#665: Formulaic Objections Part 6
Today, Dan and Jordan wrap up their run of depositions by discussing the December 2021 questioning of The Cuck-Destroyer, Owen Shroyer.
April 1, 2022 - Knowledge Fight
02:33:13
Participants
| 
| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
|
unidentified
|
I'm sick of them posing as if they're the good guys, saying we are the bad guys. | |
| Knowledge fight. | ||
| Dan and Jordan. | ||
| Knowledge fight. | ||
| Need money. | ||
| Andy and Kansas. | ||
| Andy and Kansas. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Stop it. | |
| Andy and Kansas. | ||
| Andy and Kansas. | ||
| It's time to pray. | ||
| Andy and Kansas, you're on the air. | ||
| Thanks for holding us. | ||
| Hello, Alex. | ||
| I'm a first term caller. | ||
| I love you. | ||
| Hey everybody, welcome back to Knowledge Fight, I'm Dan. | ||
| I'm Dan. | ||
| Jordan! | ||
| We're a couple dudes. | ||
| I can sit around, worship at the altar of Selene, and talk a little bit about Alex O 'Jones. | ||
| Oh, indeed we are, Dan. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Jordan! | |
| Jordan! | ||
| Quick question! | ||
| What's up? | ||
| What's your bright spot today? | ||
| You go first. | ||
| Oh, my bright spot today, Dan, is a new album. | ||
| Well, it's not as new as I would have liked, but I just caught up with... | ||
| You wish it was newer. | ||
| I wish it was yesterday. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| So I could be even cooler. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Fine. | |
| Actually, when you find out the album, you will think otherwise. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But... | |
| The new radicals. | ||
| No, it's Robert Glasper, who is one of my favorite... | ||
| Jazz pianists. | ||
| So the album's from like 1976? | ||
| No, the album is from a couple months ago. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| And Robert Glasper, though, is specific because he works in R&B a lot. | ||
| He provides a lot of hooks. | ||
| He provides all kinds of stuff for all kinds of people. | ||
| But he is himself an incredibly talented jazz pianist and songwriter, and I fucking love it. | ||
| That's great. | ||
| Yeah! | ||
| I'm glad that you have another album for you to enjoy. | ||
| Always. | ||
| My bright spot is Frozen Custard. | ||
| Superior in every way. | ||
| Is there mustard in it? | ||
| No. | ||
| Frozen custard mustard. | ||
| Year of the custard. | ||
| Year of the custard. | ||
| No, I can't do that. | ||
| Mustard is at least not as unhealthy as frozen custard. | ||
| That's what we do. | ||
| I do custard, you do mustard. | ||
| We'll meet in the middle. | ||
| Custard be mustard. | ||
| Frozen custard is superior in every way to soft serve, to ice cream. | ||
| It is the best. | ||
| I will hear no other arguments. | ||
| Frozen yogurt? | ||
| Better. | ||
| Better than frozen yogurt? | ||
| Way better. | ||
| Better than ice cream? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Better. | |
| Okay, better than... | ||
| Try me again. | ||
| What other frozen things are there? | ||
| A popsicle? | ||
| Better. | ||
| Well, yeah, obviously. | ||
| Yeah, I enjoy it quite a bit. | ||
| Anyway. | ||
| Welcome back to part two of... | ||
| Yes! | ||
| Deposition attack! | ||
| In 600-something episodes, we have never done what we'd describe as a two-parter, I don't think. | ||
| Um, no. | ||
| Because we're recording this directly after we finished recording the last episode. | ||
| We just had to break it into two episodes. | ||
| I suppose the closest would be, obviously, our documentaries, wherein we... | ||
| Yeah, I guess that's true. | ||
| Five-parters. | ||
| Five-parters. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Obviously, why would... | ||
| Dan, our episodes are regularly two and a half. | ||
| Half, three hours long. | ||
| Why would we do a two-parter? | ||
| Other people do two-parters. | ||
| That's a good point. | ||
| We do five-parters. | ||
| All right, fine. | ||
| We're slacking on a two-parter. | ||
| So, as promised today, we will be getting into the deposition that Owen Schroer did. | ||
| This was from December 2nd, 2021. | ||
| Blackjack. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Ah, nice. | |
| And this is a fun thing about this, is I went to the Daria and Alex depositions that took place the next days after this. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Unfortunately, the timing didn't work out that I could have been at the Owen deposition, but it was right in that ballpark, right around the same time. | ||
| Unfortunately, you could not watch the Cuck Destroyer be destroyed. | ||
| This was the nearest of misses, and I am sad. | ||
| I'm sad to have missed it. | ||
| To be in the same room. | ||
| Oh, with the Owen! | ||
| The legend! | ||
| Destroyer! | ||
| I would have been destroyed, probably. | ||
| Yo, I can't imagine how you wouldn't. | ||
| So we'll get down to business on this here, the deposition. | ||
| But before we do, let's take a little moment to say hello to some new wonks. | ||
| Oh, that's a great idea. | ||
| So first, Asuka Langley, so are you. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| You are now a policy wonk. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm a policy wonk. | |
| Thank you very much. | ||
| Is this a character you're aware of? | ||
| I am not. | ||
| Oh, I think it's from an anime, if I understand correctly. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| Next, happy birthday, clown space and hootie bunter. | ||
| Me love you long time. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| You are now a policy wonk. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm a policy wonk. | |
| Hey, thank you. | ||
| Next, Dan's voice sounds exactly like Obama, and now you can't unhear it. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| You are now a policy wonk. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm a policy wonk. | |
| Thank you very much. | ||
| I'm not sure if that's true. | ||
| I don't think so. | ||
| Next, Jeezy Cableezy Beef Cap Q. You are such a policy wonk. | ||
| You are now a policy wonk. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm a policy wonk. | |
| Thank you very much. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Next, technocrats are the adaptus mechanicum. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| You are now a policy wonk. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm a policy wonk. | |
| You've really gotten punished with these today. | ||
| Such a nerd shit, I think. | ||
| And finally, Ian's professional elbow pads. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| You are now a policy wonk. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm a policy wonk. | |
| Thank you very much! | ||
| Thank you oh so much. | ||
| So on our last episode, we talked about the Kit Daniels deposition. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Indeed we did. | |
| And that was in the Marcel Fontaine case. | ||
| Of course. | ||
| That was more, you know, targetedly focused to Kit and his behavior. | ||
| This, we're back on the Sandy Hook business. | ||
| Indeed. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But... | |
| Owen Schroer is the person who did the video that was defamatory towards Neil Heslin in response to the Megyn Kelly interview. | ||
| And so there is actually a bit more of an angle in that you're not really provided when you're talking with Daria or Rob Dew as the corporate representatives or Alex because it was actually Owen saying the things. | ||
| He was on the ground. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That prompted a lot of this. | ||
| And so that's a pretty interesting position. | ||
| And I'm excited for a couple things, particularly something that we're going to get into pretty early. | ||
| But first, we must learn, as we always do with all these depositions, hey bro, how much you making? | ||
| How much money do you make from free speech systems? | ||
| Is it salary or hourly? | ||
| Salary. | ||
| What's your salary? | ||
| Give or take currently about just over $100,000 a year after taxes. | ||
| After taxes, $100,000 take home? | ||
| I don't know the exact number. | ||
| I think it's about, I think before taxes, it's just over $120,000. | ||
| After tax, I think it's just right around $100,000. | ||
| Owen is not worth that. | ||
| Oh, God. | ||
| Six figures for Owen Troyer. | ||
| I can't believe that he's bringing in a commensurate amount of money. | ||
| I just can't believe that. | ||
| It's just, I mean... | ||
| Come on. | ||
| His value over replacement is low. | ||
| That is brutal. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, it is. | ||
| Oh, man. | ||
| But that's, I guess, how it works over there, man. | ||
| Everybody makes about $100,000. | ||
| It's just not fair. | ||
| It's got to be shut up money, too, somewhat. | ||
| Yeah, something along those lines. | ||
| So, sometimes you wonder about the, how did you end up in this place? | ||
| How did you get to InfoWars? | ||
| And we know a bit of Owen's backstory, but we don't know the mechanics of it. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And so here we learn that Rob Dew might have been a little bit of a scout. | ||
| Did you apply to InfoWars, or did they reach out to you? | ||
| They reached out to me. | ||
| And by they, who was they? | ||
| My first professional contact with Infowars, I'm guessing, would have been from Rob Dew. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| I'm sorry, from who? | ||
| Rob Dew. | ||
| From who? | ||
| Rob who? | ||
| And was that an email, a call, to come meet you? | ||
| Maybe both, but the first request was to just do an interview on air. | ||
| Then they asked if I wanted to come down for... | ||
| A interview for a job, and I came down to Austin for that summer of 2016. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good year. | |
| And they offered me a job, and I accepted it. | ||
| When you accepted the job, what was your job description? | ||
| At the time, a field reporter. | ||
| Every once in a while, I would do live fill-in hosting, live on air. | ||
| I was doing a lot of video editing at the time then as well. | ||
| So I would say as far as titles, reporter, editor. | ||
| Journalist? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| And has your job changed since you started? | ||
| As far as the day-to-day, yes. | ||
| But there's never really been a professional title per se slapped on me. | ||
| I guess what I'm asking is, sitting here today, you're still a journalist, right? | ||
| Yeah, for the most part, I've still been doing the same thing. | ||
| You said for the most part. | ||
| Other than being a journalist, what other things do you do? | ||
| Well, I'm just referring to I'm now live three hours a day versus back then. | ||
| I may not have even been live one minute a day, just depending on the day. | ||
| This does not become as big an issue as it was with Kip. | ||
| The argument about what is or is not a journalist. | ||
| Because Owen was actually saying something that makes sense there. | ||
| My job responsibilities have changed in as much as I'm on air a lot more now. | ||
| So that seems pretty clear. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| So as we know from listening to the show around this time period, before Owen got hired, he was a guy who would call into Alex's show every now and again, not as a guest, but as just a random caller. | ||
| At the same time, he was posting videos on YouTube where he would go and antagonize left-leaning protesters, which was probably way more important for his portfolio than any of the sports journalism work he had done in the past. | ||
| Very much so. | ||
| If you go back to before he worked at Infowars, you can actually find some interesting things. | ||
| For instance, you can find some coverage of him protesting police tyranny in the wake of the Michael Brown killing in Ferguson, Missouri, just outside his hometown of St. Louis. | ||
| Interestingly, if you consult this press coverage, including an article in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, You find that Owen wasn't totally forthcoming when Bill, in this deposition, asks him about his previous employment before he got to working at Infowars. | ||
| Owen says that he was doing sports journalism, some youth development, some odd jobs like wedding DJing, but there's something he didn't mention. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| 1380 AM went through a lot of format changes over the course of its lifetime. | ||
| Sure. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It had stretches as a top 40 station, a gospel outlet, and a couple runs as sports talk. | |
| But, just prior to 2014, it had one of the most bizarre radio formats I've ever heard. | ||
| This station, with the call letters KFXN, was a sister station with another talk station out of St. Louis, KFNS. | ||
| These two stations decided to brand themselves The Man and The Woman, with each broadcasting talk radio shows they thought would appeal to either men or women. | ||
| I am excited to hear the results, Stan! | ||
| It was a bad idea, and it failed pretty fast. | ||
| What?! | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes! | |
| Who could have guessed?! | ||
| KFNS was the man station, but decided it would go back to a sports talk format after the flop, as did KXFN, but they ended up syndicating just Yahoo Sports feeds. | ||
| I've got a plan for you. | ||
| Okay, how about we immediately exclude half of our audience? | ||
| Well, they'll be listening to the other station. | ||
| We're owned by the same people. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Okay, so then how about let's immediately exclude half of their audience? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Cool. | |
| It's a great idea. | ||
| So a little after this, KFXN decided to switch it up again, and they rebranded themselves as The X, Extreme Talk Radio. | ||
| The hope was to appeal to an edgier audience, or at least do an experiment to see if a station geared towards that edgy audience was something that could work for advertisers and break even or make a profit. | ||
| This was when Owen had a time slot on air, and if you take what he's saying in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch article about his protesting in Ferguson at face value... | ||
| He doesn't seem like he's necessarily the worst person you would encounter on an extreme talk station. | ||
| He was out at the I-64 overpass with a sign saying, quote, tyranny is here, and his goal was protesting the government overreach in the aftermath of the shooting. | ||
| He told the papers that the protesters, quote, don't deserve tear gas and guns pointed at them, which would sound fine if we didn't have natural suspicions based on where his career ended up leading him. | ||
| Well, there's that. | ||
| The extreme talk station didn't work out, at least partially due to the complete chaos of the person running the company that owned the station, a guy named Dan Marshall. | ||
| Would you say he might have been too extreme? | ||
| Too extreme. | ||
| Multiple on-air personalities were willing to go on the record by name and talk shit to the post-dispatch, like Jay Randolph Jr., who described the atmosphere at the station like this. | ||
| Quote, It's like nothing I've ever seen. | ||
| It's like every man for himself. | ||
| That's a job! | ||
| What? | ||
| This was a guy with decades in radio behind him, so the situation had to have been pretty bad. | ||
| I had to claw my way out of a closet one time because three dudes locked me in there in order to keep... | ||
| Shit went completely insane from there. | ||
| There were allegations of people not being paid, among other unsavory reports about Marshall's leadership. | ||
| But some people sided with Marshall, and there was a bit of a civil war that broke out between the two sides. | ||
| Naturally. | ||
| One host on KFNS, a guy named Charlie Tuna, who was black, became the target of some racially insensitive comments made by Nick Truppiano, a KXFN host who was upset that Tuna didn't like Marshall while Truppiano did. | ||
| Truppiano also ridiculed Brian McKenna, another KXFN host who had spoke out against Marshall. | ||
| This led to McKenna showing up at KFNS and trying to fight Truppiano. | ||
| I love it. | ||
| Security intervened, quote, however, a short time later, McKenna and Marshall got into a fistfight. | ||
| Well, naturally, yes. | ||
| You can't follow him around the rest of the day. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, no, he wasn't fighting the host. | |
| He went to fight the host and then ended up fistfighting the boss. | ||
| Remarkable. | ||
| Why didn't they succeed? | ||
| The host got into a literal fistfight with the station manager. | ||
| And when reached for comment, Marshall said, quote, I spent the night in the hospital. | ||
| He spent the night in jail. | ||
| You can draw your own conclusions about what happened. | ||
| This is chaos. | ||
| That is a quote. | ||
| That is a fucking quote. | ||
| From the boss. | ||
| I'll give you that one. | ||
| One wonders if Owen's experience working in an environment like this made him think that the way Alex acts towards his employees is somehow normal or acceptable. | ||
| And it's hard not to see parallels when you look back. | ||
| This is like a weird daddy. | ||
| I'm trying to recreate the issues that I was born in in order to fix them this time. | ||
| I'm only comfortable when I'm working for a completely abusive monster. | ||
| For a complete insane person. | ||
| Anyway, Owen wasn't there long because this whole extreme talk thing didn't last more than like six months before the station went back to a sports format and then eventually just started leasing the airtime out. | ||
| And then eventually they outright sold to Salem Media. | ||
| Ah, who started a women-only show. | ||
| No, they did not. | ||
| They have proof that failed. | ||
| Long story short, this story is a It is kind of funny. | ||
| No. | ||
| Probably not. | ||
| But I think the story is great. | ||
| And explaining it was one of the only ways that I can introduce one of the greatest things I found in preparing this episode. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Owen has been kicked off a lot of online platforms, but one that he hasn't been booted from, and he probably doesn't even realize he's still on, is SoundCloud. | ||
| As fate would have it, in 2016, he posted a demo reel on SoundCloud auditioning for a job at Infowars. | ||
| Do not tell me that this is his audition reel for Infowars. | ||
| Well, it's hard to tell if this was something Rob Do asked him to do, or if he did it just to get Rob's attention in the first place, but either way, this thing is amazing. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| On one level... | ||
| It's painfully transparent as an attempt on Owen's part to do an Alex impression. | ||
| But, on the other hand, it's also a recording of an idiot complaining about nothing, getting mad for no reason. | ||
| Hire him! | ||
| I honestly can't tell if these are clips from his KXFN show, or if he just recorded himself in his free time, but I choose to believe it's the latter, because that image is really funny. | ||
| Yeah, it is very funny. | ||
| So I'm not gonna, I'm gonna play a few clips here, because the whole thing is 20 minutes long, and no one but me should have to sit through all of that. | ||
| It's too long for a demo. | ||
| Yes, that's a good start. | ||
| Anywhere other than InfoWars would have seen the runtime and been like, that's going in the trash. | ||
| Three minutes or less, buddy. | ||
| No good. | ||
| You wish you had three minutes. | ||
| They'll fucking turn that thing off after five seconds. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I remember when I was trying to get into voiceover work, it was like, you have a minute. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| If that. | ||
| No, I had a whole recording session. | ||
| I did the whole thing, and all the experienced people were like, that was great. | ||
| You're never going to get hired by anybody. | ||
| Stop it. | ||
| Cut it out. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| Screech, you weirdo. | ||
| You idiot. | ||
| So, I will say one thing. | ||
| Owen comes out the gate pretty hot. | ||
| Mic down for all of this, because... | ||
| Just the whole show. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, just the demo clips, because you're going to... | |
| Some of it's pretty amazing. | ||
| Okay. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Every game, they salute a veteran. | |
| They, you know, give him tickets to the game. | ||
| And then during a break, they put the camera on them. | ||
| The PA guy comes on and says, salute to the veterans, you know, so-and-so. | ||
| Give him a round of applause. | ||
| And of course, just like the conditioning. | ||
| Everybody stands up and cheers, you know, and if you don't, everybody looks at you weird or kind of, you know, says you're a jerk or whatever. | ||
| How about instead of just putting them on camera and standing up and cheering like a bunch of vapid morons, why don't we give them a mic? | ||
| Let's give them 30 seconds or a minute to speak their mind. | ||
| How about that? | ||
| Well, we can't have that. | ||
| We don't know what they might say. | ||
| Oh! | ||
| Political correctness. | ||
| Yeah! | ||
| Let the veterans speak at the game! | ||
| Are you? | ||
| If they want to, or they probably don't want to. | ||
| Was he reading a transcript of Alex's show like two days before this? | ||
| That's absolutely... | ||
| I'm telling you it's an impression. | ||
| No, oh no, it's very clear. | ||
| Yeah, it's more transparent than his current work, certainly. | ||
| And that's weird, because it feels like he's doing an impression now, but he was doing a much more poorly disguised impression at this point. | ||
| How about that? | ||
| How about we just tell them to do it? | ||
| Huh? | ||
| I don't know why you're mad. | ||
| Do you know a bunch of veterans who are pissed off that they're not allowed to talk at the game? | ||
| Is everybody furious? | ||
| Are you mad on their behalf for a complaint that I've never heard anybody make? | ||
| Yep, never ever once. | ||
| That's pretty sweet. | ||
| Ah. | ||
| So here, this next clip is proof that Owen is brave and he's a man of action. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm trying to wake people up. | |
| I'm sick of these tyrannical elite. | ||
| Just sitting on us. | ||
| A bunch of slaves because they get... | ||
| You know what? | ||
| Where's my wallet? | ||
| Ha! | ||
| Look at this. | ||
| Look at this. | ||
| This is a $1 bill. | ||
| Okay? | ||
| See this? | ||
| This is worth nothing. | ||
| You got a lighter in here? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Somebody bring me some fire. | |
| Federal Reserve note. | ||
| The Federal Reserve is a Rob Child secret bank. | ||
| So it's fun how he's willing to performatively threaten to burn a $1 bill, yet he's also willing to spread lies and bullshit for Alex in exchange for 100,000 of those bills. | ||
| You see, it's principle. | ||
| And it's all about principle. | ||
| Yeah, I love that. | ||
| Give me a lighter! | ||
| Someone get me fire! | ||
| Oh my god. | ||
| Because I like to imagine that he is just recording this on his own in his house, and he's yelling to nobody. | ||
| Nobody's around him. | ||
| No, this is like... | ||
| Very, very much an Alex Jones impression. | ||
| It is... | ||
| I mean, I would almost be offended if I were Alex. | ||
| If I were Alex and listening to this, I'd be like, oh my god, is that what people think I sound like? | ||
| Well, unless you were specifically trying to find a younger version of yourself. | ||
| Right. | ||
| You'd be like, oh my god, that's what people think I sound like. | ||
| Well, yeah. | ||
| But if you're Alex, you kind of have to deal with that early. | ||
| Yeah, that's true. | ||
| You're probably way past that point. | ||
| Yeah, that's true. | ||
| But yeah, I think if you're like... | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| Considering the possibility of needing an acolyte or something like that, maybe you're like, oh, I see myself in him. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Boom. | ||
| He also has more complaints about the dollar bill, if you believe that. | ||
| I love the pyramid on the back. | ||
| Why is there a pyramid on the back of the dollar bill, folks? | ||
| Why is there the all-ever-watching eye over the pyramid on the dollar bill? | ||
| Stop it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's not Illuminati. | |
| You can't just see a triangle and say it's Luminati. | ||
| In God we trust. | ||
| Separation of church and state. | ||
| Guess that's just totally... | ||
| Of course, this isn't state! | ||
| That's my point! | ||
| This is a private British banker. | ||
| Oh. | ||
| Do you like your little Ralph... | ||
| Ralph dollar? | ||
| Oh, get it, you little slaves. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| Keep working. | ||
| Ha-ha-ha. | ||
| You can really see the Alex impression there. | ||
| Yeah, that's... | ||
| That's painful. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| The sound of him rustling with the paper, that's a direct Alex impression, even though Alex is just doing the impression of Rush Limbaugh when he does it. | ||
| The weird character work, that's straight up Alex, though. | ||
| And I love how he's like, ah, separation of churches. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Ooh, but that's not state! | |
| Oh my god. | ||
| It's so awesome because you can see the mind working in a way that, like, you could have prepared. | ||
| You could have got your thoughts together or whatever, but instead you backed into that point that you didn't intend to make. | ||
| I'm gonna throw this out there. | ||
| I think I have a theory on this. | ||
| That is, he is actually reading InfoWars transcripts after having listened to the clips and trying to do the exact same thing. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hmm. | |
| That's my theory on there, because the timing of all of that, the absolute change of the tone of voice, volume control, dynamic, all of that suggests to me that he has listened to Alex say exactly those things. | ||
| I don't think Alex is going to take the time to be like, why won't we let veterans speak at football games, though? | ||
| Why? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I don't know. | |
| I just don't think that's necessarily one of his issues. | ||
| That one might not be. | ||
| I think that one was. | ||
| Maybe. | ||
| But he also has more complaints about the dollar. | ||
| Well, that's true. | ||
| Instead of having, like, some great quote from Washington, or like George Washington's call to arms to the colonies, or like a powerful quote from Thomas Jefferson, like, I have sworn upon the altar of God to fight tyranny. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, it's a new conceptus. | |
| Novus Ordo Soliclorum. | ||
| I don't speak Latin! | ||
| It's psycho! | ||
| I'm an American! | ||
| He's mad at Latin. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| All right. | ||
| So, new theory, this is an open mic that I luckily missed somewhere around 2016. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, an angry conspiracy open mic. | ||
| I mean, but what is a demo tape for InfoWars other than that? | ||
| Yeah, that's fair. | ||
| That's essentially exactly what it is. | ||
| Bad complaints about jokes that people told 30 years ago. | ||
| Yeah, that makes sense. | ||
| So I got one more clip here from his demo tape, and it's just really to illustrate Owen's chops. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Look, obviously it can get worse. | |
| But as far as in your face, it really can't get any worse anymore. | ||
| It is all in your face. | ||
| Right in your face! | ||
| I mean, just... | ||
| I mean, it's in your face! | ||
| For some reason, Owen decided to include a meaningless clip in his demo reel where he says, it's in your face, four times in 22 seconds. | ||
| It's in your face! | ||
| And he got the job. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's in your face! | |
| That's a complete indictment of his skill as a broadcaster and Alex's obviously shallow applicant pool. | ||
| Love it. | ||
| All right, sorry about that sidetrack. | ||
| I just couldn't help myself. | ||
| I'm not going to be able to get over how many times he said, in your face. | ||
|
unidentified
|
In your face! | |
| In your face! | ||
| I will guarantee you... | ||
| He does not say it in this deposition at all. | ||
| He does not accuse things of being in your face. | ||
| So we're in the clear now. | ||
| All I can say is that just by that demo reel, I can tell you that guy's going to be working at InfoWars. | ||
| I would look at that guy and be like, you got the goods. | ||
| For InfoWars, you do. | ||
| To be terrible. | ||
| I would look at that guy and I'd be like, you know what? | ||
| In six years, you're going to get sued. | ||
| Gotta have him. | ||
| Alright, so the deposition begins off a bit talking about friendship. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| Because what is the most important thing in the world? | ||
| Friendship. | ||
| You bet. | ||
| How's your relationship with Mr. Jones? | ||
| I would say good. | ||
| I mean, there's elements of friendship, and then there's elements of boss and employee, but... | ||
| He's my dad. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Would you consider him your best friend? | ||
| No. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| Does he consider you his best friend? | ||
| I doubt it. | ||
| That's so weird. | ||
| It's a weird line of questioning. | ||
| What a weird question, Bill! | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| What a weird question, man! | ||
| Yeah, it's a little bizarre. | ||
| I do like that almost idea of... | ||
| Because what is someone going to say? | ||
| Is he going to say... | ||
| Yeah, Alex probably thinks I'm his best friend. | ||
| And I don't think Alex is my best friend. | ||
| It introduces the question of, does he? | ||
| Why am I being asked for this? | ||
| What's going on right now? | ||
| And so when Rob Dew comes up, this question is asked again. | ||
| Other than Alex Jones, do you have a direct boss? | ||
| I would say if there was one, it would be Rob Dew, but not really. | ||
| Do you and Mr. Do have a personal relationship as well as a professional relationship like Mr. Jones? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Are y 'all best friends? | ||
| No. | ||
| You've got to be confused. | ||
| I think that's what he's doing. | ||
| That's my theory on Bill. | ||
| What? | ||
| I think Bill is deliberately just throwing this shit around. | ||
| Probably. | ||
| Yeah, just to like fuck with Owen's head. | ||
| I would assume so. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I would assume so. | ||
| Who is your best friend? | ||
| Guy from St. Louis. | ||
| Guy named Dan Marshall. | ||
| Doesn't that kind of make you think that's the next question? | ||
| Like, who's your best friend? | ||
| I did expect something. | ||
| To come of it? | ||
| But it does not. | ||
| Nothing pays off. | ||
| So that leads to the conclusion of he's fucking with him. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And I think that's pretty fun. | ||
| So the issue with Owen is he was hosting for Alex on a Sunday show, and someone just gave him an article that he used to allege that Neil Heslin could not have held his son after the shooting. | ||
| Right. | ||
| That's the reason he's in trouble. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| He shouldn't have done that. | ||
| And unfortunately, it turns out Owen doesn't remember who gave him the article. | ||
| That's not good. | ||
| How did you learn about that article? | ||
| It was presented to me that day as I was on air. | ||
| By who? | ||
| I do not recall. | ||
| So you got it after 4 o 'clock? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| And when it was presented to you, did they just hand you a copy of the article? | ||
| Pretty much. | ||
| I mean, my best recollection, and this is, you know, just trying to dig into my memory, is I'm in the studio. | ||
| Someone comes in and says, hey, here's a story. | ||
| We also have the video clips for it. | ||
| And then we're live, and I mention the story and show the video clips. | ||
| Okay, so who handed it to you? | ||
| I do not recall. | ||
| That's not good. | ||
| Nope. | ||
| Because at the core of this, you have bad information that was given to you, and now you're on the hook for it because you reported it. | ||
| And, you know, it could conceivably help thin out the blame if you knew who was responsible for giving you this information. | ||
| And this becomes a compounded problem because he's asked, who could have given it to you? | ||
| And it's basically like, just anyone. | ||
| Sunday show, you're filming it. | ||
| I'm assuming Mr. Jones is not present in the studio. | ||
| That's my understanding, yeah. | ||
| If I'm filling in, most likely, yeah. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| And who has the authority, if he's not there, to find a story, cut a number of clips into a small segment, and hand it to you and give you the authority to go with it live? | ||
| I would say anybody has that authority. | ||
| There's not really an authority figure that has to decide that. | ||
| Anybody can bring me a story at any given time. | ||
| There's not going to be somebody that tries to stop me from reading it or try to stop somebody from bringing me a story. | ||
| There should be quality control. | ||
| There should be a certain amount of, like, that's not the proper channel. | ||
| You shouldn't be able to have, like, the boom mic operator give a story directly to the host and then they report it, you know? | ||
| The boom mic operator maybe should talk to the news director or something who's able to vet and, like, be like, oh, yeah, here, I'll pass this along. | ||
| Not in the moment giving them... | ||
| Obviously, a nice open-door policy is nice. | ||
| The input of people... | ||
| Everyone should be allowed to speak their mind. | ||
| But there needs to be quality control on some level. | ||
| I mean, I would say that if I were in a deposition... | ||
| Of this kind of magnitude, my first instinct would be avoid saying something along the lines of, really, when you get down to it, everybody's involved equally. | ||
| Well, but here's the problem with answering any other way than what he said. | ||
| If you say, well, there are X, Y, and Z people, then you narrow down who it could be, and then the questioning continues down that road. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You got it. | |
| And you're like, well, why wasn't it this person? | ||
| Do you know it wasn't Adan Salazar? | ||
| Do you know it wasn't Nico? | ||
| Or whatever. | ||
| And, you know, that leads to more trouble. | ||
| It's better to just be like, fucking anybody could have done it. | ||
| Anybody could have done it. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| No. | ||
| Could have been a... | ||
| Actually, you know what? | ||
| I think it was a complete stranger who just broke into our office. | ||
| Could be. | ||
| Handed me this story. | ||
| I read it out loud because that's how this job works. | ||
| Could have been Antifa. | ||
| It was definitely Antifa! | ||
| Shit! | ||
| We know from covering past depositions that Alex has said to have told people to not cover Sandy Hook after a certain point. | ||
| Right. | ||
| So the question is asked of Owen, has Alex ever told you not to cover anything? | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's a good question. | |
| And it turns out, no. | ||
| Has he ever told you not to cover a certain story? | ||
| Not that I recall. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| So if you wanted right now to go in studio when you leave here and do a whole segment about how you think Sandy Hook is a hoax, you could do that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Objection form. | |
| I could, and my guess is I would get quite a tongue lashing afterwards. | ||
| Okay. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But he wouldn't stop you. | |
| The mic is on, the camera is on. | ||
| I think this is a terrible workflow. | ||
| I am amazed that they can function. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, really? | ||
| It is a testament. | ||
| Not to their skills at anything that they are supposed to be doing. | ||
| And is Owen not, does he not recognize that they have a delay? | ||
| No. | ||
| Because they, I guess they may not for the internet, but for the radio stations, they can bleep cuss words. | ||
| They do that periodically. | ||
| So, like, I don't know. | ||
| Like, there has to be some kind of a delay that's possible. | ||
| If he starts going off about how Sandy Hook is fake, they could just hit a button. | ||
| Yeah, you've got a fucking earpiece. | ||
| They hit a button, they stop you, and then something goes away. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I think it's a terrible organization to speak. | ||
| Anybody can give me whatever information they want, and I'll just say it. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And then also, you can't stop me without tackling me or cutting the feeds. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| Right. | ||
| This is a recipe for... | ||
| It's not good. | ||
| ...for defamation situations. | ||
| It does... | ||
| It does seem like as they are describing how their business works, it is a business entirely geared towards eventually being sued for defamation. | ||
| Yep, it's sloppy. | ||
| In our last episode we talked about the kit, it revealed so much about the editorial interworking, so how these articles are written and how they're used. | ||
| Here you see in the live show and how fucked that is in terms of the structure. | ||
| This is ridiculous. | ||
| And it turns out it's not that common. | ||
| That Owen just reads whatever someone hands him. | ||
| What happened here is not a normal occurrence. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Objection form. | |
| I mean, I would say yes and no. | ||
| It's a normal occurrence in that it's a news story. | ||
| We're a live news organization. | ||
| There's constantly news coming in and out of my desk. | ||
| But I would also say no. | ||
| It's not like every day or every segment someone says, hey. | ||
| Here's this new story. | ||
| It's breaking right now. | ||
| Right, but what I'm saying is not common is the fact that you're live on air and somebody hands you a document and says, we're running with this, we've got clips ready to go. | ||
| That's not a common occurrence. | ||
| Usually it's something that is fact-checked. | ||
| You see the different video clips that you're going to be talking through and you're prepared for it. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, in this instance, it's really just kind of a momentum thing, you know, because let's say there's a developing story. | ||
| Don't offer an example. | ||
| You know, like just the other day we had somebody run somebody over with a vehicle, right? | ||
| So if there's an ongoing story, you know, somebody will be bringing me stuff as I'm on air just updates to the story. | ||
| In this case, the reason why there was momentum to this is because Megyn Kelly was just in town. | ||
| She was in the news. | ||
| So there was already all this momentum about Megyn Kelly. | ||
| We saw that she was in the Zero Hedge article, and that's why they brought it to me. | ||
| Was any of it retaliatory for Ms. Kelly's portrayal of Mr. Jones and her interview with him the week before, a couple weeks before? | ||
| I can't even recall the dates, if that aired before or after this segment in question here. | ||
| So I wouldn't say retaliatory. | ||
| I would just say it was relevant. | ||
| This is weird. | ||
| That's a weird perspective. | ||
| Not knowing when things happened. | ||
| Because there's just a concrete reality. | ||
| As is brought up in this next clip, it's like his video was responding to Megyn Kelly's video about Alex. | ||
| How did you do that prior to her? | ||
| Right. | ||
| I understand that we can all see through the veil of illusion and everyone's a psychic, but this is just not possible. | ||
| Have you watched the video in question? | ||
| Which video? | ||
| The five-minute video where you're on air talking about Neil Heslin's son. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| When was the last time you watched it? | ||
| During my latest deposition in the Connecticut case. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| And in that video, surely you realize that, I don't know, 75% of it is the Megyn Kelly interview that happened before you went on air. | ||
| You're talking about the Megyn Kelly interview. | ||
| Yeah, I believe she was interviewing Mr. Heslin. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And so I cleared it up because you said, I don't remember if the Megyn Kelly interview came out before or after. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Well, I guess what I should have said is, I'm not aware if it was the same Megyn Kelly show. | ||
| I gotcha. | ||
| That's a bad dodge. | ||
| Alright, I guess what I should have said is that, and this is something that not a lot of people know, space and time are one thing, and if you put enough energy into the sinkhole of space-time, then it's possible to pierce through, create a wormhole, and go back in time, or really forward in time. | ||
| The wormhole could go anywhere. | ||
| The point I'm saying is that I got there four days ago. | ||
| Does that work? | ||
| So, whirlholes aside, I think that Owen has a pretty bad explanation for what he was trying to say in this video, but I think he thinks it sounds good. | ||
| I think he thinks this is very exculpatory, and it's nonsense. | ||
| Do you remember what you said in the video? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Did you use the word possible? | ||
| I believe so. | ||
| I don't remember the exact quote. | ||
| Do you remember what you were talking about? | ||
| No. | ||
| You were talking about a dead six-year-old. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| And you said it was impossible for that six-year-old's father to have held his son with a bullet hole in his head based on what you had read and received. | ||
| My conclusion was not that that was impossible. | ||
| My conclusion was that the series of events that I highlight in the videos would indicate that there is... | ||
| An inconsistency there. | ||
| And I was more questioning Megyn Kelly in the instance. | ||
| And if you look at the exact quote, I'm not asserting that Mr. Heslin lied at all. | ||
| What I'm asserting is that Megyn Kelly never did a fact check and that it was basically impossible. | ||
| Or that it was, I should say, what I should say is, and again, this is asserted in the quote, that because of the inconsistencies shown in this story, It's going to add to the conspiracy theories about Sandy Hook, which are a bad thing. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| So my entire notion was that this is not good for conspiracy theories out there. | ||
| They're going to take this and they're going to run with it. | ||
| Will Megyn Kelly fact check it? | ||
| I understand you were saying you were asking questions, right? | ||
| And at the end of it, I think you say, you know, that people want answers to these questions. | ||
| You remember that? | ||
| Yeah, and again, I'm saying that this story is only going to add. | ||
| To the conspiracy theorists out there about Sandy Hook and that that's a bad thing. | ||
| And you're saying that because those conspiracy theorists are the ones asking the questions, right? | ||
| I'm not sure exactly what you mean. | ||
| You said conspiracy theorists have a lot of questions and we want answers, right? | ||
| Yeah, I would say people have questions and this story here is not going to stop people from asking the questions. | ||
| People like you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Ooh. | |
| So, this excuse is obvious bullshit, but there's a couple of remarkable things that are on full display here. | ||
| The first is that Owen is so clearly grasping at straws to explain his video, which is a very strong indication that he knows that the content he was involved in putting out was horrible and indefensible. | ||
| In order to make it defensible, you have to pretend it was something else entirely. | ||
| The second thing is at the beginning, Owen tries to evade the question by saying he didn't remember his exact quote, but then when he's trying to build a rational Yeah. | ||
| He was saying that Mr. Heslin's claim made on Megyn Kelly's show was impossible if the video Owen played of the Newtown coroner was accurate. | ||
| Owen is claiming that his point was that this is an inconsistency that Megyn Kelly didn't fact check for her piece, and because of that, it'll feed into conspiracies, which Owen is pretending is a bad thing as opposed to the only reason anyone would pay him $100,000 a year. | ||
| This is obvious nonsense, and we'll get into why over the course of a few clips. | ||
| No, I think Bill is gonna buy it. | ||
| I think he's just going to accept that that is a well-crafted, definitely not completely improvised bullshit on the fly. | ||
| So Bill throws out a quote from Owen, since we've got to use the words, right? | ||
| We've got to use the exact words. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm going to read you a direct quote real quick. | |
| He's claiming, he is Mr. Heslin, the grieving father. | ||
| He's claiming that he held his son and saw the bullet hole in his head. | ||
| That is his claim. | ||
| Now, according to a timeline of events and coroner's testimony, that is not possible. | ||
| So, surely you can agree with me that a reasonable person would hear you say that and think that you are basing the possibility conclusion on the evidence that you are looking at. | ||
| Right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Objection four. | |
| I'm not sure I understand the question exactly, but... | ||
| That, I believe. | ||
| What I'm saying is, according to the coroner, the coroner said that they didn't release the children to the parents. | ||
| Well, I'm going to ask you this. | ||
| And you're basing that off of the clips that you played during this segment, right? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| So here is the fundamental piece of this why Owen's argument doesn't work. | ||
| And it doesn't stand up to any kind of scrutiny. | ||
| But Owen has to hold on to this for dear life. | ||
| Oh yeah. | ||
| Because otherwise he has nothing. | ||
| He's fucked. | ||
| And that is that the coroner's video is accurate. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| It's funny. | ||
| I think I heard Mark whisper. | ||
| He didn't say that. | ||
| Possibly. | ||
| Much like you heard in the last one. | ||
| So Bill tries to explain to Owen the nature of what happened with this coroner's video, and it doesn't stick. | ||
| In your affidavit, you claim Miss Kelly edited videos to slant Mr. Jones. | ||
| You remember that? | ||
| No, I don't. | ||
| Do you think she did that? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Do you think it's right for a journalist to edit clips for an agenda? | ||
| No. | ||
| Do you think it's good journalistic practice for a journalist to take edited videos, not ask any questions, and run with them without fact-checking them first? | ||
| Probably not. | ||
| Have you listened to the coroner, Mr. Carver, Dr. Carver? | ||
| Have you listened to his whole interview? | ||
| Because I'll represent to you the segment that you played cuts off immediately after he says he didn't release the children. | ||
| But I want to tell you that it keeps going and he says a lot more. | ||
| Did you know that? | ||
| No. | ||
| It's kind of an important fact, right? | ||
| Yes, I was unaware of that. | ||
| Especially if you're about to say what you said about a father who's still trying to get over the fact that he had to bury a child. | ||
| And that's awful, and I understand. | ||
| And that's why I said it's impossible for Mr. Heslund to have a false memory of his dying kid because of how serious that would be. | ||
| That's the point I'm making, is that he wouldn't have that false memory. | ||
| So, according to the coroner, either the coroner is lying, or Megyn Kelly is just not going to fact check it. | ||
| Or, Mr. Schroyer didn't watch the whole coroner's interview and hear the coroner say that he didn't release them at first. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And later released the bodies. | |
| Maybe that's the third option, right? | ||
| Well, sure, that can be true. | ||
| It can't be true. | ||
| It is true, Mr. Schroyer. | ||
| You understand that, right? | ||
| Objection form. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| He can say okay that he understands this, but he can't actually internalize this and operate under that piece of information because then it casts his entire broadcast in a completely different light if he allows that awareness to exist. | ||
| And so this notion that the coroner actually made a statement that they didn't release the bodies is something worth believing and that Megyn Kelly has an obligation to address. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yep. | |
| It's insanity, so frankly. | ||
| Have you ever considered that everything is everybody else's fault and I am a blameless person trying to do my best to save the world? | ||
| Well, if I believe in something completely nonsensical and based on bullshit, everyone else has an obligation to, in any circumstance... | ||
| Disprove that, or else they are lying. | ||
| They are engaging in inconsistencies and a cover-up. | ||
| What I would like the entirety of the human race to know is that it is your job to accommodate my whims at all times. | ||
| Yeah, definitely. | ||
| Definitely. | ||
| Makes sense. | ||
| That's the idea. | ||
| So, obviously, there is an internal problem with... | ||
| Responsibility at Infowars. | ||
| People aren't really given appropriate feedback. | ||
| People aren't scolded when they do something awful. | ||
| And so the question comes up. | ||
| Anyone ever tell you you fucked up? | ||
| Anyone ever at Infowars ever tell you that you were wrong? | ||
| I don't want to hear the answer to this. | ||
| Have you spoken with Mr. Jones or Mr. Do about this litigation at all? | ||
| Not too much, no. | ||
| Has no one? | ||
| On the dozens of people and lawyers, no one has come to you and told you that what you said was dead wrong. | ||
| And that you messed up and used a clip that was highly edited for an agenda. | ||
| No, and I didn't edit the clip. | ||
| I did not previously view the clip. | ||
| It was presented to me. | ||
| And you just went with it. | ||
| Yes, I just played it. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| No one ever told him, hey, that's bad work. | ||
| You screwed up. | ||
| I don't even know how to handle this. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Everything that we learn about how InfoWars actually functions makes me believe that there's no possible way it can function. | ||
| Yeah, and it really leads you to think that, like, they have been so lucky that someone didn't, like, really fuck with them. | ||
| Like, someone get a job there and just cause chaos. | ||
| Totally! | ||
| Because it seems like there's no safeguards. | ||
| It could have been easily done. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| There is no accountability. | ||
| Anyone can just feed stories to people. | ||
| It's bananas. | ||
| It seems like the odds of them not falling victim to some internal kind of complete sabotage is outrageous. | ||
| This is nuts. | ||
| I think it's one of those things where it is one of those things where everybody just assumes because it would be ridiculous for it to be possible. | ||
| That this place functions. | ||
| So everybody just assumes, like, well, there's got to be some sort of control. | ||
| There's got to be somebody in charge. | ||
| There's got to be somebody doing something, right? | ||
| And the answer is no. | ||
| No. | ||
| Just no. | ||
| It doesn't seem like it. | ||
| Maybe from, like, a business and, like, fulfillment. | ||
| Like, the warehouse. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I bet the warehouse is fucking run like a goddamn tight-knit factory. | |
| I bet there's accountability there. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| Yeah, but in terms of the information, no, it's kind of sloppy. | ||
| Tip of the spear. | ||
| So, Jordan, let me ask you a question. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| How many times have you been arrested? | ||
| None. | ||
| Okay, well that's lower than Owen. | ||
| You ever been arrested? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| How many times? | ||
| I'm not sure of the exact number. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Wrong answer. | ||
| You have been arrested, you've just lost count of how many times. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| Is it common for you to get arrested? | ||
| Not common, but probably too much. | ||
| More than I'd like to admit. | ||
| That's just kind of a fun clip. | ||
| It turns out it's not really that scandalous or anything. | ||
| He's got like a DUI and then, you know, tried to... | ||
| Stop the impeachment trial. | ||
| Well, that'll happen. | ||
| And then he tried to overthrow the government. | ||
| Okay, well there's that one too. | ||
| So there's those. | ||
| There are a few of them. | ||
| But it's not like he had like a giant rap sheet from the St. Louis days or whatever. | ||
| I mean, when you say, I can't really remember how many times I've been arrested. | ||
| It leads you to believe it's more than like three or four. | ||
| You would think. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's not really. | ||
| Arresting is usually a pretty serious traumatic event. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| So at this point we get to the affidavit that Owen filed. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Which he should not have done. | ||
| Well, you have to. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And the beginning of it is a little bit funny. | ||
| Let's go back to exhibit one, the affidavit. | ||
| We'll go down to paragraph two, right? | ||
| It says, I have been a frequent critic of the government for using tragedies such as Sandy Hook to manipulate public opinion in order to, among other things, Further restrict gun rights in this country. | ||
| I read that correctly? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| What do you mean by manipulate public opinion? | ||
| I mean, use just outright lies to deceive the public. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| And so this sentence, you're not saying the government used Sandy Hook to use outright lies to deceive the public. | ||
| You're saying... | ||
| That you are a frequent critic of the government for using tragedies to outright lie. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Like what? | ||
| Gulf of Tonkin. | ||
| Oh, my God. | ||
| Getting us into the Vietnam War. | ||
| Lying about babies being thrown out of incubators to get us into the Middle East. | ||
| Let's back up real quick. | ||
| You're a frequent critic of the government for things that happened somewhere between 35 and 70 years ago? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| When does that come up in conversation? | ||
| What do you mean exactly? | ||
| What causes you to be a frequent critic for things like the Gulf of Tonkin and why we got into the Vietnam War? | ||
| I mean, I believe it's in an issue that's never been properly addressed. | ||
| Is that... | ||
| Is that the case? | ||
| Oh, boy. | ||
| You know, that whole Gulf of Tonkin thing, I don't think anybody ever really dealt with it. | ||
| Yeah, we haven't emotionally dealt with that yet. | ||
| Yeah, the fallout from that is still... | ||
| I wake up in the middle of the night sometimes and he's like, oh, Gulf of Tonkin! | ||
| Meanwhile, Owen would be like, never talk about slavery ever. | ||
| Ever. | ||
| We've dealt with it. | ||
| It's over! | ||
| But the Gulf of Tonkin, we must relitigate a million times over. | ||
| That's amazing. | ||
| I love that this is the phrasing that Owen thought was going to be really perfect, and it's just so farcical when repeated back to him. | ||
| How are you a frequent critic of the Gulf of Tonkin? | ||
| It is such that they don't... | ||
| Here's what it is. | ||
| Here's what is so clear about it, is that Alex has fucked with these people's brains, or they never had it, to the point where... | ||
| Words can be just fun. | ||
| Adjectives don't need to have meaning. | ||
| They're just there. | ||
| They're just like music notes. | ||
| What he's saying is that we don't say words that have any meaning whatsoever. | ||
| Put together sounds that make a functioning noise sphere that makes people afraid, and so they buy our shit. | ||
| That's true from an external perspective, but from an internal perspective, like within the company, everything is just fine. | ||
| Whatever explanation you have for something, if it's expedient, if it works, it's fine. | ||
| There is no knife sharpening knife here. | ||
| It's goo that does not sharpen goo. | ||
| I know, but it's like, I've never... | ||
| I've never had such a clear moment of like, oh, you don't mean... | ||
| You don't use words. | ||
| You don't understand words. | ||
| Like, you can't say, I have been a frequent critic, unless you are saying that... | ||
| I mean, in a legal setting, you have to explain that. | ||
| But it seems like an impression of what someone would say. | ||
| Exactly! | ||
| In the same way that his demo tape is an impression of Alex. | ||
| Exactly! | ||
| It is such that, like, this is what I'm approximating what a normal person would say here, right? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Amazing. | ||
| So the question then is refined to, alright, what are these instances where the government used these tragedies to restrict gun rights? | ||
| Right. | ||
| And shock of all shocks, Owen has a tough time coming up with anything. | ||
| What did the government do in Sandy Hook to further restrict gun rights? | ||
| I don't have an answer for that. | ||
| You swore to God in your affidavit that you're a frequent critic of the government using them to further gun rights, restrictions of gun rights. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Injection form. | |
| And swear to God. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What the fuck do you think that, what? | |
| So help me God. | ||
| I apologize. | ||
| You swore under oath that this was true, and you said that you used things like Sandy Hook, which is what I'm asking about, to further restrict gun rights in this country. | ||
| What did the government do in Sandy Hook to further restrict gun rights in this country? | ||
| Well, you're asking me to go back and provide an opinion or commentary on something that I didn't provide opinion or commentary on at the time. | ||
| I was not in full wars when Sandy Hook happened. | ||
| I did no commentary on it when it happened. | ||
| It was not even a relevant news story to me. | ||
| But what I recall is, and this seems to be the case most of the time, is whenever there's a gun tragedy, maybe less now than other times, there's politicians that go on TV and say, we need new gun laws, we need new gun restrictions. | ||
| And that seems to be a pattern of behavior. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| But, Mike, And I understand that you weren't there for the initial Sandy Hook coverage, but you swore under oath that this was your words, and you said that the government uses things like Sandy Hook to manipulate public opinion to further restrict gun rights. | ||
| I'm just asking you how. | ||
| They take a tragedy, like kids getting shot in a school, and they say because of that event, we're going to further infringe on your Second Amendment right. | ||
| For an event that you had nothing to do with. | ||
| When did they do that in Sandy Hook? | ||
| When did they do what? | ||
| Who said, you know, Sandy Hook happened and we're going to restrict your second amendment. | ||
| Who said that? | ||
| Give me an example. | ||
| I couldn't give you an example. | ||
| Oh, it seems like a problem. | ||
| Oh, that's an issue. | ||
| It seems like something you should be able to point out. | ||
| But again, it's like Kit. | ||
| What stories have you gotten right? | ||
| Too many to name. | ||
| There's too many politicians who have restricted gun rights. | ||
| I do like Bill's... | ||
| Bill's very clearly got this very obvious point that Owen has no idea is coming towards him. | ||
| He's very clearly dismantling the idea that the politicians are doing what it is you're saying they're doing. | ||
| And eventually he's going to just simply give him his own words. | ||
| That will reveal that he is, in fact, the person who is doing those things. | ||
| And he has no concept of this. | ||
| In a manner, yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| He just doesn't get it. | ||
| I don't think that... | ||
| For people who are paranoid about everything, I don't know if these people who are going in for the deposition are worried enough about where they're being led. | ||
| I mean, it is... | ||
| And the lawyer... | ||
| Here's one thing I want to focus on. | ||
| Why did the lawyer say... | ||
| Objection. | ||
| He didn't swear to God. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I'm not sure. | ||
| I want to know more about that. | ||
| One, because it seems like that would be very important to Owen. | ||
| They are always talking about Christianity. | ||
| But maybe that was why the objection was there. | ||
| You're stressing that too much. | ||
| That's what I'm saying. | ||
| Yeah, you're making this sound like a religious thing as opposed to just the formality of legalese. | ||
| Right, but it is a religious thing for him. | ||
| Maybe. | ||
| Maybe that's how Owen understands it. | ||
| Maybe it's not. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| So, the question comes up. | ||
| Do you think you're informed about Sandy Hook? | ||
| Do you think that that is something you know about? | ||
| Answers obviously no. | ||
| What would you say at this point, after your involvement in this case for three years, and your affidavit, multiple affidavits, as well as your couple episodes? | ||
| On Infowars about Sandy Hook. | ||
| Would you say you're informed about Sandy Hook? | ||
| No, I barely talked about Sandy Hook ever. | ||
| I didn't ask you if you talked about it. | ||
| I asked if you were informed about it. | ||
| That's kind of a vague question. | ||
| I agree. | ||
| And I ask you this because a number of times I've watched some of your YouTube videos. | ||
| Are you walking around at rallies and asking people to name accusers of Donald Trump? | ||
| And you start naming them because you say, yeah, because I'm informed I can name names. | ||
| So I'm just asking you to name names. | ||
| Name names of what? | ||
| Of any government official you claim used Sandy Hook to further restrict gun rights. | ||
| I'd have to go back in time to answer that question. | ||
| Okay, so right now, sitting here today, you are an uninformed citizen on Sandy Hook. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Objection form. | |
| Correct. | ||
| I would say that if you could... | ||
| I catalog my entire career in media. | ||
| Sandy Hook makes up for less than 000.1% of my commentary. | ||
| In any way, was that responsive to my question? | ||
| I think it is very responsive to your question. | ||
| What was my question, Mr. Schroyer? | ||
| You asked if I would be informed on Sandy Hook. | ||
| Yeah, you said, oh, it was only 1% of everything that I do. | ||
| Sandy Hook is not my bread and butter. | ||
| I don't know much about Sandy Hook. | ||
| So you're uninformed. | ||
| It's okay to say. | ||
| I'm not trying to trick you. | ||
| Just trying to see whether or not you think you're informed or not, so I know whether or not I need to ask you any more questions on that topic. | ||
| Are you informed about Sandy Hook? | ||
| Again, it's a vague question. | ||
| Yes and no. | ||
| I'm aware of Sandy Hook, but have I done deep research and am I very knowledgeable in the situation? | ||
| No. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| Do you know Mr. Heslin's son's name? | ||
| No. | ||
| This is such a simple question in line of questioning, and Owen would lose nothing by just saying that he's not informed about the case, but there's a weird dynamic with Infowars where attitude is just as important or more important than content, and someone like Owen has been trained to resist ever showing his ass. | ||
| He made his name by going into hostile territory and arguing with people. | ||
| He was calling them cucks. | ||
| So even though he's in a completely different setting here, that mode is still a part of how he interacts. | ||
| I suspect that Owen's afraid to come out and say that he's not informed about Sandy Hook because he's worried that the next question will be, why aren't you informed about Sandy Hook? | ||
| And he doesn't have a really good answer for that. | ||
| If you're him, why wouldn't you learn a little bit about the case? | ||
| He's been in a lawsuit for a while, and beyond that, Sandy Hook is a big deal in online conspiracy communities that make up a large part of his audience. | ||
| So it seems like he'd be curious, at least. | ||
| To admit to being uninformed about Sandy Hook reveals a lack of curiosity, and a lack of interest in knowing things, which has countered how Infowars hosts are supposed to position themselves in terms of branding. | ||
| It also opens up a line of questions that aren't going to come up in this deposition, but Owen is still probably worried about answering, namely whether or not he's informed on many of the other topics he covers. | ||
| Like, for instance, is he informed on the Gulf of Tonkin incident? | ||
| Could Owen coherently explain what happened there, beyond just the catchphrase version of, like, the government lied to get us into the Vietnam War? | ||
| I would suspect not, and one of the really important aspects of Infowars kayfabe is the image that the people working there know a lot about the things that they talk about. | ||
| Also, not knowing a child's name is actively disrespectful on Owen's part. | ||
| If he were truly someone who made an honest mistake and covered a story wrong and ended up hurting this grieving father... | ||
| You would think that Owen would have familiarized himself a little bit with the circumstances, if only to be able to fully apologize for the pain he caused, and that's clearly not something that he's felt inclined to do. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, what's he gonna say? | ||
| I've been advised by Infowars lawyers to know as little about this case as possible, thus making my answers to you perhaps less damaging to the company, although now that I have said that out loud, I'm starting to think that it's the wrong way to go. | ||
| It looks like shit. | ||
| So his refuge and the thing that he thinks is going to save him is this notion that he was... | ||
| Questioning Megyn Kelly. | ||
| He wasn't questioning Neil Heslin's story. | ||
| He was just mad that there were inconsistencies in Megyn Kelly's story. | ||
| Right. | ||
| One thing that I do both appreciate and don't appreciate, because it moves us on our stupid v. | ||
| evil continuum more towards the evil side, is that it does appear that Owen has a kind of plan here. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| He has got, like, if I stick to the plan... | ||
| Then I'll be able to keep on going. | ||
| If I insist that this was just about Megyn Kelly... | ||
| I just gotta weather through this, and if he, let's say, asks me a bunch of questions that I'm not sure about, don't know the answers to, I should definitely not volunteer information like Ken Daniels did. | ||
| Yeah, you can tell a pretty obvious difference between the two of them. | ||
| Oh yeah. | ||
| So we get back to this just questioning Megyn Kelly. | ||
| I never had any intention to... | ||
| Go after Mr. Heslin. | ||
| I never accused Mr. Heslin of lying. | ||
| I never meant to do anything negative to Mr. Heslin. | ||
| Instead, you took an interview that he did with Megyn Kelly and said, based on the coroner's report and based on this, because Megyn Kelly didn't say he held his son. | ||
| Neil Heslin did. | ||
| So when you said it was impossible, you were calling him a liar, right? | ||
| No. | ||
| You were questioning Megyn Kelly? | ||
| I was questioning the coroner. | ||
| And I was wondering why Megyn Kelly didn't fact check that. | ||
| More as, again, just because Megyn Kelly was in the studio, she was in the news, and it was just something that was relevant. | ||
| And she's a journalist, so that should be fact checked, right? | ||
| Yeah, I mean, if she wanted to fact check that and put the conspiracy theories to rest, she could have done it right there, and she didn't. | ||
| But if she didn't have a highly edited clip like you that made it look like the coroner said that the parents never saw their kids... | ||
| Why on earth would she prove that Neil Heslin held his son? | ||
| Mr. Heslin was going to say, I held my son and I saw the gun wound, and Megyn Kelly's follow-up to that was like, yeah, because the coroner told us that he didn't give them to the kids at first, but then later did. | ||
| That's, I mean, how's this playing in your head right now? | ||
| You're kind of confusing me. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, I have no idea what Megyn Kelly had access to as far as if she'd ever seen the coroner saying that or not. | ||
| I have no idea. | ||
| This is a great encapsulation of what an impossible task it is to question propagandists. | ||
| Owen's claim is that there's a contradiction that Megyn Kelly wasn't addressing that only makes sense if and only if you believe that the deceptively edited clip of the coroner is the coroner's complete statement. | ||
| If you don't believe that, or if you've seen the full video, then this isn't something that needs clearing up. | ||
| Mr. Heslin said what he said. | ||
| there's no contradiction at all. | ||
| There's only contradiction if you think that bullshit video is the full truth, which by extension means that you believe that there is a contradiction, then you're revealing that you either know the truth and are a liar, or you don't know the truth, and you're just repeating horrible and defamatory claims without ever considering that you should check and see if they're true. | ||
| Meanwhile, accusing Megyn Kelly if not fact checking Of course. | ||
| While you clearly have not fact checked any of this shit. | ||
| I think You know, like, noun, verb, direct object. | ||
| Like, I really don't think they understand how words work. | ||
| You're really into grammar today. | ||
| I'm really struggling because they keep asking questions where it's like, if you understood how a sentence worked, then you would just say, yeah! | ||
| So in reality, the fact that Megyn Kelly didn't bring this up is a testament to her doing a better job checking facts than Owen. | ||
| She didn't fall for that internet bullshit, and she's under no obligation to dispel every potentially inaccurate thing some asshole like Owen might think represents a contradiction in a grieving father's story. | ||
| But Owen doesn't feel an obligation to pass along true information. | ||
| For him, the video of the coroner was true in the sense that it existed, and who cares if the full clip says the opposite of the edited version that he plays on air. | ||
| Truth is a fully subjective thing to him, and as long as he can claim that he didn't know the version he presented as truth was a lie, then he doesn't feel the need to be ashamed of himself, nor does he feel the need to learn a lesson from this and try to do better the next time, like Kit expressed feeling. | ||
| Right. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's just because truth and falsity don't matter. | |
| The ultimate aim is what appeals to the audience That is what dictates truth and reality to someone like Owen. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yep. | |
| And then you have to do shit like this in order to rationalize it in case you're ever called on it in a deposition. | ||
| I mean, my job is to lie about shit quick. | ||
| Right? | ||
| Isn't that what you want to say? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| I mean, Kit said that a little more articulately. | ||
| My job is to lie about shit fast. | ||
| It's gotta be fast. | ||
| It's gotta be fast. | ||
| It's gotta be like Little Caesars. | ||
| It's gotta be hot and ready. | ||
| It's gotta be hot and ready. | ||
| So he's just questioning Megyn Kelly, though. | ||
| That's the thing that's important. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Except for when Bill reads a direct quote from the video that really makes it seem like he's questioning Mr. Hassel. | ||
| Ooh, that's not good. | ||
| During the segment, This is a transcript of it, of the video. | ||
| Direct quote here, Will. | ||
| Will there be clarification from Hesslin or Megyn Kelly? | ||
| I wouldn't hold my breath. | ||
| So when you say you weren't questioning Mr. Hesslin, that is very confusing now. | ||
| So can you clarify it? | ||
| Sure. | ||
| They never responded to the coroners. | ||
| Claims that I played in the video, so that's what I was saying. | ||
| So because they don't watch your show that you were filling in for on a Sunday for Alex Jones, because they didn't see it, hear your question and respond, that's what you said? | ||
| I'm not understanding what the question is. | ||
| I'm not either. | ||
| So here, you can see again, Owen's argument completely falls apart if he accepts that the claims he's ascribing to the coroner were not made by the coroner at all. | ||
| Owen fell for a deceptively edited video and then believed that the coroner had made claims that he didn't make. | ||
| And now he's justifying his coverage of the case based on how suspicious it seems that Megyn Kelly and Mr. Heslin didn't address these claims that the coroner in reality didn't make. | ||
| Right. | ||
| That's why this exchange is bordering on incoherence, because Owen is still clinging to this pretense that there were actual legitimate claims that Kelly and Heslin were dodging, and he was just trying to make sure all these contradictions were ironed out. | ||
| That's his foothold on his actions making any sense outside the reality that he was, in fact, very clearly trying to imply that Mr. Heslin could not have held his son. | ||
| Yeah, very much so. | ||
| I mean, it doesn't get more straightforward than literally the quote that was read to you. | ||
| Right, and I think, I mean, honestly, I don't know exactly how things work in the legal world. | ||
| Right. | ||
| But I think that this argument that he's making... | ||
| Makes it so much clearer that he had nefarious intent. | ||
| Yeah, it's a terrible... | ||
| Like, if this is the best you got, this is shit. | ||
| Yeah, no, that's shameful. | ||
| It's pretty frustrating. | ||
| And the level of belligerence that he's trying to stick to it, it's very frustrating. | ||
| And that does not relent. | ||
| No. | ||
| Unfortunately. | ||
| Goddammit. | ||
| So, in this next clip, it ends up weaving into a little bit of a question about free speech. | ||
| Oh, boy. | ||
| And this is troubling. | ||
| It's not my job to clarify Megyn Kelly's reporting. | ||
| Why would... | ||
| Right. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| It's a great statement for you. | ||
| Is it your job to repost a repost from an anonymous writer to question Megyn Kelly? | ||
| I think that's just free speech. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| You know what isn't free speech? | ||
| Actually, let's back up. | ||
| You said free speech. | ||
| What does that mean? | ||
| Oh, no. | ||
| Oh, no. | ||
| This definition is going to be a struggle to get through. | ||
| You said free speech. | ||
| What does that mean? | ||
| You're a nut! | ||
| You're crazy in the coconut! | ||
| The right to address grievances to government. | ||
| The right to speak, you know, without inherent consequence. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| And that's across the board. | ||
| I mean, I think that, you know, any legal expert would agree that free speech, you know, is not universal. | ||
| Correct. | ||
| Like defamation. | ||
| Did you know that? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| So when you say, this is my First Amendment right, you know that the First Amendment protects you from the government from free speech, right? | ||
| Not other citizens. | ||
| You know that, right? | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Did you know that until I just said it? | ||
| I probably wouldn't have phrased it like that, but it makes sense. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| It's shocking, but also not unexpected that Owen doesn't seem to understand what the First Amendment is about, but I got stuck on another thing that he said in that clip. | ||
| He said that free speech, in his understanding, involves the right to speak without inherent consequence. | ||
| And I say, what the fuck does that even mean? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| All speech has consequence because speech is a means of conveying things between persons. | ||
| If you tell someone you love them, that has a consequence, which will depend on how they feel about you. | ||
| Could be a good consequence or a negative one, but something happens. | ||
| Similarly, if you yell a racial slur at someone, there's always a consequence. | ||
| Maybe you get hit or maybe that person is restrained but there's still a consequence of emotional pain that's been inflicted. | ||
| There is no speech without consequence because speech doesn't exist in a vacuum. | ||
| The reason that I think this is really fascinating is because Owen's understanding of this is that free speech is speech without inherent consequences when it's he who's speaking. | ||
| There isn't a concern at all for the consequences experienced by the other people involved in the speech. | ||
| It's really just a childish mentality that kind of boils down to I get to say whatever I want and if anyone's mad about it, they're oppressing me. | ||
| I understand and I appreciate the desire and even the necessity of protecting speech from too much censorship. | ||
| But to not really understand the dynamic nature of speech, particularly when you work at a place called free speech systems, that just strikes me as the mark of a very shallow, selfish mind. | ||
| It's not grasping... | ||
| The legal definition of free speech involves the government. | ||
| And the concept of free speech between persons always has a consequence. | ||
| It may not be you get sued every time, but there's a consequence. | ||
| I mean... | ||
| Inherent consequence to me suggests that the conversations that he's been having where inherent consequence would come up essentially would mean to me that he's saying, I should be able to say the N-word, and people shouldn't be offended because I said the N-word. | ||
| It's the word that has inherent consequence to me. | ||
| Do you know what I'm saying? | ||
| That's where the right-wing version of that would come from. | ||
| But it doesn't have inherent consequence, depending on who's saying it. | ||
| No, but they think it does. | ||
| That's ridiculous. | ||
| I know, I understand! | ||
| There isn't inherent consequence for even Owen saying the N-word if he's around people who don't mind him saying it. | ||
| Right, but he thinks that the government is... | ||
| I mean, I'm telling you, this is fucking... | ||
| It's all just oppression nonsense. | ||
| No, it's absolute insanity. | ||
| It's aggrievement. | ||
| Everybody should have to have the First Amendment on their wall. | ||
| And it should be highlighted. | ||
| It should be tattooed on his arm like he's the guy from Memento. | ||
| Totally. | ||
| Totally. | ||
| Here's what we do. | ||
| We make the mark of the beast the First Amendment. | ||
| No chance they'll stop. | ||
| So we get back to this idea of what restrictions happened after these shootings. | ||
| It's just not a fruitful line of questioning. | ||
| With regards to paragraph two in this affidavit, you can't think of a single government action that... | ||
| Was made to further restrict gun rights related to Sandy Hook, correct? | ||
| Not off the top of my head. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| Why'd you put it in your affidavit? | ||
| Put what exactly? | ||
| The first sentence of paragraph two that says, I've been a critic of the government for using things like Sandy Hook to manipulate public opinion in order to, among other things, further restrict gun rights in this country. | ||
| Why'd you put that in there if you can't think of an instance? | ||
| Related to Sandy Hook, where that actually happened. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Objection form. | |
| I didn't say it had anything to do with Sandy Hook. | ||
| It says such as Sandy Hook. | ||
| So I'm not saying that there was anything following Sandy Hook. | ||
| Oh my God. | ||
| I just meant as a general thing. | ||
| When there's tragedies dealing with guns, usually there's a follow-up of a proposal of more gun legislation and restrictions. | ||
| But not in Sandy Hook. | ||
| Not that I'm aware of. | ||
| So if it didn't happen in Sandy Hook. | ||
| Why is it in this affidavit? | ||
| Because this entire case is about Sandy Hook. | ||
| Right. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But if none of this happened in Sandy Hook, why did you add it in here? | |
| Why don't you just go to the next sentence and start there? | ||
| Because this whole case is about Sandy Hook, and again, it says such as Sandy Hook. | ||
| So I'm not saying that it's after Sandy Hook. | ||
| I meant such as Sandy Hook because this case is about Sandy Hook. | ||
| Okay, so such as. | ||
| You mean like when there's mass shootings or something like that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| Okay. | ||
| Name a mass shooting where anti-gun legislation is immediately followed. | ||
| I couldn't name off the top of my head. | ||
| You can't think of a single one, can you? | ||
| Not off the top of my head, no. | ||
| You know what a fun fact is? | ||
| I can't either. | ||
| Which is why I'm trying to figure out why this sentence is in there. | ||
| It's tough. | ||
| It's tough when you have to really go over this affidavit and be like, why did you say this? | ||
| Oh boy. | ||
| So we have established now, basically, that Owen can't think of any governmental action that took place after the gun tragedies that would restrict gun rights. | ||
| So now we move on to the next sentence in the affidavit, which is about criticizing the mainstream media. | ||
| And this is also fruitless. | ||
| Let's go to the next sentence. | ||
| I believe the mainstream, because you were talking about the government in sentence one, right? | ||
| Sentence two, completely different topic. | ||
| Now we're talking about mainstream media used the Sandy Hook tragedy to utilize and transform the public's sympathy for the victims and their families into an issue of gun rights. | ||
| I read that correctly, right? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Okay, give me an example. | ||
| I think it's the exact examples I just gave you. | ||
| Right, you didn't give me any. | ||
| Now I'm asking you for this one. | ||
| Now that we're not done by the government, I'm a mainstream media. | ||
| Give me one example so that I can understand a little bit as to why this is even in here. | ||
| I don't have an example. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| That's shocking. | ||
| That is the most InfoWars thing I think I've ever seen. | ||
| It could not be more InfoWars than just... | ||
| This is very InfoWars. | ||
| It's exactly the examples that I just gave you. | ||
| You didn't give me any. | ||
| That's so Infowars. | ||
| Well, that would usually work. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Usually on Infowars, when I say it's just the examples I gave you, people just don't question it. | ||
| In my daily life, most people are very distractible. | ||
| This is so easy in real life. | ||
| What are you doing? | ||
| So now that we've broached the subject of the mainstream media, obviously you're in a courtroom setting. | ||
| You probably want to define terms. | ||
| You need to with these people. | ||
| What is the mainstream media? | ||
| Let's hear it. | ||
| When you say mainstream media, what's that? | ||
| Just any... | ||
| Cable news network that's familiar to most people. | ||
| Okay, so they have to be on cable. | ||
| Not necessarily. | ||
| Okay, what do you mean by mainstream media? | ||
| Big corporate media, been around for a while, well known to the public. | ||
| Okay, what do you mean corporate? | ||
| It has corporate sponsors. | ||
| Okay, so corporate sponsors that are... | ||
| A company that has corporate sponsors that... | ||
| Convey the news and are known to the public and have been around a while, that's how you define mainstream media? | ||
| That's one definition. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| When you say for a while, how long is that? | ||
| What are you referring to exactly? | ||
| Your answer there, you said the corporate sponsors, they've been around for a while. | ||
| What do you mean by for a while? | ||
| Are your words? | ||
| I would say they've been around long enough to have some sort of reputation and public recognition. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| So, Fox News, mainstream media. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| OAN? | ||
| No. | ||
| No? | ||
| Really? | ||
| They have corporate sponsors. | ||
| They're well-known to the public, right? | ||
| I would say most people probably don't know about OAN. | ||
| Really? | ||
| I would guess most people, if I asked them on the street, they probably are unfamiliar. | ||
| Definitely not. | ||
| Like, as familiar as they would be with Fox News. | ||
| So we've established that Fox News is mainstream media. | ||
| Mainstream media. | ||
| OAN, not. | ||
| Not. | ||
| For whatever arbitrary draw of number of people who Owen could ask upon the street who knew OAN, that's our poll number, and it's arbitrary. | ||
| Well, it's definitely arbitrary, as even Bill brings up. | ||
| It's like, well, if you went to a Trump rally, everybody knows who OAN is. | ||
| So it's really selective. | ||
| Right. | ||
| But then the question comes up, well, what about Breitbart? | ||
| Oh, no. | ||
| That should be, right? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Is Breitbart in there? | ||
| They've got corporate sponsors. | ||
| They're well-known to the public. | ||
| They've been around for longer than OAN. | ||
| Breitbart is mainstream media to you, according to your definition, right? | ||
| I would probably say, no, I wouldn't consider Breitbart mainstream either. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Why? | |
| I mean, this is all open for interpretation, but, I mean, another general thing of... | ||
| Mainstream media would be entities that go along with the same narrative as everybody else, and I feel that Breitbart and OAN often veer off of the consensus narrative. | ||
| Okay, so your mainstream media, even if you're a news outlet that checks all of Mr. Schroyer's boxes of what he defined as mainstream media, if you... | ||
| Have an opinion that's different than some other news outlets, then you're not mainstream anymore. | ||
| How different does it have to be, and what's the frequency of that? | ||
| There's no measurable. | ||
| There's no measurable. | ||
| The sentence fades out. | ||
| He doesn't have a noun there. | ||
| But I feel like stuff is and isn't. | ||
| What's interesting here is you have these definitions that Owen is bringing up, like corporate sponsorships, longevity, a sized audience. | ||
| And those are the things that he would like to present as what he defines as mainstream media. | ||
| But on further questioning, you really start to realize it's like, oh no, mainstream media says the things I don't like and things that are crazy and are in line with my narratives, that's not mainstream media, even if they satisfy all the conditions that I immediately came up with, which are the respectable answers for this definition. | ||
| It does feel like this should be a criminal trial, and the punishment should be a lifelong parole of words. | ||
| The plaintiff is words? | ||
| Yeah, you have to... | ||
| Okay, so if you want to use a word, you have to demonstrate to an expert in language that you know how to use it properly. | ||
| It would be nice. | ||
| I think that's fair. | ||
| Yeah, I think the punishment could be a lifetime of carrying a dictionary around your neck. | ||
| Absolutely! | ||
| Yes, yes. | ||
| A scarlet letter, but it's all the letters. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So Bill realizes, like, wait, InfoWars would fill all the qualifications that you just gave. | ||
| Right. | ||
| So are you mainstream media? | ||
| Prior to InfoWars and yourself being deplatformed from social media outlets, was InfoWars mainstream media? | ||
| No. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| They've been around a long time. | ||
| They have notoriety. | ||
| They have a massive audience that, I mean, dwarfs most of the companies that I just mentioned earlier, right? | ||
| And on every outlet that wasn't Infowars.com, there's corporate sponsors with ad generation. | ||
| And we have that. | ||
| So I just want to know, Infowars checks all of your boxes for mainstream media. | ||
| Why aren't they in your eyes? | ||
| I just don't agree. | ||
| They don't check all boxes at all. | ||
| In fact, I've never even agreed that there are boxes to check. | ||
| Given vague generalities of my definition of mainstream media, somebody else's could be entirely different. | ||
| I'm not asking for you to classify InfoWars for everybody else, right? | ||
| I'm asking what you think. | ||
| What's Owen's opinion? | ||
| And when I asked how Owen decides whether something's mainstream media, you gave me your criteria. | ||
| And then I took InfoWars, your employer. | ||
| And it checks every single box. | ||
| But you're saying, no, no, no, we're not mainstream media. | ||
| And I'm trying to figure out why. | ||
| Tell me why. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| How about this? | ||
| When news outlets lie about events that cause massive violence to happen, they don't end up getting sued or in court. | ||
| But when Infowars covers events, somehow we always end up in litigation like this. | ||
| You ever seen defamation verdicts? | ||
| In the United States? | ||
| I'm not too familiar, no. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| I want you to Google it when you go home. | ||
| And I want you to see who those defendants are that paid them. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Their names are CNN, NBC, Gawker. | ||
| Paid a massive one to Hollywood Hall Kogan. | ||
| So I think this is one of the more revealing moments. | ||
| And it shows how Owen processes information. | ||
| He needs to come up with an explanation for why Infowars isn't the MSM. | ||
| And the thing that he lands on is that they get sued when they make things up, but the mainstream media doesn't. | ||
| What's remarkable about this is that it's wholly reliant on Owen having no idea who gets sued for what. | ||
| No clue. | ||
| It's solely based on a feeling, and that feeling is a grievement. | ||
| Owen and everyone at InfoWars feels like they're the victims of society, and so assumptions are made in order to prop up that feeling. | ||
| Instead of asking yourself if other people get sued for doing the things that you've done, it feels more satisfying to assume that they don't, and you're only getting sued because everyone's against you. | ||
| Now, the reason that I think this is so revealing is because it's an instance of Owen speaking to the identity and definition of InfoWars. | ||
| It's something that's at the root of why he thinks InfoWars is different than other media outlets. | ||
| game. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Persecution. | |
| Yes. | ||
|
unidentified
|
This completely inaccurate feeling is part of how Owen identifies Infowars and how they're different from CNN. | |
| This makes total sense to me, and I think that this feeling is almost comically in their broadcasts, but it's a little shocking to see it articulated by Owen in a deposition. | ||
| Infowars isn't different from the mainstream media because they cover the stories that no one else will. | ||
| They're not different because they have actual deep-level sources who feed them solid intel. | ||
| They're different because they believe incorrect things that make themselves identify as the victims of society. | ||
| It's really just very angsty and childish at its core, and it really does explain Owen's early career as a self-described cuck destroyer. | ||
| It's just a child. | ||
| This is just childish shit. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, it does feel like what he wants to say is, like, you can't take the things that I say and then put them into a different context. | ||
| Because then... | ||
| Oh, no. | ||
| Yeah, that's because I feel real stupid now. | ||
| I feel real dumb. | ||
| I have made some broad statements about what makes mainstream media. | ||
| It applies to me, and so I need to come up with something else, and it's an inaccurate feeling of persecution. | ||
| I have never fully understood the transitive property. | ||
| Could you please explain that to me from the very beginning? | ||
| And start with one. | ||
| Well, we're going to be here a while, I think. | ||
| So we get to the next sentence in the affidavit. | ||
| And again, this is a meal. | ||
| Basically, this affidavit. | ||
| In the next sentence, you say, I believe the mainstream media, and we'll put a hypothetical question mark over that term. | ||
| Instead, you believe the mainstream media, instead of blaming the shooter, portrayed all gun owners and gun rights activists as the cause of what happened at Sandy Hook. | ||
| Surely there's an event that you watched or saw where this happened that made you put this in your affidavit. | ||
| I can't recall. | ||
| Wow, that's not good. | ||
| Now, what I'm hearing you say is that I should have a reason for the feelings that I have and the things that I say. | ||
| Well, I mean, you don't need to necessarily have a reason for all of your feelings, but ones that you swear to in an affidavit that motivate your actions. | ||
| Generally, I would think that you should have... | ||
| Some sort of, like, here's why. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Now, let me throw this out at you. | ||
| This is the first I am hearing of this. | ||
| Shit. | ||
| Now, this notion that mainstream media blamed gun owners. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Owen cannot come up with an event that makes this make sense. | ||
| Well... | ||
| But, Bill makes it a little bit worse. | ||
| If this sentence that I just read were true, that's a big deal. | ||
| Correct? | ||
| What is a big deal? | ||
| That the mainstream media was... | ||
| Portraying all gun owners and gun rights activists that don't even own guns as the cause of what happened at San Diego. | ||
| That's a huge deal if mainstream media was doing that, correct? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| But you can't recall anything that made that a huge deal, right? | ||
| Not in exact detail. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| What about any detail? | ||
| No, because you're putting me into an unfair position where I can't produce the evidence you're asking me to produce. | ||
| I'm glad you said that. | ||
| This will come back up. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So what's awesome about this moment is that Bill is basically saying, like, man, that would be huge. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I would be worried if you could prove this, so please prove it. | ||
| This would be very important. | ||
| I will join your team right now. | ||
| I'll fucking quit this law profession for good and work. | ||
| Under you, Owen Troyer, if you can give me one fucking example! | ||
| Yeah, I mean, it's like, I'll take this seriously because it's a serious deal if you can demonstrate this. | ||
| Yeah, what do you got? | ||
| I got nothing. | ||
| So we get back to Owen's actual video, and this is not good. | ||
| If I were Owen, I definitely would not want to hear this in a deposition. | ||
| With what you know now, when we read some of those quotes, when I read some of those quotes from the video that you did about Mr. Heslin, Should you have said them? | ||
| I mean, I think with any live broadcast, I mean, we don't have teleprompters or scripts that you're going to sometimes have words and phrases that come out that aren't in the way that you like them. | ||
| And so I'm upset that my commentary that day is perceived as an attack on Mr. Heslin. | ||
| It never was. | ||
| That was never the intention. | ||
| When you said, think we're going to get clarification from Mr. Heslin or Miss Kelly, I wouldn't hold my breath. | ||
| You know what you did after that? | ||
| I think it went to break. | ||
| I'm not sure. | ||
| You chuckled in laughter. | ||
| That's what you did. | ||
| Did you find it funny? | ||
| No. | ||
| Do you find Sandy Hook funny? | ||
| No. | ||
| Do you find mass shootings funny? | ||
| No. | ||
| Do you find, you know, asking parents for clarification on things that are the truth? | ||
| Is that funny? | ||
| No. | ||
| So why are you laughing? | ||
| Sometimes it's just awkward when you go to break and you just kind of have an awkward moment. | ||
| And I guess in that moment it was a chuckle or maybe it was just because... | ||
| Megyn Kelly was just kind of a joke to me at the time, so bringing her up was kind of worthy of a chuckle. | ||
| But again, in no way, shape, or form was any of that commentary meant as a slight on Mr. Heslin. | ||
| Really? | ||
| I've never said that Sandy Hook never happened. | ||
| I've never said that his kid didn't die. | ||
| I never said any of that. | ||
| You really don't want to hear you laughed. | ||
| Not gonna go well. | ||
| When you're trying to be like, I was trying, I had the utmost respect. | ||
| I never meant to offend. | ||
| Do you know what you did after that? | ||
| Ah, shit. | ||
| You laughed real? | ||
| How does that feel? | ||
| Doesn't feel good. | ||
| You think that's going to go well? | ||
| I feel like I shouldn't have done that. | ||
| Can I ask you a question? | ||
| Let's go back to the first question. | ||
| Do you feel like you should have said all that stuff? | ||
| So, Owen, honestly, he kind of thinks that he did as good a job as he could with the information that was available to him. | ||
| Of course he does! | ||
| I mean, it's not true, but that's how it feels. | ||
| No, exactly! | ||
| You now have been found by a court to have defamed Mr. Heslin, right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Objection form. | |
| I had no, again, I never accused Mr. Heslin of lying. | ||
| I never, that segment was never purposed as any sort of affront to Mr. Heslin. | ||
| I'm not even sure if I knew who he was before that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| So you didn't care who you were talking about. | ||
| I was just covering a story that was given to me. | ||
| And you would agree you covered it poorly, correct? | ||
| I covered what I had available to me. | ||
| No. | ||
| You did not do that. | ||
| You covered what was selected by someone at Infowars and was given to you without any questions asked. | ||
| That's what you did, right? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Because available was the whole coroner's press conference. | ||
| True? | ||
| Not to me, but it was out there. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Surely it was available to you. | ||
| Not in that exact moment, but the news isn't a race, is it? | ||
| Is it? | ||
| Up for interpretation? | ||
| Do you think the news is a race? | ||
| I don't view it as a race. | ||
| Okay, then the answer to my question is, no, it's not a race, Mr. Ogden, right? | ||
| I do not view the news as a race. | ||
| Okay, now that we've established that, you definitely had that coroner's press conference available to you, Mr. Schroyer. | ||
| True? | ||
| No, all I had was that clip. | ||
| You know what the internet is, right? | ||
| Ouch! | ||
| Do we need to define availability? | ||
| Okay, so let me try and make this a little bit clearer, okay? | ||
| Had you, or someone around you, googled the words, you could have watched the whole thing. | ||
| Two seconds, two seconds, all would have appeared instantly. | ||
| Hear me out on this. | ||
| Guardrails around InfoWars, there's news, instead of being handed directly to you, goes to somebody who checks into things, and then if this video is bullshit, then it doesn't even get to you, and there's no risk of you accidentally reporting bullshit. | ||
| I'm going to tell you this right now. | ||
| We have never had anyone at InfoWars to do that. | ||
| What is that job? | ||
| Where do you get those people? | ||
| Shit. | ||
| What, are you just going to hire somebody who can look into things? | ||
| I don't think they teach that. | ||
| There's nowhere to find it! | ||
| Not with this centralized government school system. | ||
| So he got this video and this article from whoever. | ||
| Anybody. | ||
| Everybody. | ||
| And this clip is fantastic. | ||
| Because this is the clip. | ||
| Where Bill basically makes Owen admit that he's a puppet. | ||
| I don't know who edited that video. | ||
| Right. | ||
| It could have been someone in our house. | ||
| It could have been someone else on the internet that they found. | ||
| Right. | ||
| You know what we can't agree on? | ||
| Nobody fact-checked it. | ||
| Nobody just said, oh man, that's crazy. | ||
| When did he say this? | ||
| Google up the interview and watch it. | ||
| It's 20 minutes. | ||
| I didn't plan on covering the story that day, so I had no preconceived notion that I would even have to do that. | ||
| I know, Mr. Schroyer, you're here because you were a puppet. | ||
| You would agree with me, right? | ||
| No. | ||
| You don't agree with me that... | ||
| You know what a puppet is, correct? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| A puppet is an object that is used to convey a message, but somebody else is actually controlling the message. | ||
| You understand that? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Right. | ||
| You were conveying a message, right? | ||
| True? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Somebody else was controlling that message. | ||
| True? | ||
| No. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No. | |
| Who was controlling the message that you were putting out? | ||
| Were you in control? | ||
| What was the message you were referring to? | ||
| That the coroner said he never released the children, ever. | ||
| Because that's the story you ran with. | ||
| Who was in control of that information if you weren't? | ||
| Because you already said you weren't in control of it. | ||
| Who was? | ||
| Somebody has to be. | ||
| Whoever originally posted the video. | ||
| Right. | ||
| So someone else had control, and you were conveying the message. | ||
| We just established that you were the puppet that day. | ||
| There's nothing wrong with that. | ||
| I'm not trying to be derogatory by using that term, but it's analogous to where we are now. | ||
| You would agree? | ||
| I think if anybody is being used as a puppet, it would be the people who are reporting the stories, and I'm just showing that information. | ||
| You were reporting the story. | ||
| Mr. Schroyer. | ||
| You weren't showing information, you were reporting. | ||
| So if I just pick up anybody's news source and cover it, does that make me a puppet? | ||
| If you don't fact check it, absolutely. | ||
| Okay, then I guess I'm a puppet of Zero Hedge in this case. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| No, that's actually not true. | ||
| You're a puppet of iCoinBank. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| That's the source that was underlying the Zero Hedge article. | ||
| Right, right, right. | ||
| So I think it's iBankCoin. | ||
| But like, yeah, so some anonymous blog that was reposted by Zero Hedge. | ||
| You're their puppet, you jerk. | ||
| I can't believe... | ||
| That you don't have that moment where you go, ah, I see where you're going. | ||
| Okay, all right. | ||
| I think Owen did, and I think he realized, like, there isn't a way out of this trap. | ||
| Because otherwise, I have to admit that I was in control of releasing this information, and it seems worse. | ||
| No, totally. | ||
| That's what I feel like. | ||
| The first time he was like, okay, so you're not a puppet. | ||
| Okay, so were you in control of the message? | ||
| No. | ||
| Were you conveying the message? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| It's humiliation or responsibility. | ||
| Which are you going to accept? | ||
| Yeah, and all he could do, you could. | ||
| Just be like, oh, I get it. | ||
| Yeah, sure, fine. | ||
| In this situation, I'm a puppet. | ||
| See, we're fine. | ||
| What I like, too, is the, like, at the end, Owen admitting, like, I guess I'm a puppet then. | ||
| I'm a puppet of Zero Hedge. | ||
| That's not even good enough. | ||
| Bill has to hit back. | ||
| Not even that! | ||
| You wish you were a puppet of Zero Hedge. | ||
| You're a puppet of somebody you don't even know who the fuck they are. | ||
| So, at this point, Bill plays some videos of Owen at the Women's March. | ||
| And this is a continuation of Owen saying, you're putting me in an unfair situation. | ||
| You're asking me for examples of all these things. | ||
| And I don't have it at my disposal. | ||
| Right. | ||
| So this is the videos where he does that to people and says you're uninformed, right? | ||
| Basically, yes. | ||
| But if you've been listening to this as we've gone along, Bill already made reference to Owen doing this. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| He's already foreshadowed that this is coming. | ||
| Yeah, and he made a very unsuccessful attempt at explaining what he was doing to Owen. | ||
| Right. | ||
| So now we got props. | ||
| and Owen is still hopeless. | ||
|
unidentified
|
All right. | |
| So, this gentleman just told you, tell that to the dozens of accusers that have accused him of sexual harassment and assault, right? | ||
| And you responded with, name one, right? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Let's keep watching. | ||
| So, keep watching. | ||
| Keep watching the video. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| And Bill's subtly trying to make this point that I've been doing this to you. | ||
| I know. | ||
| And Owen doesn't seem to pick up on it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
All right. | |
| So, that was an encounter with some protesters, right? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| And you were asked, they had a position, right? | ||
| And you asked them for evidence to back their position up. | ||
| And you asked them, name one name of one of the Trump accusers. | ||
| And he said, I can't. | ||
| And you said, oh, well, I'm informed. | ||
| And you started naming Clinton accusers, right? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| And afterwards he goes, believe the women who accused Donald Trump, even though I don't know their names right now. | ||
| Even though I can't remember all their names, right? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| And you said, you can't even name one name, right? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Now, take what just happened here. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And let's revisit the mainstream media and the government from your affidavit. | |
| Because you couldn't name one. | ||
| And there's way more of those than Trump accusers, right? | ||
| I don't know, but okay. | ||
| You don't... | ||
| How many Trump accusers do you think there are? | ||
| I have no idea. | ||
| Surely you believe that there's more governmental entities and or congresspersons and or congresspeople, excuse me, and or mainstream media outlets. | ||
| All of that encompassing. | ||
| That's way more than Trump accusers. | ||
| True? | ||
| I'm sorry, I'm not understanding the framing. | ||
| Yeah, you couldn't name one. | ||
| So he doesn't understand, he doesn't grasp the dynamic that is... | ||
| Playing out here. | ||
| It's not as satisfying. | ||
| No, but that's why Bill just has to directly tell him. | ||
| So here's that. | ||
| Can you kind of see how I got my question and answer format for the ones I asked you about your affidavit? | ||
| Spoiler alert. | ||
| You would agree I stole them from you from that video, right? | ||
| Tip of the cap. | ||
| Oh my god. | ||
| Oh my god. | ||
| That's actually a good Owen Troyer moment. | ||
| That seems organic. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, it does. | |
| That seems genuine. | ||
| It does. | ||
| Because it's a little snarky, it's a little bit deflated, but there's a little bit of still saving face a tiny bit. | ||
| I still don't think he understands quite what is happening. | ||
| I don't think he understands. | ||
| I think he gets it now, after being directly told, I took what you did with these protesters and used that to form the way I asked you these questions. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Again, I really think that Owen does not understand the... | ||
| The ability to transfer a series of actions and behaviors from one section to another. | ||
| I understand why you think that. | ||
| I disagree. | ||
| I think a lot of the inability to understand things is somehow, sometimes strategic. | ||
| Sometimes it's convenient to not understand things. | ||
| That's definitely true. | ||
| That is definitely true. | ||
| So this article that Owen was using to do his coverage, that he was slipped by somebody. | ||
| You'd think, like, I don't know, maybe if that article was everywhere, like it was a huge, huge story, then maybe commenting on it makes some sense. | ||
| In the same way that, like, with Kit Daniels, if truly Marcel Fontaine's picture was everywhere, then... | ||
| You know, it makes some sense to address. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| Or something? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| Maybe. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| At least it seems more defensible. | ||
| If you have more than just, say, a tweet by buttmuncher99, then yes. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And so we get to a little bit of, like, how relevant this story was. | ||
| This is the article that you were going off of, right? | ||
| You're scrolling through the video, and this is the article you're scrolling through, correct? | ||
| Well, I had, I believe I had the article printed off. | ||
| You had that as well, but this was what you were going through on the screen. | ||
| Okay, yeah, I'm not in control of what goes on the screen. | ||
| Okay, so you don't, you're just looking, somebody else is on the screen. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But I do want to look at this. | ||
| This shows that, and we're not sure where zero point now is, they could be in the central time zone. | ||
| And so it could have been published at 3.35 p.m. central or at... | ||
| Or 445 if they're on the East Coast. | ||
| And this screenshot is from the video that you're on. | ||
| And you can see how many shares it's had. | ||
| Let me zoom in. | ||
| How many shares it's had at the time you put it up to the world? | ||
| What's that number? | ||
| Three. | ||
| Three. | ||
| So this article is not one that was getting shot around. | ||
| Outlets are reporting. | ||
| Safe to say, at a minimum, if this has been up for at most an hour and it's got three shares, we're not dealing with the top brass of mainstream media here, are we? | ||
| No. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Your audience is much larger than something that's been put up for an hour or two and only has three shares, correct? | ||
| I mean, I guess. | ||
| You know you talk to thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people every day that tune in to watch you and Mr. Jones, correct? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay, yeah. | |
| Jesus. | ||
| So, when a larger media platform, like Infowars, takes a smaller media platform article and puts it up, you can agree that disseminates that information to a way bigger audience. | ||
| In this case, probably, yeah. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| This is a great way of using their grandiosity against them. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| Something that might be described as a judo move. | ||
| There's a twist in the sub-twist. | ||
| There's a sub-twist, yeah. | ||
| Here with the, you know, like you guys talk all day about how popular you are. | ||
| We have billions of listeners. | ||
| Right, and now so you just told billions of listeners this bullshit. | ||
| I mean, maybe it's a couple thousand. | ||
| Cool. | ||
| Could be five. | ||
| So if you were in Owen's shoes... | ||
| And someone had fed you this information. | ||
| What would you, internally at work, what would you do? | ||
| Do you mean, what would Owen do? | ||
| No, like you. | ||
| If you were in that situation, what would your sort of agenda be? | ||
| Alright, so I'm on air. | ||
| No, no, no. | ||
| We're talking like afterwards. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Afterwards. | |
| After you realize that this is... | ||
| Bad information that someone has given you. | ||
| Right, right, right. | ||
| I would probably run away. | ||
| You're a coward. | ||
| Because if I admitted guilt at InfoWars, I don't know what anybody would do to me. | ||
| There's a lot of possible consequences there. | ||
| That's true. | ||
| With a lot of guns around. | ||
| Yeah, it's a heavily armed workplace. | ||
| And I couldn't continue working there, morally speaking, because I just committed one of the greater sins that I can imagine. | ||
| So I'm going to have to go with move to Canada. | ||
| I was looking for figure out who gave you that information because they have clearly fucked you over. | ||
| See, because I feel like they're going to get rewarded and I should go to Canada. | ||
| Ultimately, I think you're right because it's upside down bananas world over there. | ||
| But a normal impulse would be to be like... | ||
| Hey, this person, at very least, you'd maybe be mad at them. | ||
| I'd feel betrayed. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| Or maybe you'd be worried that they might do it again, and maybe you'd want to have a talk with them about being more careful with their information. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Owen doesn't seem to really care too much. | ||
| If Zero Hedge never publishes the story, I'd never cover it. | ||
| So it's Zero Hedge's fault. | ||
| I didn't say that. | ||
| I'm just telling you that if Zero Hedge never published the story, I would have never covered it. | ||
| You know what, though? | ||
| Zero Hedge isn't the one that gave you a highly altered clip that completely misled you and all of your viewers. | ||
| I don't know who gave me that clip. | ||
| I don't know where they got it. | ||
| You definitely want to find out, right? | ||
| When you leave here, you're going to go find out who was working that day, right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Objection form. | |
| Probably not. | ||
| You don't care? | ||
| Well, I imagine that you would. | ||
| Oh, my God. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Again, I mean... | |
| I'm not even sure if the people that were working that day even still work at InfoWars. | ||
| Same question. | ||
| What's the question? | ||
| Do you care? | ||
| Yeah, I am upset that Mr. Heslin had to go through any of this. | ||
| I'm upset that I'm being lumped into this. | ||
| Again, like, Sandy Hook was never my thing. | ||
| I never have ever doubted the events happened. | ||
| I never doubted that his son never died. | ||
| I'm doing commentary on a piece that was published by Zero Hedge or Zero Point Now or iBankCoin. | ||
| They would have never published it. | ||
| I would have never covered it. | ||
| Yeah, but you were reporting on... | ||
| That was the... | ||
| Excuse me. | ||
| The Zero Hedge article got the story going. | ||
| But you, directly citing the coroner's testimony, that's InfoWars. | ||
| That's not Zero Hedge. | ||
| That's your company. | ||
| True? | ||
| I think it was a CBS interview with the coroner. | ||
| I don't know where the original interview with the coroner comes from. | ||
| What we do know is that you didn't know what was in it. | ||
| True? | ||
| Until I saw it that day, yeah. | ||
| And you said you're upset that you're lumped into this and you're upset about Mr. Hesslin. | ||
| You're not upset enough to go back to work and figure out who did this and put you in this position. | ||
| Made you betray all the people that trust you and watch you. | ||
| And severely impacted Mr. Heslin's life again. | ||
| Right? | ||
| You're not that upset. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Objection form. | |
| I just feel that that would be... | ||
| There's nothing that can really come of that for me. | ||
| Zen. | ||
| Does the truth not matter? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Objection form. | |
| Absolutely. | ||
| Nobody ever... | ||
| I was targeting any individuals by bringing me that thing other than to say, "Hey, look, Megyn Kelly's back in the news." How do you know? | ||
| You don't even know who gave it to you. | ||
| Okay, fine. | ||
| I guess I don't know then. | ||
| There you go. | ||
| That's all I needed. | ||
| You don't know why they did what they did. | ||
| You don't know why they clipped that video in the exact way that set you up to lie to thousands of people. | ||
| Owen did not have to say, no one meant to target anybody, because now that has introduced that idea, and Owen can't say that, because he doesn't know who did it, because now we have on the record, for the jury, Owen saying, I can't definitively say that someone didn't give me this in order to target them. | ||
| This is just, that's an unforced error. | ||
| Oh boy. | ||
| And I think it costs nothing to be like... | ||
| You know what? | ||
| I hadn't thought about it, but yes, absolutely. | ||
| I would love to get to the bottom of this, and I intend to figure this out. | ||
| I didn't before, and maybe that was sloppy of me, but yes, that would cost nothing. | ||
| I mean, I genuinely cannot believe that none of their lawyers just got together and explained how a deposition works and just was like, listen, answer only the question. | ||
| If at all possible, keep your answers to yes or no. | ||
| Do not... | ||
| Explain if it is not part of the question. | ||
| All you have to do is answer the question. | ||
| You just answer the question. | ||
| Keep it brief. | ||
| Yes or no, if possible. | ||
| Short as possible answer. | ||
| Giving these bizarre explanations for your motivations and where your heart is is only going to create more problems. | ||
| You are so stupid. | ||
| So the video gets played, and I think this is just a demonstration of how poorly these videos were cut. | ||
| Like, they cut off mid-sentence. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay, so making a pretty extreme claim that would be a very thing vivid in your memory, holding his dead child. | |
| Now, here is an account from the coroner that does not cooperate with that narrative. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We did not bring the bodies and the families into contact. | |
| We took pictures of them, of their facial features. | ||
| It's easier on the families when you do that. | ||
| There is a time and a place for up close and personal in the grieving process. | ||
| But to accomplish this, we felt it would be best to do it this way. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Well, let's finish this. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You can sort of, you can control the situation depending on your photographer, and I have very good photographers, but... | |
| All right. | ||
| That is what... | ||
| You realize he was going, and he was about to say something else. | ||
| You would agree, right? | ||
| I had never seen the clip. | ||
| I'd never seen the full clip. | ||
| That is the only time I'd ever seen or known anything about that clip. | ||
| Let me back up. | ||
| Right there, what we just saw, you could hear him going, continuing to make noise as the video cuts, correct? | ||
| I mean, you can play it back for me now, but I have no idea if I heard it then or not. | ||
| Okay. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Let's play it back real quick, just so we're clear. | |
| Have you ever heard somebody in Descendants with, but... | ||
|
unidentified
|
I have no idea. | |
| This is just an attempt to be like, you should have had an instinct that the sentence went on, and maybe there was more. | ||
| And this is laying the groundwork of establishing a pattern, because there's another clip that is played that's just cut off mid-sentence. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's going to be hard enough to have been able to actually see her. | |
| Well, at first I thought that, and I had questioned maybe wanting to see her. | ||
| We can agree that that clip was cut right in the middle of something. | ||
| True? | ||
| Wanting to see her? | ||
| That would be an assumption. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| Oh, my God. | ||
| Okay, so just another question that people are now going to be asking about Sandy Hook, the conspiracy theorist on the Internet out there that have a lot of questions that are yet to get answered. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I mean, you can say whatever you want about the event. | |
| That's just a fact. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So there's another one. | |
| Will there be a clarification from Heslin or Megyn Kelly? | ||
| I wouldn't hold your breath. | ||
| So now they're fueling the conspiracy theory claims. | ||
| Unbelievable. | ||
| We'll be right back with more. | ||
| Not a good look. | ||
| Not a good look. | ||
| Also, this ends up getting into a little bit of a fight right after this between the lawyers because you can hear Mark in the background. | ||
| Who's they? | ||
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
| I heard it. | ||
| And that ends up like, hey, who's running this deposition? | ||
| But that is a question that is very relevant. | ||
| Who is they who is fueling the conspiracy? | ||
| So here is that when that comes up. | ||
| The last sentence on that video, you say, will there be clarification from Heslin or Megyn Kelly? | ||
| I wouldn't hold your breath. | ||
| So now they're fueling the conspiracy theory claims. | ||
| Unbelievable. | ||
| Who is there fueling the conspiracy theory claims? | ||
| Megan Kelly and Zero Hedge. | ||
| And Mr. Heslin? | ||
| No. | ||
| What did Megan Kelly say that was false? | ||
| Because it sounded a lot like it was just Mr. Heslin talking. | ||
| Again, as far as my knowledge, the coroner's testimony was not brought up to Mr. Heslin. | ||
| In Megyn Kelly's interview. | ||
| And it may have been irrelevant, but that's what I'm saying, is that Megyn Kelly did not clarify that question. | ||
| She didn't know it was a question, man. | ||
| Nobody questioned her on the spot. | ||
| And she probably doesn't go to your website or Zero Hedge. | ||
| Pretty fair assumption, right? | ||
| Okay, sure. | ||
| You can see here that Owen's still grasping to this thing that he thinks is a life raft, which is the idea that Megyn Kelly, for some reason, was required to address the manipulatively edited clip of the coroner and the fact that she didn't is somehow suspicious. | ||
| Without oversimplifying things, this is basically all Owen has to defend his actions, which is really sad because... | ||
| If you want to really express a truer version of what happened, it's that Owen believed a fraudulent clip was true because it conformed to his conspiracy worldview and gave him ammunition to attack the people he felt were threatening his boss. | ||
| Whether he actually believed it was true is beside the point, but he used the impression that the clip was truthful to discredit the claim of a grieving father who his boss had lied about and defamed in the past by insisting that the fact that they didn't fully address this fraudulent clip, that must mean that there's a reason that they don't want to clarify things. | ||
| Probably. | ||
| It's basically all that's going on in terms of his defense, and it's just... | ||
| Sloppy. | ||
| It's not going to go well. | ||
| No. | ||
| No. | ||
| Every new question is a danger to that continued existence. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, boy. | |
| So I'm noticing in my clips that I didn't actually pull a clip of this, but at some point, Owen says that he didn't know about Wolfgang Halbig until... | ||
| Bullshit. | ||
| He didn't really even know about him until this case. | ||
| Sure, sure, sure, sure. | ||
| So that'll come up and be relevant in a little bit. | ||
| But I just realized I didn't have that clip. | ||
| But Owen does learn something. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's good. | |
| In the course of this deposition. | ||
| That's good. | ||
| It's worthwhile. | ||
| No, no, no. | ||
| Oh, he doesn't? | ||
| It's a sad thing. | ||
| Oh, no. | ||
| And why did you say, will there be clarification from Hesslin? | ||
| Just, I would say that if he doesn't like these stories being published, then he would come out and make statements saying, you know, what he said in the video. | ||
| That's literally what he, in the video, he said, I held my dead son. | ||
| To silence the conspiracy theories from your co-workers. | ||
| That's why he did the Megyn Kelly interview. | ||
| Do you understand that? | ||
| You're saying he did the Megyn Kelly interview because of InfoWars? | ||
| Yes, because of the five years before that interview, all of the torture that they put him through over and over and over again, 180 times. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's how many videos there are that we can count. | |
| So, yes. | ||
| Did you not know that? | ||
| No. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oof. | |
| That's depressing. | ||
| I just... | ||
| I mean... | ||
| It's either a lie, or it's an indication of just not caring at all. | ||
| Just... | ||
| Just that... | ||
| It did sound honest. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It did sound honest when he was like, wait. | ||
| He's a little confused. | ||
| You're saying that he went on Megyn Kelly because of us? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's a are-we-the-bad-guys kind of moment. | ||
| Yeah, that could not be more just like... | ||
| Wait, we caused this thing? | ||
| Bill's response? | ||
| Yes! | ||
|
unidentified
|
You dumb fuck. | |
| Oh my god! | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So, another thing that Owen did was be really shitty to Miss Lafferty, whose mother died at Sandy Hook, who was one of the teachers. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And he made a little bit of a video where he basically suggested that she should have had a gun, and that would have solved everything. | ||
| That's gonna go well. | ||
| Yeah! | ||
| Boy, I'd forgotten some of how shitty this is. | ||
| I'm gonna pause this video at 49 seconds. | ||
| You just made the statement that if Miss Lafferty's mother had a pistol or a firearm, that she could have prevented her death. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Correct. | |
| How? | ||
| By shooting. | ||
| Her assailant before the assailant shot her. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| How did the deceased, Mrs. Lafferty's mother, did she see the assailant coming? | ||
| I have no idea. | ||
| Did she have the ability to get to a purse or a lockbox to get the weapon to defend herself? | ||
| I would assume not. | ||
| Okay, so then why are you representing to the public and directed to Mrs. Lafferty, who lost her mom, That if she had a gun, she could have prevented this. | ||
| Because I believe if she would have had access to a gun, she would have used it to protect her life and the lives of others. | ||
| Right. | ||
| She could have also used that gun and taken steps to put herself in further danger. | ||
| True. | ||
| I mean, yeah, if you're going to approach an armed assailant, then you do put yourself in further danger. | ||
| She could have missed and hit a child. | ||
| True. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Or she could have died without ever even seeing it coming from behind. | ||
| She could have been the first one that went down. | ||
| True? | ||
| She could have been. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| So this conspiracy theory that you have, which is if she had a gun, it would have been prevented, you're just kind of guessing. | ||
| Really, you and I can agree, you're making this a gun issue here, right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Objection form. | |
| No, I believe the gun issue was made... | ||
| With whatever story I'm covering, like I said, whatever the story is that I'm covering, they're saying that new gun legislation is the answer, and my proposal is that having a gun to protect yourself is a better answer. | ||
| Are you sure that that's what she's saying? | ||
| Because I will say this. | ||
| You do say that she is a high-profile gun advocate now, but that's not what this is about. | ||
| This is about her. | ||
| Telling President Trump that he needs to distance himself from Mr. Jones. | ||
| You understand that, right? | ||
| I know that that is mentioned in the article. | ||
| You're the one that actually makes this a gun issue. | ||
| That's a great moment there, because it's really tough to argue that Owen actually was not the person who was making the story about guns. | ||
| Miss Lafferty was just saying that Trump shouldn't associate with Alex, and in order to lash out, Owen started talking shit about how if her mom had a gun, she'd be alive. | ||
| And what I find particularly repulsive about this instance of Owen's Sandy Hook content is that it's directed specifically at Lafferty. | ||
| He speaks in the second person, saying your mom, as if he expects her to be listening. | ||
| It's pretty fucked up stuff. | ||
| I can't imagine what kind of internal strife it must take to pretend you're not a monster listening back to that kind of stuff as he's doing in this deposition. | ||
| It's grisly. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's... | |
| How do you survive that? | ||
| Now I'm interested in Owen as like a specimen. | ||
| I could not hear somebody in a deposition play that for me, recognize that I did that, and then continue living. | ||
| I feel like I would just explode instantly and be like... | ||
| Good call! | ||
| I'm out! | ||
| Boom! | ||
| And I'm just gone. | ||
| I have a place where you could search for clues, your beginning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| That is the rest of his demo reel. | ||
| That would be a good call. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| So there's more to this video with Lafferty, and it's the reason that I brought up that he claimed earlier that he had no real awareness of Wolfgang Halbig, and that's because this next clip is a problem. | ||
| Is he going to talk about Wolfgang Halbig? | ||
| Maybe. | ||
| Ooh, that's not good. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Why are you so upset with Alex Jones? | |
| He's looking for the truth, folks. | ||
| And he's not the one that's denying Sandy Hook ever happened. | ||
| He's going off other reports. | ||
| He's going off other evidence. | ||
| He's going off research done by Wolfgang Halbig, who perhaps has done the best reporting on this and has 16 questions available online that still have not been answered. | ||
| Let's stop there. | ||
| Because earlier I asked you some questions about Wolfgang Halbig and you said, no, he's the radical one. | ||
| I don't know anything about his work. | ||
| I can't opine on what he does. | ||
| You remember when you told me that? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| In fact, you said... | ||
| You said, I'm not familiar with his work enough to have an opinion. | ||
| Remember when you said that? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| That clip certainly sounds bad, considering the context. | ||
| That would be like if... | ||
| Somebody had me in a deposition and was like, when you introduced such and such comedian, did you really think that they were the best in this area? | ||
| Would you say that? | ||
| Do you really believe that they played colleges? | ||
| Have you seen them at clubs and all around the nation? | ||
| All around the nation. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Are they really a regular on the festival circuit? | |
| Do you really think that it's someone's birthday? | ||
| Well, usually... | ||
| So Owen has a pretty good excuse for this. | ||
| Okay! | ||
| Let's hear this one. | ||
| I lied. | ||
| It's not good. | ||
| I mean, if I have to make a cemented statement, it would say I'd think that people died that day because there was no armed security, there was no layer of protection to stop the shooter from going in there and killing people. | ||
| You didn't stop at people. | ||
| You named Miss Lafferty's mother particularly would not have died if she had a pistol or a firearm. | ||
| You said those words. | ||
| True. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Then you went on to say, you know, Wolfgang Halbig, he's a good guy. | ||
| He's done the best reporting of anyone on Sandy Hook. | ||
| He's got 16 questions. | ||
| Remember when you said all that? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sounds like you're a big fan of Wolfgang Halbig right here. | |
| I wasn't. | ||
| I'm not sure. | ||
| I mean, my guess is, when it comes to Sandy Hook, that was probably the only name that I ever saw brought up about it, and that's probably why I referenced it. | ||
| But to say I was a big fan of Wolfgang Halbig is inaccurate, and I don't believe I ever described him as a good person. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Why did you tell thousands, if not millions of people here, Wolfgang Halbig did the best reporting on Sandy Hook out of all the reporting? | ||
| And this was a highly reported incident in the world. | ||
| Probably because that was just the only name that I had associated with Sandy Hook, for whatever reason, just because I never researched it, and that was the only name I ever saw associated with it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I mean, you know, Anderson Cooper was there. | |
| You know, all the big CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, Breitbart covered it. | ||
| You know, tons of people covered it. | ||
| But you, did you choose Wolfgang Halbig because he fit your narrative here? | ||
| I didn't have a narrative. | ||
| Again, I wasn't following Sandy Hook at the time. | ||
| I wasn't following politics or current events at the time. | ||
| You were just upset because what Ms. Lafferty said about Trump and your boss upset you and you needed to stand up for him. | ||
| I just wanted to cover an article and respond to statements. | ||
| Did you get good feedback from Alex Jones after this? | ||
| Did he say, hey, I appreciate you, new kid? | ||
| I have no idea. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| I doubt there was any feedback. | ||
| That's a bummer. | ||
| Has your dad ever said, good job, son? | ||
| Yeah, that's a bummer. | ||
| I mean, it's really tough to be in that situation where it's like, you have just been shown evidence that you lied. | ||
| And the lie is material. | ||
| It has to do with, like, you were calling out someone whose mother died at Sandy Hook, and part of your rationale for that is, hey, Wolfgang Halbig is great. | ||
| Right, but I've never heard of the guy. | ||
| But the video... | ||
| I mean, this is a show, you know? | ||
| Sure. | ||
| You just say things. | ||
| But, I mean, look, you've got to correct yourself, probably. | ||
| Oh, well, obviously. | ||
| If I've never heard of Wolfgang Halbig, I'm sure that later on you'll see that I've never heard of him. | ||
| But now being shown that you have promoted him on air, you should probably correct that. | ||
| Yeah, that would make sense. | ||
| Or not. | ||
| What reporting did Wolfgang Halbig do that was good? | ||
| I'm not sure. | ||
| How did he become the best, in your opinion? | ||
| I would say I misspoke in that video, or as I said earlier, it was just the only name that I'd ever heard associated with Sandy Hook at the time. | ||
| You saw this video a couple weeks ago? | ||
| Yeah, about a month. | ||
| About a month ago. | ||
| Okay, in the last month, have you gone on air and clarified to all of your audience that you were wrong? | ||
| Because now it's got us asking questions. | ||
| I don't want to touch anything Sandy Hook with a 3,000 million foot pole. | ||
| I really, I mean, I understand that impulse. | ||
| Right. | ||
| But I also think that if you're someone like, oh, and you have to recognize like this makes your credibility look really bad. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| And the families probably would only think it a positive if you would go on air and directly address that you made a mistake. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I just think that this is a cowardly kind of perspective. | ||
| Well, what Bill doesn't understand. | ||
| Alright, is that standard operating procedure for InfoWars, okay, is to never be wrong, always lie, and never, ever apologize. | ||
| And yesterday didn't really happen. | ||
| It didn't? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No. | |
| What happened at our... | ||
| I don't even know what yesterday means. | ||
| I got the feeling, watching this, that Owen is starting to get pissed. | ||
| Oh, I would imagine so. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Then they finally do quote Alex, and they say that he admits... | |
| He doesn't know what really happened at Sandy Hook. | ||
| And they just say the official story has more holes in it than Swiss cheese. | ||
| So, again... | ||
| What holes are you talking about? | ||
| I have no idea. | ||
| Okay, then why are you talking on air? | ||
| Because I'm covering a story. | ||
| You're defending your boss because someone said he said this, but all he said was there's holes. | ||
| And that's all he said. | ||
| What did he say? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| Prior to going on air, did you do a bunch of research to fact check any of this? | ||
| No. | ||
| Okay, you just took somebody else's article, went on air, and started talking. | ||
| Uh, yes. | ||
| It's kind of like your modus operandi, right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Objection form. | |
| No, but that's the case in this video. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And that was also the case in the last video we watched, right? | |
| Okay. | ||
| One we're here for today with Mr. Hesslin at Zero Hedge. | ||
| That was the case then, right? | ||
| Same thing. | ||
| True. | ||
| I've answered the question. | ||
| Where was that? | ||
| That could have come out earlier. | ||
| Oh, man. | ||
| A recognition that you should not answer. | ||
| I am suddenly realizing I am losing. | ||
| I'm in a little bit of mud here. | ||
| Large margin. | ||
| A little deep. | ||
| Have you ever heard the phrase, in over your head? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, okay. | ||
| In the soup up to your thorax. | ||
| Do you know where an anglerfish is in the ocean? | ||
| Way down. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's about how in over my head I am. | ||
| Yup. | ||
| So it turns out Owen didn't just promote Wolfgang Halbig on... | ||
| Oh my god, no. | ||
| Don't do this. | ||
|
unidentified
|
She said this. | |
| I'm asking conservatives and all Americans to join me in telling President-elect Trump this. | ||
| Alex Jones represents the worst of our country. | ||
| It's time to disavow the man who calls my mother's desk death a hoax and do not appear on his show. | ||
| Again, I would say you need to address Wolfgang Halbig and his 16th questions. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But again, why is Alex Jones the worst of this country? | |
| What are Wolfgang Halbig's 16 questions? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I think it was more of a matter of, from my perspective, Alex Jones was catching all this flack for Sandy Hook, but the other people that were questioning it weren't. | ||
| To my best knowledge. | ||
| Who do you mean other people? | ||
| Wolfgang Halbig. | ||
| That's fucking brazen. | ||
| Amazing. | ||
| Owen is trying to claim that he was just saying that Alex shouldn't be taking all the heat, some of it should be directed at Halbig. | ||
| And the way he decided to express that is telling a woman who lost her mother in a horrific shooting that Alex lied about a bunch of times that she needs to answer Wolfgang Halbig's 16 questions. | ||
| Right. | ||
| That doesn't sound like a takedown of Halbig, and this comes from the same video where Owen called Halbig the best reporter on Sandy Hook, so he's clearly saying that Lafferty needs to answer Halbig's questions because he thinks she can't. | ||
| Right. | ||
| The meaning behind what Owen is saying is he believes that if Lafferty were forced to answer those questions, Sandy Hook would be proven to be a hoax. | ||
| Pretending that this is in any way critical of Wolfgang is the most cowardly dodge Owen could pull here. | ||
| You expect better from a cuck slayer. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You know, you die the cuck slayer, you live long enough to see yourself become a cuck under oath. | ||
| That's what's going on here. | ||
| I mean, it is so sad. | ||
| I just want to sit down and just be like, listen, I know how Infowars actually works. | ||
| The questions that I am asking you are... | ||
| Just either to tell me if you know how InfoWars actually works or to tell me how you're lying about how InfoWars actually works. | ||
| There is no outcome where you get away. | ||
| This is over. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's a conversation or a trap. | ||
| It's your choice. | ||
| It's up to you, man. | ||
| You can tell me the obvious things or I'll make you look even worse. | ||
| Come on, dude. | ||
| Because then you'll lie about it and then I'll play a clip of you doing the thing you said you didn't do and then... | ||
| How long are we going to do this dance? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| You still believe that? | ||
| That Wolfgang Halbig is not her enemy? | ||
| I don't know enough about Wolfgang Halbig to... | ||
| I never knew. | ||
| Okay. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Ooh. | |
| All right. | ||
| Fuck you, man. | ||
| That's dark. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I never knew enough, and yet I am using him as a prop to attack a woman who lost her mother. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Just ghoulish shit. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| So here's a little bit more of the video. | ||
| I ask you, if your mother had a gun ready, aimed, and ready to be fired at Dylan Roof when he took your mother's life, do you think she would still be alive today? | ||
|
unidentified
|
This is Owen Troyer for Infowars.com. | |
| How do you think that last little part went over with Ms. Lafferty? | ||
| Objection form. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| If you could redo this video, would you keep that last part in? | ||
| I just wouldn't do the video at all. | ||
| Why? | ||
| Because it's now being used against me. | ||
| Is that why? | ||
| That's why. | ||
| Oh, man. | ||
| That's selfish. | ||
| That's real. | ||
| See, that's one of those things where your answer is, Way worse. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| And also, not for nothing, Owen got the shooter's name wrong. | ||
| He said Dylann Roof. | ||
| He said Dylann Roof, yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's... | ||
| A little disrespectful. | ||
| That's dark. | ||
| Pretty fucking disrespectful. | ||
| That is dark. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| So the question comes up of, hey man, what shootings has Infowars not thought was a hoax or a false flag? | ||
| Okay, if I'm Owen and I get this question, my immediate response is, I don't have any examples for you. | ||
| And then we just call it, right? | ||
| Because that's where we're going to go. | ||
| I mean, eventually. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Can you think of a mass shooting that Infowars did not say was a false flag and or a hoax? | ||
| Yeah, there was just one at a high school in Michigan this week. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| Prior to, yeah, actually, prior to this lawsuit being filed, can you think of one? | ||
| No. | ||
| Neither could Paul Watson. | ||
| Because Columbine, Infowars, false flag, or brainwash, the government brainwash program. | ||
| Boston bombing, Gabrielle Gifford shooting, Parkland shooting, Aurora. | ||
| Sutherland Springs church shooting, El Paso, 9-11, Oklahoma City, San Bernardino, all. | ||
|
unidentified
|
False flag or hoax? | |
| All claimed by InfoWars. | ||
| So earlier when I asked you if you thought InfoWars was a conspiracy theory website, you said no. | ||
| Now that I just went through those, you still holding on to that opinion? | ||
| There's way too much to unpack there to make a broad statement about 20 different events and then just make a blanket statement of conspiracy theory. | ||
| I gave you all 20 events, right? | ||
| Or however many. | ||
| Which one of them was a hoax? | ||
| Which one of them was a false flag? | ||
| You tell me. | ||
| I have no comment on that. | ||
| You can't name one, right? | ||
| I didn't say that either. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You can't. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, buddy. | |
| You can't say any, because if you do, there's follow-up questions, and you just can't. | ||
| You just can't. | ||
| You can't handle the heat. | ||
| Just say no. | ||
| So, the fact that all of these things, you can't demonstrate or claim that any of them were actually hoaxes, and Infowars called all of them hoaxes, that makes you a conspiracy site, doesn't it? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well... | |
| Every single one is... | ||
| Labeled a hoax and or false flag immediately by Infowars. | ||
| The day of, on every single one that I just listed off, did they get any of them right? | ||
| I mean, I'm basing an answer off of an assumption that you're being completely honest. | ||
| I don't know what you're talking about. | ||
| What events did I cover of those events that you listed? | ||
| Well, so here's the thing. | ||
| You didn't cover any of these. | ||
| But you did say... | ||
| That InfoWars is not a conspiracy theory website. | ||
| So if they're a website that labels all of these events as false flags and or government cover-ups or hoaxes, and none of them are right, what does that make InfoWars? | ||
| It's a matter of opinion. | ||
| I'm asking, what's your opinion? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Objection form. | |
| I have no opinion on the matter. | ||
| Yeah, don't answer that. | ||
| At this point, it's like... | ||
| When did he figure this out? | ||
| Three hours in? | ||
| At that point where you were starting to look pissed off, it just felt like, yeah, you're gonna have to... | ||
| There was almost like a switch kind of flip. | ||
| It's like, I gotta clam up about some of this. | ||
| I think it's the Halbig clips. | ||
| That revelation of like, oh, I am completely trapped myself here. | ||
| I can't say anything else, because if I do, it's probably going to be a trap. | ||
| And I think that, I mean, I would be shook, too, if I was in that position. | ||
| I mean, I guess points for getting there, but you should have gotten there way earlier. | ||
| It might have taken three and a half hours. | ||
| I mean, the idea that you... | ||
| Oh, God. | ||
| So there's a culture at InfoWars that is of a certain character. | ||
| Oh, I would say so. | ||
| Now, how much anyone is aware of what the other people there believe is a matter of debate. | ||
| There's some information about some of Owen's co-workers that is brought up, and we want to know if Owen is aware of this stuff. | ||
| Michael Zimmerman. | ||
| Do you know who he is? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Are you friends with him? | ||
| I would say we're friends, but, I mean, we don't hang out or talk that often. | ||
| Sure, but you're a friend. | ||
| You have a somewhat... | ||
| Professional and personal? | ||
| If I saw him in public, I'd go say hello. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| Okay. | ||
| Does he seem like a good guy? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And I'd opposed him. | ||
| He came off very respectful. | ||
| He was shockingly nice. | ||
| Has he ever shared any of his opinions or views on mass shootings with you? | ||
| Not that I can recall. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| Were you aware that... | ||
| Do you remember the Christchurch shooting? | ||
| New Zealand? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Christchurch, New Zealand shooting? | ||
| It was live-streamed? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Brandon Tarrant was the shooter. | ||
| He executed a bunch of Muslims at a mosque. | ||
| Yeah, you're refreshing the details of the event for me right now. | ||
| Do you know whether or not anyone at InfoWars claimed it was a false flag? | ||
| No, I'm unaware. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Did you know that some individuals at InfoWars liked that shooting? | ||
| No. | ||
| Did you know... | ||
| You understand that Michael Zimmerman handles the IT stuff for InfoWars? | ||
| Objection, form. | ||
| I know that he... | ||
| Was doing IT. | ||
| I'm not sure if that is still his role. | ||
| Did you know that on March 14, 2019, Mr. Zimmerman registered the domain TarrantManifesto.com? | ||
| No. | ||
| Did you know that he registered the website ShooterChan.org? | ||
| No. | ||
| Did you know who Timothy Thrift is? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Do you have a personal relationship with him? | ||
| Work acquaintance. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No. | |
| No. | ||
|
unidentified
|
How do you feel about the people that you work with who you have somewhat of a personal relationship registering these type of websites immediately after? | |
| a mass shooting that was live streamed to the world. | ||
| Pretty surprised. | ||
| He was pretty surprised, but he also says, I'm not gonna bring it up to them. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No. | |
| I, Listen, what are we going to do? | ||
| Oh, I'm going to be mad at all the Nazis at Infowars? | ||
| I would quit. | ||
| Come on, man. | ||
| I think if I found out that a co-worker had registered StTarrant.com, I would probably quit. | ||
| Because it also is, that's an intersecting data point. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| With someone who you, I don't believe he's been on much lately, but was a pretty regular InfoWars guest, Vox Day, who would call Brendan Tarrant, St. Tarrant. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And was a big fan of Anders Breivik. | ||
| And I think that these kinds of intersections, these kinds of... | ||
| Like, ooh, it's suspicious that everyone seems to... | ||
| You scratch under the surface and there's these weird, weird, seeming to like white nationalist violence and murder. | ||
| I'm going to throw this out at you, Owen. | ||
| You ever notice how many of your friends are Nazis? | ||
| Like, but have you ever talked to them about it? | ||
| Well, I don't want to talk to them about it. | ||
| But, like, if you're at a... | ||
| But if I don't talk to him about it, then maybe I don't have to... | ||
| Okay, okay. | ||
| I can pretend I don't know. | ||
| Okay, fine. | ||
| But if you don't talk to him about it, and then you guys go to a rally together, right, and it's all of their friends... | ||
| Yeah, but what if they don't talk about it? | ||
| Right, okay. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| But you like them, right? | ||
| Well, I love their ideas. | ||
| And they are all wearing Nazi armbands. | ||
| But it's in fashion. | ||
| It's the season. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Well, then you've convinced me. | ||
| It's troubling. | ||
| I mean, like, obviously, it's not your responsibility to know everything that your coworkers do or anything like that. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| I've had some coworkers that I've had some suspicions about. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| And I think if somebody came to me and confirmed some of those suspicions, I would have disassociated myself from working around them. | ||
| Whether it's, like, I'd like a transfer to maybe another office or something like that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| I want nothing to do. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| With those folks. | ||
| And if it's something like a place that does deny mass shootings and did believe the Christchurch shooting was a false flag, and you have multiple people who work there who are creating websites intended to maybe make something... | ||
| That's like a terror cell! | ||
| You gotta get out of there. | ||
| That's what it is. | ||
| You work at a terror cell. | ||
| I understand. | ||
| Is that what you want? | ||
| I understand you can't make $100,000 anywhere else. | ||
| No, but you can make a fine living not, I don't know, helping Nazis. | ||
| It would be good. | ||
| So, we only have a couple more clips left, and one of them is a question about, did you know that you didn't answer Discovery? | ||
| And so, this is all gonna be Exhibit 13. And it's... | ||
| One large document that starts on this first page. | ||
| We'll go through it together. | ||
| Which is a signed order by the judge back in 2018. | ||
| And it is ordered discovery by the judge to defendants. | ||
| And this is the discovery ordered, and that's your name, right? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Okay, so that was ordered by the judge for you to answer these requests. | ||
| Directly to you. | ||
| And if we go to the request for production, we see the request for production 1. Can you read what that says? | ||
| All communications, including letters, memoranda, emails, text messages, instant messenger logs, or other electronic communications in which the following topics are referenced. | ||
| Neil Haslund or his son, Dr. Wayne Carver, Zero Hedge, Jim Fetzer. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| And that was ordered by the court. | ||
| That wasn't just sent by us. | ||
| It was sent by us, not answered, and then brought to the court, and the court ordered you to do that production. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay? | |
| Okay. | ||
| To this day, you have not answered that as we sit here. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And... | |
| Correct. | ||
| I was unaware of this. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| And you would agree that some of the exhibits that we've gone through today would be considered... | ||
| Communications about Dr. Carver, Neil Hesslin, or his son, and Zero Hedge, correct? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| You did not produce any of that to me. | ||
| We had to get that elsewhere. | ||
| You would agree? | ||
| Like I said, this is the first that has even been brought to my attention. | ||
| In the other case, as soon as this request was presented to me, I produced everything. | ||
| So we have this situation where Owen is saying he had no idea he needed to do this. | ||
| In addition, I have the Kit Daniels where he said that the lawyer sat on this thing for a month. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Conceivably might be true, might not be. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, could be. | |
| Who knows? | ||
| And so this leads to Bill making a suggestion that is a little bit unconventional. | ||
| I understand that Mr. Reeves represents you right now. | ||
| And this next question is in no way a reflection of Mr. Reeves. | ||
| Because I'll represent, he's the best you've had so far. | ||
| But when we look into your net worth, I want to know whether or not you have discussed or contemplated, not with Mr. Reeves, but with anybody else, legal malpractice lawsuits against your prior counsel for multiple failures over the course of three years Can | ||
| you just try to simplify that for me so I can answer? | ||
| Have you discussed or contemplated suing your lawyers because they did not tell you any of this had come to them, that you were ordered by the judge to answer, and because of that, along with other conduct by them, default judgment was granted? | ||
| I have not had any discussions about that, no. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| I will say this. | ||
| I think you should. | ||
| And the reason I say that is because those claims are an asset. | ||
| And at some point, those assets are probably going to be evaluated at the end of this lawsuit. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Because... | |
| I'm sure you've had conversations to an extent with your lawyers, but I will say this. | ||
| Are you aware that as this case stands right now, the judge has taken away any ability you have to defend yourself? | ||
| I understand that now. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| And that was not based on conduct solely from Mr. Reeves whatsoever. | ||
|
unidentified
|
If we could please make sure we're clear on the record there when you're going to ask about legal malpractice questions. | |
| And I tried to make it clear before. | ||
| That's between y 'all. | ||
| So, this is a pretty wild thing here. | ||
| Recommending that you sue your prior lawyers. | ||
| But also, there's a two-pronged thing here. | ||
| The first is that this isn't all your fault. | ||
| You got fucked by these lawyers. | ||
| Second thing is... | ||
| If you do sue your lawyers, that's an asset that's collectible. | ||
| Because then that money, whatever you would get for suing the lawyers, should be assessed to be possibly given to the people who are awarded a judgment against you. | ||
| I feel like Bill is saying real quick, like, hey, if you think after this is done, you can then go sue your lawyers to get some of your money back. | ||
| We are going to take that money too. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| All of this money, all of yours, is now mine. | ||
| This is not going to be something where you can make yourself richer after the fact. | ||
| This will be a piece of whatever your assets are that are a factor in this case. | ||
| Here's what blows my mind, okay? | ||
| They know we exist. | ||
| Us? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So, I mean... | ||
| The only thing that makes sense to me is we have episodes where we critique depositions. | ||
| Essentially, we gave them free coaching. | ||
| True. | ||
| All they had to do was listen to us shit-talk them and take our advice and then go back in. | ||
| This one's free. | ||
| And it's for the lawyers. | ||
| It's the same lawyers. | ||
| Like, what are we doing? | ||
| This is insane. | ||
| To be fair, I don't know. | ||
| Okay, so the ones that I was at, Brad, was the lawyer. | ||
| Right. | ||
| The one with Kit Daniels was another lawyer. | ||
| Right, that I do know. | ||
| This one's Brad, and I think some of the other ones, I mean, we know Good Work Barnes from when Barnes was around. | ||
| Sure, we got that. | ||
| So I think there have been periodic different lawyers in our lineage. | ||
| Right. | ||
| But yeah, that's a... | ||
| I mean, it's free. | ||
| That's an interesting way to bring this sort of, to land this. | ||
| It was free. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You could have downloaded it any time. | ||
| It's true. | ||
| Amazing. | ||
| I know I've said amazing a lot, but really, like genuinely, this is shocking shit. | ||
| We don't really know all that much about law or legal advice, but we do know about unforced errors that you keep committing. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| And ways that you just shut up or come up with a better answer. | ||
| Just ridiculous. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Silly. | ||
| So there's one last clip here to dismount, and it's a question of whether or not Owen feels remorse for what he's done. | ||
| My last question. | ||
| Do you have any remorse for any of the contributions you made towards the impact Mr. Hesslin had from the reporting that you were involved with in Sandy Hook? | ||
| I would say I do. | ||
| I would say that I wish I'd never commented on any of it. | ||
| I would say that I wish I understood whatever reporting Mr. Halbig was doing at the time better before referencing him. | ||
| And so my one regret is that I just should have never even covered it, never should have talked about it. | ||
| And having said that, and just not to be redundant, but I think it bears repeating, I never said anything about Mr. Hesland being a liar. | ||
| I never said anything about his son not dying. | ||
| I never said anything about Sandy Hook being a hoax. | ||
| I never had any intention of any ill will towards Mr. Hesland and anything. | ||
| If I had thought that there would have been such consequence to eight minutes of my career on air because of these videos, then I would have not done it. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| Appreciate your time. | ||
| That's all I got. | ||
| So this is interesting for me because obviously there is an expression of him saying, yes, I have remorse. | ||
| Right. | ||
| But at the same time, the explanation of the remorse has to do with consequences that have been visited upon him, as opposed to it was wrong to do this. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| It's wrong to treat someone like this, essentially, even if they're an abstract idea to you. | ||
| Like, he doesn't know who Mr. Hasselman is. | ||
| It's not like a person in his life, but... | ||
| Not considering the possible ramifications of your blatantly irresponsible and bullshit coverage of a very, very serious and traumatic thing. | ||
| And not to mention, Ms. Lafferty's brazenly disrespectful coverage of her situation. | ||
| I don't know if it's an inability or an unwillingness to accept responsibility on the level of this was wrong to do. | ||
| Right. | ||
| But I find that distasteful, that you can only understand wrongdoing through consequence. | ||
| I mean, it is a guy saying I regret being caught. | ||
| Yes! | ||
| Listen, I stole all of her money. | ||
| I loved stealing it. | ||
| I get to keep it. | ||
| And I regret you catching me because now I feel like I'm going to lose it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And I would really like to keep that person's money that is not mine. | ||
| If I'd known there was a punishment for the shitty behavior that I engaged in. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's exactly what he said! | |
| Yes. | ||
| If anybody had explained to me that there were rules. | ||
| If I ever thought that there was a possibility that this would come back to haunt me, I probably wouldn't have done it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Totally. | |
| Totally. | ||
| Great. | ||
| Congratulations on being a very responsible adult. | ||
| It's just so much like, listen, if I hadn't gone to work for Infowars where they told me this shit He worked for that AM station. | ||
| So we reached the end of this, and I am exhausted. | ||
| As am I. But I think we learned a lot. | ||
| I think we did. | ||
| I think we really learned a good bit about the inner workings of multiple facets of Infowars. | ||
| True. | ||
| And then we reinforced that these people are shitheads, and they just don't know what to do, and can't defend themselves without making things worse. | ||
| And they can't take the help from people... | ||
| Who hate them. | ||
| Who do a podcast. | ||
| They couldn't even take our help. | ||
| That's how stupid they are. | ||
| Just because we're aware that they know who we are doesn't mean they listen to every episode. | ||
| I'm not saying they listen to any episodes. | ||
| I don't think they should listen to anything. | ||
| But if you've got a deposition, I mean, it might behoove you. | ||
| We'll see how they do next time. | ||
| We'll see. | ||
| But, hey, Jordan, we have a website. | ||
| We do. | ||
| It's knowledgefight.com. | ||
| Until we're back for episode 666. | ||
| Ooh, 666. | ||
| Yeah, we're also on Twitter. | ||
| We are on Twitter. | ||
| It's at knowledge underscore fight, and I go to bed, Jordan. | ||
| Yep, we'll be back for episode 666. | ||
| But until then, I'm Neo. | ||
| I'm Leo. | ||
| I'm DCX. | ||
| Clark, I'm... | ||
| The devil himself. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| And now here comes the sex robots. | ||
| Andy in Kansas. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You're on the air. | |
| Thanks for holding. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello, Alex. | |
| I'm a first time caller. | ||
| I'm a huge fan. | ||
| I love your work. |
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