#732: Trial Press Conference dissects Alex Jones’ courthouse spectacle, where he falsely claimed legal restrictions blocked his testimony while promoting The Great Reset and The War for the World. He deflected blame—calling Sandy Hook "staged," accusing jurors of bias, and alleging $73M was siphoned from victims—while lawyer Robert Barnes parroted conspiracy theories. Dan Friesen and Jordan Holmes expose Jones’ evasions, mock his theatrics, and highlight his refusal to admit calling grieving families "actors." His antics reveal a pattern of weaponizing legal processes for profit and attention, further alienating the very community he exploited. [Automatically generated summary]
Football club in Wrexham in Wales, which is like the oldest.
It's a really cool story about the backstory of the town, and it's got the oldest international stadium anywhere, and all this cool stuff.
And then they turned him into like the Mighty Ducks.
Right?
And that's really cool.
But then because Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhinney are rich as shit and they can get all these sponsorship deals, now they're in a league where they are getting a huge budget compared to everybody else.
So they're like the bad guys.
But at the same time, because of the way football works, they're in a lower league.
So what they're really trying to do is get out of that league to be the underdog in the higher league.
I don't want to spoil anything about it or anything, but in the first season...
The beginning of it is really survival-based, trying to find food and make fire, and then by the time it's down to four of them, they're all losing their minds.
The one guy who came in second, because we watched the first season, the guy who came in second, and it was after like three or four months, and it was like you were just hearing him talk to a camera, and you feel like he's talking to you, and then you stop and you realize he hasn't spoken to another human being for months.
He's, like, from Georgia, kind of vaguely hillbilly-ish, kind of, or at least, you know, has a little bit of that vibe to him, and he's getting deeply philosophical.
It is a sort of prisoner's dilemma aspect, too, because you have to be in your head like, well, I'm a great survivor, obviously, because I'm four months into this.
But this is a TV show, man.
There's gotta be nine other great survivors on this show.
So, Jordan, today we have an episode to go over, and what I thought we might do is talk a little bit about the trial, of course, and then I want to discuss Alex's press conference that he gave on the steps of the courthouse.
Right, right, right.
So I think that there's points that I want to make, and this is something I think probably merits focus.
Okay.
And we'll get to that in just a moment.
But before we do, let's say hello to some new wonks.
The stuff that you hear about Alex, whether it be the business practices or the...
I think that guy from the Super Bowl, the Matt Miller guy, that was a...
It's not like...
The biggest thing in the world, but it's crippling to Alex's argument.
A lot of that stuff is there, and then to the side of that, all of the humanizing and the fleshing out of the people's experiences, the sort of discussion of their loved ones.
And so we reach the end of the trial and the testimony, and the closing arguments end up with the plaintiff's lawyers laying out really concise argument about what they have discussed.
There's the appeal to the emotions of the case, respect for that, but also the cause and effect of Alex's behavior and the grief that was caused to these people.
And then...
Norm Pettis, for the defense, decides he's going to play a 20-minute video of Alex from his own show.
I mean, I watched the video and was focused on it because for some reason I thought there must be some sort of content reason that he would play this video.
And when you watch it, you're like...
unidentified
I think he just didn't want to do 20 minutes of his closing argument.
So look, I understand that the whole argument that Alex and Norm have wanted to make this whole time is that the videos the plaintiffs are showing have been taken out of context, and to understand what they're playing and what Alex says, you need to watch the whole videos.
So now, in the closing statement, that's when Norm has this ability to do that.
But this is kind of bullshit, because the exact same argument, Yep.
outbursts that are the result of some other stimulus.
So in order to understand the whole show, you kind of need to watch the day before.
You know, the jury's got to see the day before show in order to put this in context.
You can see how this argument spirals out of hand easily because it's meaningless.
Alex defends himself by saying that things are out of context and you need to see the whole clip because he wants to be able to set the arbitrary parameter for what you need to see in order to be qualified to judge him.
So I don't think the video did as much to help Alex's case as he might have thought it would.
Beyond sounding completely insane, rambling about how Megyn Kelly totally wanted to fuck him and he could prove it if he was recording at the right time, beyond that, Alex also touches on a number of fucked up claims.
One, he says that it's proven that the WikiLeaks releases couldn't have been hacked and were the result of someone on site downloading the files.
This is part of his Seth Rich conspiracies, and it's based on comments made by his buddy William Binney.
It was shown to Benny that he was totally wrong and that the documents could have easily been downloaded remotely, and Benny recanted his claim.
But Alex has never corrected himself or updated his talking points.
So just off the bat, in this closing statement, Alex is reaffirming his belief that Hillary Clinton had Seth Rich killed for releasing the WikiLeaks, which Seth Rich's family has successfully sued people for claiming.
Four, Alex demonstrably lies about what he said about Sandy Hook.
He directly contradicts videos that have already been shown in court.
If this video shows anything, it's that Alex is a completely untrustworthy source, particularly about his own actions.
Five, Alex claims that the Syrian gas attacks are false flags.
Six, In this clip, Alex says that he got a cease and desist slash retraction request about Sandy Hook that gave him a month to act, and he didn't because he felt like he hadn't done anything wrong.
I think that Alex severely overestimates his own ability to make a point.
He's playing this video because the underlying point he's trying to make is that he's totally cool, did nothing wrong, and the media is attacking him about Sandy Hook because he exposes things that the media doesn't want the public to know.
Alex thinks that if people could just see him lay out his defense, then they would get it and it would be game over for the plaintiffs.
But this video is uncompelling to anyone who doesn't already believe Alex's shit.
It's particularly useless to show people who have already seen evidence that the things he's saying in this video are bullshit, as the jury already has.
I get the impulse on Alex's part, I think.
But in this setting, it actually kind of makes his image look much worse.
So you have to play this troubling clip full of bullshit.
So Alex is used to facing no consequences, being surrounded by losers on his payroll who know they're unemployable anywhere else, interviewing con artists who are financially and professionally invested in maintaining the illusion that Alex is right, and being able to hang up on or bully any callers who disagree with him in any meaningful way.
He's used to his explanations for things working because the people he's explaining things to are already in his camp.
To uninitiated ears or to people who've seen evidence to the contrary, this video just seems insane.
What would have been useful for Norm to do would be to take the clips of Alex saying that Sandy Hook was fake with actors that were played in court and then show the full video that the clip came from which would then reveal that the original clip was taken out of context and Alex was actually just asking questions or playing devil's advocate.
Norm's other argument seemed to be that Alex's actions were driven by a fear that the government was going to take the guns, not by a desire to endanger grieving parents for money.
But the reality is that Alex endangered grieving parents in order to push his narrative surrounding the fears about the government taking guns, which is something he embellishes, exaggerates, and sensationalizes in order to make money.
It's not one thing or the other, as Norm is pretending.
It's all part of a dynamic system that Alex uses.
Norm understands this.
He's been a guest on Alex's show numerous times, and if you watch this, you kind of get the sense that Norm doesn't believe a goddamn word he's saying.
It's just that there's no other real way to argue this, and the bravado that he had about the families exaggerating their grief in his opening statement probably...
That sort of cockiness isn't going to play too well with a jury after days of hearing from said family members about the pain they've endured.
He tried to bring that exaggeration point back up, but you heard how much more apologetic and careful he was about it, as opposed to the sort of cocky swinging dick he had in the opening.
Norm was desperate to try and make this political in his closing, trying to shoehorn in references to Trump and getting shut down with objections along the way.
He also tried to make a mockery of the idea that the plaintiffs who testified and said that they didn't know what Alex's positions on guns were.
They didn't know what his position was.
He tried to mock them.
I want to touch on this for a second.
When you live by the sword, it's not a certainty that you're going to die by the sword, but if you do, you have an obligation to accept your death by the sword.
Alex's most consistent defense of himself is that he's being taken out of context and that you can't understand what he's saying from short clips.
I think this is bullshit, but it's the foundation of Norm's defense and their position, so he has to accept this.
It's all good fun for him when he wants to claim that Alex mocking Robbie Parker was out of context, but it's so weird how he doesn't realize that this cuts both ways.
He can show the jury a clip of Alex saying they're coming for our guns or they're staging shootings to take our guns, and if he's being intellectually consistent, he should know that the jury can't possibly know what Alex's position on guns is without watching the whole video.
In essence, Norm's underlying defense strategy precludes him from being able to expect that he's able to prove anything.
This is also a corollary of one of Alex's other defenses.
When he's accused of anything and then shown video of him doing or saying the thing he's accused of, he'll say it's out of context or it's satire.
If that is what Alex is saying, and if the entirety of his on-air career isn't allowed to be shown in his custody hearing because he's putting on a performance, Then why should the plaintiffs in this case take him at his word when he says something on air?
He could lay out his entire philosophy on guns succinctly on his show, and the plaintiffs would have every right to say that while he did say things on air, they have no way of knowing what Alex's sincere positions are.
Alex gets a lot of mileage out of people knowing he's a fraud and a liar, where he can wiggle out of trouble by disowning the things he says on air as being theatrical or satire.
But the other side of this is this.
If you want Norm to insist that the Sandy Hook families are suing him because of their opposition to his position on guns you have no right to claim that they even know what those positions are.
Because he was playing the video, and then Norm said he was trying to insinuate the thing that he's been trying to insinuate the entire fucking time, and everyone has stopped him, and they still let him do it, and then the objection was sustained.
But it doesn't fucking matter, because again, he got to say, why did they come with this...
With this lawsuit, it's because of the guy who said, good job, Alex, right?
Because he can't say it's Trump.
He can't say they're coming after Trump, but he can play a video where Alex references Trump and then references that maybe he was referencing Trump.
To the extent that they have any awareness of why it's inappropriate, this behavior, I think that they can understand, like, this guy's trying to do something he's not allowed to do.
Yeah, he went there because he knew he was going to get that press conference right outside the court because he always gets it because everybody who works in the media is fucking stupid.
If you have heard the deposition episodes, then you'll know this.
But just to revisit this, this is Brittany Paws testifying under oath that they're considering suing Barnes.
unidentified
I went over this a little bit with Mr. Schroyer and his deposition, and I'll ask you the same thing, based on the information that you just testified to.
Has the company decided one way or another on legal malpractice as a potential asset?
If you are giving him that press conference, or if you're the editor forcing somebody to go give him that press conference, who are you doing this for?
You're not helping the families at all.
You're not helping your listeners at all.
You're not helping anybody but Alex and, I guess, the corporation you fucking work for.
So those are the people that you care about.
If that's what you're going to do, those are the people you care about.
One thing that sticks out to me, though, about what you're saying is it does highlight the difference between what you can say in court and what you can say just outside on the steps.
And I think that that imbalance should be shown to Alex.
You have the awareness that you yelling at him is disrespectful to the court itself as well, and disrespectful to what the families and all of them are doing.
And I think that's another thing that Alex weaponizes, that people of good heart and good conscience wouldn't want to make a scene and treat him the way he deserves to be treated on the steps.
Not like fight him or assault him or anything, but yell at him.
It says, quote, Jones and his company, Free Speech Systems, have been prohibited from defending themselves under the default, but can try to minimize what they have to pay in compensatory and punitive damages.
Alex can't defend himself under the default.
That's an important distinction, because that ship has sailed.
He had every opportunity to defend himself when that was appropriate, but he didn't, and he was so abusive of the process that he was defaulted.
He can't now take this damages hearing as an opportunity to try and undo the default, or to carry out the case as if he hadn't been defaulted.
He fucked himself over, and this is a consequence of that.
He has every ability to defend himself in the context of this damages hearing which is the second part of the sentence in that current article that he's ignoring.
He can try to minimize the damages.
That's the damages hearing equivalent of defending himself.
Point being, Alex is a fucking baby and Barnes is tagging along to Connecticut with him because Barnes is...
He just loves a public spectacle.
And he doesn't have a problem being a disrespectful shithead if it gets him attention.
And, you know, maybe drives a couple more people into his revenue streams, like on that Patreon clone for unhinged assholes.
I also want to point out that later, he is just holding up a copy of his book.
This is a publicity stunt for Alex, pure and simple.
That's why he went to Connecticut.
He had no intention of ever testifying, but since the bankruptcy court has taken over his business's finances, I bet he had to pretend that he was going to testify in order to rationalize the expense of his travel.
It would probably not fly as a bank.
business expense for a company in bankruptcy to say, hey, I want to go across the country with my shithead lawyer friend so I can promote my book on the steps of the courthouse where I'm avoiding testifying because I'm scared.
Alex is a tremendous piece of shit, and this press conference is a new level of inexcusable act on his part.
He could have stayed the fuck in Texas.
There was no need for him to go to Connecticut just so he could siphon off some of the attention from this trial in order to grandstand in front of the court with Barnes to try and promote his stupid book.
It's honestly difficult to think of a way he could have been more disrespectful to the families inside just trying to get their day in court.
It's one thing for him to be afraid to sincerely face them and accept responsibility for his part in everything that's happened.
And the judge today said that she will hold me in criminal contempt if I say I'm innocent, if I say I'm bankrupt, if I say I wasn't the first person to question Sandy Hook, and over ten other things.
No judge in U.S. history has ever told somebody what they can and can't say.
Alex would be held in contempt because if he did any of that stuff, he'd be acting in ways that are contemptuous to the court.
He's not allowed to try and re-litigate his default in this setting because to do so would run a very high risk of poisoning the jury.
The jury isn't there to determine Alex's culpability.
That's been decided.
So for him to rant about this irrelevant nonsense is an act of contempt to the court.
Judges very regularly hold people in contempt, and if you don't stop yelling about things that aren't germane to the matter at hand...
You will be held in contempt.
It happens all the time.
Alex just doesn't want to accept that he's a petulant child who can't allow for there being rules that he's subject to, so he's trying to turn it into a constitutional issue.
So this raises the issue of whether or not Barnes is an official spokesperson.
Is he on the payroll again now?
And if so, is this just a way for Alex to try to rationalize to the bankruptcy court to pay for Barnes to travel to Connecticut for their stupid publicity stunt?
The story they told about Sandy Hook was not true in the sense that they blamed gun owners and blamed Alex Jones for what happened when the reality is that school safety was not up to snuff at Sandy Hook.
Democratic politicians decided to pocket money meant to protect little kids' lives, and little kids died who didn't need to die because politicians lied.
I know from conversations with them that they were very willing for him to have a day in court.
It was quite a surprise when there was a default and that a day in court would have been fine.
If Alex had done what he was supposed to do, sent competent corporate representatives, allowed disclosure things to happen with Discovery, They would have been perfectly happy to let him have his day in court.
And he said this stuff on Alex's show already, and one of the things that I kind of noticed is like, felt like they were working out their talking points, working out their bits on his show, and then now they're just doing it in front of the courthouse.
I mean, if FBI agents can now sue people for raising questions about what took place in various cases, does everybody who questions the government now go to jail?
Does everybody who testifies truthfully in their own defense?
Do they all get bankrupted into oblivion?
Because that is the future we face if we allow precedents like this to be set.
And this was, again, one of the more powerful things that you could hear is that the FBI agent himself, Bill, testifying, I wish I'd worn a different jacket that day.
Maybe that would have changed something.
Can you...
Like, that kind of...
That kind of weird guilt that should never have even existed.
Just like, man, if I'd worn a different shirt for ten years, these people wouldn't have been abused, you know?
I didn't kill those kids, but people don't know Adam Lanza's name.
They know Alex Jones's name.
We'll take a few questions, and then we're going to come back later, obviously, but I want to just say this in closing.
I am strongly considering tomorrow, when I get put on the stand, looking at the judge and saying, you've barred me from saying I'm innocent, this isn't a real court, so I take the Fifth Amendment.
Alex was never considering pleading the fifth because he knew he was never going back into that courtroom.
He was only going to testify if Norm called him, and he knew Norm wasn't going to because he pays Norm.
This is all just artificial bravado and an attempt on Alex's part to get headlines written about the speculation about him pleading the Fifth.
This is desperate and pathetic and also a transparent attempt to use the trial as a promotional event.
Also, more people know who Alex is than Adam Lanza because Alex is a giant media celebrity with an audience of millions of people.
Lance is a notable name, but he's a murderer from about a decade ago, so maybe his name recognition isn't the same as a giant media celebrity who's the textbook definition of a fucking attention whore.
And this charade that Alex is using about, like, everyone thinks that I did this, or they don't know who Adam Lanz is, but they know who I am, is just atrocious.
So you notice here that Alex can't even bring himself to admit that he called them actors when he's explaining what he did wrong that he claims he's apologized for.
He can only use these vague terms like that he called it staged.
He's doing this because even he knows that his real actions are indefensible, but if he lies about what he actually did, it becomes a little bit more understandable how he could make these mistakes and such.
Alex, you can say to the people who were responsible for the harassment against the family, what's your message to them, the people that were putting out the misinformation?
The original people were professors that questioned it, former CIA operatives and others, and I believed them, and they never told anybody to go harass families.
A few mentally ill people did harass families.
I think there's some evidence of that, and that's a real thing.
But the people that harassed some of the families who became public figures and met with Obama and went on TV, you know, a lot of folks that are pro-gun didn't like those families being political.
Well, no, because there is a chance that, you know, this is a local news piece and maybe they would play this and then be like, back in the studios and be like, this is totally not true.
They're going to be suing people for a thousand years over Sandy Hook.
They may rename the whole planet Sandy Hook, okay?
This is a damn hoax and a lie.
And I'll tell you the best part about it.
I don't have two million dollars.
I don't have all this money and crap they talk about so they can get a billion-dollar verdict.
They're not going to get anything.
But what they got was their publicity stunt for their charities and their $73 million in Remington and the cash machine squeezing money out of the dead children's bodies.
I mean, look, there's an inability to control himself that is absolutely true, but he can't control himself enough to somehow navigate doing shit like this.