Today, Dan and Jordan sit down with author and journalist Elizabeth Williamson (Sandy Hook: An American Tragedy and the Battle for Truth) to continue to discuss the verdict in the CT trial, and hear from Elizabeth what it was like to be there in the courtroom.
| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
|
unidentified
|
Knowledge Fight. | |
| I'm sick of them posing as if they're the good guys, saying we are the bad guys. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Knowledge Fight. | |
| Dan and Jordan. | ||
| I love you. | ||
| Hey, everybody. | ||
| Welcome back to Knowledge Fat. | ||
| I'm Dan. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm Jordan. | |
| We're a couple dudes like to sit around, worship at the altar of Selene, and talk a little bit about Alex Jones. | ||
| Oh, indeed we are. | ||
| Dan. | ||
| Jordan. | ||
| Jordan. | ||
| Quick question for you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What's up? | |
| What's your bright spot today, buddy? | ||
| My bright spot today is that we remembered to do an intro. | ||
| That is true. | ||
| Before you left. | ||
| As opposed to last time. | ||
| Boy, I couldn't say words, and now I can't either. | ||
| Your intros, when you're by yourself, Have a tendency to flounder as time goes on. | ||
| They get a little heavy. | ||
| You have a good head of steam as you start, and then they start to go a little bit off the rails. | ||
| It's kind of Wile E. Coyote-ish. | ||
| There's a bit of that. | ||
| You don't know when you've run off the cliff. | ||
| You keep going. | ||
| It's kind of amazing. | ||
| And there's an existential question in the middle of why am I doing this? | ||
| There is that. | ||
| Anyway, when you fall, you hold up a sign that says, why am I doing that? | ||
| So, I'm glad that we remembered to do that today. | ||
| What about you? | ||
| My bright spot, Dan, it may seem trivial, but it is the parking spot that I got today. | ||
| There is, so on the street, there is... | ||
| Don't talk to me. | ||
| I wasn't going to. | ||
| There is one spot. | ||
| One. | ||
| That is free. | ||
| There's no parking meters. | ||
| It is in between... | ||
| Don't talk to me, man. | ||
| You can't park in those places, but there's one perfect spot completely free, right? | ||
| Always filled. | ||
| But then every now and again, this is the second time in like three years I've gotten this spot. | ||
| And it brightens your day, man! | ||
| Free parking! | ||
| That is fantastic. | ||
| I now have more work to do because I'm going to have to bleep a couple things. | ||
| It's not specific enough to geolocate me, but at the same time, I'm still uncomfortable with landmarks. | ||
| Fair enough. | ||
| But as far as parking goes, that could be anywhere in the city. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| It's a real menace. | ||
| People have a real tough time with it, and I'm glad you landed. | ||
| It's a little bit like standing in the four corners, you know, where you're like, oh, I'm in any state that I want to be right now, where you're like, this is the freest parking in the entire block. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I guess we already doxed my old place. | ||
| I lived on Ainsley. | ||
| And that street is so thin. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And there's people parking on both sides of the street. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yep. | |
| And there's never a spot. | ||
| It was just so awful. | ||
| Anytime anybody came over, they would learn that, oh, I have to park a ways away or drive around in a loop for half an hour to find someone leaving. | ||
| That was awful. | ||
| Anybody living near Belmont and Lakeshore is like, you might as well park on Addison, my man. | ||
| Funny story, that was around where I lived before. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| Yeah, a lot of people... | ||
| Who would come over would just be... | ||
| Tough, tough stuff. | ||
| That you'd learn. | ||
| Take the fucking red line. | ||
| Take the red line. | ||
| Yeah, it's easier. | ||
| There's good transportation here. | ||
| Yeah, luckily for us, you also lived in Uptown when I lived in Uptown. | ||
| So you could just walk over, which was pretty convenient. | ||
| Beautiful. | ||
| So, Jordan, today we have an interview to enjoy. | ||
| Ooh! | ||
| Continuing our Sneaky Snake weekend series. | ||
| The sneaks have snuck again. | ||
| We have a little conversation with Elizabeth Williamson. | ||
| She dropped by to... | ||
| Our good friend Elizabeth? | ||
| Yeah! | ||
| The trial has concluded, and so we thought, in addition to checking in with the legal end with our friend Mark... | ||
| Why not talk to our friend Liz about what it was like in the room as she had spent the entire time there for the trial? | ||
| I think really, beyond the judge and the lawyers and the jury, I think Elizabeth has been in there the most. | ||
| Well, the families. | ||
| Well, I mean, yes. | ||
| In the professional capacity. | ||
| People who weren't part of the trial. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| Obviously, yeah. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, Sebastian Murdoch was down there, but he left after a week or so. | ||
| I mean, even Mark left after a week. | ||
| Mark had places to be. | ||
| True, true. | ||
| Vegas. | ||
| Yeah, baby. | ||
| So, I hope you folks do enjoy, and we'll be back Monday with a non-sneaky episode. | ||
| Indeed we will. | ||
| But, hey. | ||
| Enjoy. | ||
| Until then? | ||
| No. | ||
| No. | ||
| That's not how we do this. | ||
| Ah, boy. | ||
| Hey, folks, we are back again. | ||
| It's true. | ||
| Guess who's back? | ||
| No. | ||
| Is this how we start things now? | ||
| This weekend feels empty without me. | ||
| That Eminem song is 20 years old. | ||
| Yeah, I know. | ||
| Sometimes I really think about how many things are 20 years old now, and it's a real bummer. | ||
| What are you going to do? | ||
| Anyway, we are here having another little sneaky snake. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| And we're excited to be joined by, from the New York Times, from Sandy Hook, The Battle for Truth. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| An American Tragedy. | ||
| Yes! | ||
| You got the, yeah. | ||
| Also, person whose name I remembered fucked up last time. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yep. | |
| Ladies and gentlemen, Elizabeth Williamson, thank you so much for joining us. | ||
| It's Erica Williamson. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Damn it! | |
| Every time, Dan. | ||
| I'm used to not being able to get anything wrong. | ||
| That is okay. | ||
| How are you? | ||
| I am fine. | ||
| How are you guys? | ||
| A little tired. | ||
| A little exhausted. | ||
| I'm sure you're feeling fairly similarly, so I should... | ||
| Yeah, I am, actually. | ||
| But I'm happy, even though you didn't ask me what's my bright spot. | ||
|
unidentified
|
My bright spot is that I'm in Wisconsin at my brother's house. | |
| I think a lot of people's bright spot involves Wisconsin. | ||
| People who love cheese. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Booze. | ||
| Brisk air. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| Lots of fall colors. | ||
| Milwaukee's in Wisconsin. | ||
| That's true. | ||
| They have that spotted cow. | ||
| Is that the name of the beer that everyone likes? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Yes. | ||
| We've got a refrigerator full of that. | ||
| My brother won a case of it in a bet. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| What was the bet? | ||
| Wait, now. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Was it Alex Jones is going to lose $900 million? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Ding, ding, ding. | |
| That's a good bet. | ||
| That's a good bet. | ||
| Yeah, especially if it ropes you in some spotted cow. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's right. | ||
| And I'm thinking it's probably a little early for it, but you never know. | ||
| It's creamy, right? | ||
| I mean, it has sort of a cream thing. | ||
| I'm not trying to argue that it's a morning beer. | ||
| I was going to say, are we easing into day drinking this early? | ||
| It's an excellent breakfast beer. | ||
| So you, I got to imagine, are exhausted because you've been in Connecticut for the trial the entire time, right? | ||
| It was almost five weeks of that. | ||
| Yeah, I did go home on the weekends, but yeah, I... | ||
| I was there for the whole thing. | ||
| And I wouldn't have been anywhere else because it was really quite something. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| I guess that's got to help. | ||
| I mean, being able to go home on the weekends... | ||
| Probably keeps a little bit of sanity. | ||
| But us being down in Texas for just like two weeks, it felt like an endurance trial. | ||
| Yeah, it was excruciating. | ||
| And this trial in particular, there were so many really moving, difficult stories from these family members. | ||
| I feel like I would collapse. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, the families were the ones I really was thinking of because... | ||
| You know, once in a while, the group would be larger or smaller, but I would say for the most part, the families attended just about every day of the trial. | ||
| You could really see the toll that it was taking on them. | ||
| I mean, there were some family members that every time their child's name, for example, was mentioned in court, they would be very emotional about that. | ||
| And then hearing each other's stories. | ||
| I mean, sometimes there were spouses who... | ||
| They didn't know what the other one had gone through. | ||
| They hadn't heard that exact story told in that exact way, or they hadn't heard another relative's story themselves. | ||
| So you could really see how much... | ||
| Just grief and what a revelation some of this was even to them. | ||
| And they were really there for each other. | ||
| I mean, they all sat together. | ||
| They all consoled each other. | ||
|
unidentified
|
They all kind of spent time together. | |
| And that was really simple. | ||
| Yeah, that is a really, really interesting thing that I hadn't thought of and I imagine most people hadn't thought of because, you know, despite our desire to kind of view everybody individually in this case, obviously there is still that element of they're all sitting there with a shared event in their lives. | ||
| So you just kind of don't realize that, of course, they wouldn't have. | ||
| Just sat down in a group and gone through each individual story to each other. | ||
| And if you have, even if you're married to somebody or maybe you're divorced or whatever, but a partner, sometimes in the aftermath of a really terrible grief... | ||
| Sometimes you don't want to relive it. | ||
| Or even overburden the other person. | ||
| Be strong for them. | ||
| Maybe some of the intricacies of what you're going through don't necessarily come up. | ||
| A number of them spoke about how they tried to shield the other parent, for example, from what they were hearing or what they were seeing or the attacks that were coming at them. | ||
| I'm sure you guys noticed that. | ||
| How could you not? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And then the other thing, and I noticed this when I was writing my book, memories are faulty, particularly when people have gone through a big trauma. | ||
| They can't remember everything. | ||
| And this has been just about a decade. | ||
| Them working on those recollections and then replaying them, there were things that I think that some people in the room hadn't really remembered, although they may have known it at the time. | ||
| Yeah, you block out a bit. | ||
| Yeah, the brain will create that safety measure. | ||
| Much like trying to protect your partner. | ||
| The brain tries to protect you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, it's really true. | |
| So we came to the end of the trial last week on Wednesday. | ||
| I guess the verdict was read on Wednesday. | ||
| But the actual end of the arguments was the end of the week prior. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| And so one of the things that I was wondering was, how did things feel as time went on and the jury was deliberating? | ||
| Yeah, so they had a number of questions. | ||
| And so every time they'd ask a question, you'd try to game, you know, what does that mean? | ||
| You know, at one point they asked to hear the testimony again of William Sherlock, whose wife, Mary Sherlock, was the school psychologist who died at Sandy Hook. | ||
| And there was this, you know, Thought in the room. | ||
| Well, OK, let's think. | ||
| His name appears on the bottom of the jury verdict form. | ||
| So does that mean they're nearing the end? | ||
| Oh, right. | ||
| Try and figure it all out and kind of game through it to see, well, what does that mean? | ||
| And one question in particular that the jury asked was this thing where they said. | ||
| What does it mean? | ||
| There's this kind of archaic language in the law in these sorts of cases. | ||
| And it's, what does it, you know, the instructions of the jury is, try to put the plaintiff back into the position when you, you know, levy these damages. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Try to put them back into the position they were before the harm occurred. | |
| And, you know, that works for things like... | ||
| You know, a broken contract. | ||
| So, you know, you can say, well, here's the income you would have had if that person hadn't broken, illegally broken the contract. | ||
| Or, you know, a personal injury, you know, you're paying for hospitalization and maybe special care and things like that. | ||
| But when it comes to defamation and, you know, reputational damage and things like that, and reputational damage to someone who has lost someone in this way. | ||
| How do you ever get them back to where they started? | ||
| It becomes almost a philosophical question. | ||
| Everyone was thinking, what are they thinking when they're asking that question? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Are they thinking no amount of money? | |
| Are they thinking any amount of money? | ||
| How are they grappling with that? | ||
| So that was kind of the thing. | ||
| Everybody was wondering, what's going on inside that room where only the six-member panel is meeting? | ||
| Yeah, I remember the one question that stuck with me from them is the one where they asked, why was Lafferty the first name? | ||
| Obviously, it was just, you know, that was the first name, and then at all meant rather than writing out every single name, right? | ||
| But everybody went, oh, I know. | ||
| They must be thinking that if the name is first, maybe there was more injury to them, you know? | ||
| Everybody had to have had that same thought, right? | ||
| Well, I had another takeaway from it, and that was, boy, does this show they are not Googling anything. | ||
| Yes, exactly. | ||
| They are sticking to the judge's instructions if they're asking this. | ||
| Yep, not even the definition of at all. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Mm-hmm. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| No, they were very thorough. | ||
| They were extremely diligent. | ||
| You got the sense that, you know... | ||
| As the judge was noting during the trial, they were showing up early every day. | ||
| They were taking notes. | ||
| They were really into this. | ||
| They were very engaged. | ||
| I noticed a lot. | ||
| There would be different testimony. | ||
| They would be wiping their tears away, crying a little bit. | ||
| When Jones testified, a lot of frowns and a lot of shaking. | ||
| They're heads. | ||
| And that, you know, was really interesting because after that, Norm Pattis told me he thought Jones did well in his testimony. | ||
| And I was thinking, define well. | ||
| He's getting paid well. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| That's surprising. | ||
| You think he did well. | ||
| That's surprising. | ||
| Well, yeah, it could have been $1.2 billion. | ||
| I think he took $300 million off. | ||
| It's relative. | ||
| I think when you're someone like Norm, you have to play by pro wrestling rules where you don't break kayfabe. | ||
| Even backstage, you're still in character. | ||
| There's still a like, hey, doing pretty well out there. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| When he goes home and it's just him and his wife, he takes the wig off. | ||
| He doesn't actually have a ponytail. | ||
| He's completely bald. | ||
| He removes the makeup. | ||
| I mean, it's tough, but he's the only one who gets to see the real him. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| He definitely has his shtick down. | ||
| I mean, when I first started researching what was happening here for the book, I went to see him at his offices in New Haven. | ||
| And his offices are in an old Victorian house. | ||
| And he has, in what had been the dining room, just the walls are lined with books. | ||
| And he said his wife has an antiquarian bookstore. | ||
| And he said... | ||
| Wait, wait, wait. | ||
| You mentioned the antiquarian bookstore on the last episode that we talked. | ||
| In Waterbury, there was one. | ||
| You didn't mention it was Norm's wife? | ||
| No. | ||
| No, make no mistake. | ||
| Let's not start anything here. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Different antiquarian bookstore. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| No, her antiquarian bookstore is someplace else. | ||
| I think he said it's in an old barn somewhere. | ||
| I just, I can't believe that there are two antiquarian bookstores that are coming up. | ||
| I mean, yes, it's amazing. | ||
| That's amazing. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, it gets weirder because he said, so he shows me these two very, no, three very interesting antique books. | ||
| And he said, and look at this one. | ||
| And one of them, as I recall, was like one of those flip books where you get a moving picture when you flip the pages. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Not the same type of antique books that I was thinking of. | ||
| Right. | ||
| I was thinking more like, oh, this is a first edition Robinson Crusoe, not like, this flip book is from the 70s. | ||
| That was a first edition of... | ||
| No, they were old. | ||
| They were very, very old. | ||
| No, they were. | ||
| And it was kind of like, let me dig out some really interesting finds for you. | ||
| He comes up with these three books. | ||
| And you know from his opening arguments, Norm prides himself on how well-read he is. | ||
| I think he cited, you know, the great philosophers and all the way down to Shoshana Zuboff in his opening remarks. | ||
| And he was talking about her book. | ||
| As well, not only during his opening remarks, but back in 2019 when I first visited with him. | ||
| But anyway, so he shows me these three books and I thought, oh, that's really interesting. | ||
| And then a couple months go by and I read a profile of him in Connecticut Magazine. | ||
| And the reporter comes in and he says, oh, let me show you my library. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Look at these three interesting books. | |
| Same three books. | ||
| That's gotta be a little bit disappointing. | ||
| Yeah, you know, he's got a shtick. | ||
| You know, he's sort of the, you know, he always says the same thing, you know, hey, I'm an echinoclast. | ||
| I'm a... | ||
| You know, name your age. | ||
| Now he's, I think, 67. But at the time it was, I'm a 64-year-old with a ponytail. | ||
| I'm a 65-year-old with a ponytail. | ||
| I'm a 67-year-old with a ponytail. | ||
| I'm an iconoclast. | ||
| I like, you know, offbeat clients. | ||
| Yeah, there's the analog of that in the comedy world, which is the comic who has to come out wearing the same shirt because they have a joke about the shirt. | ||
| You know, they have to, every show they do, they have to do the same. | ||
| It's a shirt joke. | ||
| And it gets so sad. | ||
| It gets so sad. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, Norm. | |
| He's got the same book joke. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yep. | |
| I mean, what three books does he think is going to impress everybody? | ||
| And why? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Alex Jones' The Great Reset. | |
| Glenn Beck's The Great Reset. | ||
| Lyndon LaRouche. | ||
| Klaus Schwab's The Great Reset. | ||
| All three books titled The Great Reset. | ||
| Have you all heard his podcast where he interviews Alex Jones? | ||
| No. | ||
| No, absolutely not. | ||
| Oh, my. | ||
| Was that new? | ||
| No. | ||
| I want to say it's probably a year old. | ||
| I knew that Norm did some broadcasting, but I've heard him on Alex's show a number of times, and I've not found him to be a compelling figure. | ||
| Yeah, the upshot of it is, wow, Alex, here I am, Norm, incredibly well-read Norm, very familiar with the great philosophers, and how did I miss you? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It is just really amazing. | |
| It's like you are one of the greats when it comes to prophecy. | ||
| Oh, boy. | ||
| And then Alex quotes a comic book. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| As Uncle Benjamin used to say, with great Alex comes great Alex-bility. | ||
| I think you call that client management. | ||
| That's true. | ||
| I guess if you spend any time around Alex, you realize a little bit of flattery probably is how you get anything done. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| What do you want to order for pizza? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I mean, you look great today. | ||
| Let's go with pepperoni and cheese. | ||
| Like, okay, fine, man. | ||
| Brilliant choice. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Brilliant choice. | |
| So smart. | ||
| So I'm particularly interested in, as those questions were coming in, and as the deliberation went on, what was the flavor of tension? | ||
| In the courtroom, as best as you can describe it. | ||
| Because I know that for us, from far away, there was a bit of confusion, a bit of like, is it going to be today? | ||
| Even on Wednesday, it was like the end of the day Wednesday. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| I think by the end of Wednesday, especially after they heard... | ||
| William Sherlock's testimony again. | ||
| And then they took a recess. | ||
| They went back to deliberate. | ||
| Then there was lunch. | ||
| And then they came out and they said, can we have a new copy of the verdict form? | ||
| Because we wrote the wrong number on a line. | ||
| And I was sitting in the back row with Dan Reed, the documentarian who's been recording this trial and others. | ||
| And we both looked at each other, you know, eyebrows raised. | ||
| Does it mean they're almost at the end, you know? | ||
| Or does it mean, you know, they're still kind of making their way? | ||
| And no one knew. | ||
| I was starting to, by the end of the day on Wednesday, really kind of lose hope that they were going to arrive at a verdict that week. | ||
| I don't know why. | ||
| I just felt like they were, you know, I started out really optimistic. | ||
| If it wasn't Wednesday, it was going to be next Wednesday. | ||
| Or maybe never. | ||
| It would go over the weekend. | ||
| Yeah, I just felt like, ugh. | ||
| And then, you know, speaking of Norm, he started to say, I've got another, you know, I've got another gig, basically, in New York City. | ||
| It's a stand-up gig. | ||
| I need to postpone this a little bit because I have to go be in New York City and I can't monitor this case and I don't trust anyone else to monitor this case or these deliberations so I can't be in two places at once. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Norm got booked to do a check spot at the stand. | |
| Sorry. | ||
| Terrible stand-up gig. | ||
| Yeah, it's funny. | ||
| It's funny. | ||
| I remember whenever he broke into the conversation with the judge and just all of a sudden was like, hey, listen, I can't be here until 2 on Thursday. | ||
| That's as good as I can do. | ||
| And everybody just went, what? | ||
| What just happened? | ||
| What are you doing? | ||
| Yeah, I think my jaw literally dropped when he said that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I thought, wow. | |
| Everyone was taken aback. | ||
| I'm booked to be on Rogan. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| It was like, ah, double booked. | ||
| Sorry about this one. | ||
| It really was odd. | ||
| And the judge kind of looked at him and said, yeah, why don't we just cross that bridge when we get to it, Norm? | ||
| So, yeah, she didn't call him Norm. | ||
| She's very formal. | ||
| Yeah, that would have been against a quorum. | ||
| But yeah, so then we were thinking by the end of the day on Wednesday, now we're looking at a really truncated day on Thursday. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| And then what's going to happen? | ||
| Then we're at Friday. | ||
| And then you were also thinking about, there were all these other things going on, you know. | ||
| You had a lot of news that was starting to pile up at the end of the week, like the January 6th hearing on Thursday night. | ||
| And I was just starting to think about, you know... | ||
| Are you going to be in Connecticut for the rest of your life, like a Twilight Zone situation? | ||
| You know, you can't escape the restaurant. | ||
| You're William Shatner. | ||
| Like, it's a whole thing. | ||
| I get you. | ||
| Yeah, it was sort of Groundhog Day in the hotel, which was just walking distance from the courtroom where pretty much everybody was staying. | ||
| So anyway, they surprised us in the end. | ||
| When they asked for a new verdict form, it was because they really were at the very end and they were writing everything in. | ||
| What was your feel when the first number was read? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I was like... | |
| You know, that is a lot. | ||
| Because I noticed a couple people were speculating on Twitter. | ||
| They were saying, okay, price is right rules. | ||
| Let's all guess. | ||
| What's the verdict going to be? | ||
| Can't go over, you know? | ||
| And so people were saying, you know, $3.50, $3.25. | ||
| And I was thinking, that sounds ambitious, but... | ||
| Given the number of plaintiffs, I don't know, maybe? | ||
| Yeah, right. | ||
| So when Robbie Parker got 120 and you still had 14 plaintiffs to go, you were thinking, wow, this is going to be historic. | ||
| And I have to imagine that was palpable in the room, that feeling after Robbie's verdict. | ||
| It was absolutely silent in the room. | ||
| It was just sort of stunning how quiet it was. | ||
| And, you know, people were just listening to the numbers and all you could hear were, you know, people like myself typing these numbers in and, you know, trying to keep track of them. | ||
| And then I was typing in and in New York, they were adding and re-adding just to make sure everything was accurate. | ||
| You know, you started to see these sort of exclamations of, "Whoa!" and "Oh my God!" Yeah, the moment I think they showed the judgment, they immediately cut to Robbie. | ||
| And it was, you saw him put his head in his hands, like, very slowly and just keep it there. | ||
| And it was very much like, I could feel and see that thought of, "Fucking, we did it!" You know? | ||
| Like, it was... | ||
| It was such a feeling of, I mean, I imagine you could have reached out and held victory in the air. | ||
| Like, it was that kind of intensity there. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| It was really incredible. | ||
| It was, yeah, I think nobody knew what to say. | ||
| It was just, I mean, I just looked over at this colleague and was like, holy smokes, you know? | ||
| But... | ||
| Which came out like a different word. | ||
| But anyway, yeah. | ||
| It really was. | ||
| It was really jaw-dropping. | ||
| It was incredible. | ||
| And not to dwell on any schadenfreude or anything, but how was Norm feeling? | ||
| Could you get a sense of his vibe? | ||
| I did look over. | ||
| Oh, of course you did. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| He was staring straight ahead. | ||
| He did not look at the lawyers. | ||
| He did not turn around. | ||
| And then one of the things he was doing in the courtroom prior to that was he was kind of Kind of like making nice to people in the room. | ||
| You know, at one point, you know, Robbie Parker, during one of the recesses, was leaving the room and Norm was following him out the door and kind of like patted him on the back. | ||
| At another point, Pat Lodra, who attended many days of the trial, she was the former first selectman in Newtown when the shooting occurred with the equivalent of mayor. | ||
| You know, went up to her and said, oh, nothing personal kind of thing. | ||
| Yeah, it's all in the game. | ||
| Yeah, that is very much Norm's vibe, especially in the courtroom. | ||
| He was just like, I'm a gladiator in here. | ||
| I'm fighting for my client. | ||
| And then at the end of it, he's like, hey, man, it's fun to be in the pit with you, right? | ||
| Let's go have a beer. | ||
| And you're like, no, you're a monster, dude. | ||
| I don't know what to tell you. | ||
| In a case like this, it's really hard to sort of Great character like that. | ||
| I'm not sure that that is something that people were buying. | ||
| I won't speak for Pat Lodra or anyone like that. | ||
| I think everybody obviously deserves a defense, even if you're an awful person. | ||
| I don't think it makes you any less reputable of a lawyer if you take those cases. | ||
| But I also don't think that you need to, at multiple points during the case, suggest that these grieving families are exaggerating their pain. | ||
| I think that there might be another way to go about defending Alex that doesn't involve something that distasteful. | ||
| It really does require, like, I mean... | ||
| If you are in a vacuum trying to think up defense strategies, I can understand why this would go up on the whiteboard, you know? | ||
| But once it's up there, you should be like, and this is an inhuman thing to do now that we should not do. | ||
| We can scratch this one off. | ||
| But when you're brainstorming, you're like, oh, this could happen. | ||
| You know, this is a strategy session or something like that. | ||
| But when you behave the way Norm did and Raynal, you know, it's not that they defended Alex that was the reason they were bad. | ||
| It's the way they did it that was so disrespectful. | ||
| Well, but here's where, you know, as you guys know better than anybody, this is where, you know, you have to consider who's the client. | ||
| And as Raynal told me during the trial in Austin. | ||
| Alex calls all the shots. | ||
| Because I said, will he be testifying? | ||
| And he said, it's up to Alex. | ||
| And then he goes, everything is up to Alex. | ||
| And so what they were putting on was the defense that Alex wanted. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So, you know, in a normal client relationship, you would, as you guys were just saying, you know, you'd say... | ||
| No, let's cross that one off. | ||
| We're not going to be accusing the families of anything. | ||
| You know, that's what got us into this mess. | ||
| And that's how we're going to end up paying a billion dollars. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But, you know, he person after person in these trials has testified. | ||
| Alex calls all the shots. | ||
| Alex runs the show. | ||
| The show runs on Alex. | ||
| There would be no info wars if not for Alex. | ||
| Alex makes all the decisions. | ||
| Alex said to do that. | ||
| Alex checked on this. | ||
| Alex wanted that. | ||
| So that was the defense that he wanted. | ||
| And so he got the judgment that that kind of defense produces. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Mm-hmm. | |
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yep. | |
| And not effective. | ||
| No, no. | ||
| Not effective. | ||
| I think what's fascinating about it. | ||
| To sit in a courtroom and say, I'm done apologizing to families that were still weeping because they had just watched Robbie's entire tribute to his daughter the night after the shooting on video, you know, to sort of say, not sort of say, to literally say, I'm done apologizing is, you know, not strategic. | ||
| Put it that way. | ||
| No. | ||
| And saying the courtroom is a struggle session. | ||
| It doesn't play very well. | ||
| Yeah, and Norm echoed that comment, which surprised me. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So, you know, audience of one. | ||
| You know, a lot of the things he said in the courtroom, I felt like, okay, he knows Alex is watching the live feed. | ||
| He's performing for the audience of one. | ||
| Well, I mean, he just apparently lost his radio show, so he might be coming on InfoWars roster. | ||
| He's got, after the war room, there's the norm room. | ||
| That's the way it's going to go. | ||
| He and Robert Barnes could do a show together. | ||
| They absolutely hate each other. | ||
| Well, they couldn't do a show together because neither of them has the goods. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Charisma? | |
| Yeah. | ||
| So, Liz, I feel like since we have you here, there are two things that come up that the audience probably has questions about. | ||
| The first is the judge's shoes. | ||
| Oh, yes. | ||
| There are some questions that the people have about that. | ||
| Right? | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Are there? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Are there questions about the judge's shoes? | |
| You're tweeting about the judge's shoes. | ||
| I was. | ||
| Elizabeth, you were tweeting about the judge's shoes. | ||
| What was going on with the judge's shoes? | ||
| I confess. | ||
| What was going on with the judge's shoes? | ||
| This is not an inquisition. | ||
| Okay, it's true. | ||
| I tweeted about her shoes. | ||
| Yes, no, she has a great collection of shoes. | ||
| And I think, you know, as a couple people pointed out, when you're wearing, you know, long flowing black judges robes. | ||
| There's not a lot to... | ||
| I mean, Ruth Bader Ginsburg distinguished herself by wearing those lace collars that became so iconic. | ||
| And I think Judge Bellis kind of did that by wearing a lot of really interesting shoes. | ||
| You've got to give your own personality a little bit when you have a uniform so much like a black robe. | ||
| Right, right. | ||
| You gotta have something for you. | ||
| Shouldn't that, at some point, though, penetrate your mind to how stupid the fucking robe is? | ||
| If you're like, ah, see, I'm getting around the whole respectful judge thing by wearing flashy shoes. | ||
| Then just wear a fucking... | ||
| What are we doing? | ||
| This is one of your long-standing things about uniforms. | ||
| I hate uniforms so much. | ||
| Oh, I see. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So arbitrarily bullshit. | |
| Like, oh, you can't wear shorts, but I wear a big moot. | ||
| Fuck off! | ||
| I hate it. | ||
| I think my problem with it is they go halfway. | ||
| Because in the Commonwealth countries, let's say. | ||
| You've got to wear the wig, man. | ||
| You've got to wear the wig. | ||
| If you're going to wear the robe, then you've got to wear the wig. | ||
| Otherwise, you're faking it. | ||
| I feel like I regret bringing up the shoes now. | ||
|
unidentified
|
This turned into a very intense standoff. | |
| So her shoes were always really interesting. | ||
| You know, they're usually primarily black, but they were kind of high heels and, you know, at one point black and white, sort of, you know, what you might call spectator pumps. | ||
| And some really interesting, you know, really nice looking shoes. | ||
| I was just noticing. | ||
| I'm kind of, I am a shoe person. | ||
| I was noticing that. | ||
| And then on verdict day, it was almost as if she knew because she was wearing these zebra striped. | ||
| Uh, shoes with a red bow and a vivid red heel. | ||
| Do not, do not suggest that she may already have known in advance and was signaling via shoes. | ||
| Please do not do that in our world. | ||
| Speaking of, I know you're right. | ||
| You're right. | ||
| She of course didn't know anything about the verdict, but, um, but it was, it just happened to be the most flamboyant shoe day. | ||
| Can, um, Can the judge see Twitter? | ||
| Like, the judge can, like, Google things. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, it's legal for them to know things, right? | |
| So she probably knew that you had an interest in her shoes. | ||
| She had to. | ||
| Maybe. | ||
| That might have been for you. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That might have been for your benefit. | ||
| We are talking about a lot of audiences of one today. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, exactly. | |
| That feels like an honor. | ||
| Your honor, it's an honor. | ||
| Your honor, your shoes are honorable. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Thank you for honoring me with these shoes. | ||
| These truths are righteous. | ||
| And then I guess the second thing, and I apologize if this is bringing up something that's a sore subject, but there was a little bit of controversy with a tweet that you put out about Norm, and I feel like if I didn't bring this up, it would feel like I was not bringing it up on purpose. | ||
| Like you were protecting me. | ||
| Right, and I feel like it's a pretty simple explanation. | ||
| And I guess, do you want to lay out what happened from your perspective? | ||
| Sure, absolutely. | ||
| So on the day after Alex Jones testified, Norm got up and his testimony was supposed to continue the next day. | ||
| So Norm would have had a chance to examine his own client, the defendant. | ||
| And he declined. | ||
| And he said, so we will assume, given what we said earlier about Alex calling all the shots, so Alex didn't want to testify a second day. | ||
| Can't fault him. | ||
| So Norm said, I think, you know, it's probably best instead, and also I think strategically there are some lawyers who are commenting on Twitter who are more knowledgeable on the legal strategy. | ||
| And they were saying, It's favorable to his client if Norm would decline to do the cross like that and instead call his own client as the defense witness. | ||
| So he reserved the right to do that. | ||
| They made a deal with the family's lawyers where they would have the right to cross if Norm called him and he came back. | ||
| And so Norm said, he's not going to testify today. | ||
| He's going to come back next week. | ||
| And I will call him as a witness. | ||
| And this is agreeable to the family's lawyers. | ||
| And then they will have another crack at him, basically. | ||
| And what he said was, that'll lower the temperature in the room. | ||
| You know, I think it will be better. | ||
| So I interpreted that. | ||
| And having seen the juror's reactions to Jones's testimony the day prior, I interpreted that as, you know, Norm says, His client has damaged himself so much that you might want to give the jury a break. | ||
| Something to that effect. | ||
| Which I think is, that's a reading of lower the temperature. | ||
| Why was the temperature high? | ||
| Yeah, who raised the temperature? | ||
| It wasn't the jury. | ||
| You know, that sort of says, things didn't go so well yesterday. | ||
| Let's calm down and I'll bring him back next week. | ||
| My error was, I said that he said that. | ||
| The way I worded the tweet, if it were my interpretation, that would have been one thing. | ||
| That would have been fine, right? | ||
| But I said something to the effect of, he says. | ||
| So, Norm, after the recess... | ||
| It's right on that cusp, though, because you didn't use quotation marks. | ||
| So, you know, it wasn't like a direct quoting of him. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But yeah, the word said was in there, which says or, you know, is saying or something like that. | |
| So that makes it sound like, you know, that was what he told the judge when he did not. | ||
| So after the recess, he came back. | ||
| It was clear that, you know, Jones had seen this. | ||
| He called it to his attention or someone at Infowars, but maybe Jones. | ||
| And so he came back and he was just really angry. | ||
| And he was saying, I don't know why, you know, Elizabeth Williamson of the New York Times is covering this. | ||
| She's written a book about this. | ||
| And, you know, she shouldn't be in the courtroom. | ||
| And how anyone could have interpreted what I said as he's damaged. | ||
| And the judge cut him off. | ||
| And she was like, we're not doing this here. | ||
| That's not what this trial is about. | ||
| I've already told you, stop talking over me, something like that. | ||
| And so he tried again, and she stopped him, and then that was that. | ||
| And I thought, oh, if he's calling me out for something, I better see what the problem is. | ||
| So I followed him out of the courtroom. | ||
| And when we got in the hallway, I turned on my recorder on my phone because I wanted to hear what he had to say. | ||
| And he was like, I'm not talking to you. | ||
| And I said, well, are you talking? | ||
| So you just wanted to say that in front of the, you know, so my alternative to think if you have a problem with something I've written, I want to hear you out. | ||
| Or are you just saying that for the judge and for the cameras? | ||
| And he was like, He went into this big thing. | ||
| So we got into the elevator. | ||
| He had all of his files and his briefcase was really stuffed full of paper. | ||
| That was his joke notebook. | ||
|
unidentified
|
The whole thing exploded in the elevator. | |
| And there were papers and files. | ||
| And I said, do you need a hand? | ||
| And he was like, not from you. | ||
| What a petty little boy! | ||
| Yeah, he was like, you shouldn't be here. | ||
| You shouldn't be covering this. | ||
| I said, well, I think I know a lot about this case. | ||
| And then he kind of, you know, I was like, what is the problem? | ||
| And he finally did, you know, I'm following him out onto the street. | ||
| He finally got to the point where he said, The problem is, you said that I said that he damaged himself. | ||
| And I said, I didn't say that. | ||
| And he said, no, you did. | ||
| Go back and look. | ||
| I said, I will go back and look. | ||
| And if I did say that, I will correct it. | ||
| Because that's just responsible. | ||
| And he said, I would appreciate it. | ||
| And then he said, because people are thinking that... | ||
| The upshot was, people are thinking that I told you that. | ||
| I'm in bed with the New York Times, meaning, like, I'm embedded with, you know, the paper. | ||
| In other words, like... | ||
| Conspiring. | ||
| Yeah, that he... | ||
| Yeah, so there's, you know, you can imagine Jones, you know, seeing this or someone on his staff seeing this and saying, is Norm Pattis talking to the New York Times and telling them that? | ||
| You know, that was what I got. | ||
| Weird, because it's not like Alex to be paranoid. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That would be an odd thing for him to do. | ||
| Usually he's pretty chill. | ||
| Very odd character. | ||
| I assume that Norm did not immediately get struck by an irony bolt, right? | ||
| Like, no God struck him down for his whining about somebody slightly misquoting him. | ||
| Maybe, if you look at it the wrong way. | ||
| Like, he does realize what he's in court for, right? | ||
| Yeah, I mean, but... | ||
| My job as a reporter was just, if I mischaracterized, you know, or if I said he said that and he did not, then it's my job to correct that. | ||
| I respect that. | ||
| However, I also think if you just said, turnabout is fair play, he might have been like, ah, touche. | ||
| And then you guys could have just moved on, you know? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, yeah, but then I wouldn't have been doing my job. | |
| So I just said, you know, If it's wrong, I'll correct it. | ||
| I'll go back and look at it. | ||
| So I went back and looked at it and I did say says. | ||
| So I fixed it. | ||
| I took it down and then I provided an explanation. | ||
| And of course, that became material for Infowars and, you know, a reporter lied after, you know, she lied and was caught in a lie. | ||
| Of course. | ||
| Tell them that they can try and come after you for a billion dollars. | ||
| Good luck! | ||
| It's always really unfortunate that the real world plays by the semi-too-fully-responsible rules, where this is something that you obviously feel the obligation to and the professional responsibility to make a clarification and correction. | ||
| And then for people like Alex and his fans, this becomes proof of some kind of an intentional lie. | ||
| And it's just, I mean, I saw some of the responses to your clarification tweet, and it was not good. | ||
| Yeah, you were kind of hosed the moment that tweet came out. | ||
| It wouldn't have mattered whether you took it down or apologized or explained it or whatever. | ||
| It was going to be on the show. | ||
| So the moment the tweet happened, you were there. | ||
| 100%. | ||
| So your clarification is really for the audience of, I guess, your employer more than it is for Norm. | ||
| They don't care. | ||
| And for your soul. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Your soul is probably pretty important. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| I mean, we are, you know, this is a trial about truth and reality. | ||
| And so, you know, it's always helpful to cue as closely to those as you can. | ||
| So, you know, because he did not say that, I thought, okay, fair. | ||
| I'm going to change it. | ||
| So, yeah, so that I knew, you know, of course, this would be material for them, that, you know, this would be a chance for them to, you know, take a whack and, you know, that's what they do. | ||
| It's so unfortunate that this is like the angle they take on Infowars, not that you flushed half a donut. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You know, like, this is what Alex should be yelling about. | ||
| I think that donut went under the radar, don't you? | ||
| Yeah, I think so. | ||
| I think you lucked out on that. | ||
| The other thing, too, is, like, you know, we have... | ||
| For you, this is probably, like, as chaotic or as much drama as there is surrounding... | ||
| The case. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And you compare that to Alex's performance on the stand, Norm falling asleep, Norm saying that the families are exaggerating their grief. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I think the balance here is pretty clear. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Oh, and that was the other thing in that conversation, you know, riding down the elevator and all that, you know, talking to Norm. | ||
| He said, you said I fell asleep as if that was some big scoop. | ||
| I said, no, I just said you fell asleep. | ||
| And he said, I was not sleeping. | ||
| He said, I was signaling that we had spent enough time on Gilligan's Island. | ||
| That was when Chris Maddy, the attorney for the families, was questioning Brittany Paz, the Infowars corporate representative. | ||
| And he said he was sending a signal that we had spent too much time. | ||
| I said... | ||
| You know, Norm, you were sleeping. | ||
| It was on video. | ||
| And he was insisting that it wasn't. | ||
| And he told me to get my head out of my own, you know, yeah. | ||
| It was an elaborate signal. | ||
| It was very subtle and yet complicated, if that was what he was trying to signal. | ||
| But I respect people who take unconventional messaging approaches. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| Well, he was already reprimanded for not standing up when he approached the judge or asked the judge a question, so he figured, if I'm going to stay down, I might as well lay down. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| Some of the objections that he would make from his seat, it was almost like... | ||
| It was like, you picture someone on a chaise longue with a cigarette, you know, like, hey, objection. | ||
| Objection, you're on there! | ||
|
unidentified
|
Objection, come on. | |
| I have finished making love! | ||
| She was like, get on your feet. | ||
| Yeah, that was it. | ||
| You want to make an objection. | ||
| She should have loaned him a pair of shoes. | ||
| That would have gotten him up. | ||
| When that was kind of where things were right at the beginning, that you need to stand up if you're going to speak to the court. | ||
| I was like, this is going to be an interesting stretch of time. | ||
| Yeah, I think one of the things I noticed was that... | ||
| Norm spoke progressively less as the weeks went on. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| You could really kind of measure it. | ||
| That first week, he did as much as he could do. | ||
| The second week, he pulled back. | ||
| And by the third week, he was like, I'm not going to cross-examine anybody. | ||
| I'm just going to say, go for it. | ||
| You know? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, I was a little surprised at that because some of his messaging to the media in the years leading up to the trial was sort of, well, these families think that they won't be examined themselves. | ||
| Well, they will be. | ||
| He had a lot of, well, we know he had a lot of their personal records and health records and things like that. | ||
| And the reason we know that is, of course, they were wrongly transmitted to the attorneys in Texas. | ||
| And he had to come up for a hearing on that because that shouldn't have been done. | ||
| But once the families were on the stand and testifying as to what they'd been through... | ||
| He had very little to say. | ||
| He didn't, you know, Robbie Parker and what Robbie has endured in this case over the years from Alex Jones, where he played that, you know, opening few seconds of Robbie Parker's press conference the night after his daughter Emily was killed at Sandy Hook. | ||
| Over and over and over again for years. | ||
| So Robbie was really at the center of this case. | ||
| And Alyssa Parker, Emily's mom, also testified. | ||
| And she's not a plaintiff, but the two of them just painted this nightmare of torment and death threats and people knowing where they lived and a man confronting Robbie four years after. | ||
| the shooting on the street in Seattle, and all of these things. | ||
| And Norm did not have a single question for either one. | ||
| I think that his crossing that he did do... | ||
| With a couple of the plaintiffs was just about like, you have a charity. | ||
| Suspicious. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And I think that there was a couple attempts at that with some of the first few folks. | ||
| And then I think it was just like, this isn't effective. | ||
| Maybe like, let's just not even do anything. | ||
| I think Norm really tried at the beginning to hammer that like, oh, these guys are just going out for money. | ||
| The lawyers are ambulance chasers. | ||
| Or politics. | ||
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
| You know, subtly trying to inject politics. | ||
| And that was against the rules. | ||
| The judge had said, you cannot talk about electoral politics. | ||
| You can't talk about political figures. | ||
| You can't discuss Jones's finances. | ||
| Because we remember in Austin in August, you know, he tried to say wrongly that he was bankrupt and that two million would be more than he could, you know, just about all or more than he could handle in terms. | ||
| You know, so on and so on. | ||
| So all of that was sort of off the table. | ||
| But, you know, lawyers try to, you know, get around that and defend, you know, in presenting their cases. | ||
| And so, you know, a couple of times in mentioning some of the family's charities, you know, he was talking about, well, basically, isn't this about gun violence? | ||
| Isn't this about gun control? | ||
| And isn't this about politics? | ||
| Didn't you? | ||
| Well, he mentioned this when the Wheelers testified because Francine Wheeler, about, I can't remember how long after the shooting, a month or two after the shooting, delivered President Obama's radio address on a Saturday. | ||
| And this was when the families were pushing for expanded background checks and that legislation wound up failing. | ||
| But as part of that effort, she delivered the radio address and Norm brought that up. | ||
| So it's a way to get both guns and politics back into the jury's minds. | ||
| And I think the calculus there may have been that there would have been some people on the jury who might have been sympathetic to that argument that, okay, so there was a political aspect here or something like that. | ||
| But I think as these stories mounted and as just the sort of horror of what some of these people had endured, Became more and more apparent. | ||
| I think, you know, Norm wisely decided that this wouldn't be worth it. | ||
| That, you know, trying to say, oh, well, you voted for Hillary Clinton is not going to cut it. | ||
| When you have jurors weeping at the idea that, you know, people who had just lost their loved ones were getting death threats, rape threats, people threatening to dig up their murdered. | ||
| And, you know, talking about defiling their graves, you know, saying, oh, wasn't this all about gun control? | ||
| Just sort of pales as an argument. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And I think that, you know, whatever you can inject into that is kind of useless once the understanding of the damage being the like sort of. | ||
| Making it so you can't properly grieve and reopening wounds over and over and over and over and over again. | ||
| The notion of, you know, political ideas while distracting. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Probably not that helpful. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| No. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It was just too powerful and too awful, you know, that... | ||
| Just to hear that day after day, what, you know, what these poor people had gone through and, and the kind of like, just, you know, the jury was watching them in the courtroom day after day, you know, just stoic and pulled together and consoling each other. | ||
| And it was extremely powerful. | ||
| And I think that's another reason that Alex Jones didn't return to the courtroom because We saw what happened when Scarlett Lewis, through an accident of timing, wound up confronting him and for 90 minutes addressing the answer. | ||
| To every question directly at Alex Jones and asking him, you know, why are you doing this? | ||
| And truth is so important to our society. | ||
| Truth is the bedrock on which our democracy rests. | ||
| You say you're concerned about the country and you're spreading things like this. | ||
| What's wrong with you, basically? | ||
| And I think at all costs, I mean, having watched him literally sweat through his shirt while she was talking to him. | ||
| I think the idea of sitting in front of 15 plaintiffs, I don't think he can do it. | ||
| I really don't. | ||
| I think he was afraid. | ||
| I mean, we've talked about this a bit. | ||
| I can't blame him. | ||
| Yeah, no, absolutely. | ||
| If you look at it from his perspective, if there's a choice to not have to do that, it would seem like it would be almost like... | ||
| Like, psyche-crushing. | ||
| It is a little bit like if Alex is directing the defense strategy inexplicably by himself, and somehow at the same time recognizes that him being on the stand is a bad thing for him, he doesn't realize that those two are essentially the same thing. | ||
| They're essentially the same problem. | ||
| Him being on the stand would be him defending himself in the exact same way as him creating this defense. | ||
| Him running the defense is bad for him. | ||
|
unidentified
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Exactly. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| Every part of this is bad for him, but he didn't get that somehow. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So there was something I wanted to ask you guys about because you are Alex Jones experts. | ||
| I do not own any spectator pumps. | ||
| Zero. | ||
|
unidentified
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We'll talk about that later. | |
| So one of the things that Chris Maddy, one of the lawyers for the families, mentioned was, and I just found myself actually even in the moment saying, I wonder what Dan and Jordan would think about this. | ||
| He was saying that one of the reasons that he thinks Jones didn't testify more is that It's really important to him to be on the outside calling this all a sham because he thinks that the more time he would have spent in the courtroom, and I don't want to misstate his message, but I think this was pretty close to what he was saying. | ||
| If he got close to this process, that it would sort of expose him as... | ||
| This guy who's just a huckster and selling products and doing it on the backs of these people and lying about this and having to acknowledge that he had been lying about this for years, that that would damage him with his audience. | ||
| And I said to Chris at the time, I don't know, because his audience seems to sort of accommodate a lot of... | ||
| Yeah, I'm closer to your side, for sure. | ||
| I think that the audience is trapped, I think, for the most part. | ||
| And they can rationalize quite a bit that that happens. | ||
| You know, all it takes if Alex has a bad day is to say it was a good day and have Barnes come on and they can talk for an hour about how everything is unfair and if only he could defend himself. | ||
| If only he could say the name Trump and Hillary, then everything would be fine. | ||
| I think that what Maddie is saying makes sense. | ||
| To the outside world, I think he would be exposed as a liar and a con man and all this. | ||
| But that audience, they have so many opportunities to realize this outside of a courtroom. | ||
| I have said there's no bottom far too many times for me to pull back on that now. | ||
| There is no bottom. | ||
| No matter what he does. | ||
| When he was testifying, he was talking about his Bitcoin thing. | ||
| And then Maddie said, you're going to use this in a commercial. | ||
| And then Alex did use it in a commercial. | ||
| And the audience probably thought that's a victory. | ||
| Yeah, they were like, this is the smartest dude that's ever lived. | ||
| I don't think you can get much more... | ||
| Like, trying to profit off the trial. | ||
| Or when Alex was in front of the courthouse, he had his book in his hand. | ||
| Like, when he was interviewing with local news outlets. | ||
| He's flown back to Connecticut, doesn't testify, instead does these press conferences where he's clearly trying to put product placement for his book on the local news. | ||
| And it's like... | ||
| If the audience can't see through a lot of that stuff, I don't know what hope there is for anything more explicit. | ||
| Or as he's walking away and he's going, Infowars, and I won't do it here, giving the URL. | ||
| Yeah, I would say if Chris had just said the more time he's in the court, the less time he's selling, I think that would make more sense to me than anything else. | ||
| When he's in the court, he's not moving product. | ||
| Well, he might be moving some, but it'll be less effective. | ||
| It'll be less effective if Owen is pointing out, hey, look, there's Alex in the courtroom. | ||
| Boy, it sounds bad. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Oh, no, no. | ||
| It sounds good. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Oh, no, no. | ||
|
unidentified
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It sounds good. | |
| For sure. | ||
| And here's Barnes. | ||
| Talk about it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So, yeah, so it sounds like, yeah, that was a sort of debunking argument that, you know, something that Lenny Posner, who really began this whole effort to call Alex Jones to account, you know, learned early on that debunking doesn't really work. | ||
| And so the idea of, like, exposing, oh, Alex Jones will be exposed as, you know, a person who lies and sells products on the back of tragedy, etc. | ||
| It sort of, in a way, reminded me of how difficult it is to talk someone out of a conspiracy theory that they have already fully embraced. | ||
| That his audience is, as you said, Dan, captive. | ||
| They're in. | ||
| So their choice is to accommodate. | ||
| But to repudiate him, I think, I don't know what that would take. | ||
| Well, and I think that so many of the people, obviously we've heard much more explicit stories about this as it relates to QAnon, but a lot of the people in the audience are financially in the hole because of Alex. | ||
| Maybe not in debt, but they've spent a lot of money. | ||
| They're committed in that way. | ||
| It would feel dumb if they realize, oh, I've been scammed for all this. | ||
| Or they've alienated family members, loved ones, isolated themselves and insulated in a A bubble of people who are amenable to Alex Jones conspiracies. | ||
| And parroting and reinforcing it back and back to them. | ||
| Yeah, there's a lot of investment, emotional and financial, that they've taken on to believe this stuff. | ||
| And I think that... | ||
| Alex always talks about the Nigerian email scam. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Because I think he got tricked by it. | ||
| That he definitely didn't get tricked by multiple times. | ||
| But he says he has met multiple friends who have fallen for it. | ||
| And you fall for the first email and then you fall for the second because you don't want to admit that the first was a fraud. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I think that there's some dynamic of that with his audience, and I don't know if a courtroom is going to penetrate that. | ||
| Yeah, because that's the reality world, and that's not where they are living. | ||
| It can be super effective, though, in helping people not fall into Alex's sphere, though. | ||
| That could be an effect you'd have. | ||
| It could have, ironically, an inoculation effect. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, I mean, it's a little bit like no matter how many times I prove the Earth is more than 10,000 years old, I'm not going to convince a lot of people, you know? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So before we wrap up, I wanted to ask about the feelings and, like, how things sit. | ||
| I mean, obviously, I don't want to ask you, like... | ||
| What did the families say? | ||
| This process is over, but it's also not over. | ||
| That's got to feel cathartic, but at the same time, there's still a road to travel. | ||
| There's still the looming notion of appeals. | ||
| I don't think an appeal is going to work, but if there is an appeal, there may be another trial. | ||
| They might have to retry. | ||
| Do you have any sense of the feeling of, like, I don't even know what I'm trying to ask. | ||
| You won Gettysburg, but the Civil War is not over yet, you know? | ||
| Like, how are you feeling about that process moving forward? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So, without, you know, betraying any individual confidences, I think, just, and, you know, I don't like to speak for the families as a group, because that's just not right. | ||
| Sure, yeah. | ||
| And it's not a thing. | ||
| From what I gathered, first of all, a gigantic exhale in the room. | ||
| Just a sense of, wow, we kind of took back our story. | ||
| We were able to tell the world what happened. | ||
| We were able to explain by explaining what happened. | ||
| We were able to explain. | ||
| The dangers here of this sort of culture of disinformation and lies for profit and, you know, and explain that this is a phenomenon that's not confined to Alex Jones and has really in the decades since Sandy Hook occurred again and again. | ||
| And, you know, he himself, and this was a point I made in the story I wrote about the verdict, you know, he has been a part of most of the Highest profile viral lies over the decades since Sandy Hook. | ||
| Whether you're talking about Pizzagate or coronavirus myths and anti-vax stuff and the Great Replacement Theory that drove the violence in Charlottesville and certainly the 2020 election conspiracy theories that led to the violence at the Capitol on January 6th. | ||
| I think that their sense was by speaking about what happened to them and how this all got started and how long it's lasted, they were speaking to that and really trying to help. | ||
| Not only claiming their story and saying this is... | ||
| As Robbie put it in the press conference afterward, he found his voice. | ||
| He was silent about this for so long because he didn't want the abuse to get worse. | ||
| He was really worried about the safety of his family. | ||
| And he finally got to a point when he saw that Parkland parents were receiving the same kind of abuse and that just horrible statistic that today. | ||
| Nearly 20% of Americans believe that every high-profile mass shooting is a plot by the government and is fake. | ||
| You know, they were able to sort of say, hey, this is something really serious that is not only impacting us. | ||
| This is not a one-off. | ||
| We were a foundational story in what is now a phenomenon. | ||
| And the fact that they were able to raise that, I think, was really satisfying to them. | ||
| And we owe them our gratitude for that, because as you could see from watching the proceedings, it did not come easily for them to, you know, it was extremely painful for them to, you know, raise that alarm and, you know, and relay and recall what had happened. | ||
| Yeah, so I think in that sense, you know, and again, sticking with what Robbie was saying afterward, you know, that they sat there, they went through it, they told the truth, and everybody on that stand, and these are Robbie's words, not mine, everybody on that stand told the truth except for one person. | ||
| And, you know, and I think that that is... | ||
| Yeah, okay. | ||
| I forgot about her. | ||
| I need to correct Robbie Parker, but... | ||
| What I find so interesting about this is that it is... | ||
| You know, like when Mark Bankston and we talked a couple of days ago, and we were all talking about how we were worried about how the judgment would go. | ||
| We were worried what the verdict was going to be, whether or not he was going to send a message or whatever. | ||
| But by doing this, the trial itself to me kind of reinforces just how bad Alex is. | ||
| Without... | ||
| Allowing Alex to poison people's minds with all of the other shit, with all the politics and the emotional bullshit, all the things that can get them angry and distract them. | ||
| Without that... | ||
| There is no misinformation. | ||
| A reasonable group of people and, you know, there were Republicans on the jury. | ||
| The reasonable group of people will look at that shit and go, that is a monster. | ||
| It is only by Alex Jones's ability to inject those things that we get to where Alex Jones is in trial. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| It was kind of like, hey, this is how bad it can get. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And the other thing, too, that I was thinking about while you were discussing this, Liz, is that for each one of these parents, there are a hundred, a thousand stories that we haven't heard of people who are hurt by these misinformation things. | ||
| Whether it's somebody who lost a loved one because they refused to get vaccinated or wasn't careful at all with COVID. | ||
| There's so many stories that end up going never heard. | ||
| And it's great that this allows that story to be told in a large setting where people will hear it. | ||
| And that judgment is so huge. | ||
| When you talk about setting a precedent, the largest judgment in American history by a factor of 10, that's a 56-game hitting streak level of, you're not going to break that record for a long, long time. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It really is. | ||
| It sort of launched it over the wire as, hey, pay attention. | ||
| This is really a big deal. | ||
| And, yeah, and, you know, you're so right. | ||
| I mean, the fact that politics, it's not about politics, as we've seen. | ||
| You know, there have been people whose lives have been destroyed by online disinformation and just abuse. | ||
| You know, so many of them. | ||
| And, you know, they're on all, you know, they're across the political spectrum. | ||
| And for reasons that, you know, have everything and nothing to do with politics. | ||
| And I think the families are saying, this is a phenomenon. | ||
| This is something that's happening. | ||
| This guy is one of the worst, if not the worst, actors in this arena, but it's a big arena. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, it is. | |
| And I think he probably is undisputably the biggest during the, especially the years right after the shooting. | ||
| If you need any evidence that their argument that it's getting worse is true, there are so many more, and it's now debatable whether Alex is the worst. | ||
| Yeah, no, I mean, I think maybe the biggest probably thing that Alex is really responsible for is without him demonstrating the popularity, I don't think Tucker could go as far mask off white nationalists as he is right now, you know? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Alex has pushed it so a bigger platform. | ||
| Than him can engage in his behavior. | ||
| Oh, absolutely. | ||
| Yeah, it's a sort of frog boil, isn't it? | ||
| Well, we learned recently that actually that metaphor is not true. | ||
| Oh, sorry. | ||
| I know. | ||
|
unidentified
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I know. | |
| But then also... | ||
| That's lazy of me. | ||
| He's instrumental in the creation of the Oath Keepers. | ||
| His fingerprints are on the Proud Boys. | ||
| There's just so much stuff. | ||
| It is silly how much of an epicenter of bullshit that's infected everything he is. | ||
| It's crazy. | ||
| It's really interesting. | ||
| We've talked about this, I know, before, but the idea that when he was getting his start, there was that sense of... | ||
| He's just a clown. | ||
| He's a goofball. | ||
| He's very theatrical. | ||
| He's fun to watch. | ||
| But at the same time, he always had those ties to these sort of far-right extremists like Stuart Rhodes from the Oath Keepers. | ||
| And, you know, I mean, the first demonstration of how persuasive he could be was when he raised $90,000 to rebuild the Branch Davidian Church after the Waco siege. | ||
| You know, he was a hero. | ||
| And John Ronson has been wonderful. | ||
| By the way, John Ronson listens to your show a lot. | ||
| We talked to him. | ||
| Yeah, he's been on the show. | ||
| And I was on a podcast with him a week ago, and he was saying, you know, those guys really have a wonderful understanding. | ||
| And we were talking about how John Ronson traveled with Jones back in the early mid-90s. | ||
| Out West. | ||
| And he's revered among people who have been in armed standoffs with the federal government for years. | ||
| So, yeah, and all of that sort of blew under the radar. | ||
| It was just too fringy, you know? | ||
| And now we see, you know, it's not anymore. | ||
| And just the damage that can be done. | ||
| And you wonder, like, what would have happened? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| What do you guys think? | ||
| What would have happened? | ||
| If people had taken Jones more seriously at the very beginning? | ||
| I don't think anything, because I think people would be quite rightly, or maybe not rightly, I'm sorry. | ||
| They would have been marginalized, the voices that are like, take this seriously. | ||
| In the same way that, what was it, in 2009, there were people within intelligence agencies that were like, You gotta worry about some of these Patriot groups that are popping up. | ||
| And their warnings, and I don't remember the guy's name, damn it. | ||
| But there was a guy who did an interview about how, like, all this stuff that's happening now, you could see the kernels of it. | ||
| I wrote a report about this, and it was ignored. | ||
| Was that Mike German by any chance? | ||
| I'm not sure. | ||
| The FBI? | ||
| It might be. | ||
| We talked about it a while back, so it's not fresh in my memory. | ||
| But these kinds of things would probably be the same. | ||
| I think the people would be like, yeah, all right, sure. | ||
| You're saying that this tiny fringe thing is so dangerous? | ||
| Please. | ||
| I think the problem with what you're describing is that it's not really an answerable question. | ||
| If people could have taken him seriously back then, Is a more interesting question because I think the answer is no. | ||
| I think that what he did was find an exploit in our society that was there. | ||
| He found a way to monetize it and exploit it better than I think a lot of people. | ||
| But the fact that it happened is evidence of why it happened. | ||
| And that's because it was there. | ||
| It wasn't like he invented some brand new thing that brought everybody to something. | ||
| It was that there's a crack and he just hammered away at it until he got his own space. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I think he benefited too from being in the conspiracy space. | ||
| And so like most of the criticism of him, I noticed this is one of the motivating factors behind like taking this show more seriously. | ||
| I noticed that most of the criticism about him was like, he secretly works for Israel. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You know, like he works for shadowy Jewish cabals. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| The criticisms of him were conspiracies themselves. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And I think because of that sort of Ouroboros of nonsense, I think he benefited from that because there is no real... | ||
| Power to that critique. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| If you can always point to other people criticizing you for being a secret agent for Israel, then you can distract from any legitimate criticism and just combine those two together. | ||
| Oh, he says I'm a liar. | ||
| That guy says I work for Israel. | ||
| See, all these people are lying about me. | ||
| That kind of thing. | ||
| That's so interesting because when I called people, this was years ago when I first started working on this for the book. | ||
| I called people who had been associated with him in those early days, and a shocking number of them were like, you know, he used to be more anti-Semitic than he is now, and I'm really mad about that. | ||
| It was just like, what? | ||
| Out of all the possible critiques, I didn't see that one coming. | ||
| No. | ||
| And I also think he's plenty anti-Semitic now. | ||
| Yeah, I would say he's plenty anti-Semitic. | ||
| Speak against Israel more. | ||
| That is probably true. | ||
| I think he's... | ||
| But now Netanyahu's a fascist, so he's kind of still a fan of Israel. | ||
| It's very complicated and confusing. | ||
| I don't even know, really, if I know his positions. | ||
| Well, Liz, this has been a lot of fun. | ||
| Well, fun maybe, you know, relative terms. | ||
| It was fun talking to you, but also this conversation and this topic is... | ||
| I think what he'd like to say is thank you very much for joining us. | ||
| That is part of it. | ||
| Well, thank you for having me. | ||
| I love talking with you guys, as you know. | ||
| And before we part ways, I should say, you are in Wisconsin now because you're at a book festival, and you will be appearing at various book festivals over the next till the end of November-ish? | ||
| Is that correct? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Until Thanksgiving, more or less. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And people can find your dates on Twitter? | ||
| Yeah, you should tell people through our show where you'll be and then they'll come. | ||
| I'm sure. | ||
| I know that a lot of our audience has spoken so highly and loved your book. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| The ability to come see you speak about it, I think they would gobble that up. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| I would love to see them there. | ||
| And they'll probably bring you gifts. | ||
| That's true. | ||
| That is a weird thing that will happen. | ||
| That's not necessary. | ||
| It's odd, but it might happen. | ||
| You'll get a bunch of ceramic half donuts or something. | ||
| Handmade everything. | ||
| People can find that at NYTLiz. | ||
| You have your dates up there. | ||
| Coming to a town near you, maybe. | ||
| I hope so. | ||
| Someone just said, why don't you come to Cleveland? | ||
|
unidentified
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And I was like, I would love to come to Cleveland. | |
| Would you? | ||
| Hello, Cleveland. | ||
| Oh. | ||
| I hear that city rocks. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Cleveland's cool. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, Liz, thank you again. | ||
| It's been a delight, and I'm sure we will talk again soon. | ||
| Okay, sounds great, guys. | ||
| Thank you so much for having me on. | ||
| Andy in Kansas, you're on the air. | ||
| Thanks for holding. | ||
| Hello, Alex. | ||
| I'm a first time caller. | ||
|
unidentified
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I'm a huge fan. | |
| I love your work. |