Today, Dan and Jordan sit down for a sneaky snake chat with plaintiff's attorney Mark Bankston, to get a handle on the news of Alex's recent almost $1 billion verdict in the CT case, and what the next steps are likely to be in the various litigations he's facing.
| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
|
unidentified
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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 in Kansas. | ||
| Andy in Kansas. | ||
|
unidentified
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Stop it. | |
| Andy in Kansas. | ||
| Andy in Kansas. | ||
| It's time to pray. | ||
| Andy in Kansas. | ||
|
unidentified
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You're on the air. | |
| I love you. | ||
| Hey everybody! | ||
| How's it going out there? | ||
| This is Dan. | ||
| Here's the situation. | ||
| The other day, me and Jordan, after the verdict came out on Thursday, we had the opportunity to sit down and chat with the plaintiff's attorney from the Texas cases, Mark Bankston, about the goings-on, reflect a little bit on the case, and what were the most likely next steps. | ||
| And that is a little bonus. | ||
| Bowonis. | ||
| Bowonis. | ||
| That's what it is. | ||
| It's a bonus little episode for this weekend for you all to enjoy. | ||
| Sneaky snaking. | ||
| But here's the thing. | ||
| Me and Jordan had meant... | ||
| Man, I'm pronouncing things weird all over the place. | ||
| Me and Jordan had meant to record an intro like this, what I'm doing here, but we forgot. | ||
| Anyway, I just thought it would be weird if the episode started and then just immediately jumped into an interview. | ||
| Maybe I'm wrong. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| Maybe this is unnecessary. | ||
| Anyway, before I get too up in my head, I'll just throw it to the interview. | ||
| Enjoy, and we will be talking to you soon. | ||
| Well, folks, I figured there's a lot of news. | ||
| There's a billion stories to cover. | ||
| Yeah, 965 million to be exact. | ||
| Yeah, close to a billion stories. | ||
| And whenever we need some legal analysis on cases involving one Alex Emmerich Jones, there's one. | ||
| We put up the Mark Bankston symbol. | ||
| There's only one signal. | ||
| I go to the rooftop of my apartment here in Chicago and I... | ||
| I put a gummy worm shadow on a cloud, and then Bill calls Mark. | ||
| I think the Mark signal is a silhouette with the words underneath it. | ||
| Who sent me these texts? | ||
| I think that's... | ||
| It's a Matlock-shaped symbol. | ||
| Or bones being picked. | ||
| Alright, we have extended this long enough. | ||
| Mark, welcome to the show! | ||
|
unidentified
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Cheers, boys. | |
| How are y 'all doing? | ||
| Welcome back. | ||
| I raised my glass of Jordan brought champagne over this evening. | ||
| It's hard not to. | ||
| And so, welcome. | ||
| Thanks for joining us. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| Couldn't be in better spirits today. | ||
| I think a lot of the audience is aware, obviously, that... | ||
| The Connecticut case, the verdict came in on Wednesday. | ||
| Boy, did it ever! | ||
| It came in as a flood. | ||
| It will require 40 days and 40 nights to weather the storm is the level of flood we're dealing with here. | ||
| And I think some people probably have some questions about, you know, the dynamics about it. | ||
| We're certainly no legal minds. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Absolutely. | |
| We have no law in stuff. | ||
| I got a lot of questions, too. | ||
| There's still so much to get answered here. | ||
| But boy, it's really a nice time to celebrate. | ||
| One thing I wanted to ask you first. | ||
| How about we start with that? | ||
| You were in the courtroom for a while, correct? | ||
| Yeah, I was there for a while. | ||
| What was it like sitting in the courtroom as a spectator as opposed to a gladiator? | ||
| Well, it's interesting because you walk into that courtroom and nobody knows what's going to happen in this trial, but everybody knows what happens in mine. | ||
| So when I walk in there, there's a weird feeling of it. | ||
| You're like Ray Lewis in 2004. | ||
|
unidentified
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Something like that. | |
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
| I mean, here's the other thing, too. | ||
| I had, over the years, gotten a chance to reach out and talk to some of the other plaintiffs in the Lafferty case. | ||
| But this was the first time I'm in a room with them all and got to meet them. | ||
| And, you know, it's weird because sometimes people, you don't think about it too much. | ||
| That in a very technical sense, these cases of ours in Connecticut and in Texas are in competition in a way. | ||
| That would normally be the case, right? | ||
| But that has, since almost the outset, not been how we've treated it. | ||
| These parents were so gracious to me. | ||
| And so, I mean, they were expressing their admiration and their thanks for what we did. | ||
| And I don't even represent these folks, right? | ||
| But we've kind of stopped looking at it that way because, you know, I think we've said it in court many times. | ||
| Me and Chris are as cooperative as two plaintiff soldiers across the country could ever be. | ||
| And we have helped each other along this way to make sure that these people are not pulling fast ones in either direction. | ||
| And so, man, when that trial started, yeah, there was no other place in the world I wanted to be, try to help whatever way I could. | ||
| And it was a great experience to be there and to be, I don't know, there was something about that particular courtroom and you have that amount of gravity of people in it, of all these plaintiffs. | ||
| It was quite an experience. | ||
| But, you know, like a lot of people, midway through the trial when I had to leave and come home, because I actually had to come home for a couple days and then go try another case out in Kansas City. | ||
| Nobody really knew what was going to happen. | ||
| Right? | ||
| Nobody really knew. | ||
| Well, I mean, there was even just the simple dangling thread of like, is Alex going to come back? | ||
| Totally. | ||
| Yeah, that was, I mean, look, I'll be honest with you. | ||
| Once Alex testified, I kind of knew where we were going, just not the degree. | ||
|
unidentified
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Right? | |
| Like, nobody knows. | ||
| I've always said this in the beginning. | ||
| Nobody knows how to value these cases, right? | ||
| And so I was almost concerned after my case, if people were going to look at it and go, all right, well, yeah, but that's a freak. | ||
| Right? | ||
| Just a total fluke. | ||
| You've got one story of what happened with Neil and Scarlett where Neil gets defamed and you get one result. | ||
| That's just a fluke. | ||
| And what's so rewarding about this next trial is it proves that's not a fluke. | ||
| There's no fluke about it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And you can almost look at it as like the hustling case is sort of the battering ram that breaks into that fortress. | ||
| Sets the value. | ||
| Sets, understands how the case is going to go. | ||
| And then Chris and his team just took that and, I mean, look. | ||
| There was a lot of things that were going well, right? | ||
| To start this preface. | ||
| There were a lot of really good things. | ||
| Well, they had already won. | ||
| So that's a good start. | ||
| That's a good start. | ||
| In terms of trials, I hear that having already won. | ||
| Step one. | ||
| To win the trial, yes. | ||
| There can be a lot of defendants who got defaulted or came in there with just a damage hearing. | ||
| And it still, it doesn't really matter because it's still, if the jury doesn't think what they did was wrong and they're not going to compensate people for it, right? | ||
| So the default is almost meaningless. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, exactly. | ||
| Well, that idea of getting a dollar, you know? | ||
| Well, like when Trump sued the NFL and they gave him a fucking dollar, you know? | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And so I think everybody knew that wasn't going to be what was happening because, I mean, I think what these cases show, and I knew from when he testified, is a jury, once this information is put in front of him, it is basically indefensible on its merits. | ||
| They're going to fucking hate the guy. | ||
| That's just how it's going to be. | ||
| And then the question is, right, like, so look, they have all these things going well for them. | ||
| They have the first trial with Jones that we had in Austin clearly broke his brain, right? | ||
| He came to that trial with the defense lawyer who was going to put on a fairly standard defense. | ||
| He went in there and pretended that he had remorse. | ||
| They tried to play the script of how you would supposedly defend this, and they got wrecked, and so it broke Alex's brain. | ||
|
unidentified
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So he shows up to the next trial, and he acts like a goddamn madman. | |
| I mean, he's up there on the stand saying, I don't apologize for shit. | ||
| Basically, like, all of you are my enemies. | ||
| You gotta admire that on some level. | ||
| You know, it's like, this strategy didn't work, let's try. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| No, I mean, I didn't get... | ||
| Admires the wrong word. | ||
| I gotta take that back. | ||
| I really didn't get an apology from all of the people who had no idea this was going to be coming, but what are you gonna do, you know? | ||
| Right. | ||
| You have that. | ||
| You've got Jones acting like an absolute madman, which helps. | ||
| You've got Norm Pattis, which... | ||
| Wow, did I... | ||
| I never would have thought that I would have seen a lawyer who could try this case less competently than anyone at all. | ||
| I did not think so. | ||
| We learned that is possible. | ||
| You had Norm. | ||
| Norm was literally asleep at one point in the trial. | ||
| He was, like, tweeting during the trial about other stuff. | ||
| Like, what is going on? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| He's, like, being openly combative with the jury. | ||
| I mean, it was... | ||
| I don't know what's going on with Norm, but I tell you, when I saw that closing statement of his, I was like... | ||
| Is this son of a bitch throwing the case? | ||
| What is he up to? | ||
| Like, what is happening? | ||
| I know this is not going to be a popular statement, but maybe these grieving families are liars. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, that was an intense... | ||
| That was actually a really good question. | ||
| Lawyering you can do. | ||
| That lawyer's prayer sounded fake as shit to me, right? | ||
| Like, no lawyer has ever done that. | ||
| Nobody said that. | ||
| Nobody's ever said that. | ||
| Why did he say it was like the old-fashioned lawyer's prayer? | ||
| Norm's a creative guy. | ||
| He's a stand-up comic. | ||
| He writes his own material. | ||
| There's nothing to shit on there, Jordan. | ||
| Well, I will share with you the old comics prayer. | ||
| Fuck Norm Pettis. | ||
| That's our favorite one to say before every set. | ||
| Dear Lord, may the laughs be plentiful and the alcohol intake. | ||
| You know, I think it sometimes works in a criminal trial when you have a lawyer who is defending, who is deeply and fundamentally unlikable, like Norm is. | ||
| I mean, it's just a powerfully unlikable human being. | ||
| But it actually sometimes works in criminal trials. | ||
| But in the civil, and no, this book didn't fly. | ||
| So you've got all these advantages going on. | ||
| You've got Jones, you've got the attorney. | ||
| I mean, it's a mess. | ||
| But here's the thing that I don't think people are putting enough attention on, is that... | ||
| While Chris Matty had himself a really strong case and really favorable conditions in the courtroom, he faced something that is so insanely difficult, which is when you have, when you just have a, when it's just Neil and Scarlett, it's one family, right? | ||
| You can get the number up, get it up there to 50 million, and your jury understands that. | ||
| But once you start having 15 plaintiffs, you have to get the numbers up so high that your jury's going to get sticker shock, right? | ||
| And that's a worry even well below the figure they got. | ||
| To be able to defeat that. | ||
| To be able to get a jury on board with the idea of giving this kind of award is literally the hardest thing a plaintiff's lawyer can ever do. | ||
| I believe it. | ||
| I think in terms of that, that's an angle. | ||
| And then, too, with the number of plaintiffs, as opposed to with your case, with Neil and Scarlett, it's one story. | ||
| It may be a complicated story to tell, but with so many plaintiffs being able to... | ||
| You know, respectfully and accurately convey all of their different experiences is something that I thought was also well handled. | ||
| And it seems like a gigantic challenge. | ||
| Yeah, and I mean, look, you know you're going to, if you do it right, like you did, you get critical mass up. | ||
| Yeah, that can happen. | ||
| But there was a huge danger there of losing the jury in the details of all of these different people and having them get exhausted through the process and having that be dulled in their senses. | ||
| And you'll notice that as Chris started going through the different plaintiffs, he was able to create new angles and new ways to tell the story. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yes. | |
| It wasn't just repetitive. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It wasn't at all. | ||
| I think Koskoff, too, had a great sort of friendliness with the way that he questioned the plaintiffs as well. | ||
| There was a... | ||
| At times, certainly got objections from Norm, but there was kind of a friendliness to him in contrast to Mehdi kind of having more of a straightforward... | ||
| And even then, the objections for Koskoff were more like... | ||
| Okay, you can't ask that question. | ||
| I know we all just want them to tell the story and you're trying to ask a question that will get them to the story. | ||
| Yeah, absolutely. | ||
| You'd object and then it'd be like, okay, let me rephrase this to just tell your story. | ||
| You know, just like that. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| The other person I should probably mention by name just because I'm such, such a big fan of hers is Eleanor Sterling's work arguing legal propositions in that courtroom was so outstanding. | ||
| I really have rarely seen a lawyer who was so effective at communicating with a judge than Eleanor is. | ||
| And there were so many big rulings that she was able to secure during that trial. | ||
| And she did such an amazing job. | ||
| They had a really great team. | ||
| I mean, that's the thing is both of these parents, both sets have, we're lucky to have really competent representation because they could have gotten stuck with terrible people. | ||
| You never know. | ||
| Like Norm? | ||
| I bet she, I bet she has to feel amazing just because there are so few times, I think, where you can really get into like the nitty gritty of, ah, this isn't point one for point C. Exactly. | ||
| And feel like the righteous crusader of fucking, you know, like. | ||
| Oh, no! | ||
|
unidentified
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It's 1-4C, motherfucker! | |
| You know, like, you don't get to do that. | ||
| Rarely. | ||
| Well, it's funny that they're... | ||
| Yeah, exactly! | ||
| Their legal team had three very distinctive and different personality presences in the courtroom, right? | ||
| Some people look at the four of us, for instance, and it's like, yeah, the four bearded weirdos, you know, they're basically brothers. | ||
| They're different shades of the same color. | ||
| People look at you like fucking Wyatt Earp from Tombstone. | ||
| Shut the fuck up. | ||
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
| Right? | ||
| But there is sort of a solidarity, a groupness that we almost operate as one unit. | ||
| And it's an interesting way to do it. | ||
| And Jerry seemed to really like us for it. | ||
| But then when you add up in Connecticut, I thought this different approach of having... | ||
| All right, so Chris is able to bring a level of moral righteousness to the courtroom that in a less genuine person would be over the top. | ||
| But Chris is so... | ||
| Genuine. | ||
| That he was able to keep this very strong sense of moral authority in the courtroom. | ||
| But that needed to be counterbalanced because they needed to have an emotional angle too. | ||
| They needed to have a humanistic relating. | ||
| And Josh Kostka pulled that element off of it. | ||
| He has such an easy... | ||
| Unforced sense of camaraderie with people, that he can pull that off. | ||
| And then you have Eleanor, who is basically a strategist at heart. | ||
| She is a battlefield general. | ||
| And to know how to use the rules to keep her opponent where she wants it. | ||
| And so you have this very analytical approach in Eleanor. | ||
| And the three of them together just knocked it out of the park. | ||
| I'm actually super excited to work with them again in the future. | ||
| Because they are some... | ||
| They have been doing some great work outside of this, too. | ||
| You know, because they did Remington, and that was a long slog, a very uphill climb, and they did it. | ||
| And so they're out, you know, celebrating the world right now, getting the accolades, and they deserve every bit of it because, wow, this is really an amazing result. | ||
| Yeah, totally. | ||
| So I guess that leaves us in a position where, you know, we have this almost $1 billion judgment against Alex and Infowars. | ||
| He has put his company into bankruptcy, or at least Free Speech Systems is in bankruptcy. | ||
| And there's some sort of chaos going on with that as well, with the lawyers turning on each other a little bit, as I understand. | ||
| But where do... | ||
| I mean, obviously, it's almost entirely unpredictable, but where do you... | ||
| What are we talking about when we talk about appeals? | ||
| What are the options, even? | ||
| There was a clip that came out of me talking in the courthouse right after our verdict came down. | ||
| And I made some predictions on this subject. | ||
| The bone picking? | ||
| Yeah, dividing up the corpse of Infowars. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| Follows me like a ghost wherever I go. | ||
| There was the thought that, look, if these verdicts aren't monstrously... | ||
| Big like they are right now. | ||
| That this would end up with resolution through bankruptcy court because Jones wants this over. | ||
| He's not going to chase to the ends of the earth on this kind of stuff. | ||
| And it wouldn't make sense. | ||
| Like, look, he's going to have four trials. | ||
| To get them all overturned is just ridiculous. | ||
| And I figured that we wouldn't be looking at that situation. | ||
| In other words, we would be looking at this ending in a different way. | ||
| But now when you've got a billion-dollar judgment, you've got the Texas verdict, which I know they think they can appeal. | ||
| And then they're going to have two more. | ||
| Alex has just decided, To just screw it. | ||
| And, like, he said the other day on the show, you know, I'm going to spend a few hundred thousand dollars and keep these cases wrapped up for years. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And I'm like, I don't care. | ||
| Like, you think I care about that? | ||
| Like, one, I think you're vastly overestimating how difficult a plaintiff's side appeal is. | ||
| Like, I've got to write two briefs over the next two years. | ||
| Oh, big deal. | ||
| Well, because the burden's on them, right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right, yeah. | |
| They've got a lot of work to do. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| They're going to have to do a lot of work to do that. | ||
| And for me, taking these up on appeal is great. | ||
| Now, here's the real kicker of it, right? | ||
| Here's the real kicker. | ||
| Let's say that by some heaven forbid chance he is successful on appeal against us, for instance, and Texas Court of Appeals or Texas Supreme Court reverses and orders a new trial to go forward. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Can you think of anything that would make me happier than going to trial against Alex Jones again? | |
| No. | ||
| Very few things. | ||
| In case you're wondering, last time there was a billion dollars on Connecticut trial. | ||
| How about you guys? | ||
| They said $50 million and appealed it! | ||
| Surprise! | ||
| The appeals court, it wouldn't just be like, this judgment is gone. | ||
| It would be ordering a new trial. | ||
| And Alex's behavior, you'd probably assume, wouldn't be any different. | ||
| He'd probably end up getting himself defaulted again. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| Well, and here's the thing. | ||
| No, if it comes back for a new trial, it's just like we reversed the clock back to June 2022 and we just set a new trial date and try it again. | ||
| And so it really wouldn't be a big deal or anything like that. | ||
| But could he undo the default? | ||
| Could that be appealed? | ||
| I mean, look, that's a technical thing that I guess... | ||
| Let me just put it this way. | ||
| This appeal, no, that's not something that's feasible. | ||
| The default is so well papered. | ||
| I mean, we should have had a default in 2019, but... | ||
| The judges made sure to paper the shit out of that. | ||
| Of course. | ||
| 2022, it's a dead issue. | ||
| There's no way he's getting that overturned. | ||
| So the appeal, essentially, is just about the damages. | ||
| Just about the, and fundamental errors at the trial, if they think that anything happened there. | ||
| It's interesting, though, because most of your objections to this would be off of, like, jury instructions. | ||
| And strangely enough, like, Reynaud, every time we had a charge conference, was like, no objection. | ||
| Which, I mean, again, that's the whole through line with Reynold. | ||
| There were so many opportunities for him to do things that would help this case, and he just sat there and twiddled his thumbs while they were happening. | ||
| I think what's ironic about the idea of an appeal is that after all these four trials are done, basically, we're going to find out that once you have the ability to choose a jury of peers, you can weed out certain people. | ||
| Any reasonable person will agree that Alex should go fuck himself. | ||
| The idea of that you can take it to court still kind of infuriates me whenever it's like, it doesn't matter where you are or who you choose. | ||
| As long as you get rid of info warriors, this motherfucker's going down. | ||
| I need a jury of my peers and my peers are crazy. | ||
| It's one of those things too that like... | ||
| I noticed, look, we had some really strong, well-informed jurors on the jury who I think in the next round, for instance, we go try Posner early next year or something like that. | ||
| The jury pool's all going to know about this billion-dollar verdict. | ||
| How could they not? | ||
| Right, exactly. | ||
| And so a lot of those people who do know about it are probably going to get kicked off the jury, right? | ||
| So we're going to have a jury who's less in touch with what's been going on with Alex Jones. | ||
| And what I've learned through this process is that is... | ||
| Perhaps more advantageous, right? | ||
| Totally, totally. | ||
| People who don't know this shit and they get exposed to it, they lose their fucking minds. | ||
| How dare you? | ||
| Yeah, absolutely. | ||
| That became so clear to me when we had the guys from The Dollop on, and I was playing stuff that Jordan would just be like, oh, yeah, okay. | ||
| And Dave and Gareth were freaking out. | ||
| Yeah, absolutely losing their minds. | ||
| They were hearing stuff that's kind of... | ||
| Junior Varsity Alex content to me. | ||
| How is this one show? | ||
| What the fuck is happening? | ||
| It is kind of a situation where this has, you know, we were all worried. | ||
| As you said earlier, Dan and I were both worried about the judgment and all of this stuff. | ||
| And I think that really might be because we are so close to it that if we had could step back, you know, like if you can go back and listen to episode one, I'm. | ||
| Fucked up about this shit, you know? | ||
| And I saw none of it. | ||
| When Alex said, it's time to pray, we lost our minds. | ||
| We lost our shit! | ||
| That's nothing now. | ||
| That is nothing, you know? | ||
| But it would be great for a jury. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| We don't factor that in nearly as much. | ||
| It's hard. | ||
| It's the opposite of naivety or something, but it's still kind of naive on our part. | ||
| Because you don't know the amount that's correct, you know? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, we'll give you kind of a preview of where things are going. | ||
| There will need to be, so on the 20th of this, so like next week, we're having a hearing in Heslin for Enter the Judgment there. | ||
| We're going to try to make a play to get around the cap on punitive damages there. | ||
| That's a play I think we can make in Heslin. | ||
| I know for a fact it's going to be a much easier play than possible. | ||
| It's just from the way that sets up and how we'll be able to do it will be much, much, much easier. | ||
| But I still think we're going to do it as well. | ||
| Get that entered. | ||
| There's the sanctions for Andino's trial conduct that the judge requested I put down on paper. | ||
| So we've done that. | ||
| We're going to have a hearing on that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We're also going to have a hearing about norm sanctions. | |
| I wish. | ||
| I wish. | ||
| No, but we are. | ||
| We're doing also a sanctions motion for the improper removal and bankruptcy back in April, which was total BS. | ||
| Got dismissed really quick. | ||
| But that caused us to incur a bunch of expenses. | ||
| So we're going to seek all that. | ||
| And we're actually going, instead of going after Jones and the company, we're going after the lawyers who did these things and pulled these things off. | ||
| Are we talking about a media star here? | ||
| We have some news on him coming up. | ||
| I'll just tell KnowledgeFights fans. | ||
| Keep your eyes peeled. | ||
| The story of Robert Barnes. | ||
| Oh, my God. | ||
| This would actually be against Antino for what he did during trial, as well as another one of their lawyers, too, named Eric Taub, who was involved with the representation earlier and made certain representations about InfoWars LLC prior to the bankruptcy. | ||
| So we'll be having a hearing on those and then enter the judgment, right? | ||
| The Lafferty folks will be having a similar thing happen. | ||
| Of course, they're still stretching out because people don't even realize they haven't even had punitive damages yet. | ||
| I know! | ||
| That's got to be bigger, right? | ||
| I think when you have a billion-dollar punitive, I don't think you... | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| Compensatory is a billion dollars. | ||
| I feel like they are going to wind up going ham on punitive damages. | ||
| I think it's very possible. | ||
| But also, the unfair trade practices part wasn't even that. | ||
| That's interesting. | ||
| That's still even another thing that's sort of hanging in the balance. | ||
| It was a really nice tactic they pulled out of their hat on that one. | ||
| And if they can sail that through, wow, what a great move. | ||
| I don't think anybody's ever thought about doing it this way before. | ||
| I think they're the first ones to ever try it this way. | ||
| I don't know for certain, but boy, do I smell Alinor on all of that. | ||
| That is Alinor's strategy right there. | ||
| If they pull that off, oh my gosh. | ||
| Now we're talking numbers that you can't ever resolve. | ||
| This will be a millstone around his neck forever if that's the case. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| And that may be where we're going. | ||
| So they're going to have to do the same thing. | ||
| They got to get their punitives. | ||
| Then they'll have a hearing for entry of judgment. | ||
| Once that happens, InfoWars has about 30 days to file notices of appeals in the various state courts. | ||
| And if they want to do that, then they'll get an appeal. | ||
| Like, for instance, I'll just take my case. | ||
| They'll go up to the Texas Court of Appeals. | ||
| And then that court will rule on everything. | ||
| That will probably take nine months, something like that. | ||
| And then there will be, they'll probably appeal after that. | ||
| They'll do what they call a petition for review to the Texas Supreme Court. | ||
| That's not a mandatory appeal. | ||
| The Texas Supreme Court gets to decide whether they want to hear it or not. | ||
| And in the past, they declined to hear the earlier appeal. | ||
| So I don't know. | ||
| But that would probably, if the Texas Supreme Court takes it, that's another nine months. | ||
| And then they'll petition to the U.S. Supreme Court. | ||
| That will resolve itself quickly. | ||
| They'll reject that in two months. | ||
| But we are probably looking at a year and a half, two or so before brass tacks really get hit. | ||
| You're saying we're looking at two years before people legit go to his house and start digging up his fucking gold. | ||
| Start digging up gold out of the backyard and all that kind of stuff. | ||
| But the problem there is that it even gets more complicated. | ||
| Because at the same time, we have a fraudulent transfer suit pending against it, which we can adjudicate during that time on appeal, but we really can't do anything with it until the appeal's over. | ||
| So then we get to go after the money that isn't technically in Alex Jones' hands or Free Speech Systems' hands, but that has been transferred over until other entities have been given to other insiders. | ||
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
| The one that trips everybody's radar on this is PQPR. | ||
| And there's a trust out there. | ||
| The AEJ one? | ||
| Is that right? | ||
| Yeah, they got an AEJ trust. | ||
| Now, what's interesting with that trust is it's got $30 million sitting in it right now. | ||
| So, you know, people sometimes have come up to me and said, like, hey, you know, great result, but, you know, are you really going to collect anything? | ||
| Alex Jones, really have any money? | ||
| And there was a time in my life where I was like, I don't know, and frankly, I don't care. | ||
| Like, that's never what this was about. | ||
| It's not important for the families either, right? | ||
| That's not why they're doing it, you know? | ||
| Like, the idea of them actually having to wait. | ||
| More time. | ||
| They don't care. | ||
| Like, fine. | ||
| Whatever. | ||
| Yeah, of course. | ||
| They've waited a decade. | ||
| But isn't that ultimately the question that so many people are having right now? | ||
| And it's the one that I'm hearing from a lot of people in regards to our show specifically, obviously, is like... | ||
| Is Alex going to be on the air for another two years until people start digging up his gold? | ||
| Do you know what I mean? | ||
| With this whole situation, one, I want to say that the law is great and it makes perfect sense. | ||
| And two, it is a thing where it's like this judgment is so immediate after so much bullshit. | ||
| And then... | ||
| People are going to want this to then be an immediate result. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Right. | ||
| You know what? | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| They want people to be like, Alex has to get in a plane tonight and head to Venezuela to survive. | ||
| People are asking, is he a flight risk? | ||
| Yeah, absolutely. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| See, to me, though, look, there already are immediate consequences. | ||
| There already are immediate effects that I think are... | ||
| Because here's the thing. | ||
| Even if you could take all of his money and you could essentially shut down Infowars, that's not going to stop him from being a man. | ||
| Like he'll be on the Internet. | ||
| Like he'll make videos. | ||
| He'll do whatever. | ||
| People start getting money. | ||
| You're not going to get rid of him that way. | ||
| The way you really have to do is to be able to marginalize and neuter his influence on American culture. | ||
| That really is kind of the goal of the whole thing. | ||
| When these families realize that, man, they start to see that Parkland shooting happen, the same stuff was happening. | ||
| They're like, we can't just let this keep going. | ||
| The suit itself. | ||
| You've got to remember, the suit gets filed in April. | ||
| Lafferty's suit follows up a couple months later. | ||
| And Jones basically loses his mind over that period of time. | ||
| Starts threatening to kill Robert Mueller. | ||
| Starts posting just a bunch of stuff that is like an attempt to get the tech giants to come after him. | ||
| Just the most racist, transphobic, all sorts of stuff during that summer. | ||
| He loses his mind. | ||
| The combination of those two events, the lawsuit and all of that, caused the tech giants to deplatform him. | ||
| Which I still think was... | ||
| Done in the most ridiculous, unarbitrary way that kind of, like, points to their mistakes all through it. | ||
| But, like, it got done, right? | ||
| And that was the first big effect of the suit. | ||
| I really do think that you move past 2019. | ||
| At 2018, Jones was basically at the height of his powers. | ||
| And he was effectively defanged by the suit itself. | ||
| Then the deplatforming reduces the core size of his audience. | ||
| And then now... | ||
| After the defaults, after all of it, after this constant drumbeat of how he's not taking it seriously, and then the verdicts, he has been heavily marginalized as a figure. | ||
| And in a way that, like, I'm not even sure that collecting the money makes that much more of a difference, to tell you the truth. | ||
| I mean, I think it will reduce the size of his media operation, but his ultimate reach, I think, will probably be about the same. | ||
| Because he's still on the margins. | ||
| I think you have a number of impacts. | ||
| I think that the people who are already in and deeply in with Infowars, it's not going to marginalize him with them, but you never would be able to do that, period. | ||
| There's a vaster awareness of who he is among normies, perhaps, in a way that's like, oh, this is the guy who lost a billion dollars over Sandy Hook. | ||
| And I think that could be helpful in some ways. | ||
| But then there's even the logistical things of credit. | ||
| Impacts of losing a case like these. | ||
| And that's something that will be a problem for him. | ||
| And in order to maintain whatever relevance he has and ability to get audience, he has to have his own site like Band.Video that is intensely expensive for him with bandwidth costs. | ||
| And the only way to keep getting people... | ||
| To go to the site is to offer a platform for weirdos like David Icke and some of these other folks like that guy who dresses up like Uncle Sam and yells at people on the street. | ||
| He has that stuff and that's costing him an arm and a leg. | ||
| Eventually, he's not going to be able to afford to run this site and other people aren't going to pony up the money for that. | ||
| You're left in a position where If that goes away, he has Infowars. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, I think what we are all underestimating. | ||
| Oh, I'm sorry. | ||
| He also has Nick Fuentes' streaming site, Cozy. | ||
| I think what we're all estimating as far as, you know, when you say, like, he won't lose his reach or he can still do a show on YouTube or whatever. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| He can't do a show on YouTube. | ||
| Well, I mean, whatever. | ||
| He can do a show and put it somewhere. | ||
| I think we're underestimating the amount of cachet that he gets from having a professional studio. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Like if he no longer has a professional studio and he's going out of his fucking room and you look at his video and you see the same thing that you do with any asshole. | ||
| Yeah, in our room. | ||
| Yeah, absolutely. | ||
| I don't think he has the ability to go beyond that because he doesn't have any talent. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You know, he doesn't he doesn't create anything. | ||
| Well, it was cool for him to be broadcasting out of his spare bedroom when he was coming up. | ||
| Yeah, it's super cool to have those bona fides. | ||
| It's sadder for it to be the falling action of you had this CNN-level set with elaborate visuals behind you. | ||
| A skull on your desk for some reason. | ||
| And then you're back to recording in a bedroom and it's not the same. | ||
| I think it would be surprising to really look at whether or not that moment when it becomes sad to be a fan of Alex Jones really has an effect. | ||
| Once he's fallen so far and you're still a fan of Alex Jones, aren't you at some point going to be like, oh, this is not fun. | ||
| I can't imagine that point hasn't already come. | ||
| Yeah, for most of them, they've already crossed that Rubicon. | ||
|
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|
That's fair. | |
| That's fair. | ||
| And I mean, it's always been my sense. | ||
| I don't know this, right? | ||
| But it's always been my sense that among his viewership, the people who are actually buying the supplements is a very, very, very small component of that. | ||
| It is a tiny percentage of the audience who are spending a shit ton of money with him. | ||
| Like any televangelist, yeah. | ||
| And you'll notice that his revenue has never been terribly dependent on his total spread. | ||
| Once he escapes from Crazy World and his stuff leaks out in the normal world, it doesn't increase his sales at all. | ||
| That's never been a thing. | ||
| And so I think, look, the important effects of defanging him to some extent. | ||
| Well, hold on. | ||
| Hold on. | ||
| I want to put a button in this really quick. | ||
| It does seem like when the FBI says no one died at Sandy Hook, breached into what you might call mainstream, like it spread wider, that did have an effect on spreading his sales. | ||
| That is true. | ||
| But when he's on Piers Morgan or he goes on Rogan, that doesn't necessarily spike sales. | ||
| No, exactly. | ||
| There's a difference between that. | ||
| That's a good point. | ||
| It broke through into a greater community, but that community was still pretty... | ||
| Pretty damn crazy. | ||
| True, true. | ||
| And I do think that, like, you look at the 2017 period, right after Trump's victory, there were a lot of sort of standard NASCAR dad mega-conservatives who suddenly discovered Alex Jones during that period, and he became a very dangerous thing. | ||
| And he doesn't have that anymore. | ||
| There's more dangerous things. | ||
| Think about how the 2020 election goes if these suits never happened. | ||
| Alex has all of his platforms. | ||
| He's still at the height of his powers. | ||
| He may have a very different 2020 election. | ||
| There's those sorts of things. | ||
| Alex might have turned on Trump by then, though, too. | ||
| I don't know if we have a different election. | ||
| Maybe we have more people on January 6th. | ||
| That could be the bigger problem. | ||
| 100% true. | ||
| We could have a dictatorship. | ||
| There's no question. | ||
| And I mean, it was frustrating to me going through the COVID period and seeing him do all this stuff and realizing you can't stop him. | ||
| You never will effectively stop him. | ||
| The only way you can is to completely try to marginalize him. | ||
| I hope this has done that, and I think it's going to. | ||
| It certainly is. | ||
| Life is about to get more difficult. | ||
| That's for sure. | ||
| But I think there's this bigger effect, and I think this is real legit, is that There has now been a signal sent out to media of all stripes that if you start bringing private people, blameless, innocent private people, into your conspiracy lies and start telling false facts about them, either intentionally or explicitly, there's going to be a big damn price tag for that. | ||
| And I think it's going to be the effect on other people who are edging close to, I might do some things like Alex Jones. | ||
| This has given them considerable pause. | ||
| It sends a strong message that your conspiracy games are all fun and well. | ||
| There's a litany of things that Alex has been full of shit about that he's never been sued about and never will be sued about. | ||
| It's all fun and games, but there is a point at which you need to be careful. | ||
| Don't do these things. | ||
| Maybe that's a lucky message for some of those people coming up. | ||
| A reasonable society. | ||
| Could take all of the things that Alex Jones did in regards to this case, in regards to these people, and be like, okay, well, we know yelling fire in a crowded theater is not free speech, so if you do exactly this list of things... | ||
| Then you go to jail or your show is gone or something like that. | ||
| Because it is like any reasonable jury would come to the conclusion that you owe a billion dollars if you do this shit. | ||
| So why not skip the five years of goddamn litigation and just go, you did the exact list of things that every reasonable person thinks costs a billion dollars. | ||
| So guess what? | ||
| Just go to jail. | ||
| Take a breath. | ||
| You know? | ||
| Sorry. | ||
| Well, what's wild, too, is if Jones had been a normal media defendant, He would have settled these cases early, and he probably could have done so. | ||
| I'm almost certain. | ||
| If I think back at... | ||
| Look, because here's the other thing. | ||
| People look back at this now, and they're right now, and they're like, this is how it was always going to end. | ||
| And they saw just sort of an extra bull downfall of Jones. | ||
| And if you look back to 2018, that wasn't the case at all. | ||
| I had a lot of people right after I filed this case say, it's real brave of you. | ||
| I wish you the best, but boy, that's going to be a hard uphill climb, and I hope he doesn't get you. | ||
| And it took a long... | ||
| Process. | ||
| Very strategic litigation to put him in the box that he's in. | ||
| It's frustrating in that way, actually. | ||
| You did a very good job. | ||
| That is a good point. | ||
| People underestimate how hard the guys worked on this. | ||
| All around. | ||
| Yeah, all around. | ||
| A lot of people want to put it on Jones as though he dug his own grave. | ||
| And I'm like, people, look, I had a shovel and it was a big shovel. | ||
| Alex did play a part in digging that. | ||
|
unidentified
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He was like, let me help you out here. | |
| He's like, you ain't digging this right. | ||
| You gotta dig this way. | ||
| Get down here. | ||
| You gotta really put your back into it. | ||
| You've said before, even I believe on the show, that there is a point, or maybe it was Bill, that like... | ||
| This could have been resolved so easily in earlier times if Alex said, well, I mean, he's done it with other cases before, like with Hamdi Ulukaya, you know, Chobani. | ||
| He said he was going to fight that or die, and then he settled like a week later. | ||
|
unidentified
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I'm really sorry about the things I said about Hamdi Ulukaya. | |
| It's so funny that even after he did that, then he gets into my deposition and he starts defaming the guy again. | ||
| Of course. | ||
| It's wild to me that it's just because of the two jurisdictions, right? | ||
| Because of where Chobani is and where Comet Ping Pong is, those areas, both of those venues, if you make an apology before the suit and retract, your damages are cut to almost nothing if you do that. | ||
| And so they knew it wouldn't have been worth it to pursue it once he made those apologies. | ||
| The weirdest part about Alex's ping pong apology was the 15 minutes he did about how good the pizza was. | ||
| He went over the whole menu and was like, you've got to try the quinoa. | ||
| That's how you apologize. | ||
| Free advertising. | ||
|
unidentified
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Now I'm seeing in the past day or two these... | |
| I guess right-wing influencers who are trying to test the waters about how much they can defend Alex or attack the outcome of this thing. | ||
| And I see, you know, like a Sarnavich or a Charlie Kirk who say the same litany of bullshit about like, this is something Alex apologized for. | ||
| No, he fucking didn't. | ||
| Show me. | ||
| Show me. | ||
| Pull me the clip. | ||
| Show me where Jones said, I'm sorry for the things that I have done to these parents. | ||
| Did he apologize for when he said it was fake last week? | ||
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
| First of all, that's bullshit. | ||
| They say, oh, he only did it a couple of times. | ||
| Motherfuckers, we had 40 hours of it in evidence in our trial. | ||
| And we know now from Exhibit Similarity, they had 100 more episodes between 2013 and 2018 that they never produced to us talking about Sandy. | ||
| Do not talk to me about it. | ||
| He only did this a couple of times. | ||
| It's these constant... | ||
| I'll invent new realities to try to defend Alex Jones. | ||
| But I've noticed that... | ||
| They're not even getting a lot of traction off of this. | ||
| Even some of your usual suspects are like, eh, I ain't touching this. | ||
| Glenn Greenwald hasn't said a word, I'll tell you that right now. | ||
| Despite frequent poking by Jordan. | ||
| I've been trying to piss that dude off for a while now. | ||
| I haven't been on Twitter for fucking forever, and man, it's annoying. | ||
| You know what I think is the case with those people who are defending him? | ||
| I think that they see a guy going down. | ||
| But a guy who's going down can be profitable for them in some ways. | ||
|
unidentified
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Right. | |
| It makes me think of... | ||
| When Toys R Us was going bankrupt, a lot of people made a lot of money. | ||
| You know, like that kind of thing. | ||
| Well, not less of that. | ||
| And more like the way that Alex makes a hero out of Colonel Travis and the Alamo. | ||
| You know, there is kind of a, like, remember Infowars. | ||
| Yeah, that's a good point. | ||
| Where it's like, no one wants the reality of Colonel Travis. | ||
| They want this myth. | ||
| And I think they're trying to engage it in the myth as Alex is... | ||
| You know, being surrounded by Santa Ana. | ||
| Yeah, well, I don't believe, for instance, a guy like a Benny Johnson or Charlie Kirk or one of those fuckers, I don't actually think they have strong feelings of defensive outs. | ||
| I think they're really in tune with what the people they grift off of are going to want to hear. | ||
| And so there is a small contingent who they know they can get engagement from that way. | ||
| Well, they probably feel like they would look weak if they didn't. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| And it's so weird. | ||
| I see all this stuff about, like, well, this is what happens when you speak out against the regime. | ||
| And I'm like, what the fuck are you talking about? | ||
| Like, there are so many people who are, like, enemy of, like, I guess, like, modern establishment liberals or whatever. | ||
| And if there really was, like, Hillary and Soros were sitting around a room plotting to take them down, like, no, that's not how that would work, right? | ||
| Mark, here's what you're not taking into account. | ||
| You don't know that Robbie Parker was elected to be the shadow secretary general of the UN. | ||
| You know, yeah, it's nonsense. | ||
| I, in fact, did not know that. | ||
| It's not challenging power. | ||
| These aren't power. | ||
| This is people. | ||
| Yeah, that's what's so disgusting about it to me is that, like, here's something that's so obviously morally obscene. | ||
| Something that's so horrific that even if you just take what, like, take like a, you know, again, like a Charlie Kirk, but he probably wants to imagine Alex Jones, right? | ||
| Which when his imagination of what Alex Jones did is still pretty fucking bad, right? | ||
| But they will never engage with what he actually did, which is so morally horrific that you can't even wrap your head around it. | ||
| And the fact that something that morally obscene has taken this much effort. | ||
| Yeah, there's no slippery slope against these people. | ||
| If it's this hard to go after literally the worst act of defamation in American fucking history, then like... | ||
| Yeah, no, people. | ||
| Couldn't it be stopped the next time way better than a billion-dollar judgment if somebody just wrote a law that was like, okay, if you defame people multiple times and make a billion dollars off of it, and then you get sued for it instead of trying to settle, you have a default judgment. | ||
| And then if you do all this shit, it's over. | ||
| Go away. | ||
| I support the spirit of what you're discussing. | ||
| No, I'm just saying that writing that into a law would be very complicated. | ||
| It'd be very specific. | ||
| The floor debate on that would be intense. | ||
|
unidentified
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But that's what I'm saying. | |
| What if we just finally accepted a floor for defamation that's criminal? | ||
| Let's start here. | ||
| This is a crime. | ||
| I feel like the problem that everyone is having is they want to talk about the billion-dollar judgment and not the reason that it's a billion dollars is because he committed a real-life crime. | ||
| You know what, Jared? | ||
| I'll go you one better on that, which is he did. | ||
| He did commit a crime. | ||
| 100%. | ||
| And what he did is under Texas Penal Code 2204, is that if you intentionally commit emotional injury to a disabled person, that is a felon. | ||
| And these parents, at the time that he committed these injuries, were suffering from severe emotional disturbance. | ||
| Hell yeah! | ||
| That makes them disabled under Texas law. | ||
| Hell yeah! | ||
| These acts were illegal. | ||
|
unidentified
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If a prosecutor had the balls to do it, he could have prosecuted him for this. | |
| But the thing that we're going to be talking about on the 20th of this month is that because that conduct was criminal and all of the allegations were found by default, that's going to get us around the punitive damage cap. | ||
|
unidentified
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Wow, that's a great criminal act. | |
| There's no punitive damage cap for that. | ||
| And so here, yeah, it is definitely going to be our argument in court on the 20th that Jones committed a felony in this act and that he very well could have been prosecuted. | ||
| If you had had an enterprising prosecutor. | ||
| So that's also, like, even our criminal law recognizes the moral repugnancy of what he did. | ||
| And how hard it is to prosecute people. | ||
|
unidentified
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And how hard it is. | |
| Look, people hit me with all the time. | ||
| It's like, Jones 100% lied on the stand. | ||
| And I say, look, personal opinion of mine, yeah, I think that's probably true. | ||
| I think the evidence bears that out. | ||
| But trying to prove that he lied, right, intentionally deceived. | ||
| It's a much tougher apple to crack, particularly with Jones, because he's not a rational thinker. | ||
| Well, the judge in your case even made that point that, like, you might think this is true. | ||
| Right. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yes. | |
| There are certain things, but see, there's a big difference between some of those things Alex was saying that he thought were true, that the record shows are not true, right? | ||
| So, therefore, need to not be said that way. | ||
| Well, isn't that... | ||
| Sorry. | ||
| Look, when he said... | ||
| When he said... | ||
| I mean, look, let's go back to the Perry Mason. | ||
| When he said, I searched my phone, I pulled it down, I put in Sandy Hook, and then boom, it's found out that that's not true. | ||
| It's very difficult to arrive at a conclusion that that wasn't an intentional attempt to deceive. | ||
| And I think, I hope, anyway, that Travis County prosecutors are looking at that. | ||
| But the thing is, is perjury is damn near impossible to prosecute. | ||
| It is. | ||
| You never see it happen. | ||
| It just never does. | ||
| Okay, what if we held a trial, all right, now, and now, before you say no, There are a lot of alleys in Chicago. | ||
| So we hold a trial and me and Dan, well, Dan's the judge, obviously. | ||
| I want to be the bailiff. | ||
|
unidentified
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Right. | |
| And I'm going to be the defendant for Alex Jones and it's the defense lawyer for Alex Jones. | ||
| It's going to be great. | ||
| And then we beat the shit out of him. | ||
| I feel like this makes perfect sense as a court system. | ||
| Is this bad? | ||
| I mean, look, you don't know the guy's not going to do that. | ||
| Dan's shaking his head at me. | ||
| I'm sorry. | ||
| I'm going too far, obviously. | ||
| His speech systems is in Chapter 5 bankruptcy. | ||
| There's no way that they're going to fund his travel to a Chicago alley in order to hold this court. | ||
| Yes, to get illegally assaulted. | ||
| Logistically, this is difficult. | ||
| It's a courtroom. | ||
| He would be legally assaulted. | ||
| Now, you pointed something really that's interesting to me. | ||
| It's like, There is this through line among so many people of their abject disgust for Jones. | ||
| They want to see horrible things happen to him, right? | ||
| There's plenty of people, you put them in a room with Alex Jones alone, Alex Jones is not walking out of that room okay. | ||
| That's how people feel about him. | ||
| And there's something to me very... | ||
| I don't even know the right adjective for it, but the idea that we took this case and pursued it with total white hat and did it every by the book... | ||
| For over four years and did it correctly and brought him financial ruin and did that. | ||
| That, to me, is so much better than somebody who doesn't like Alex Jones being put into a room. | ||
| I think people would think that of someone like me or Jordan. | ||
| Well, maybe Jordan. | ||
| Well, not Jordan. | ||
| But, like, I was there in the deposition and I left without beating him up. | ||
| Or yelling, I just needed a margarita. | ||
| Stiff one. | ||
| Yeah, that was... | ||
| I think it is a testament to the patience and the process that you guys followed. | ||
| Ultimately, I think that sentiment really comes down to everyone wishes that they could pursue it and defeat him in the way that you did. | ||
| In the way that the lawyers have done, in the way that the families have done. | ||
| To go out there to face all of the shit and then to win at the end. | ||
| That's really cool. | ||
| But it took a long fucking time. | ||
| And what if we just beat the shit out of you? | ||
| That's what people think, you know? | ||
| Like, that's just how your brain works. | ||
| It's like, it's been a long time. | ||
| What if we just got it out of the way a while back? | ||
| You know, like, that's kind of the feeling. | ||
| And what I respect way more is the way that you did it. | ||
| Way more. | ||
| Because I sympathize with your feelings of outrage and frustration, all of that, and us channeling it for all these years. | ||
| We've had a lot of frustration ourselves. | ||
| Well, let me see if I can strike a balance here. | ||
| Alex owes a lot of money. | ||
| There was a period of time where he was offering to do a celebrity boxing match with Tom Arnold. | ||
| Maybe. | ||
| We get Jordan in a celebrity boxing match with Alex in a Chicago back alley. | ||
| Maybe we can meet in the middle. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| No cameras. | ||
| Let's just figure this out. | ||
| Oh, okay. | ||
| Oh, we have to have cameras. | ||
| God damn it. | ||
| If you can give his written consent, I can sign off on it. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| The ultimate default judgment. | ||
| I'm filled with this feeling of coming after our first trial. | ||
| We knew that was sort of... | ||
| I mean, it's the opening act. | ||
| There are 20 claimants against him. | ||
| And we just took Neal and Scarlett, one family story, and did an opening act. | ||
| And it was really nice because you get all of these things that not only was it this resounding referendum on him, but he got embarrassed in that court. | ||
| I mean, just a coughing fit of panic. | ||
| I mean, it was awful. | ||
| Come on, man. | ||
| Just completely disappeared the moment he knew he was in real hot water. | ||
| Just stopped coughing completely. | ||
| There's a soothing effect of anxiety. | ||
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
| Does a little bit for you there. | ||
| But to have all of that go down, to have these national moments of embarrassment, even to embarrass his attorney was really rewarding in its own way. | ||
| It makes all these late night shows, does all of that. | ||
| You get this sort of Feeling from it. | ||
| But you know that it's just, you're just opening the door on this whole, the final chapter, right? | ||
| We said at the end of that trial, this is the beginning of the end, right? | ||
| There's still, like, so much. | ||
| To see that thing happen with a sequel that sets literally a record-setting verdict, right? | ||
|
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Like, God damn, that feels good. | |
| And to know he's got two more sitting there. | ||
| And I think something that some people haven't even really thought about it in this equation is that Lenny Posner and Verity De La Rosa... | ||
| Their direct damage from this are probably the most outrageous of anybody involved in this. | ||
| And for such a long duration. | ||
| That last one he's looking at there is really, really threatening. | ||
| And then, look, even with Marcel's case, which didn't have the years-long effect, is still really repugnant. | ||
| Very possibly facing a big verdict there as well. | ||
| And so you're going to have some more of this. | ||
| But the fact is, we followed our suits near each other. | ||
| The Lavery people came a couple months after mine. | ||
| And then over the course of these four years, even with the procedural differences in the case, we've basically stayed neck and neck. | ||
| And so to have it come down to, even after all the appeals, our trials are like a month apart. | ||
| To have this one-two punch, it's like this story being told. | ||
| It's amazing. | ||
| It couldn't have worked out any better. | ||
| It really is. | ||
| And that kind of brings me back to another point. | ||
| I think it's super important that people need to realize and that needs to get said more. | ||
| People keep saying these sorts of things of like, oh, Alex Jones could have put on a First Amendment offense, but he chose not to participate and therefore got defaulted. | ||
| So, haha, he didn't get to do that. | ||
| And that's actually not true. | ||
| Is that in the beginnings of the case... | ||
| In both states, he was allowed to bring an anti-slap motion that challenges his First Amendment rights and all of that stuff. | ||
| And he actually had all of that heard on the merits. | ||
| He had appeals up to the Texas Court of Appeals and up to the Texas Supreme Court. | ||
| You can go read, like, one of them that really spells it all out really nice is the Posner v. | ||
| Jones opinion from the Texas Court of Appeals. | ||
| And they go through these issues, all of the First Amendment things that he would want. | ||
| He had every chance to do that. | ||
| He got a fair shake in court to do that. | ||
| It wasn't until he came back from that and still over years didn't participate. | ||
| That's when he ended up getting defaulted on the merits of trial. | ||
| So he got to try to vindicate his First Amendment rights, and it failed. | ||
| Because this has nothing to do with the First Amendment. | ||
| You cannot tell false facts about identifiable people. | ||
| The First Amendment stuff actually failed. | ||
| And because that pageantry wasn't available to him, he decided not to engage, knowing he would lose. | ||
| And that's the default. | ||
| I think there's some of that, but I also, I really believe, looking back on it, there was this hubris of, what's the worst that could happen if I don't cooperate? | ||
| Sure. | ||
| They just didn't, they didn't care. | ||
| And they thought, you know, and they thought they would play it to their advantage of, oh, there's a show trial kangaroo court, right? | ||
| And it was, if our judges had done that early off in 2019, that would have even been more effective than an argument for them to make. | ||
| But he didn't get to do that. | ||
| And the fact is, is these First Amendment issues were tested, and I had to brief my ass off on them, and we beat them on them. | ||
| That's what got us to the place that we are. | ||
| And not that he was denied any of his fundamental constitutional rights or anything like that. | ||
| I mean, it's a ridiculous thing for him to say. | ||
| Well, I have an expert named Viva Fry who tells me he's an associate of a very famous media star. | ||
| He tells me that that's incorrect. | ||
| The First Amendment rights were violated. | ||
| You know, that is one of the questions that I have been fascinated by throughout both trials is, you know, the great, great lengths that have gone to avoid letting him turn it into a political thing or letting him really spew his bullshit unencumbered, you know? | ||
| All things considered, the question I have really for humanity is if Alex was allowed to do that, is he grabbing one juror? | ||
| Is that what humans have? | ||
| Is it you have to withhold some bullshit in order to have a reasonable response? | ||
| Or is it just going to overtake at least one person? | ||
| Because that, I think, was his and Norm's concept of the whole thing. | ||
| We need to get one person Well, I mean, yeah, they're going to red pill the jury. | ||
| Yeah, absolutely. | ||
| That was their idea. | ||
| But even that is revealed in how they talk about the Connecticut Supreme Court. | ||
| Like, they were like, we were just one judge away from, you know, it's like, if we could have gotten that one other person over on our side, then we would have flipped this thing. | ||
| At absolutely no point. | ||
| That means we're so close to right. | ||
| Yeah, we're not right, but goddamn, if we lied better, we'd be closer. | ||
| Yeah, if we could swing that one juror. | ||
| Then this all would be... | ||
| It felt like that with the amount of time that Norm spent. | ||
| Like, here's the question that I have for you, is Norm spent so much time trying to, like, worm around. | ||
| You know, all of those restrictions for that. | ||
| How many times would you have said objection when it wasn't said? | ||
| I'm not asking you to compare your performance overall. | ||
| When you were watching it, were you screaming objection? | ||
| At first, I was, right? | ||
| The first little bit. | ||
| And then I gave up. | ||
| I was like, I've got to shut this down. | ||
| Like, what is he up to? | ||
| And then the more I see him in trial, I'm like, oh, let that motherfucker talk. | ||
| You know, one of the things that's interesting about this is I knew Norm was a... | ||
| Weasel? | ||
| Shipwag? | ||
| An X-factor, a wild card. | ||
| I won't use any of your pejoratives. | ||
| Different words? | ||
| Stand-up comedian? | ||
| The guy who says the word in public? | ||
| No, sir. | ||
| Let me put it this way. | ||
| When he came down to try to apply to try our case, our position is that he was a unique threat to the administration of justice. | ||
| We felt he was a potential... | ||
| Skunk in the courtroom that could have made things really bad, giving us a mistrial, all that kind of stuff. | ||
| Is that skunk a stab at his ponytail? | ||
| No, that's funny, but it's actually, yeah, it's a pretty common courtroom expression. | ||
| And so we did get him opposed, which I think was the right call because he is a total wild card, whatever. | ||
| And he would have no motivation to behave himself in Texas because once he's done, he's just gone. | ||
| So we had to oppose him. | ||
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But boy, do you have to, after watching that trial, have to be second guessing that decision. | |
| Because as bad as Andino was, and he was, no question about it, holy cow, was that performance by Norm really... | ||
| I mean, what's sad is the man has this long career. | ||
| That's what he's going to be remembered for is that performance. | ||
| Jesus. | ||
| Reynold must have felt so good going into the office that next day. | ||
| No kidding. | ||
| Hey, how about this? | ||
| I'm walking on sunshine. | ||
| I kept it down. | ||
| How about that? | ||
| I kept it down from a billion dollars. | ||
| I'm a pretty great lawyer, aren't I? | ||
| Look at this guy get a billion dollars. | ||
| I only accidentally sent a bunch of texts to the council. | ||
| I didn't do that. | ||
| I didn't lose a billion. | ||
| I mean, that's the thing, too, is the synergy off these cases. | ||
| I mean, look, that was some finesse there to make that happen and required Federico not knowing his rules. | ||
| But it ended up with a pretty large amount of data in our possession, which at my trial, I only had four. | ||
| I mean, look, before I put those text messages in front of Jones. | ||
| Because I was in trial all day the previous day, and that was my first day that I could look at these documents. | ||
| I had about like four hours to be able to get that stuff together. | ||
| So then Chris has a month with these text messages, right? | ||
| And he battered him with these. | ||
| Man, some of that stuff from Fruget is just brutal. | ||
| And so you have these synergies between the case. | ||
| You'll notice that in my case, in mine, we played deposition testimony, and half the depositions that we played were from Lafferty. | ||
| It's interesting, Chris Maddy made an appearance in my trial, so did Matt Lumenthal, by questioning these witnesses. | ||
| And it was these synergies between the cases. | ||
| So right after the verdict, I called up Chris and I was like, man, it was nice to have a six-person trial team down there, because I had you and Matt as well down there. | ||
| And so it's nice that if it had only been one case, you just don't know how it would have turned out. | ||
| But when you have four and they synergize and they're all on the same page, you kind of know how they're all going to turn out. | ||
| It really was that way. | ||
| Yeah, that's what you were talking about when we first got started. | ||
| You were talking about how oftentimes cases will be sort of in competition with each other. | ||
| Who's going to take precedence for the judgments? | ||
| Sure! | ||
| Well, the idea of taking credit. | ||
| Like, I'm not seeing Mehdi be like, hey, I'm the greatest lawyer for getting a billion and Mark wasn't for not. | ||
| You know, like, you guys were really kind of... | ||
|
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Oh, shit. | |
| You haven't been on SoundCloud. | ||
|
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Oh, fuck. | |
| Did he drop his mixtape? | ||
|
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Yeah. | |
| It's about time. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
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I've been arguing for the Mehdi mixtape. | |
| He released a skeething diss track on the Texas Playtips fraternities. | ||
| It's violent, too. | ||
|
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Someone's going to get killed. | |
| It is really, really kind of amazing because it was like you had two independent teams coming up with interesting ideas, communicating with each other, and then going back and coming up with more interesting ideas. | ||
| It was really fascinating to watch the interplay between you guys. | ||
| I think part of that would be because the families, while not one Like, indistinguishable blob or anything, are all dealing with the same thing. | ||
| Right. | ||
| They share something so unique, it cannot be a bond that's unbroken, you know? | ||
| I mean, like, first, you have to consider that, like, early in the case, and, you know, particularly early, early in the case, Chris and I didn't know each other like we do now. | ||
| And Chris and I are two very, very different people, but we have a really strong bond. | ||
| Early in the case, though, we didn't really know each other. | ||
| And there was nothing that required Chris to say under his protective order with the court that the documents that he gets, that he went to the court and actually asked for a provision in the protective order to allow him to share those documents with me if he got stuff. | ||
| He didn't have to do that. | ||
| And there would be a lot of people in different cases where they weren't on the same page that wouldn't do that. | ||
| And it was always felt like this was a boat that we are sailing together. | ||
| That there are certain times, depending on which case something is happening in, somebody's going to be at the wheel of this thing. | ||
| But it was absolutely critical to us that we are sailing in the same direction, that we were not doing things that would undermine each other, anything like that. | ||
| Withholding some information that he's defrauding you. | ||
| Yeah, absolutely. | ||
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
| And it was that, that we gave each other surprises all the time. | ||
| We'd be calling on each other. | ||
| You never will guess what I just found out. | ||
| Yeah, it was good. | ||
| In the movie, I'm writing about this. | ||
| First off, you and one, Nicole Kidman is going to play Christina Maddy. | ||
| All right. | ||
| You are going to play... | ||
| Actually, you can choose, but you guys are going to fall in love at the end of this. | ||
| I'm sorry. | ||
| This is a sleepless in Texas kind of situation. | ||
| You don't have to gender swap anybody. | ||
| We're already there, brother. | ||
| Ben Shapiro is going to be furious. | ||
| It's not for you guys. | ||
| It's for the big crowd. | ||
| It's for you, Jordan. | ||
| Oh, yeah, sure. | ||
| It's for Jordan. | ||
| It's for me. | ||
| We should probably wrap this up before too long. | ||
| Yeah, I know. | ||
| I could go on forever with you guys. | ||
| Yeah, and so could we. | ||
| But we have other business we need to attend to. | ||
| Indeed. | ||
| The thing I want to touch back on is you said the 20th is the next thing for y 'all. | ||
| Mm-hmm. | ||
| And then also the Posner case, that's coming up. | ||
| Do we have a time frame on that? | ||
| We don't have a trial date yet. | ||
| I'm hoping to get one at that hearing on the 20th. | ||
| I mean, it's going to have to kind of come down to whether we're going to actually have to move the bankruptcy court to lift the stay and get that done through the bankruptcy court to get free speech out of there, or whether we just go forward against Jones and say, you know what, screw it, we'll sever it out and just try to get Jones. | ||
| Well, the free speech system seems like it has enough hanging around its neck at this point. | ||
| Yeah, it seems like that company might be tapped out. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Could be. | ||
| You had success in unsuing those other entities. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| It's a choice. | ||
| You can make it any point. | ||
| In fact, you wouldn't even have to unsue them. | ||
| You just have to sever the cases out, leave free speech in bankruptcy, go try the case against Jones. | ||
| There's different ways you could do it. | ||
| I was hoping to have that tried in December for the anniversary. | ||
| I wanted it to be over on the 10-year anniversary. | ||
| It sucks. | ||
| I'm probably not going to be able to do that, but it's looking like early next year. | ||
| I'm hoping for January, February, something like that, and we'll get them done. | ||
| And then hopefully if we can get Marcel's case tried before the end of the spring, then the whole trial saga of this is over early next year. | ||
| Are we invited? | ||
| Do we get to come? | ||
| Or are you kicking us out this time? | ||
| No, no, no. | ||
| After last trials performance. | ||
| Austin's a nice place to be in the winter. | ||
| It's not a bad place to be in the winter. | ||
| Gosh, 105 degrees in July. | ||
| I'll guarantee you. | ||
| See if Jordan can still sweat through his shirt. | ||
| Oh man, I'll be so dry. | ||
| I don't believe it. | ||
| Fair. | ||
| Well, Mark, thank you so much for joining us. | ||
| It was really nice to be able to chat and get some of these angles chatted about. | ||
| But yeah, we look forward to it. | ||
| Last thing I do want to say is that... | ||
| During the course of the trial itself and over the weeks following it, I received so much from your audience. | ||
| The most heartfelt kind of gifts and trinkets. | ||
| So just as a couple... | ||
| Watch out, some of those do magic. | ||
| I would be concerned. | ||
| I had one of your listeners do wood carving on a giant wood board that says speech is free but lies you have to pay for. | ||
| And that now hangs in my office. | ||
| That's so fucking cool. | ||
| That's so fucking cool. | ||
| One of your listeners is an Egyptologist, and she's a really well-admired Egyptologist. | ||
| She did what she calls an Egyptian victory stile, which is like in hieroglyphics. | ||
|
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What? | |
| Yeah, and I'm going to actually send y 'all a copy because it has you. | ||
| You sent me a picture of it, I think. | ||
| Yeah, you enjoyed it. | ||
| Are at the top as, like, Jackal Osiris gods with microphones. | ||
| The wrong place for us to be. | ||
| Me and Bill, they have little Egyptian guys with me and Bill, and they have little baskets in front of them, and Bill's is filled with gummy worms. | ||
| And then he has built in hieroglyphs, an entire Egyptian poem about the victory. | ||
| And, like, now we have that. | ||
| Somebody else did, and it became popular on your subreddit, is, like, a Tiger Beat-style magazine cover of the charm. | ||
| And I want the person who made this to know, we blew that up to poster size on a wall in our office. | ||
| And we've actually surrounded it by other pictures and things from the top. | ||
| Good lord. | ||
| Someone from your audience had a bouquet of flowers delivered to me at the courthouse. | ||
| So I'm in the jury collection room, like, meeting with the team. | ||
| They bring me in flowers. | ||
| I had people who sent us to, like, somebody had sent to the courthouse a giant thing of cookies for the trial. | ||
| I mean, we were just bombarded with this. | ||
| Very thoughtful and weird. | ||
| At least half of them were anonymous. | ||
| They were just like, we love and support you from the wonk. | ||
| You know? | ||
| And it's just, man, the community that y 'all have fostered and what it is, it means a lot to me. | ||
| And I, you know, some of the people have been saying things like, what is Knowledge Fight going to do when Alex Jones is gone? | ||
| And I remind them, one, Alex Jones is never going to be truly gone until he's six feet under. | ||
| Like, if he keels over, okay, but like, otherwise he's not going to be gone. | ||
| And two, there's this big thing coming up where I'm seeing, I don't know, more lower level Alex Joneses, more things of that style that I know it's going to keep him relevant. | ||
| And, you know, no matter what we do to this guy, do not leave him alone. | ||
| You've been beating him like a dog. | ||
| So this is like the end of Batman Begins and we finally pick up the Joker card and it's like we're off to the next. | ||
| Oh, we've defeated one enemy. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, that idea of like what we're going to do when he's gone has never troubled me because it's not really relevant. | ||
| Like if he's gone and I don't like get donations or whatever, I don't give a shit. | ||
| I don't care. | ||
| I will find a less interesting person to talk about. | ||
| The only thing that troubles me a little bit is that this notion of lower-level Alex's, we now are not a podcast just started. | ||
| It is weird to not punch up. | ||
| Yeah, that to me is something we'll have to deal with, but I'm not saying that's impossible. | ||
| But yeah, I love our audience as well. | ||
| We are so lucky to have such... | ||
| Bizarrely positive people about this show that is so disgusting. | ||
| Beautiful, wonderful, amazing people who love so hard. | ||
| I also am going to blow up a copy of that Egyptian hieroglyphics and put it on the wall because that's so cool. | ||
| Well, Mark, all the best. | ||
| As they say, I wish you nothing but successes and... | ||
| Further in future successes and may your sword ever be sharp in regards to Alex Jones. | ||
| Thank you, gentlemen. | ||
| And, I mean, I guess all your other cases or whatever. | ||
| Not that one in Kansas City, though, because I heard he was suing big barbecue sauce. | ||
| Oh, shit, motherfucker. | ||
| Mark, our relationship is tenuous. | ||
| We'll talk soon. | ||
| As you see, that's the Bellagio behind me, so I'm going to go hit the tables and see if my luck keeps up, because it seems to be doing pretty well right now. | ||
| Roll them bones. | ||
| As Bobby Barnes' former client would say, bet on black, wasn't that a snipe thing? | ||
| That's right. | ||
| Let me go black. | ||
| All right, take it easy, buddy. | ||
| Andy in Kansas, you're on the air. | ||
| Thanks for holding. | ||
|
unidentified
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Hello, Alex. | |
| I'm a first time caller. | ||
| I'm a huge fan. | ||
|
unidentified
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I love your work. |