
	Did you know that?
	It's been a while since I looked at it.
	The Carlisle document is what you were referring to, correct?
	I don't know.
	To cover, it was 1965, that was used right before they released the JFK full report on the shooting and that cited conspiracy theories.
	I think you've been sitting next to Mr. Jones when he's talked about it on air.
	Do you remember that?
	No.
	Do you think InfoWars, the free speech systems and its programming as a whole, gets more stories right than the free speech systems and its programming as a whole, gets I would say so.
	Really?
	Okay.
	Can you think of any that it's gotten wrong?
	The Spontane story, for example.
	Ever heard of Sandy Hook?
	What's that?
	Ever heard of Sandy Hook?
	Yes.
	Think they got that one right?
	I never really looked into it, to be honest.
	You haven't heard Mr. Jones, I don't know, 50 or 60 times on air apologizing back and forth for what he said?
	Not really.
	Did you know that Rob Dew posted one of the parents' addresses on air?
	I didn't know that.
	So when I ask you if Infowars gets things more right than wrong, your answer is like, I don't know.
	Right?
	Well, considering that we put out thousands of analysis on news stories, like...
	Every year, maybe hundreds to thousands, and a lot of it turns out to be true later on.
	Like what?
	Like, the General's was warning about the social credit score, for example, coming to the United States and Canada.
	We're already starting to see some instances of that occurring.
	Okay.
	What else?
	He also warned that they were going to start mandating COVID vaccines, if I recall correctly.
	No, not before, but keep going.
	Unfortunately, I've watched a lot of InfoWars programming.
	I think I've read every word that you've ever written.
	So when I'm asking you these stories, I kind of know what the answers are.
	So what else have y'all gotten right?
	And I'll give you two.
	Epstein and Jussie Smollett.
	I'll give you those two guesses that y'all ended up getting right.
	What else?
	We, uh...
	I'm trying to think.
	There are just so many of them.
	That are right?
	I'll wait.
	Just give me one.
	And Gulf of Tonkin doesn't count.
	Y'all weren't in company when it happened.
	I said the Gulf of Tonkin doesn't count.
	They weren't a company when it happened.
	We can sit in this awkward silence as long as you need to think of one time where y'all were right.
	Well, there's just so many, like, stories we've covered over the years.
	It's a little bit hard for me to kind of...
	Just pick one then!
	If there's so many, pick one.
	Well, that's kind of the problem.
	There's so many of them.
	It's like, it's kind of like on Spotify, like, I try to pick a...
	Let me stop you here.
	You keep thinking.
	We'll wait in silence.
	Okay.
	Let's see here.
	I do remember Jones saying something about the COVID mask being ineffective.
	Now we're starting to see studies that suggest the same thing.
	I also believe that Jones said at one point he questioned the effectiveness of the COVID lockdowns.
	We're starting to see studies that suggest that as well.
	Really?
	Yes.
	What studies?
	I don't know off the top of my head.
	I believe it was like a John Hopkins study.
	Okay.
	I'll read that one.
	Have not heard Mr. Jones reporting on that story, at least not in the last five years, but I'll go look for it again.
	What story?
	Whatever Johns Hopkins report you're talking about.
	No, what I said was is that I believe Jones has questioned the effectiveness of COVID masks and COVID lockdowns.
	You believe or you know for a fact?
	I believe.
	I don't want you guessing.
	So if you're guessing, just say, I don't know, and keep thinking of your one that you're trying to pull out.
	I don't know them.
	All right.
	Keep thinking.
	We'll wait.
	I don't know them.
	Okay.
	Can't think of one.
	Not off the top of my head.
	Okay.
	It's just because there's so many, right?
	Yes.
	All right.
	Madam court reporter, am I on exhibit seven?
	I think your next one will be 6. Okay, thank you.
	Thank you.
	There's a copy.
	Handed you Exhibit 6. This is a Twitter post where they did a reverse image search on your photo.
	You understand that?
	I guess that's what you're telling me.
	Well you can see at the top the reverse image search and they took a screenshot.
	And then at the bottom you can see, Fascist Youth in Asia posted it to their Twitter account with a caption, correct?
	Hang on, sorry.
	Fascist Youth in Asia, I guess that's their Twitter name.
	Photos being used as a defamation by fascist propagandists to exploit the Florida shooting.
	Antifa has never killed anyone.
	The real shooting is concluded as a mega terrorist.
	This unfortunate tragedy is one of the many murders of the alt-right.
	Okay.
	You see it says anonymous.
	There, in the middle of the image, in green?
	Yes.
	Okay.
	You see the date that that photo was posted?
	2-12.
	Okay.
	So, if you'd have done a reverse image search, you would have seen that this photo had been being trolled by a bunch of people on 4chan for at least two days before the shooting even happened.
	That sounds correct.
	Okay.
	Sounds correct today, not at the time you published your article.
	I don't remember if I did a reverse image search or not, but from what we're talking about today, that does sound correct.
	If you would have seen this from your reverse image search, would you still would have published that photo?
	Absolutely not.
	Okay, then it's safe to say you didn't do one, right?
	I don't remember doing one.
	Because this one was done, the Twitter post It's at the bottom there.
	Can you read what date that Twitter post was made?
	February 14th.
	What day was the shooting?
	I believe it was February 14th.
	It was.
	The same day.
	You know the difference between this person and what you did?
	What's that?
	Their audience wasn't pressuring them to get it out quick.
	Yours was.
	Yeah, if I'd known this, I never would have posted Mr. Fontaine's photo.
	At any point since you did, have you issued an apology to him?
	No, because I didn't know who he was until we got sued.
	Right.
	Any time since then, have you issued an apology?
	I just issued a retraction.
	Did you apologize?
	Well, at this point, after I got sued, I've just been talking to counsel.
	Okay.
	Have you seen Mr. Jones' coverage when he goes live and talks about it?
	I hadn't.
	I'm going to go ahead and represent to you.
	you it's not very apologetic this is going to be exhibit seven and I know this is probably preaching to the choir because you said that you've had the internet bully you before
	But this is a post from 611 p.m., bottom left-hand corner.
	Yes.
	611 p.m., February 14, 2018. Mm-hmm.
	So this is roughly, based on your guess, an hour after you posted Mr. Fontaine's photo.
	And an hour later, we've got someone says, as much as I hate communists, the guy in the photo isn't the shooter unless he or people that knew him posted the photo at least three days ago.
	Yes.
	Okay.
	This will be exhibit eight.
	thank you since you didn't do the reverse image search i assume you don't know where the original image came from and you've never seen mr fontaine's initial instagram post correct correct Correct.
	Okay.
	That's what this is.
	Excuse me.
	Tab 25.
	Do you believe you and/or Infowars share responsibility in what Mr. Fontaine has gone through?
	I regret posting his photo and what he's gone through.
	I didn't ask you how you felt.
	I asked if you're gonna hold yourself and the company responsible for doing what you did to him.
	Yes.
	Okay.
	And that goes for both you and the company, correct?
	Yes.
	Are you aware that the company testified day before yesterday and they said we don't have any responsibility?
	No, I'm not aware of that.
	You would disagree with that.
	I know I put you in an awkward position there, but that's what they testified.
	I understand.
	That's your job.
	We know the answer.
	I just asked it.
	I'll strike the question.
	I got your answer.
	Yes, eight.
	I'm gonna go ahead and assume you've never seen this February 10th post from 4chan either.
	No.
	Okay, if you flip to page three.
	Yes.
	What do we see?
	A photo of Mr. Fontaine.
	Okay, and that's four days before the shooting, correct?
	Yes.
	Okay.
	So this post is, if you go to the first page, is a sub page of 4chan called Politically is a sub page of 4chan called Politically Incorrect, right?
	Yeah, I believe so, yes.
	And the caption of this thread is, Antifa Aspie Lefty Communist Cringe Thread.
	That's what it says.
	Show me your worst, unironic, lefty, dimwits, commies, etc., you found while surfing the internet social media.
	Okay.
	And you understand Mr. Fontaine was posted by someone to this thread.
	It's what it appears to be, yes.
	Are you aware that Mr. Fontaine suffers from any mental health diseases?
	No.
	Would that affect the way you feel about him if he did?
	Yeah, because I've felt the same way at times.
	I'm going to represent to you that Mr. Fontaine has been clinically diagnosed with being on the autism spectrum and has been for a while.
	He's socially not very developed as you are today speaking of the journal and has dealt with mental health issues both before and continues.
	Now, remember how you said you felt whenever you got death threats, right?
	Yes.
	Now, I want you to imagine And you do not have any sort of mental health diseases that you know of, correct?
	No, I've suffered from depression.
	Okay.
	Have you suffered from autism, social anxiety?
	Do you have an inability to work in large groups of people and deal with a lot of people in person?
	I do.
	Okay.
	And you can sympathize a little bit more with Mr. Fontaine for what you went through.
	And I understand you're upset, and I'm not trying to...
	i can understand the suffering he's been through Take your time.
	I understand you're upset.
	If you want to take a few seconds, let's take a break and get him some tissues.
	We're going to go off the record, Madam Reporter.
	The time is 12.30 p.m.
	We're off the record.
	The time is 12.44 p.m.
	We are on the record.
	So we're still looking at exhibit nine.
	OK.
	Let's just...
	Let's look at some of the comments that people are talking about.
	I can't hear you.
	I'm sorry, sir.
	I'm sorry.
	I'll scoot over.
	I think this is better.
	I think I'm closer to your speaker.
	Yes.
	Okay.
	If we look at page 2. Okay.
	There's a picture above Mr. Fontaine.
	It's right here.
	Okay.
	All right.
	That's Mr. Fontaine in the middle.
	Oh, okay.
	Can you please read the comment that was posted with it?
	I'd rather not, but I will because you asked me.
	It says, same Aspie commie faggot.
	Okay.
	Go down two.
	Actually, go down one.
	What does the next one say?
	The nose.
	The nose.
	What's the next one say?
	What is it with the they-them pronouns?
	Aren't they plural pronouns?
	Would you understand that to be a comment related to Mr. Fontaine being a non-binary identifying individual?
	I guess, just because I'm not terribly familiar with the terminology.
	Okay.
	It means, I'll represent to you that Mr. Fontaine does not identify as a male or a female.
	Okay, I get you now.
	Yes.
	Okay, I see.
	That's what, if you go up one, that's what the they, them.
	Yes.
	They're picking apart the public information they find on him and using that to make fun of him.
	Then you see the photo of Mr. Fontaine.
	Yes.
	Right under that.
	You see a picture that was posted, correct?
	It looks like it was a screenshot of a video.
	Okay.
	Can you tell me what the file name was?
	Left Wing Death Squad.
	Okay.
	Go to the next one.
	Yes.
	Can you read it for us?
	I can guarantee that this loser works at the Palladium in Worchester, Massachusetts.
	They play loads of metal shows far more than any other genre.
	Do you know where Mr. Fontaine works?
	No.
	I want to represent to you that at the time he worked at the Palladium in Worchester, Massachusetts.
	Hmm.
	Then you go down two to the bottom post.
	Uh-huh.
	Can you read that comment?
	Thanks.
	It's a great metal venue.
	They get lots of festivals there, and I've seen a ton.
	Sorry, page three.
	Oh, I'm sorry.
	It says 3 of 15 in the bottom right.
	I'm sorry.
	Page 3 of 15. Good guess.
	He has this on his Instagram.
	So you understand that this thread is talking about Mr. Fontaine and also...
	Tracking down his personal information as far as what city he lives in and where he works.
	That's what it appears to be, yes.
	How would you characterize the content on this thread?
	I think it's horrific, to be honest.
	Would you consider it hateful?
	Yes.
	Okay.
	Now, imagine having to go through this with this thread talking about you.
	Yes.
	And then I want you to fast forward four days.
	Okay.
	And I want you to have...
	When the shooting happened.
	Correct.
	And then I want you to have What I would characterize as a major media source publish a photo of you claiming that you were responsible for gunning down a bunch of children in a school.
	Okay?
	You understand that so far?
	Yes.
	Okay.
	How would you feel?
	Well, I broke down in tears earlier.
	It really bothers me to see someone like Mr. Fontaine suffering from dealing with what he's dealing with you tell me he has like Asperger's or he's on the spectrum of it and then i don't understand why they would do this to him it's like what's the point you know i mean look at his twitter he's only got like 60 followers do you know what alex jones has said about him since no you think it's good or bad i don't know if you haven't seen it then i'll i'll hold those questions
	for him okay i'm sorry i couldn't hear because the paper was I'm sorry.
	I said I'll hold those questions for him If Mr. Fontaine, actually let's back up, you understand that this case is slated to go to trial middle of this year, in a few months.
	That's my understanding.
	About four months away.
	Should you take the stand and you see Mr. Fontaine sitting in the room with you, if you could say anything to him, what would you say to him?
	I regret that this happened.
	Why?
	Because I've been through the same thing with the death threats and the harassment campaigns.
	I can definitely understand.
	And I just don't see the purpose of why these people are attacking.
	I mean, if they disagree with them politically, it's like, what's the purpose?
	What does this serve?
	You know, I will...
	Let me ask you something on that note.
	Okay.
	Do you watch Mr. Jones' radio show?
	Not often.
	Have you watched it?
	You've watched it before, though.
	Yes.
	You ever heard him say anything nice about people that disagree with him politically?
	Not off the top of my head.
	It's going to be Exhibit 10. This is your article, correct?
	I believe so, yes.
	It's got your name on it?
	Yes.
	Can you tell me what the headline is?
	BBC Falls Victim to 4chan Trolling, MSN Caught Sounding Like Idiots.
	It's kind of ironic, huh?
	I would agree, yes.
	And you wrote this article in August of 2017, right?
	Yes.
	About eight months before you wrote the article in question today.
	Yes.
	Now, the subheading catches my eye.
	Can you read it for me, please?
	BBC claims visiting 4chan constitutes investigative journalism.
	And your subheading there is pointing out and making fun of BBC for falling victim and for thinking that 4chan's reliable, correct?
	Something to that effect.
	Okay.
	You'd agree this one didn't really age well, huh?
	I would agree so.
	This one didn't age well, and he said, I would agree.
	Let's flip to page four.
	Okay.
	It's the second full paragraph.
	The BBC's quote-unquote investigative research also claimed InfoWars' Joseph Paul Watson helped promote the campaign, but a quick look at the InfoWars contributors page shows no one with that name.
	Yes.
	And that's you making fun of BBC for getting Paul Joseph Watson's name incorrect, right?
	Yes.
	They identified the wrong person.
	They put his middle name as his first name, which to me is weird.
	You don't even have to go on the InfoWars website to do that.
	You can just do a Google search.
	But this paragraph is written, again, you making fun of BBC for identifying the wrong person.
	Yes.
	Oh, is this the wrong person?
	They say Joseph Paul Watson.
	Oh, I understand.
	Sorry, Madam Reporter.
	- Yes. - So Joseph Paul Watson did not help promote this 4chan campaign, but Paul Joseph Watson definitely did, correct?
	I don't know.
	Okay.
	Would you say you're qualified to talk about traditional journalism?
	No.
	Okay, let's look at the last paragraph on page five.
	It says, "Traditional journalism requires true investigation and compilation of a variety of messy and disorganized facts.
	It's much easier, however, to simply call up a politician or an expert and create the facts by eliciting a quote-unquote newsworthy opinion from an important person.
	Yes.
	Now, we look at that paragraph and then we look at what you said about the post in question today.
	Yes.
	Today you said, well, it was a newsworthy story, correct?
	Okay, so talking about newsworthy content like this paragraph.
	And you took some information that was disorganized and messy, correct?
	You threw it together and you created a story that wasn't necessarily true.
	Yes, but I want to clarify, I did not write this last paragraph.
	I don't know if you know this or not.
	No, I understand.
	It's a quote from the Mises Institute.
	Right.
	From the White Institute?
	Mises.
	M-I-S-E-S. With that said, why did you include that quote in the story?
	Let me read it.
	I'm sorry.
	I think because the past several years I've seen a lot of traditional media outlets that claim to be completely unbiased and completely objective, steering more and more into news analysis and opinions.
	Do you believe InfoWars is unbiased?
	No.
	What would you say?
	They lean left or right?
	I mean, I hate to use left or right paradigm, but I would say right, I suppose.
	A little bit or a lot?
	That's kind of a matter of opinion.
	Is it?
	Yeah, because...
	In your opinion?
	In my opinion, Alex Jones is more of a libertarian, and I would never consider libertarians to be right-wing or left-front-wing.
	Although people would disagree with me, and that's understandable.
	Was he a libertarian between 2015 and 2020?
	I would say he's always had a flair of libertarian about him.
	Wasn't much flair when Trump was running for office or elected, correct?
	That's a question I'll have to ask him.
	Do you agree with this quote on page 5 of Exhibit 10?
	Let's see.
	Okay, I'm sorry.
	Let me do that for you.
	Traditional journalism requires true investigation and compilation of a variety of messy and disorganized facts, according to Mises Institute.
	It's much easier, however, to simply call up a politician or an expert and create the facts by eliciting a newsworthy opinion from an important person.
	This will be Exhibit 11. Exhibit 11 is a Twitter post from who?
	Jack Posobiec.
	Can you read it out loud?
	Jack Posobiec says, ADL says they saw claims on 4chan and then contacted the Republic of Florida who claimed Jesus Cruz was a member.
	And then there's a screenshot from ADL.org that says, after self-described ROF members, I'm assuming that's Republic of Florida, claimed on the discussion forum 4chan that Cruz had also been a member of the Anti-Defamation League called the ROF Hotline and spoke with an ROF member who identified himself as Jordan Jarub.
	And what did you comment with?
	I said, Chinese Cartoon Image Board.
	How did that tweet age?
	I don't remember what this is even about, to be honest with you.
	Do you agree with the things that Jack Posobiec puts out?
	I normally don't follow him.
	I follow him on Twitter, but I don't normally look at his stuff, to be honest.
	You would agree that 4chan is a Japanese message board, correct?
	I guess.
	Do you even know?
	No.
	Did you read in your declaration?
	Yeah, I would say it's a Japanese message board.
	So this would be you making fun of Jack Fasovic for utilizing 4chan, right?
	You're trolling him with Chinese cartoon image board.
	I don't know if I was trolling him.
	I don't think I would have trolled him.
	okay I do want you to look at the date Yes.
	Because a few hours before you posted this tweet, You took down Mr. Fontaine's photograph from your website, didn't you?
	Yes.
	Or it might have been me or Paul Watson.
	Well, you're right.
	Hours before you made this tweet, Infowars had to take down Mr. Fontaine's photograph from its website because they identified him incorrectly as the high school shooter in Florida.
	Yes.
	What social media websites do you use?
	I'm really not on social media that much anymore.
	I still have a Twitter account.
	I still have a Facebook account and maybe a Facebook page.
	I've kept both active for the discovery process of this lawsuit.
	I may or may not have used Twitter since that time.
	I have a Getter account that I'm not that active on.
	I don't think I have a Gab account.
	And to the best of my recollection, that's about the only social media I still have.
	I thought I was pretty woke.
	I've never even heard some of those, so...
	Yeah.
	That's a lot of social media.
	Right.
	Here's this.
	Exhibit 12?
	Yes.
	This was the...
	Original photograph that began getting circulated on Twitter the day of the shooting.
	Okay.
	You see the date and time it was posted at the bottom of the photograph.
	Can you tell us what that is?
	2.37 p.m.
	Okay.
	This is the image that you attached to your declaration, correct?
	As far as the Laguna Beach Antifa exhibit?
	Yes.
	I believe so.
	And you would agree that this is actually one of your sources?
	No, because like I said earlier, Kevin Brown used this as an example of how this image was circulated on social media before I posted it on InfoWars.
	When you look at the number of times this was posted and shared, this would have been the only one in the time frame that you would have seen on Twitter.
	Do you agree with me?
	I don't recall ever seeing this on Twitter under Laguna Beach Antifa.
	Right.
	You just saw the picture.
	You didn't look to see who posted it.
	I don't remember who posted it.
	Okay.
	So, sitting here today to this jury, you're going to say you're not sure if this was the one you saw on Twitter.
	The Laguna Beach Antifa?
	Correct.
	Correct.
	Okay.
	You do realize, though, that this is a joke, right?
	I was told that, I think, by your law office.
	What do you mean?
	I wasn't familiar with Linguna Beach and Tifa before that.
	No, I meant the caption.
	You realize they're just trying to troll reporters.
	I mean, looking at this now, yes.
	Did you Google...
	it.
	Okay.
	And I'm what type of computer do you use?
	The MacBook.
	Which one?
	Do you know?
	No.
	Okay.
	How long have you had that MacBook?
	I don't recall.
	Is it ten years old?
	Is it five years old?
	No, it's a company computer.
	Okay.
	How old do you think it is?
	I don't know.
	Is it the same one you were using when this post went out?
	I don't know.
	How many computers have you gotten from Infowars?
	At least three.
	Okay.
	Over how many years?
	Since I've been there.
	Do you have your old computers?
	I have all three.
	You do still?
	Yes.
	Okay.
	Has anyone searched those in Discovery?
	No.
	Well, I mean I have.
	All three of them?
	Or just the one you have now?
	The one I presumed I was using...
	Well, I did my discovery search not long after the lawsuit was filed.
	So I did search the one I was using at the time.
	And you still have that if we wanted to image it?
	Yes.
	What kind of operating system does it run?
	Do you know?
	I guess the MAC system.
	Okay.
	OSI? Yes.
	What browser do you use?
	Brave.
	Brave?
	Yes.
	Is that an onion slice or is that just a traditional browser?
	You just went over my head.
	It's a privacy browser.
	I think it's Chrome based.
	Chrome?
	I think so, but...
	I don't really know too many people that put privacy in Google in the same sentence, but...
	Yeah, I agree with you on that.
	But it's Chrome.
	I think it's Chromium.
	I don't think it's Chrome.
	I got you.
	What At what point were you told to preserve your computer?
	When I saw the letter.
	How did you see it?
	I was shown it, I think, by Dr. Jones.
	Dr. Jones is Alex Jones's father?
	Yes.
	His name is David?
	Yes.
	Do you call him Dave?
	I've called him Dr. Jones.
	Okay.
	What did Dr. Jones say when he showed it to you?
	I don't remember.
	Were any steps given to you as far as what you need to do to preserve information?
	I believe I had that discussion with my counsel at the time, and I did my best efforts to do so.
	When did lawyers get involved?
	Probably when the lawsuit was filed.
	Okay, so between February 14th and April 1st, Nobody really talked to you about what you need to do to preserve?
	Well, there wasn't a lawsuit filed at the time.
	No, but the letter that we sent had preservation of evidence language, correct?
	I don't remember even if I saw the letter before the lawsuit was filed.
	Okay, so you don't remember when Dr. Jones showed you our letter from my law firm?
	Yes, correct.
	It could have been after the lawsuit was filed?
	Possibly, yes.
	But you do know that it wasn't until the lawsuit was filed that a lawyer instructed you on preserving evidence?
	Yeah, and I sent him everything I had.
	What did they say as far as preserving?
	What did they tell you to do?
	I don't remember.
	What did you do?
	I made sure to take screenshots of the article in question on Facebook and social media.
	I made sure to reserve the article with the correction attached.
	Everything I provided to Discovery is what I preserved.
	I haven't seen a Facebook screen capture.
	Really?
	I sent it to my former counsel.
	Which one?
	Mr. Brown?
	Yes.
	And it's still publicly available.
	I made sure not to delete the Facebook post of this article in question.
	Which Facebook account?
	I think it was, gosh, I still have the Facebook page, I think Real Kit Daniels.
	I made sure not to delete that.
	And you still have it today, even though the deplatforming from 2019?
	Yes.
	If I remember correctly, I stopped using it so it wouldn't get deleted because I didn't want it deleted for the lawsuit.
	As far as Other steps taken to preserve evidence.
	Did Mr. Brown give you any other advice as far as what you needed to do to properly preserve evidence?
	I don't remember.
	Do you use your cell phone to use for work or message content or use your Facebook or Twitter on it?
	I don't normally use Facebook and Twitter on my cell phone.
	Do you use email?
	No, not on my phone.
	I usually just try to do everything on a laptop.
	Do you use the internet browser on your phone to search?
	Yes, but not necessarily for work purposes.
	Okay, and I ask because a couple of things that you've provided to us are screenshots from a cell phone while others are screen captures from a computer.
	I don't know if those are screenshots from my phone.
	Okay, so to your knowledge everything came from your computer?
	That's how I preserved evidence.
	I did search my phone and I couldn't find anything related to the suit.
	How did you search your phone?
	I searched the text messages.
	What did you search?
	Just the dates.
	I did a search around when I got the lawsuit was filed.
	Did you go to the top?
	Is it an iPhone?
	Yes.
	Did you go to the top of all messages and type in words to search for or did you go back to specific conversations and just scroll up?
	I looked for specific conversations and scrolled up because I didn't know what search terms I would be looking for at the time.
	With who, what conversations did you scroll through?
	Just whoever I was talking to on the dates.
	How many people was that?
	I don't remember.
	I think it was mostly family maybe I was talking to, maybe not necessarily people at work.
	Do you get text messages from people at work?
	Yes, I do.
	Does Mr. Jones text you?
	Yes.
	Does Mr. Jones also email you?
	I may have gotten an email from him once or twice as a CC, but I don't know, I don't remember if he's ever directly emailed me.
	Okay.
	But he has an email address.
	I believe that's my understanding.
	And you've seen him on...
	Sorry.
	So she's not going to get mad at us again.
	You've seen his email cc'd on a number of emails over the years that you've been on as well.
	Yes.
	Yes, not very often, but yes.
	Thirteen.
	I'm sorry.
	I've handed you your discovery response in this case.
	Can you read the lawyer's name on the first page that represented you?
	Eric Taub.
	Kevin Brown.
	Flip to page three.
	Yes.
	It says, produce a copy of any web browser history showing all pages you visited from each web browser on any electronic device you used on February 14, 2018 to February 15, 2018 concerning searches or pages visited related to the challenged publication, the challenged image, the plaintiff, or your efforts to ascertain the identity of Stoneman Douglas High School Shooter.
	It says response, none known to exist.
	Correct.
	Okay.
	Did you search your computer?
	Yes, but I don't keep web history.
	I clean it out several times a day.
	Actually, with my Brave browser, when I close the browser, it cleans it automatically.
	I've been doing that for years and years.
	Okay.
	You said you also clean it yourself manually multiple times a day?
	Yeah, just out of habit.
	Why?
	Just out of privacy concerns.
	Okay.
	Do you think someone's watching you?
	No, that's just my nature.
	So you don't have any web browsing history on your computer at all?
	No.
	Only when I'm actively on the browser using it.
	If we were to...
	Do all three of your computers at your home right now from InfoWars, do they all look the same?
	No.
	Or can you identify which ones were from what time frame?
	I can do my best guess at it.
	Okay.
	So if we wanted to request an inspection of your computer, you would be able to provide that to us?
	Yes.
	Okay.
	Do you recognize this document?
	- Ooh.
	Let me see here.
	Yeah, I guess this is the letter your law office sent.
	So you have seen it before?
	Yes.
	Earlier you said you weren't sure if Dr. Jones had shown it to you or just told you about it.
	I don't, yeah, and I don't remember the time frame of when I saw it.
	This was on February 26th, correct?
	Yes.
	The original article was posted on the February 14th, correct?
	Yes.
	Do you ever work in the InfoWars offices?
	I used to.
	When?
	But what offices are you referring to?
	Just the whole general building or?
	Any of the offices.
	I used to work in my area of the building.
	What's the address of that office?
	Oh, it's on Alvin Devane, 3019, I think.
	Can you spell that?
	A-L-V-I-N-D-E-V-I-N-E. In 2018, were you working in that office?
	Yes.
	Would you bring your laptop to that office, or do they have a computer system there that you use?
	I had a laptop at the office.
	What kind of laptop was that?
	It was a MacBook.
	Did you use the same browser, or were you have to use a certain browser when you were on the company system?
	I used whatever browser I choose.
	Which browser were you choosing at that time?
	On your work, on the computer, in the office?
	I don't remember exactly, it was probably Brave.
	Did you check that computer when you did your search?
	Yes.
	And nothing came up?
	Yes.
	If we wanted to inspect and image that device, would you be able to locate it?
	Yes.
	So we got a home computer and we have an office computer, right?
	Yes.
	Well, they're all technically office computers, all three of them.
	Do you still use all three or two of them old and one's the new one?
	That's funny you say that.
	They gave me a new computer and I hardly ever use it.
	I still use one of the old ones.
	The oldest one I don't use hardly at all.
	They'd hate me for saying that, but that's the truth.
	When did you start using Brave?
	I don't remember.
	It's been several years.
	but as a habit I've always deleted my web browser history like the day of exhibit 15 Do you recognize
	what these are?
	Looks like, just from the format, it looks like Facebook?
	No, it looks like some sort of social media.
	Maybe YouTube?
	I really don't know.
	I'm gonna represent to you that these are the comments from Infowars.com These are the comments on the story that you published.
	Okay.
	Did you, are these ever, are the comments moderated?
	Yes.
	By who?
	Louis Certuche and he has another girl working under him.
	Did you click, did you happen to click on this link here that's listed?
	No.
	I normally don't read our comments on articles.
	So this is, these comments were on InfoWars' page and people were explaining to everyone that the picture was wrong.
	And it had to have been within hours of posting it because you say within hours you took it down.
	Well, I took it down the following morning around 6 a.m.
	So from 6 to 6, People were pretty quick to debunk the photo and story that you had posted.
	Correct?
	It certainly appears that way.
	if this is the comments from the article in question to be exhibit 16 okay Sorry.
	Thank you.
	So you see here that the comments on your article are questioning if Mr. Cruz is a clone.
	Where's that at?
	Is it?
	Last comment by Linda.
	The cruise kid didn't do it.
	I hate to say it.
	This is why I don't hardly read our comments on articles.
	Is it common for your audience to have this kind of thought process?
	I don't know.
	It really just depends on the person.
	Is it common for this kind of content to show up in your comments?
	It's common for this kind of content to show up anywhere on the website, unfortunately.
	That's just how people are these days.
	So, let's go through these.
	This first comment by 1-1 Ball.
	It says, this is the web...
	Let's back up.
	When a suicide nut uses an AR-15 instead of a million other weapons, It raises a red flag.
	This is the weapon of choice for a political reason.
	You see that?
	Yes.
	You and I would agree that is a bit of a conspiracy theory.
	No, because I have read FBI statistics before on the types of weapons used in mass shootings.
	And they're commonly, if I remember correctly, it's commonly handguns.
	Not necessarily AR-15s.
	Okay.
	How in any way does that...
	Reflect a political reason for this gun being used.
	I can see where he's coming from.
	Which is where?
	That you have a gun that's not commonly used in the Commission of Crime according to FBI statistics.
	It's also a gun that's often ridiculed by the media for political purposes.
	Like let's ban assault rifles is what they call them.
	Let's ban AR-15s.
	So I can understand where he's coming from.
	Whether he's right or wrong, I don't know, but...
	Do you think that mass shootings are used to restrict the Second Amendment?
	I think they happen for a variety of reasons.
	Do you think anybody's ever tried to use a mass shooting to restrict the Second Amendment?
	I've seen politicians, like, only hours after a mass shooting has happened they're quick to demand gun control.
	For instance, who?
	I don't remember off the top of my head.
	I just remember even as a kid, looking back, you'd see a shooting and immediately you'd have the media pundits or politicians demanding gun control in response to it.
	You're the third person from Infowars that said that, and every time I ask, give me one example, no one can.
	Because it's one of those things that's happened so often and I don't specifically remember any specific circumstance of it.
	Did it happen in Sandy Hook?
	I don't know.
	Did it happen in Vegas?
	Possibly.
	Not possibly, yes or no?
	I don't remember.
	Parkland?
	I believe so at Parkland.
	Nightclub in Orlando?
	I hardly remember that shooting.
	San Bernardino?
	Possibly.
	El Paso.
	I don't remember.
	All those had AR-15s.
	We can't remember.
	A single person politician mentioned gun control.
	But for some reason, it happened so often that that's everybody's thought process.
	I'm trying to figure out where you're getting this from.
	Well, I can't excite specific examples of it.
	Just like I can't excite a specific example of seeing a red car drive down the road.
	But I know I've seen red cars drive down the road.
	But I know for a fact that there are politicians that have demanded gun control in response to a mass shooting.
	You just can't think of any of them.
	Not off the top of my head.
	I mean, I'm sure a little...
	Let me take that back.
	I think maybe Dianne Feinstein has done it before.
	Maybe Pelosi, maybe AOC. Let's go to the next comment.
	Okay.
	He didn't do the shootings.
	Patsy, just like Vegas.
	Too many lies and conflicting reports, but mainstream media, as usual, is continually brainwashing people.
	Point is this.
	Had those schools had armed security, most of these school shootings wouldn't have happened.
	I read that correctly?
	Yes.
	This is a conspiracy theorist, right?
	I don't want to.
	I don't want to.
	To me, it's just someone with an opinion.
	Maybe you're right.
	Maybe she would call herself a conspiracy theorist.
	I don't like labeling people.
	Sure, but I'm asking you to.
	A person that's sitting here, day of a shooting, saying this guy's a patsy just like in Vegas.
	Sounds like a conspiracy theorist, doesn't it?
	Let me read it again.
	To me it's her opinion.
	Right.
	I agree with you that is her opinion.
	Yeah.
	I'm asking you if from her opinion being shared you would consider that a bit of a conspiracy theorist.
	Well, like I said, I don't like labeling people.
	She has a right to her opinion.
	Go to the next one.
	Okay.
	The deep state is supplying them with them.
	So now we've got a link to Vegas, we've got a link to the weapon and the reason it was chosen, and we've got the deep state involved.
	Conspiracy theorists yet or no?
	Well, I would definitely say Brandon is starting to lean that way.
	I think we all are.
	Because that's his opinion, but he's stating it as a fact.
	Now we've got Linda bringing it home for Brandon.
	She says, or gangs, the Cruz kid didn't do it unless there were several clones looking like him.
	It's all about NWO gun control.
	So now we've got the first comment saying the AR was for a reason.
	Second comment is somehow linking this to a Patsy just like in Vegas.
	The third person brings in the deep state.
	And then Linda comes back and says, unless they were clones, and I don't think she's saying that sarcastically.
	I agree with you with that.
	I've met people like that before.
	She says, this is about NWO gun control.
	We've got the New World Order, and it's now brought in as gun control for the reason.
	So...
	And there's a lot of them like this on InfoWars comment sections.
	That's why I asked you earlier if you thought y'all were a conspiracy theory website.
	But I will say I've seen a lot of comments like this on YouTube.
	To the videos y'all posted on?
	No, in general.
	Okay.
	I see, even on more mainstream conservative websites, I see comments like this.
	I would agree.
	You'll find them all over conservative websites.
	And even on liberal websites, I've seen comments, not necessarily like this, but they are trying to get conspiratorial about something conservative.
	Like what?
	Like, for example, they talk about restrictions on abortion and they say, oh, this is just a way for them to restrict all abortions and whatnot.
	Okay.
	What?
	Yeah, I mean, that's like some of the things I've seen before.
	Okay.
	My point being is that you go on any ideological website, you're going to see comments like this where they're blaming the other side, and that's just politics in general.
	And that's what I was kind of getting to.
	Thank you.
	Infowars does have an ideology.
	Yes.
	And it is right-leaning.
	That's how people characterize this.
	Me, I characterize Jones and Infowars more as libertarian-leaning.
	And it's called Infowars.
	Yes.
	Right?
	Which is a war on information.
	It's information warfare.
	Right.
	So you're using information to combat somebody else's information.
	I would say so, yes.
	Okay.
	Are there very many stories that come out where the left-leaning mainstream media and Infowars have the same story?
	Yeah, I actually remember off the top of my head, I did a story once that CNN reported on, and I basically kind of more or less rewrote the story.
	And I forgot what the exact context of it was, but I was thinking to myself, wow, CNN and us were aligned on this one story.
	I haven't found one, but...
	Yeah, I remember that just because it's so rare for it to happen.
	But a lot of the times we write stories, like let's say it's something that happened in German media.
	And we just kind of more or less rewrite it for American audience.
	I'll enter that one.
	Exhibit 17.
	Some more comments.
	Deplorable Tim Jones says, I did a Google Images search for the picture above.
	And found a hit on an archived 4chan page.
	and he gives the link.
	When he, oh, and then you go down and he posts the information below.
	Do you understand that people may not necessarily believe that Mr. Fontaine actually didn't do this?
	What's that?
	From this, would you think that a person following your content would believe that Mr. Fontaine actually was not the shooter?
	From this, yes.
	Okay.
	Scroll down.
	There's 18. This is the next comment section.
	Christopher Nadeau says, the picture of him wearing the communist shirt is damning.
	Make sure everyone sees that.
	Then Witchsmeller Persuvent says, no, it's fake.
	Don't spread fake news.
	And then WhiskeyBravo8 comes in and says, of course, quote unquote, you would say that.
	When you know nothing, the days of accepting reality, taking things at face value, are finally coming back to America.
	Can you see that even though people say, this is a fake photo, stop spreading it, there's other people out there on Infowars that don't believe you and still believe that Marcel Fontaine had something to do with it.
	At the time, I'm assuming these comments were taken the day of the shooting.
	Correct.
	Did you see that as a problem?
	When people were out there posting links, debunking the photo that you published was not involved, people were out there saying, oh, you're drinking the Kool-Aid.
	I see it as a problem when I have comments section.
	Certain people in the comments section are doing a better job than I was that day.
	Yeah, that's another point there.
	And if I'd known...
	If that photo of Fontaine was not Nicholas Cruz, I never would have posted it on the page.
	But the bigger problem is, even when you take it down, right, there's still people out there that don't believe you.
	There's comments out on the internet that say, oh, they got to Jones.
	This kid's involved, but he's so involved that the higher-ups were able to get to Jones.
	Well, some of those people, I hate to say, and again, I don't like labeling people, but some of those people are straight-up schizophrenic.
	Some of these people think Jones is a part of this grand conspiracy.
	They think that he's Bill Hicks or whatever.
	Is it your testimony under oath that Mr. Jones is not Bill Hicks?
	I don't know that for sure.
	Alright.
	He's not going to be happy with that answer.
	19 same thread your article okay Okay.
	First person says, it's time to have the hard discussion about concentration camps for leftists.
	And then, let them hang responded, almost time for Second Amendment remedies to Trump and his supporters.
	And then Hopeful Independent says, you are 100% correct.
	The remedy is have no gun-free zones anywhere.
	Also, execute anyone of this nature in public slowly.
	And this is in response to Mr. Fontaine's phone call.
	Would you classify the InfoWars audience as educated?
	For the most part.
	But that said, I've never looked at their demographics in that regard.
	Would you say they're intelligent?
	I would say so.
	For the ones I've met out in the field, yes.
	Okay.
	Do these people in the comments section right now sound intelligent?
	No, but unfortunately, a lot of comment sections on the internet have been kind of lacking of intelligence.
	And you have to be a member of it.
	You have to have a login in Infowars' website to actually make comments.
	No, my understanding was back, this is from Discuss.
	You had to have a login for Discuss, not Infowars, is my understanding.
	You can read the webpage, but you can't comment unless you have an account.
	Well, I count with disgust is my understanding.
	20.
	Do you know who Max Taney is?
	I do not.
	He's a Politico reporter.
	Okay.
	What do you think of Politico?
	I don't have much of an opinion of him.
	Okay.
	He says, on February 14th, he says, if you are getting news from right-wing conspiratorial media outlets like Infowars and The Gateway Pundit, The alleged shooter is an ISIS-loving Democrat.
	You see where he says that?
	So he's making fun of y'all, right?
	Yes.
	And then his next tweet says, Just another successful day attempting to use a national tragedy to own the libs.
	Right?
	Yes.
	Go down one more and says, in case you were wondering, Infowars is floating a conspiracy theory that there was a second shooter?
	Yes.
	There wasn't a second shooter, was there?
	Well, there was a, my understanding there was a high school girl that was a witness and she said that she had been walking with Nicholas Cruz during the shooting and there was no reason to believe that she wasn't a credible witness at the time.
	Did you watch the whole interview?
	Of what?
	That girl.
	I don't remember.
	It's eight minutes.
	I don't remember even how long it was.
	Okay.
	Because if you watch the entire interview, that's not what she said.
	But if you pull the sound clip out that Mr. Jones used the next day, I see how he gets there.
	But if you watch the whole thing, that's not what she's saying.
	Okay.
	And you agree, when you pull something out of a full clip and you take it out of context for an agenda, that's not a good thing.
	I'm not saying that he even did that.
	I'm not either.
	I'm telling you if someone does do that, that's bad.
	That's distrust.
	That is just manipulating your audience.
	I don't know if that's what Jones did.
	I don't know either.
	I'm saying if Tucker Carlson or Megyn Kelly or Rachel Maddow, any of them, if they pull a clip out of context and use it for an agenda, that is manipulating their audience, correct?
	In general, I don't like taking things out of context.
	Right, because it's lying.
	Well, it paints someone in a bad light, if that's not what they said.
	Right.
	And what happens when you paint somebody a bad light?
	It's just not a good thing.
	Why is that?
	I mean, do you normally like to lie about people?
	I don't.
	Exactly.
	So you're saying you don't like doing it because of the way it makes you feel, not for what it does to the person.
	No, it's also because of what it does to the person.
	I mean, that's why I was crying earlier.
	earlier I felt really bad for Mr. Fontaine what he's been dealing with.
	So if you go to the next page Will Sommer comes in and he has a screen cap of an image from your article you see the Where's that at?
	Next page, right here.
	Okay.
	He pulls the, he crops an image out of your article, and he says, sure, what ISIS member doesn't use slurs against Muslims?
	Because Will Somers, like myself, immediately realized that Sandurka is an extremely disrespectful and derogatory term for a Muslim.
	He's making fun of your article as well.
	Okay.
	And I've never used that term against any Muslims.
	I would assume not, considering three hours ago you thought Nicholas Cruz was supporting Muslims by using the term.
	Yeah, that was my understanding at the time.
	Do you know what Ali Akbar means?
	God is great, maybe?
	That's the one.
	It doesn't sound very ISIS-y, does it?
	All I can tell you is ISIS terrorists have used it.
	Yeah, I do know what you're saying.
	It does sound like a contradiction.
	You go out and kill people randomly and you're saying God is great while you do it.
	It's like a Christian saying a rosary before they kill somebody.
	Oh, you mean a Catholic, but yes.
	Oh, Catholics, yeah.
	Well, I'm not going to say Catholics aren't Christian.
	You said that.
	No, I didn't say that.
	I'm Catholic.
	I just said a Christian saying a rosary.
	No, but you said a Christian using a rosary.
	Yeah.
	I was being more specific.
	That would be a Catholic thing.
	I don't know any Christians like Catholics that use a rosary except maybe Anglicans, but I'm going off on a tangent.
	There you go.
	Do you know who Will Sommer is?
	No.
	He is a frequent writer for the Daily Beast, specifically on InfoWars.
	yeah kind of fact checks y'all then the last one here we'll go back to that last The last tweet there is at the Tom Zone.
	Is this on the next page?
	Nope, the very bottom.
	Level 46 dog-faced pony POTUS. And his handle is at the Tom Zone.
	You see that?
	Yes.
	It says, don't the ISIS guys dress like that?
	Don't the ISIS guys dress like they just walked out of a bad British rap video?
	You see where I said that?
	Yes.
	And again, they're making fun of the fact that you took that collage of photos from Nicholas Cruz's Instagram and saying that that's not ISIS wear, that's just clothing and somebody said he looks like ISIS. He could look like anything, right?
	That's his opinion.
	Right.
	Yours was ISIS, his was British rap videos.
	Yeah, and I don't even think I've ever seen a British rap video.
	Well, if you do start watching them, your stories might change because you're going to have a lot less to talk about ISIS and a lot more British rap video.
	Yeah, I don't think I've covered ISIS in a long time, though.
	Guess we're done.
	Oh, I got another one somewhere.
	There it is.
	Must be Exhibit 21.
	This is your article, please.
	correct?
	Yes, the next day.
	You published it the day after you published Mr. Fontaine.
	Yes.
	You took a video of some officers walking to a truck and putting a bag inside, and you drew from that the headline, Strange Responders Throw Body Bag in Back of Truck Amid Florida Shooting.
	Would you agree with me that that does not look like a body bag?
	That's pretty blurry.
	I agree.
	I'm not the one that made a national headline with it.
	I don't even know if I wrote the headline either to be honest.
	Okay.
	Who else writes your headlines?
	Alex Jones.
	So the gist of this article is you saw a video of police officers putting a black bag into a vehicle.
	And from that you derived this entire story that there might be a second shooter.
	Let me see if that's what I said.
	I'm just pointing out the question.
	It seemed odd.
	I mean, the majority of my article is questions after questions.
	Does your headline...
	Responders throw body bag in back of truck amid Florida shooting.
	Does that spawn a genuine question or is that trying to imply that there's weapons for a second shooter?
	I don't think I ever, let me read this again, but I don't think I ever said any, implied anything like that.
	What was your question again?
	We'll start here.
	Paragraph after the first image says, First responders were filmed carrying a heavy body bag to the back of a pickup truck, which apparently occurred either during the shooting, which is odd, or right after the shooting when police should be securing the scene for an investigation.
	Yes.
	A couple questions on that.
	One, why do you keep saying body bag?
	Other than clickbait?
	I don't remember, but I normally...
	When I write stories, I'm not thinking clickbait.
	Sure you are.
	No, I'm not.
	Every article, every headline you've had has had some sort of clickbait.
	That's your opinion.
	None of it has been factual.
	Not a single article that we've gone through that you wrote has had a headline that was factual.
	But that's just what you've brought with you.
	I've written thousands of articles.
	Right.
	But the ones we have...
	Exactly.
	...are all clickbait.
	That's your opinion and that's kind of cherry picking.
	Okay.
	All the stories you wrote on Parkland are clickbait.
	And if I had to do Parkland again, I would have done it a lot differently.
	Did you write any stories on Sandy Hook?
	No.
	Not that I recall.
	No, not that I recall.
	Why did you say body bag?
	I don't remember.
	More than likely...
	It may have been from Jones or one of the production crew that said body bag.
	Okay, and they thought that maybe that term would spice it up a little bit.
	That's the question for them.
	He wrote it.
	But that's the question for them.
	Okay.
	Maybe they just didn't think it was going to spice up the headline.
	They just thought it really was a body bag.
	Why are you saying that it's heavy?
	Well, like I said in the article, it's taken two people to carry it.
	It's not just one person from the screenshot of the video.
	Okay.
	You're saying it occurred during the shooting, which is odd, or right after the shooting, when police should be securing the scene.
	When was this video taken?
	I don't recall.
	You don't recall.
	At the time, did you recall?
	It would have had to have been before I wrote this article.
	So it could have been the day of the shooting.
	Okay.
	So it's odd that it could have been the day of the shooting, but your article says It happened either during the actual shooting or right after when they should have been securing the scene for an investigation.
	Are you contending here under oath that the investigating officers of this shooting were improper in what they did?
	The way I wrote this article, I thought at the time of the video it seemed a little odd.
	I'm not saying that they did anything improper.
	Sure, but let me do this.
	Um if if you and I go outside of this building and we're standing there and a school bus of children drive by and I say that was really odd how you just looked at that little girl I'm implying something but I can say I'm just asking questions but it's not really a question you get that right I don't know if that's uh if that's equivalent to this well sure it is I'm just asking questions No,
	I literally was.
	I mean, to me, it did seem a little odd that they were carrying it at the time.
	It was pointed out to me.
	I believe it was a gentleman, maybe one of the radio production crews brought me this video.
	Why do you keep looking at me like you realize this is clickbait, but you don't want to admit it?
	Because that's not my...
	I'm just asking questions.
	You're the one that keeps bringing up the word clickbait.
	Right.
	But your eyes look, in my opinion, they look like you're saying clickbait.
	So my eyes are saying clickbait?
	Right.
	I'm just asking questions.
	You see how this works?
	When someone has an opinion...
	I'm sorry you've lost me.
	Alright, here.
	I'll break it down for you.
	I'll be very rude, but...
	That's fine.
	When someone has an opinion, and then they inject that opinion into a loaded question with an agenda, But they do it in a form of a question and then they say, whoa, whoa, I'm just asking questions.
	That's not actually asking questions.
	You don't care what the answers are.
	That's what your opinion is.
	Okay.
	What are the answers?
	You know them now.
	Did you go look?
	What do you mean?
	Did you go through the files of Parkland and look and see what bag was put in that truck?
	No.
	Did you try to search and find out who these officers were?
	Not after this.
	No, because it's not important.
	The important part is that you got body bag and responders acting suspicious the day after the shooting.
	That's the important part, not the actual truth, right?
	That's what you're implying, but...
	What'd you do to find the truth?
	What'd you do to answer these questions?
	Let's put it this way.
	Just answer my questions.
	I will answer your question.
	What'd you do?
	If I were to go back and do FOIA requests to find any of this out weeks later...
	I'm sorry, the audience has already moved away from Parkland.
	Right.
	You're writing stories to get your audience to read them now.
	No.
	I'm writing stories that the audience is already paying attention to.
	How do you know what your audience is going to pay attention to in two weeks?
	How do you know they won't still want to know, oh yeah, what are the answers?
	Because, unfortunately, that's how the world works nowadays.
	People have a short attention span.
	It doesn't sound like these questions are very important then, does it?
	That's what you're...
	I don't understand what you're saying.
	Well, if you had all these important questions, right, but never even attempted to figure out the answers, they're not that important, are they?
	I guess that's your opinion.
	What's your opinion?
	Are these important questions?
	I mean, the day afterwards, I mean, people are trying to figure out what was going on with the shooting.
	And to me, it does seem a little strange.
	Maybe they were in protocol.
	Maybe there's nothing to it.
	You didn't answer my question.
	I asked, in your opinion, are these questions important?
	When we're trying to figure out what's going on with the mass shooting, it is important to ask questions.
	The right questions.
	Who decides what the right questions are?
	Well, we know which ones are the wrong questions, right?
	No, I don't know where you're getting at.
	Wrong questions are the questions that are put out there that nobody cares about and nobody actually goes and tries to answer.
	Like your article.
	Says who?
	You yourself didn't even try to answer them.
	They can't be that important to you.
	You don't even care what the answer is.
	You didn't look.
	What do you mean?
	You just said you did not go and do anything to get the answers.
	FOIA requests would have taken too long.
	My readers wouldn't have liked that.
	So how important can they be?
	Here's the problem.
	I can't force readers to care about things.
	If I wrote about something three or four weeks after the fact, unfortunately people are just not going to care that much.
	So InfoWars audience only cares about the questions that are asked immediately and they don't care about the answers.
	The news audience in general tends to only focus on the stories of the day and they're not necessarily focused too much on stories that would happen two, three, four weeks ago.
	Okay, sure.
	Where'd you get that info?
	That's just common knowledge.
	No, it's not.
	Where'd you get that information?
	Do you normally see on any news site stories from 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 weeks ago?
	Or is it stuff that's breaking today?
	Well, if there were some suspicious questions and somebody dove in and wrote an article answering them, then yeah, I could see it popping back up.
	But if somebody's just out here asking a bunch of loaded questions to catch the The popularity of a story for its viewers, and they don't care about what the answers are.
	That's an agenda.
	Those are all loaded questions.
	Well, I'll tell you this.
	Jones has told me years ago that we were not investigative journalists.
	I will agree with him on that.
	Now, whether or not you made your audience believe it.
	Hold on, let me finish.
	Okay, I'm sorry.
	Now, whether or not you made your audience believe you were is a completely different question, but there is no doubt in my mind that nothing that you do is actually investigative journalism.
	I would agree with that.
	The problem I have is that Alex Jones' motto and something he's repeated over and over and over again is, we are the truth in what?
	Starts with a J and ends with an urnalism.
	Where did you see that at?
	On his show.
	What?
	I don't know.
	Once or twice every three hours, at least for the first 300 hours I spent listening to him when these cases came.
	Well, unfortunately, I can't speak for Jones.
	Okay, so if Mr. Jones, the owner of the company, says Infowars, we're the truth in journalism, he's lying in your opinion.
	I didn't say that.
	Well, you said you're not journalists.
	In my opinion, I don't consider myself a journalist.
	I mean, I've said that before, but I think I've done that out of ignorance.
	And frankly, articles like this, that's not my forte.
	Sure seems like it.
	No, you just cherry-picked articles out of a couple of school shootings.
	In general, the majority of articles I've ever written have been basically, here's what's in the news.
	I'm rewriting this article, or here's what's in the news, here's my take on it, or here's something that happened in a local or in a foreign country that I think should have more of a prominence in the United States media.
	So here it is.
	Okay.
	Frankly, I don't like writing about mass shootings, to be honest with you.
	Let me ask you something.
	What was in this bag?
	I don't know.
	Was it weapons?
	I don't know.
	How many shooters were involved here?
	Was it just one or more?
	I don't know.
	Okay.
	What was, why did it take two trained professionals to carry this bag?
	I don't know.
	Is there SWAT gear in that bag?
	I don't know.
	Are these questions that you find important?
	I don't know.
	I'm asking your opinion.
	I don't know.
	Well, they're not important enough for you to go and answer, right?
	We know that.
	Well, if I remember correctly, I wrote this article at the behest of somebody else.
	Somebody told you to write it?
	I believe so.
	I think it was Jones or a radio producer, like I said.
	And Jones said, here's some footage.
	This is what I want you to write.
	I don't remember.
	I just vaguely remember someone asked me to write this article.
	Okay, so this article would have been about, is not necessarily your beliefs.
	You just wrote something that somebody asked you to write.
	Basically, yes, is my understanding of it.
	And you would agree with me, these aren't, these aren't, you don't actually care what the answers are to these questions, right?
	I mean...
	If you did, you would have gone and found them over the last four years.
	Right?
	Well, I mean, just for my own personal knowledge, or...
	If the coffee were important, you would have done four requests.
	Wait, I'm sorry.
	I couldn't hear because the coffee was closed.
	I apologize.
	Please accept my apologies.
	Go ahead.
	If you thought these questions were important, you would have gone and looked for the answers at some point between February 2018 and today, February of 2022. Right?
	Like I said, I don't consider myself an investigative journalist.
	I consider myself more as a social commentator.
	I don't even believe I've ever done a spoiler request as far as I recall.
	So the answer is easy to my question.
	I'm not trying to trick you.
	I understand.
	You don't care what the answers are to these questions, right?
	You're just asking them.
	I think I would have been interested if I could find the answers of it, like, within a couple days of the shooting.
	Are you saying you couldn't find those answers?
	I mean, no.
	You're not saying that.
	What's that?
	I'm saying I doubt I could have found the answers to these questions a couple days within the shooting.
	Mr. Daniels, you didn't even try.
	You didn't even try for the first couple days, did you?
	You never tried.
	Because I'm not an investigative journalist.
	Right.
	So why do you find me on these questions?
	Because maybe I just don't understand the questions.
	I'm just trying to put it out there that sometimes Infowars has articles that go out, whether written in your perspective or on behalf of somebody else, that ask questions, quote unquote, to stir up fear or stir up a conspiracy theorist.
	Like, There was a body in the bag, or there was weapons in the bag, or that there was SWAT gear in the bag, or that it was a dead body, or that this was taken during the shooting.
	All of these just questions, they're all there just to incite people to say, oh my gosh, something might be up.
	And then where do they start going for information?
	They start coming back to www dot fill in the blank.
	Infowars.com because that's where this all started.
	Infowars makes money, right?
	The business.
	I don't understand.
	I'm not too privy to the business structure of Infowars.
	Let's back up then.
	You write articles for money.
	I get paid a salary.
	Right.
	For what you do, writing articles, they give you money.
	Yes.
	Okay.
	And the price on your words is roughly $75,000 a year to write stuff like this.
	Yes.
	Right?
	Are you proud of this article?
	No, I didn't like this article, to be honest.
	Why?
	This is like I said, I wrote it on the behest of somebody else.
	The original article in question, did you write that on the behest of somebody else?
	Which article?
	The one with Mr. Fontaine's photograph.
	I don't believe so.
	That would have been on your own?
	Yes.
	I think I was practically the only person left in the building at the time.
	Alex had already went home for the day Okay.
	Let's go back to Exhibit 2. Yes.
	That one right there.
	Okay.
	Okay.
	And based on the exhibit I showed you with the SQL information?
	Sequence information?
	Yeah, SQL. MySQL.
	That time frame lines up with when that article was published, correct?
	What I saw on SQL is...
	Let me...
	Do we have the SQL? Right there.
	This time frame on SQL is the last time it was modified, the article.
	What's the date on the article?
	February 14th.
	Oh, excuse me.
	Does it show the date on the retraction?
	It doesn't even do that, does it?
	No, not on the article.
	It does show the date top left though, right?
	No, 418 would be when someone printed the article or submitted it.
	Okay, so you have no idea when this language was added?
	No, that's why I submitted this discovery.
	Okay.
	April 2nd, 2018 was when this retraction, clarification, and correction was added, correct?
	That's my understanding.
	Okay.
	Do you know what date Mr. Fontaine filed a lawsuit?
	Around that same time frame?
	April 1st, 2018. And he did that because the standard language that should have been in the original one, it's not just okay for you to take the photo out.
	This is what's required.
	Okay.
	And because he gave you over two weeks and nobody did anything about it, that's where this comes from.
	Do you find the retraction, clarification, and correction A bit disingenuous considering it was in response to getting sued.
	No, if he...
	Here's my problem.
	I've told my counsel this.
	If this is an attorney-client conversation, it's privileged.
	Okay, well, I'm not going to say what I told you then.
	Well, you can say what you told her.
	You're not supposed to tell me what legal advice she gave.
	Okay, I understand that.
	My problem was, at the time, our counsel, Eric Taub, apparently he said on that letter that y'all sent for a month.
	Okay.
	And my understanding is we had, when we saw the letter and the lawsuit, we went and got other counsel to write the retraction letter.
	Did you know that Mr. Taub actually represented you all the way up until about maybe two weeks ago for the last four years in this case oh excuse me uh he pulled out in end of november he came on well he came on the case probably weeks after the lawsuit was filed right and he stayed on that case until november of 2021. yes and your it's your contention that he sat on the letter and
	he's the reason why the retraction wasn't done correctly or in the right time frame it was done under the right time frame What do you mean by that?
	I mean, my understanding is we have, what, like 30 days to put the retraction up?
	It's 10. According to what I saw in the Texas State Law, it said 30. And even if it was 30, you got my letter on February 18th.
	You changed it on April 2nd.
	I don't remember if I even saw the letter until the lawsuit, to be honest.
	Sure, but I'm just saying, when you said you met the time frame, I don't know how many days you're counting, but that's more than 30. But my understanding is we don't practice law in Texas on the weekends.
	That's just blatantly not true.
	I practice law all the time.
	Saturdays I wake up, I practice.
	Do you do depositions on Saturdays and Sundays?
	Absolutely.
	Really?
	Yep.
	Maybe something.
	So I do have a question about Exhibit 2.
	Okay.
	Here, it says, on this webpage, on February 14th, 2018, we showed a photograph of a young man that we had received.
	That's very puzzling, considering you said that you pulled it and that you never said anybody sent you that photo.
	Yes, you're right.
	So whoever wrote that, that clarification also is inaccurate.
	Only those words I did bring up to Alex Jones that I didn't like we had received.
	What did he say?
	He said, just let the lawyers handle it.
	Do you know which lawyer wrote that?
	I believe it was Mark Balaam.
	Outside of that, in my view, the retraction is accurate.
	Okay.
	Okay.
	What do you think of Mr. Watson?
	I don't talk to him very much, to be honest.
	Do you have an opinion of him?
	He seems very extroverted on video, but he seems very introverted in person.
	Madam Reporter, what number are we on?
	The next one will be 22. The day after you posted your story, Paul Joseph Watson, who at the time I believe was...
	What was the role you gave him?
	Not chief editor, but editor at large?
	That's how he referred to himself in his biography.
	And he says, so the alt-right and the alt-left media crafted a fake news narrative that fulfilled both their objectives, using made-up 4chan posts less than 24 hours after A bloody massacre that killed 17 people.
	Period.
	Okay.
	Period.
	You realize Mr. Watson's actually making fun of you right now.
	He doesn't realize that you did this, but the Sandy Feinmester responds to him and says, that's rich coming from you.
	Infowars published false information in the wrong photo in propaganda efforts to link the left and Antifa.
	You're a huge part of the problem, period.
	Complete hypocrisy, period.
	He's not wrong there, is he?
	No.
	The Sandy guy?
	Correct.
	Sandy's right with what he's saying right now.
	Let me read it again.
	It wasn't, well, let me take that back.
	I published the photo of Fontaine at the time because I did believe he was the shooter.
	here.
	It wasn't a part of an effort to link him to anything in particular.
	Although what he was wearing did remind me of what I was told with the Las Vegas shooting.
	Well, you would agree with what Sandy's saying there, right?
	Yeah.
	Yes and no.
	I agree it was the wrong photo, but I wasn't trying to push an agenda.
	Well, you agree it was the wrong photo who linked communism, who then linked, because communism's left, Antifa's left, because Antifa materials were in the Vegas shooter.
	That was my belief at the time.
	Right.
	Sandy's not wrong there.
	Well, but I wasn't doing it as an effort to link them.
	That was actually my actual belief at the time.
	I'm not saying that you made it up on purpose.
	I'm just saying what Sandy's saying is completely accurate.
	Yeah, I just wanted to clarify that.
	To me, it seems like he's saying I did it on purpose, and I never would.
	If I'd known Fontaine wasn't the shooter, I'd definitely never have posted his photo.
	This is your story, correct?
	Yes.
	And it's on the Vegas shooter, correct?
	Yes.
	paragraph one page one
	it says the vegas shooter didn't commit suicide as the mainstream media is reporting but was killed by a fbi hostage rescue team who also found antifa literature in his hotel room comma according to a source linked to the team Yes.
	Who's your source?
	That was the person I was referring to.
	Who's that?
	The person Jones showed me, the text.
	You don't even know his name?
	Not that I recall.
	Sure it's not, does it start with doctor?
	No, it was not Steve Petenic as far as I know.
	Okay.
	Was it Rob Dew's uncle?
	No.
	Alright.
	So there's some random anonymous FBI source that you don't know.
	It wasn't anonymous to Jones, but Jones didn't tell me who it was as far as I remember.
	Then why didn't you tell him to put his name on the story?
	Because when you put your name on this, as you are in this case, you get sued if you defame someone.
	I understand that now.
	Well, for the last few years, it looks like whatever Mr. Jones says for you to do, you just hop to it and get it done.
	Well, he is my boss.
	That's fine, but your boss is getting you sued personally.
	You realize that, right?
	I understand.
	If a jury finds a verdict against you and your individual capacity, you're on the hook for that.
	What is this article...
	This article that you wrote here, this is journalism.
	You've got a source that no one else has.
	You're not regurgitating news.
	If you go over to the next page, Page 3 of 19 on the bottom right says, even further, a deep-level intelligence insider who spoke to Infowars said the attack was very, very strange.
	Where does that say?
	Oh.
	Right in the middle of the page.
	Okay.
	So this is you being a journalist.
	This is Jones.
	No, I don't see Mr. Jones's name.
	This is Kit Daniels.
	But I'm saying under oath that I remember writing this on the head of Alex Jones.
	Because I don't talk to sources like this on my own.
	From now on, if Mr. Jones starts quoting a source, are you going to say, unless you tell me, unless I can verify that source, I can't put my name on it?
	Or are you just going to keep following orders?
	I'm probably not going to put my name on it.
	Okay.
	And you'll stand up to him and say that?
	I think so.
	Okay.
	How is Mr. Jones as a boss?
	I've liked working for him.
	You ever not liked working for him?
	I mean, he has his ups and downs, but that's with any boss.
	Are his downs as normal?
	I mean I think it's as normal as it can be in this day and age.
	Because we've been up to post a number of individuals from Infowars now and some of the stories are a little different than yours.
	I guess it's just a matter of perspective.
	So when we you did you come through the whole article it's not very long Okay.
	Alright, I'm going to ask you one question.
	Okay.
	Your headline says, Vegas Shooter Found with Antifa Literature, right?
	Yes.
	Point me where you get that from in this article.
	I don't see an embed for it.
	You know why?
	I don't remember.
	Because the headline is clickbait.
	That's your opinion.
	Okay, if I say that this shooter was an Antifa, that's a pretty big claim.
	That gives a political-leaning ideology for the shooting, correct?
	I never said that, though.
	What's your headline say?
	Read your headline outline.
	FBI source.
	Found with Antifa literature.
	Where does it say anything?
	About Antifa or literature in this article.
	Well, it says in the headline.
	Right.
	Show me.
	He showed me the text.
	I don't know.
	Maybe I admitted.
	Hold on.
	Hold on.
	Let's not get away from you.
	I'm sorry.
	Please point where in the body of this article you can show me that makes this headline not absolute clickbait.
	Clickbait's a matter of opinion.
	I wrote the headline in the lead sentence on behalf of the Jones, if I remember correctly.
	He showed me the text he got from his source.
	That you don't know if it's even real.
	It could have been Dr. Jones with his birth phone.
	I seriously doubt that.
	You don't know who it was.
	But I seriously doubt he would do something like that, just from me working for him for so long.
	He's got you writing multiple articles telling you to put stuff in that you can't back up.
	And that nobody...
	Maybe the embed for the...
	Okay, I'm sorry.
	That nobody can corroborate.
	You put your name out there.
	But you would agree with me, nothing about this article has anything to do with Antifa other than the headline Jones forced you to put on the top of this paper.
	Well, it said Antifa literature.
	There's a difference.
	There's nothing in this article besides the, you know, The headline that Mr. Jones forced you to put on here that has anything to do with Antifa literature.
	Well, that was what the source told Jones.
	Then where is it?
	Where's the screenshot?
	Where's the screenshot?
	I don't know.
	So here's the thing.
	Why is that your headline if the article doesn't talk about it at all?
	That's the question for Jones.
	Okay.
	So, and just to kind of break it down, Jones just kind of said you're writing this and kind of forced you to write this.
	This isn't something you wanted to write.
	My understanding is this is something he asked me to write.
	He gave me the information off his phone.
	Did he ask you in a way where he would have been okay if you said no?
	I doubt it.
	Right.
	Because when he asks something like this, you do it.
	Yeah, he's my boss.
	Zero to 24.
	Yes.
	Do you recognize that fella?
	Yeah, it looks like me.
	Alright.
	So, we've got your article from the day after Parkland.
	We've got your article here from October 10th, 2017. What was the date of the Vegas shooting?
	It was probably October 2017, if I remember correctly.
	It had to have been before that.
	What's that?
	This is October 10th, 2017. That's why I said it had to have been like, I think it was October 2017, the Vegas shooting.
	How are you talking about the Vegas shoot...
	How are you talking about a Vegas massacre that's happening in 10 days from this post?
	When did the Vegas shooting happen?
	I'm asking you.
	I don't remember.
	Okay.
	What we can say is, this is another...
	Time where you are writing or implying in some way that there's multiple shooters at a mass shooting.
	Correct?
	I don't remember the context of this.
	You're telling me that I... Hold on, hold on.
	Kit Daniels, this is your Twitter, right?
	Yes.
	Experts, hyphen.
	There was more than one shooter at Vegas Massacre.
	Please retweet encouraging people to spread this false information.
	False.
	Yeah.
	Oh, I'm sorry.
	What was the name of the second shooter in Vegas?
	I don't know that.
	Do you know that there was a second shooter in Vegas?
	I think it's plausible.
	I didn't ask you if it was plausible or possible.
	I said, was there one?
	I don't know.
	You don't, but you're telling people, retweet that there was, not is there.
	There was.
	But that's not me.
	That's from experts.
	I'm citing someone else.
	Who?
	It was experts that Jones had on the show that listened to audio recordings of the shooting.
	Who?
	I forgot.
	Okay.
	But you definitely want people to tweet this out.
	Well, it was strange, the audio that I heard.
	Was what?
	The audio that I heard?
	The audio was strange that I heard of the Vegas shooting.
	One thing we can say is that both with Parkland...
	And with Vegas, multiple shooters was brought up by you, right?
	No, like I said in this tweet right here, it's experts.
	I never made the claim.
	I'm quoting experts.
	You're just the guy spreading the information, right?
	Well, it's what experts said.
	Right, and then you're spreading it.
	I shared it on social media, if that's what you mean by spreading it.
	And then you asked people to spread it further.
	Okay.
	Right?
	Yeah, so?
	Okay.
	That's all I'm trying to get at is you're not the one inventing this information.
	You're just being told and then your job is to keep spreading it.
	Who said it was invented information?
	This expert invented this information.
	How do you know that?
	Because there is no second shooter.
	We'd know his name.
	Are you sure about that?
	What's his name?
	Well, I mean, if let's say that the Vegas shooting was done by some weird like Saudi intelligence, not that I'm saying that it is, would we ever know?
	I mean, instead of Saudi intelligence, you can literally insert anything you want there.
	But that's not the point.
	And you can still ask the question.
	My issue here is you hide behind this.
	I'm just asking questions.
	And we know that that's not true.
	I'm not saying that I'm hiding behind asking questions, but I do believe it is worth questioning things that are in the media.
	I didn't invent this information.
	The expert did.
	I'm just the guy who tweeted it and encouraged everyone.
	Hold on, let me finish my question.
	Kit Daniels is just the guy who sits here and asks everybody to spread this information that I don't know if is even true.
	You're just that guy.
	You're the guy who spreads the information, not the guy who makes it.
	Is this a legal inquest or a political one?
	I'm saying that's true, right?
	I don't understand your question.
	Let me answer it.
	Well, I don't want you to answer it if you don't know what it is.
	So I'll ask it again.
	It's hard for me.
	I think you're starting to rant more so than ask questions.
	Nope.
	Just trying to get you to understand where I'm going.
	Here we go.
	True or false?
	You wrote an article that involved in some way the possibility of a second shooter regarding the Parkland Florida High School shooting.
	True or false?
	I don't know.
	Body bag.
	Was there a second shooter?
	Is that a body?
	Is that the weapons they used?
	Did you write that?
	Yes.
	Yes.
	All right.
	Got Parkland out of the way.
	Vegas.
	But as far as Parkland, I didn't say that there was a second shooter.
	I didn't say you did.
	All I said is that you spread the...
	Sure.
	All I said was that you made that implication and spread that information.
	Now, let's go to Vegas.
	Okay.
	Vegas, you spread information that there was a second shooter.
	True or false?
	Yes.
	Okay.
	Now we have a clean record of your MO when a mass shooting happens.
	I don't know if I'd call it an M.O.
	Can I hope we get to a natural breaking point?
	Can we get a break?
	We can go for at least an hour or a half.
	I've got one more document.
	I think I'm done.
	Okay.
	That's your article, correct, Mr. Daniels?
	Yeah, I believe so.
	Okay.
	I'm sorry, I did not hear.
	I believe so.
	I didn't hear the question.
	That is your article, correct, Mr. Daniels?
	And the title of your article is WikiLeaks to Expose Hillary Clinton's Ties to Russia and Seth Rich 4chan Predicts.
	So this is another story where you relied on 4chan, right?
	Yes.
	Did any of this come true?
	Any of it?
	I don't remember.
	Take your time.
	I don't remember.
	By you don't remember, you would agree with me that you have no recollection whatsoever of any of the outlandish Predictions you make in that article based on your reliance of 4chan.
	True?
	I don't remember.
	Okay.
	We can take a quick break.
	Let's go five minutes.
	Let me look at my notes and I think I'm done.
	The time is 2.22pm.
	We are off the record.
	The time is 2.27pm.
	We are all the record.
	I looked over my notes.
	I don't have very much.
	I do have a couple questions.
	Okay.
	First, do you believe that your audience deserves better?
	I think when in terms of the Fontaine article, yes, I believe I could have done a hell of a lot better job.
	I think that was the worst job I've ever done on an article.
	What about Vegas?
	I don't know.
	I don't remember Vegas.
	The one we just went over.
	Do you think your audience deserves better out of you?
	This article or the other one?
	The other one.
	The one where you just ask a bunch of random questions about a body bag.
	That was Parkland.
	Excuse me, Parkland.
	Yeah.
	What about the Vegas article we just went through?
	Did we go through a Vegas article or was it just this one?
	Yeah.
	The one where the headline says, Antifa Literature, and then nothing about the article has anything to do with it.
	You think your audience deserves better out of you?
	I mean, I wish, maybe it did have it at one point, but I wish I could see an embed for the tweet that Jones showed me in the article.
	The tweet that, I'm glad you brought that up.
	Open that article up, go to the last page where the tweet is, and read what Mr. Jones tweeted.
	Which article is that?
	That one right there.
	Okay.
	Last page.
	Sorry.
	I'm still in sales.
	Keep going.
	Right.
	Uh-oh.
	Scavenger hunt.
	Right there.
	Okay.
	Mr. Jones' tweet.
	Read it, please.
	Live.
	ISIS takes responsibility for Vegas shooting as left celebrates massacre.
	Can you tell me why you put that in there?
	I don't know if I did put it in there myself.
	We might have had a script at the time.
	Do you think anyone on the left was celebrating what happened in Las Vegas?
	I don't know.
	Personally?
	I don't know.
	Okay.
	So, in your opinion, you have zero evidence that anyone from the left was celebrating that massacre.
	I don't know.
	I mean, I didn't write this, to be honest with you.
	Well, it's in your article, correct?
	But it's an embed for Twitter for Jones' radio program.
	Okay, so that's just an advertisement that happens to be on the same subject matter as your article.
	I mean, I don't know if advertisement is accurate, but I guess, for lack of a better term...
	Maybe this was the...
	When was this published?
	It just might have been coincidence that he's talking about that on the same day of this article.
	Okay.
	And it could be coincidence that he asked you to write that article in that way on that day, right?
	I don't understand the question.
	You said it might be coincidence that that tweet is in that article, correct?
	Yeah, but Jones wouldn't have wrote in that tweet.
	That would have been the social media.
	He might have wrote the headline, but I'm not sure.
	OK.
	That's all the questions I have right now, but I do need to make a record.
	I do want to confer with you on the record, Jacqueline.
	Okay.
	Would you agree, based on the motions that you're filing and that Mark's preparing to file right now, that we'll need a full day hearing to deal with all of it?
	Oh, at least, yeah.
	Okay.
	Let's see what else I got on my notes.
	Okay.
	Thank you for your time.
	Thank you.
	And we'll reserve ours until the time of trial.
	Alright, the time is 2.31pm.

▲