Today, Dan and Jordan celebrate Hot Shot Lawyer Norm Pattis mentioning them on his podcast by breaking down a deposition from the Connecticut case against Alex. In this installment, attorney Chris Mattei deposes long-time Infowars writer/editor Adan Salazar, and things get fishy. Citations
| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
|
unidentified
|
A young fireplug of a lawyer got his teeth into Alex Jones and decided that this was something he'd like to gnaw on. | |
| And, you know, so he tore through a series of people who were designated as corporate reps and then published their depositions online. | ||
| And so the haters, we had a field day with the corporate reps. | ||
| No one else at InfoWars was willing to do it again. | ||
| No one wanted to have their deposition placed on video online to the ridicule of all the Alex haters. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Knowledgefight.com. | |
| There's something called Knowledge First or Knowledge Fight. | ||
| These people apparently live by loving Dave Alex Jones and they bounce on every piece of video they can find. | ||
| Knowledgefight.com. | ||
| There's a website I think about called Knowledge Fight. | ||
| And, you know, These are a couple of bottom feeders who make their chops hating Alex. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And so they have episodes almost daily. | |
| The corporate reps didn't want to be exposed to that again. | ||
| I guess I should say it. | ||
| I got my ass kicked. | ||
| KnowledgeFight.com. | ||
| Hey, everybody! | ||
| Welcome back to KnowledgeFight. | ||
| I'm Ben. | ||
| I'm Jordan. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We're a couple of bottom feeders who like to sit around. | |
| Worship at the altar of Selene and talk a little bit about Alex Jones. | ||
| Oh, yes we are, Dan. | ||
| Jordan. | ||
| What's your bright spot today, buddy? | ||
| My bright spot is I was on Marty and Sarah Love Wrestling this week. | ||
| Fun podcast. | ||
| Our friends Marty and Sarah do. | ||
| Sarah is in Belgium. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| And so Marty needed someone to fill in, and we had a fun conversation about my feelings about Bray Wyatt. | ||
| That's excellent. | ||
| I imagine that would be the main focus. | ||
| A little bit more about Bray Wyatt, and then some talk about how I don't understand what the deal is with Orange Cassidy. | ||
| Well, that's fair. | ||
| It was a lot of fun. | ||
| People can find that over at, I guess you just search for Marty and Sarah Love Wrestling. | ||
| It's a podcast. | ||
| You know how to find podcasts. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, if you don't know how to find podcasts, that's kind of an interesting... | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| How'd you find us? | ||
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
| Did you come here from Norm Pattis? | ||
| Did he tell you to check out these dorks and these losers? | ||
| Did you download this bootleg from LimeWire? | ||
| What's going on here? | ||
| Yeah, so what's your bright spot? | ||
| My bright spot is shoes, Dan. | ||
| My wife, very beautiful person, lovely. | ||
| Love her very much. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| She's my favorite. | ||
| I found out recently that my shoes are garbage, as they almost always are. | ||
| Got me some new shoes and they're amazing. | ||
| Nice. | ||
| They're amazing. | ||
| I'm the fastest tennis player maybe there's ever been right now. | ||
| Well, and if you fuck up, you can say new shoes. | ||
| New shoes! | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You know what? | ||
| All sorts of things can be just completely written off because you have new shoes. | ||
| Oh, what's even better? | ||
| They're a little bit too big. | ||
| Just a little bit. | ||
| It's actually very comfortable, but when you're running, that's an excuse. | ||
| But also, your feet are like goldfish, and they will grow to the size of the container. | ||
| That does sound correct from what I remember. | ||
| In basic biology, when I was about 8th grade, that is what they said about koi feet. | ||
| Let me take a look at those shoes. | ||
| These are different shoes. | ||
| I'm wearing the old shoes. | ||
| I don't want to screw up the good shoes. | ||
| Sure, sure. | ||
| One time, I got new shoes. | ||
| They were pretty... | ||
| Bright white, you know, like, because they're new. | ||
| Sure, sure, sure. | ||
| And I wore them to an open mic just because, to be fair, like, my older shoes had fallen apart. | ||
| Right, right, right. | ||
| And so I wore them, and I walked in, and immediately, Sorin Choksi and John, his buddy John, John McBride. | ||
| That was his last name. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. | |
| The two of them were sitting at a table and they saw me and they just started doing a run of jokes about my new shoes. | ||
|
unidentified
|
They're like, whoa, whoa, what are you doing with me? | |
| I love being a comedian. | ||
| I love being a comedian. | ||
| You don't get that. | ||
| It's just my favorite. | ||
| Yeah, I couldn't stop laughing. | ||
| Anyway, Jordan, today we have an episode to go over. | ||
| Oh. | ||
| We're going to do some fun stuff, but you might have noticed in the intro there, we have a new special intro courtesy of DJ Dan Arkey. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| The best. | ||
| Norm Pattis, lawyer extraordinaire. | ||
| One of the premier lawyers, First Amendment lawyers, constitutional lawyers. | ||
| Four shitbags. | ||
| He has a podcast called Law and Legitimacy. | ||
| And on a recent episode, after the trial, he did a little bit of a breakdown of what happened, how he was wronged, how the appeal is going to go great. | ||
| I'm sure. | ||
| And in it, he decided to bring us up. | ||
| What a terrible idea. | ||
| First of all, I mean, Norm, you didn't get the memo that you're not supposed to talk about us. | ||
| That's the rule. | ||
| That's rule number one there. | ||
| You just accidentally revealed a lot more than you wish you had. | ||
| Quite a bit. | ||
| Quite a bit. | ||
| Because I think, like, okay, so he mentioned us in a bankruptcy hearing where he called us knowledge first. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Which was great. | ||
| I appreciate that. | ||
| And we're saying that we have a cottage industry out of making fun of Alex. | ||
| Fantastic. | ||
| And that was just good, clean fun. | ||
| But this mention of us is deeply problematic for Alex and everybody at InfoWars. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| And in case, you know, You could hear the intro and feel like things are maybe taken a little bit out of context for the sake of the beat. | ||
| Here is the clip of Norm talking about us on his podcast, and afterwards, I think we'll have a lot to celebrate. | ||
| And if there's one thing I've learned about Alex, it's that these were video depositions. | ||
|
unidentified
|
People love to hate them. | |
| And so the haters, we had a field day with the corporate reps, and the corporate reps... | ||
| There's no real organization. | ||
| So they testified about what they knew, and their answer to most things is, I don't know. | ||
| Good question. | ||
| Really? | ||
| And that young man was able to persuade a trial judge in Texas that this was willful failure, that the corporation had an obligation to produce a representative that could answer his questions because there had to be answers. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And so there was a... | |
| Another deadline in Texas to produce a corporate rep. | ||
| I selected a person from Connecticut because no one else at InfoWars was willing to do it again. | ||
| No one wanted to have their deposition placed on video online to the ridicule of all the Alex haters. | ||
| There's a website I learned about called Knowledge Fight. | ||
| These are a couple bottom feeders who make their chops hating Alex. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And so they have episodes almost daily. | |
| And, you know, they'll call me out. | ||
| They'll call this one. | ||
| I mean, I don't know if Alex is going to get a percentage of the royalties for the space he rents in their head. | ||
| Oh, good luck. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But this is their life. | |
| And so the Alex haters didn't, you know, the corporate reps didn't want to be exposed to that again. | ||
| So the Connecticut representative testified. | ||
|
unidentified
|
She didn't satisfy the fireplug or the Texas judge. | |
| She testified in Connecticut three and a half days. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I called it the Gilligan's Island Direct. | |
| The guy had her up there, the lawyer for the plaintiffs. | ||
| Wait, the Gilligan's Island? | ||
| That's a three-hour tour, not three and a half days. | ||
| Yeah, that doesn't make sense at all. | ||
| No, but that's Norm's stand-up chops coming out. | ||
| Yeah, I was gonna say. | ||
| So, Norm, come on, man. | ||
| You're showing too much here. | ||
| So apparently Brittany Paws got hired as the corporate representative because everyone else was too worried about being roasted on our podcast. | ||
| Here's what's the most important thing. | ||
| Like, okay. | ||
| You know what, Dan? | ||
| You kicked ass, and you brought a lot of work into it, but also the trials where the lawyers did a great job. | ||
| You know, like, your contribution was spectacular, but it was limited, and it was shared. | ||
| In this case, Dan, you cost Norm Pattis personally $30,000. | ||
| Maybe. | ||
| Plus more, because they had to hire Brittany Potts. | ||
| That $30,000 is all you. | ||
| Yeah, it might be. | ||
| I mean, look, I don't want to break down quantifying things. | ||
| What is important is that there is a recognition here of a behavioral change that was made at Infowars, which is prior to this, Rob Dew was totally fine going in and being a Kangol hat-wearing doofus, sitting in there being like, I don't know. | ||
| How many did he do? | ||
| A couple, actually. | ||
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
| And then, you know, Daria was totally fine doing these depositions. | ||
| I don't actually think she's afraid of me at all. | ||
| I'm afraid of her. | ||
| Anything. | ||
| But these people were not willing to do this and face the kind of scrutiny in the public eye. | ||
| That our podcast brings to their words. | ||
| That literally only, only our podcast brings. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And the other thing that it reveals, too, is that there are discussions about us being a motivating factor and them not wanting to be the corporate rep, which is fucking hilarious. | ||
| That means this conversation happened. | ||
| We need you to be the corporate rep again. | ||
| I don't want to do it. | ||
| Those two guys will be mean to me. | ||
| Those two guys in Chicago will just roast the shit out of me. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| The two guys in Chicago? | ||
| Wow. | ||
| Good luck. | ||
| Royalties. | ||
| Oh, boy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, yeah. | |
| Also, Norm is... | ||
| We're commerce-faced. | ||
| He's really got to stop with this brain landlord joke. | ||
| Yeah, that's not good. | ||
| He's been doing this too much in the aftermath of the trial. | ||
| Too much like, I live rent-free in people's heads. | ||
| Sure, sure. | ||
| I mean, it's fun. | ||
| I remember the first time I heard it. | ||
| Like, when I was maybe like 13? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah, yeah. | |
| That's a really interesting turn of phrase. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| Now it's a little bit... | ||
| Especially when Norma said it like a hundred times. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| It's getting very old. | ||
| And I think that it's evidence of him either deflecting from reality or not understanding what I and this show is about. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Like, I don't give a shit. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Like, he is only... | ||
| Serving the purposes of what I hope to achieve. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| Alex is a window. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Alex is nothing. | ||
| The sky and everything cool is out there. | ||
| After we get through Alex. | ||
| Not after we get through Alex in terms of him going away, but after you get through in terms of after you understand, after you see the window, there's a tree out there. | ||
| And yeah, Norm, I mean, none of this lives free in my head. | ||
| I think it's hilarious. | ||
| It's even funnier now that you... | ||
| It's too funny. | ||
| It's too funny. | ||
| Oh, so thank you, Norm. | ||
| It's beyond a bright spot. | ||
| It's a revelation. | ||
| It is. | ||
| It is. | ||
| Because it is such an acknowledgement of how much gaslighting they've been doing to us. | ||
| It's physically impossible for them not to know, right? | ||
| We've known that for a long time. | ||
| But what they knew, how much they knew, what it meant to them, all that stuff, we could only guess at that. | ||
| We could only guess at it, and it kind of drives you mad because you're like... | ||
| There's no way they put that much thought into it. | ||
| And I think that's partially because you and I are self-deprecating people by nature. | ||
| And so it's like, get off your fucking high horse. | ||
| These people don't care about you. | ||
| No one cares about you. | ||
| Those thoughts are in your head. | ||
| Zero people. | ||
| And obviously you're gaslighting yourself along with them. | ||
| You think you're so important that they care about you, is my thought process. | ||
| That's why it was so shocking. | ||
| I'd heard that he mentioned us on the podcast. | ||
| And when I was listening to it, I was like, what the fuck? | ||
| That's all I'd heard. | ||
| This is nuts. | ||
| I had heard the rent-free thing, so I was like, oh, make a joke about that. | ||
| But to find out the second part is mind-boggling. | ||
| Oof, oof, oof. | ||
| Also, it is a bad idea to insult somebody when they have a DJ willing to... | ||
| Don't remix that insult. | ||
| If you were in high school and there was a bully bothering you, but you had a DJ who was going to remix their insults, you've won. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And if you have so little respect for the bully that whatever insult they're saying is funny. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Hilarious. | ||
| Do your best. | ||
| So good. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good luck. | |
| Good luck. | ||
| Thank you, Norm. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Anyway, we have an episode, like I said, but before we get to it, let's take a little moment and say hello to some new walks. | ||
| Ooh, that's a great idea. | ||
| So first, Wilford. | ||
| Snibble Snabble of the Gribble Pibble. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| You are now a policy wonk. | ||
| I'm a policy wonk. | ||
| Wait, I thought that was me. | ||
| You can't donate to your... | ||
| Well, now I can't use that as a name at the end because that's somebody else. | ||
| Now there's a wonk with that name, so I have to come up with a new alias. | ||
| Yeah, this is like a Twitter handle. | ||
| They bought it from you. | ||
| Maybe Mind Slumlord. | ||
| Wait, why did that one show up first in your brain? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| That's a good question. | ||
| Shep says Trans Rights. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| You are now a policy wonk. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm a policy wonk. | |
| Thank you very much, and we agree. | ||
| Thanks. | ||
| Next, Rollie Boys. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| You are now a policy wonk. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm a policy wonk. | |
| Thank you very much. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| Next, Lucy Lawling on the Trail. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| You are now a policy wonk. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm a policy wonk. | |
| Thank you very much. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Next, never expected to learn that Alex Jones thinks our last name is weird. | ||
| We pronounce it Pet-In-Gill. | ||
| The Gribble Pibble is silent. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| You are now a policy wonk. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm a policy wonk. | |
| Thank you very much. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Next, Angela and Chase of House Gribble Pibble. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| You're now a policy wonk. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm a policy wonk. | |
| Here's how far behind. | ||
| Sometimes you can really get it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You can really tell. | |
| This was shortly after the Gribble Pibble episode. | ||
| Right after the Gribble Pibble. | ||
| And, oops, all sweary carries. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| You're now a policy wonk. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm a policy wonk. | |
| Thank you very much. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Now, Jordan. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| As you know, we've talked about this privately. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| I've been having some insomnia-type issues the past week. | ||
| It's been really tough with the sleep schedule. | ||
| Traveling. | ||
| And, you know, I think it has a little bit of an effect on what you want to do, how much you can take on, and what have you. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| And I found myself this week definitely having a, like... | ||
| I don't even want to turn on Alex's show. | ||
| I don't even want to listen to it. | ||
| It's frustrating. | ||
| I know I'm going to be bored. | ||
| I'm already exhausted. | ||
| I don't really want to do this. | ||
| And so I kind of, you know, I can guess what he's saying. | ||
| I feel like I'm just not interested. | ||
| Not hard. | ||
| And so I decided, hey, Norm, talking shit about us covering depositions. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, no. | |
| We're going through his whole show? | ||
| No. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh. | |
| No. | ||
| Oh. | ||
| All these people are afraid to sit in a deposition room. | ||
| Oh, no! | ||
| Today, we have another formulaic objection. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No! | |
| Yes! | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yay! | |
| So, today, what we're going to be looking at is the deposition of Adan Salazar. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| The longtime writer and editor at InfoWars. | ||
| One of the people who wrote some of the articles that were primary in the Sandy Hook conspiracies. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Someone who has a number of emails around the Sandy Hook conversation. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Somebody who followed us on Twitter until we mentioned it, and then he unfollowed us. | ||
| Ran away! | ||
| Goodbye forever! | ||
| Whee! | ||
| This is from the Connecticut case. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Gotcha. | |
| And Adan is somebody who I've always had a little bit of a fascination with. | ||
| Because I think he is a soldier, as they say. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| In the... | ||
| I don't know what world. | ||
| Gangland Warfare world? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Gotcha. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| He strikes me in the same way as someone like Adaria, and that is like a, oh, you believe. | ||
| Or whether or not you believe, you believe in whatever the underlying mission is. | ||
| You are going to follow orders, regardless of whether or not they are sanctioned by the Geneva Conventions. | ||
| A lie and, you know, you believing some insane thing are undistinguishable for you, because... | ||
| Whatever is motivating it is more important than its primary. | ||
| He is somebody who's written a lot of horrible shit over the course of his time. | ||
| He seems like an asshole. | ||
| But he's also somebody who I've never heard talk. | ||
| I've never seen him in front of the camera. | ||
| He's not an on-camera guy. | ||
| That's true. | ||
| And so I had nothing really to prepare me to... | ||
| To see this deposition. | ||
| To, like, what's gonna happen here? | ||
| I'm not as afraid of him anymore. | ||
| Oh, yeah? | ||
| I'll say that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Uh-huh. | |
| For one thing, he doesn't strike me as savvy as I imagined him. | ||
| So his intelligence is not of the world-shaking variety. | ||
| He might be a perfectly smart person, but I don't find him, and the way he answers questions, and the way he processes what's going on to be all that, like, remarkable. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| And then also, he's 37, and that really bummed me out. | ||
| Right. | ||
| For some reason, I thought he was, like, 26. Or, like, I don't know, in the Alex-Darren-McBreen age range. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right, right, right. | |
| For some reason, 37 was about the exact age that I was surprised to hear. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And I was disappointed. | ||
| Maybe it's because I'm 38. Sure. | ||
| And, you know, it's like I can kind of... | ||
| Whatever the... | ||
| You know, the landmarks in life, they would have been fairly similar. | ||
| We would have been the same age at about certain times. | ||
| True. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Experienced certain things, world events, you know, from the same presumed level of maturity. | |
| Right. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And that kind of makes me sad. | |
| Yeah, it would be less sad if he were on the front nine. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
so to speak. | |
| You know, like instead of the back nine is where he's starting. | ||
| He's starting on the 10th hole and you're going, this is not going to end well for you, man. | ||
| The, the other thing too is though, like I realized how delusional that was of me because he's been there since 2012. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| The idea that he would be 26 is like, what, he started at 16? | ||
| I mean... | ||
| This is ridiculous. | ||
| That seems like the appropriate level of writing he's at, though. | ||
| You're not wrong. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So, this deposition is quite interesting. | ||
| It's taken by Chris Maddy. | ||
| And, yeah, let's just jump in. | ||
| It begins with some formalities and stuff. | ||
| And the first question, the first bit that you want to get into is... | ||
| How did you prepare for this deposition? | ||
| Always my favorite question. | ||
| It's a great way to open. | ||
| Well, and it always reveals that they didn't really do all that much. | ||
| Didn't do it at all. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| What did you do to prepare for today's deposition, Mr. Salazar? | ||
| I went over a few of the articles that are in question. | ||
| Which articles are you going to? | ||
| I did the... | ||
| I reread the FBI's Sandy Hook. | ||
| FBI says nobody died in Sandy Hook, and... | ||
| Probably the first Halbig article that I wrote. | ||
| The first what article? | ||
| Probably? | ||
| Sorry, Wolfgang Halbig article that I wrote. | ||
| And that article was titled something to the effect of investigator threatened, Sandy Hook investigator threatened something to that effect? | ||
| Yes, sir. | ||
| That's it. | ||
| You reviewed those two articles. | ||
| Did you review anything else? | ||
| I didn't go in depth. | ||
| I kind of just glossed over them. | ||
| That's pretty much it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| So other than glossing all of those two articles, did you review any other materials in advance of your deposition today? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, sir. | |
| Other than Attorney Wollman, did you discuss your deposition with anybody else today? | ||
| No, sir. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| You haven't communicated with Alex Jones that you're being deposed? | ||
| No, sir. | ||
| You haven't communicated that to Rob Dew? | ||
| No, sir. | ||
| You haven't communicated that to David Jones? | ||
| No, sir. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Would you ordinarily be working today? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| And you're currently employed by whom? | ||
| freespeechsystemsinfowars.com As this deposition progresses, you get the sense that maybe Adan should have done a little more to prepare for this interview. | ||
| There are basic elements of his timeline and surrounding context of his writing that Maddie can demonstrate, which Adan seems to think are, like, undiscoverable secrets. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| Also, I find it very strange and probably difficult to believe that Adan didn't talk to Alex or Rob Dew about being deposed. | ||
| They work together, this is in relation to a suit against Alex and the company, and as Adan says, he was supposed to be at work that day. | ||
| It seems like he would have to come up with a reason he couldn't make it to work, so I guess he must have just lied to his employer? | ||
| Right off the bat, that doesn't inspire confidence in him as a credible witness, highlighting his willingness to deceive. | ||
| Yeah, I told... | ||
| No, no, no, listen, I didn't tell Alex or Owen or anything, because I told him my grandma died, and I had to go to the funeral, so I'm a reliable source! | ||
| Come on, man! | ||
| Let the record show that this guy's a liar. | ||
| I can understand if Adan doesn't want to say that he spoke with Alex about what he was going to testify, as that would probably or even possibly give the impression that Alex coached him. | ||
| But I don't understand what issues there would be with him just telling Alex about the existence of this deposition. | ||
| Alex would have to know that they were interested in talking to him. | ||
| I could possibly see a scenario where Adan was afraid to tell Alex that he was actually going to show up and talk to the lawyers. | ||
| But outside of something like that, I have a hard time accepting that this didn't come up. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's possible, but it's just like, it seems very weird. | ||
| I'm gonna throw this out at you, okay? | ||
| If I was going to be deposed for anything, and they had like six books I had to read, and I would be like, okay, I'm gonna make it through at least a full two or three of these books, right? | ||
| I've got the time, I've got the work, there's the need to do it, and then maybe I can pass off the other three as being fine, you know? | ||
| But... | ||
| Adan is only telling me that he skimmed less than 5,000 words, right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's not like the articles are long. | |
| Some of them may be longer than you think, but not that long. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, it seems really strange. | ||
| I mean, you would think that if you really wanted to be an active participant, you would go, you'd read the article, you'd figure out where the information that you were working from came from. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| At least brush up on some of that so you can defend your process. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| But yeah, you just skimmed some stuff. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So Adan started in April 2012, and as we know, the shooting happened in December 2012, so he was pretty new there when that happened. | ||
| He was green, yeah. | ||
| But before we get to any of that, we have to talk about what he was doing before April 2012. | ||
| When did you finish working for Free Speech Systems? | ||
| April 2012. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Where were you working prior to that? | |
| I held three jobs. | ||
| I wrote for textbroker.com. | ||
| I also was a contractor for Quest Diagnostics. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And what was that third job? | |
| Oh yeah, I was also a Google search engine optimizer. | ||
| I worked for a contractor for Google. | ||
| It's somewhat notable that Adan began his time at Inforz only a short time before Santany Hook occurred. | ||
| He was a fresh, new-on-the-job reporter when this story started, and as you can tell from this resume that Adan is giving... | ||
| He didn't have previous work experience that would make him well prepared for the role that he found himself in. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, no, no, no. | |
| The job at Quest is basically a courier position, shuttling samples from hospitals and doctor's office to a central testing facility. | ||
| The job he had with TextBroker is the sort of thing where he would get paid to write little blurbs for websites. | ||
| Sort of a freelance gig thing. | ||
| Sure, sure, sure. | ||
| This is where you might go if you want someone to write a paragraph about a lamp you're selling and you don't want to pay too much. | ||
| TextBroker is also the sort of place you might go to get filler for a website that's designed for gaming affiliate link systems. | ||
| To give you some sense of the operation, in their basic category of services, you can choose their low rate option, which has this blurb. | ||
| This is how it describes that service. | ||
| Did they write their own blurb using their service? | ||
| They might have. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Quote, I accept mistakes in spelling, grammar, and expression in favor of a lower price. | ||
| For writing, where you can just write... | ||
| What? | ||
| Yeah, you can just write... | ||
| What? | ||
| Random misspelled words. | ||
| You can make about 1.1 cents per word for that. | ||
| If you have to pay attention to spelling and grammar, you can make up to about 5.5 cents a word. | ||
| Right, right, right. | ||
| To be clear, I'm not knocking the hustle, and there's no shame in this kind of gig. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No. | |
| It's just not... | ||
| Necessarily the sort of writing work you'd do if you had in-demand skills in that field, and it's something that maybe isn't a great thing to be on the resume for the job that he ends up in. | ||
| Yeah, I think Heinlein got paid 1.1 cents a word at one point, but it was different currency-wise at the time. | ||
| So I don't think he's on the same level. | ||
| I don't think so. | ||
| Hemingway got money subtracted for punctuation. | ||
| Too many commas! | ||
| The job at Leapforce is described here as an SEO subcontractor for Google. | ||
| More specifically, the company hires people to work at home and do repetitive searches to evaluate the results, basically to use as information for better ad placement. | ||
| It's a pain-in-the-ass kind of job, and you can find tons of reviews about the grind and how it's really only worth doing as a side gig for some extra cash, unless you can just turn off your brain. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| The people on Glassdoor talk about this is miserable. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| I mean no offense to Adon or anybody else working these kinds of jobs. | ||
| It actually does show quite a bit of initiative for him to have these three gigs running simultaneously. | ||
| That's, you know... | ||
| Impressive. | ||
| Gotta hustle. | ||
| In a certain sense. | ||
| He's gotta hustle. | ||
| I just don't think it's the kind of resume I would be incredibly impressed by if I were running a super important media network and I was looking to hire a reporter slash editor of the news. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Maybe you take a chance on this candidate and you get lucky, but Adan's writing and behavior are pretty central to the claims that Infowars was disseminating that just lost them a billion dollars, so it doesn't seem like this one worked out great. | ||
| When I worked at the coupon place, testing coupons, that was my whole job. | ||
| I would go in there and I would test expired coupons. | ||
| I'd put the code into a website and I'd click, can you buy? | ||
| And they'd be like, no. | ||
| And I'd be like, you're goddamn right, no. | ||
| That was my whole day, right? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| At no point in time was I like, okay, now that I've finished this, I'm going to go work for the Tribune as a cub reporter. | ||
| That's not the jump you make. | ||
| Let's even go a step further. | ||
| It's not a cub reporter. | ||
| No, that's right. | ||
| I'm not the features editor at the Tribune today. | ||
| As Adon will go on to describe, his role immediately was essentially he could write whatever he wanted. | ||
| There was no oversight. | ||
| So it's going from Coupon Cabin. | ||
| To being to write freehand in the newspaper. | ||
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
| While people are reading it. | ||
| While they're reading it to just make it up as you go along. | ||
| It's wild. | ||
| That's crazy. | ||
| It's not best practices. | ||
| It's fucking crazy. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So now we get to Adon's educational background. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Tell me about your educational background, please. | ||
| I went to the University of Texas for about a year and a half. | ||
| I majored in liberal arts, took several English courses there, and I also did half a semester at Austin Community College. | ||
| I don't know why you'd even bring up that you did half a semester at a community college. | ||
| It's just confusing. | ||
| And it sounds like you're saying that you signed up for some classes and you just didn't finish them. | ||
| Austin Community College has 16-week semesters, but they also offer some courses that run eight weeks. | ||
| So it's entirely possible that Adan is expressing that he finished some of the classes. | ||
| I don't know But if that's the case, he should have said, I took a few classes at ACC. | ||
| That makes me think that it's more likely that he signed up and then just didn't finish them. | ||
| Also, I don't know how it is at all universities, but typically liberal arts isn't a major. | ||
| It's sort of a category of majors. | ||
| You wouldn't be a liberal arts major. | ||
| No. | ||
| You'd be within the liberal arts. | ||
| I mean, in the early year that he... | ||
| Did finish. | ||
| Maybe he hadn't chosen a specific major. | ||
| He was just taking the basic courses in the department. | ||
| Yeah, and you were drawn towards the soft sciences of humanities. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| You know, yeah, that's fine, but I don't think liberal arts is a major. | ||
| When I was... | ||
| I didn't go to UT Austin, though. | ||
| I went to a community college for a while, and I hated it so much that after the second week, I would drive there to avoid telling my parents that I wasn't going to school, but I would sleep in the parking lot. | ||
| In the car. | ||
| In case they put, like, a low jack on your car? | ||
| Just in case. | ||
| What, am I going to go in and sleep in the class? | ||
| No, that's disrespectful. | ||
| I'm going to not go to their class and sleep nearby. | ||
| That's pretty good. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| I did not put that on many resumes, though. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Smart. | |
| I didn't put it on there. | ||
| Yeah, I don't know. | ||
| You didn't. | ||
| When I hired you, it didn't come up. | ||
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
| So I'm a huge fan of education and the academic environment as a whole, but I do try to be as clear as possible that I don't think it's necessary for everyone to partake in. | ||
| You can be as smart. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Over here, looking at you, buddy. | ||
| There are so many hyper-competent people who never went to college, and those people aren't folks that I would look at and say, hey, they should take some classes, because they're doing just fine. | ||
| On the other hand, if you don't have any formal education, then find yourself as a highly placed reporter at a propaganda outlet where you argue that grieving families are actors, and you're discussing your educational background in a deposition about that shitty work that you did. | ||
| I might think that your lack of training or familiarity with the field that you're in is a problem. | ||
| And it could have helped if you would have taken some classes. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| To be perfectly blunt, I don't think that any amount of classes would have helped Don. | ||
| Not that he's dumb or anything, just that I don't think that he's interested in doing the thing that he's doing well. | ||
| I don't think he needs to get better. | ||
| If you have the moral framework necessary to do what you're doing now, then you're fine whether you're an expert at J-School or not. | ||
| You're going to do what you're doing. | ||
| Yeah, you might just need a moment of revelation about yourself as opposed to classics. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| So by this point in the deposition, we have a sense of what Adan's resume would have probably looked like when he applied to be a writer and editor at Infowars. | ||
| He had some freelance-style writing experience, but beyond that iffy credential, he had no experience in media or journalism, and he had no education in the field, but he got hired anyway. | ||
| And it seems like there might be possibly a reason why. | ||
| Why did you apply to the free speech systems? | ||
| I liked Alex Jones and The Message. | ||
| So before you ever applied to the free speech systems, you were essentially an audience member, correct? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Yeah, he was a fan. | ||
| I just, you know, every time I learn more about how InfoWars operates, I'm like, there's no way. | ||
| There's just no way. | ||
| It's usually a contest that people win and they end up working there. | ||
| But I guess that maybe is for more of the on-air folks. | ||
| You know, that's the... | ||
| Because, you know, give them the razzle-dazzle of the contest. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure, sure. | |
| It's hard to have an InfoWars contest about writing. | ||
| Because there's, like, no benchmark. | ||
| There's no, like, oh, here's good writing and here's bad writing. | ||
| You've just got the same... | ||
| InfoWars essay contest. | ||
| Oh, no. | ||
| I think that's the low rate, not worried about typos and spellings and character. | ||
| 1.1 cents a word. | ||
| Yeah, that's 1.1 cent a word, yeah. | ||
| For sure. | ||
| So, Matty asks, what was it about Infowars that really got you interested? | ||
| And what attracted you to the Alex Jones show and the written content? | ||
| Probably their... | ||
| You know, their refusal to believe the narrative behind 9-11. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| Did you suspect the narrative that the mainstream media had reported concerning 9-11? | ||
| What was that question again? | ||
| Were you suspicious? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| I'm sorry, just let me finish my question. | ||
| I know you're anticipating what I'm going to say, but did you personally suspect the narrative? | ||
| That the mainstream media had reported concerning 9-11. | ||
| Yes, I was suspicious of it. | ||
| So in 2012, 11 years after 9-11, that's a motivating, I guess maybe, you know, whenever he got interested in it. | ||
| It could have been years prior. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| Yeah, so a motivating factor. | ||
| Suspicion about 9-11 and their refusal to accept the mainstream narrative. | ||
| What's your career path like if it starts with... | ||
| I thought 9-11 was an inside job. | ||
| And then the next step is, I'm the editor at Infowars.com. | ||
| That's a career path. | ||
| I sought employment because I was impressed with these people refusing to believe that 9-11 happened. | ||
| That is great. | ||
| As we're told. | ||
| That is great. | ||
| So I appreciate this instinct on Maddie's part. | ||
| And that is to go from this like, oh, you were suspicious about 9-11. | ||
| Why? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Because in a deposition setting, that can lead to some interesting things. | ||
| Uh-oh. | ||
| And what in particular were you suspicious of? | ||
| I didn't think we were being told the full truth about various parts of that narrative. | ||
| Can you go into a little bit more detail about what you thought the gaps were in what the reporting was? | ||
| I could, I suppose. | ||
| I didn't think that the planes should have been able to take down the buildings as they were taken down. | ||
| It seemed like a controlled demolition, which a lot of people still believe, actually. | ||
| Are you one of them? | ||
| That was probably the biggest one, especially with Building 7 falling and collapsing controlled demolition style when no plane hit it. | ||
| Those are the biggest factors. | ||
| And did the fact that you felt it was implausible that the buildings would have collapsed the way they did caused you to suspect whether the United States government was involved in some way in the attack? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Objection. | |
| Yes, sir. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| So this is a really interesting clip because there's a couple of things happening here. | ||
| The first is really transparent, which is how a conspiracy theorist answers a question. | ||
| Adan is asked why he was suspicious about 9-11, but it's a conspiracy he hasn't focused on in a while, so a lot of the talking points are a bit foggy in his memory. | ||
| So he tries to give a vague non-answer. | ||
| Then Matty asks for something more specific, and Adan basically just got like, it doesn't seem right, and Building 7 is his response, which is pretty soft. | ||
| The second thing is something that will become important later as some of Maddie's questions develop. | ||
| This is something that Adan is suspicious about. | ||
| He has some inconclusive things to point to that he can use to justify these suspicions. | ||
| And based on having those suspicions, he just testified to Maddie that led him to suspect the U.S. government was involved. | ||
| This provides a clear example of Adan's thought process, where he's willing to take things that look weird and make him suspicious and use them to build a baseless explanatory narrative. | ||
| Hold on to this for later because it will become clear how relevant this is. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, it's hard to... | ||
| I do appreciate one thing about Infowars employees that will never not be hilarious to me, is that at some point, doesn't the lawyer have to go in and be like, before you answer the question, look at me to see whether or not I'm going to object or not? | ||
| In a deposition, it's a different setting. | ||
| In this setting, you still have to answer the question. | ||
| Unless it's some other kind of objection. | ||
| But these objections are just... | ||
| Yeah, you still have to... | ||
| You can't be late. | ||
| But I think you could just still say, like, I don't know, or not answer. | ||
| Sure. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Just always look at your lawyer before you answer a question. | |
| It's not hard, right? | ||
| Isn't that what I would do? | ||
| I'd be like, I'm going to listen to my lawyer. | ||
| Your lawyer's just tugging on his shirt collar. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| And then I'd be like, ugh. | ||
| My answer is, ugh. | ||
| So when Adon got hired, he got some training. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| But it wasn't what you think. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What? | |
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| It's not really training. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| When you started at Infowars in April of 2012, did you receive any training of any kind? | ||
| Just to learn the back-end systems like WordPress and things of that nature. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| So that training basically involved learning how to use the software programs that you were going to be using every day as an employee, correct? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Did you receive any training concerning the writing function of your job? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No. | |
| Did you ever receive any training during your tenure at Free Speech Systems concerning the writing function of your job? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No. | |
| Wow. | ||
| Have you ever received any training during the course of your employment concerning Investigative, journalistic practice. | ||
| They train you more at, like, a fast food restaurant. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Like, I remember when I went to... | ||
| I worked at JCPenney's for a cup of coffee when I was younger. | ||
| And, like, there was an entire, like, hours-long... | ||
| Think about the corporate culture, the rules, and harassment policies. | ||
| You had to sit in a room and watch videos. | ||
| At the very least, you had to sign something saying that you understood the rules of what they told you. | ||
| Yeah, it seems like there's less oversight at Infowars than JCPenney's. | ||
| Man, if you had walked into any newspaper in the world and they didn't tell you first things first about the, quote, in-house style, if they were just like, right away, my dude. | ||
| Also, I would say that every single job that I've ever had, at least the first half a week, maybe even the first week, you're working with somebody else. | ||
| Yeah, absolutely. | ||
| You're training. | ||
| You're shadowing. | ||
| Yeah, because you can't be trusted just to know exactly how to do your job. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And it's wild. | ||
| That does not seem to be the case here. | ||
| It is wild to not receive training on the job you are ostensibly doing. | ||
| You know, like, they taught him how to post things on the internet through WordPress. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That was it. | ||
| You know what? | ||
| It kind of makes me think of, like, some temp gigs I've had. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You know, where it's just like, all right, here's how you enter this data. | ||
| Go do it. | ||
| I don't give a shit. | ||
| I got other work to do. | ||
| What did he think that first six months? | ||
| Right? | ||
| He had to have been walking around like... | ||
| They know, right? | ||
| They know I have no idea what I'm doing. | ||
| They have to look at me and know. | ||
| Maybe that's part of the test, though. | ||
| Do you have the psychopathic confidence to just be like, there's no such thing as imposter syndrome because I'm the greatest. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So you also got no training about what news to cover. | ||
| What? | ||
| You understood when you applied to InfoWars that you were applying for an editor and writer position. | ||
| When you first started, it sounds like one of the things that you needed to do was update news items on the Infowars.com website, correct? | ||
| Yes. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And what do you mean by update? | |
| Kind of like find news items and republish them on Infowars with a link back to the original source. | ||
| Okay. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So essentially, you would find news items that appeared elsewhere on the internet and then put a link to that news item on the Infowars.com. | |
| Yes, sir. | ||
| That was subjective. | ||
| So, basically, whatever I thought would be good on the website. | ||
| Did you receive any guidance or training on that in any way? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No. | |
| That's wild. | ||
| I mean... | ||
| I know. | ||
| Words fail. | ||
| I just don't know how... | ||
| It's so nuts that, like, you have to think, like, that can't be true. | ||
| That can't be true. | ||
| But it could be. | ||
| It's the only place in the world where it could be true. | ||
| It could be true here. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And, like, the... | ||
| Opening of a WeWork. | ||
| You know, like, these are the only two scams where you can pull off having no clue what you're doing and just be like, yeah, fuck it. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| I think... | ||
| I'm just making noises now. | ||
| Yeah, I know. | ||
| I don't know how to deal with that information. | ||
| I would have straight up quit so fast. | ||
| This is a scam. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| This is a scam. | ||
| Yeah, I would have just been like, or at least this is trouble. | ||
| This is a recipe for... | ||
| Yes! | ||
| Leaving aside anything about the ideology or anything about Infowars, a business that runs like this, like, I don't know if payroll works like this. | ||
| What are we doing? | ||
| What is going on? | ||
| That is the roommate scam. | ||
| Like, if I... | ||
| I was interviewing for that job. | ||
| I would view it the same way as the roommate scam, you know, where it's like... | ||
| Person selling magazines? | ||
| No, no, no. | ||
| I'll move in with you and be your roommate, but I need $1,000 up front to move here, and then I'll give you $2,000 or whatever it is. | ||
| I didn't know about that scam. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| It's a great scam. | ||
| It works for, I don't know, somebody. | ||
| But it is the job equivalent of that. | ||
| It's like, hey, man, come on in. | ||
| You're our new editor. | ||
| No, I don't believe you for a fucking second. | ||
| You are trying to make me the CEO. | ||
| And then blame me for something. | ||
| Yeah, this has got to be... | ||
| I'm the fall guy, right? | ||
| This is a bait and switch here, for sure. | ||
| This has got to be on the... | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So, also, Adan didn't need to get anybody's sign-off on posting pics. | ||
| No, what? | ||
| Before posting news items that you had clipped from other sources, did you have to get approval from anybody to actually publish? | ||
| Um, no. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| You should. | ||
| Probably, and it was more loose back in 2012, and now we've learned our lessons and we're kind of stricter about what we republish. | ||
| And I'll ask you some questions about that, but at the time at least when you started, you could go to any website, select a news item that you thought your audience might be interested in, and publish it to Infowars.com, correct? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Wild. | ||
| So, uh, the, we've learned our lesson thing. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| You think that that's about, like, content, like Sandy Hook stuff. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Nope. | |
| But it's not. | ||
| It's, uh, he explains later, uh, in a clip that I didn't cut, that, um... | ||
| Basically, there are some websites that are litigious about repurposing their content. | ||
| Yeah, it did sound like he was trained on stealing. | ||
| Yeah, and so he's like, basically, by trial and error, you learn that the AP doesn't like it when you just steal their articles. | ||
| Right, right, right. | ||
| And so you just avoid AP articles. | ||
| Right, right, right. | ||
| That's pretty... | ||
| Sad. | ||
| Like, in terms of the lessons you've learned are respecting intellectual property, I guess? | ||
| Copyrights? | ||
| It is analogous to learning about which dumpsters are good to get food from. | ||
| You know, there's definitely certainly something along those lines. | ||
| They are nothing if not info raccoons. | ||
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
| We info scavenge in the info war. | ||
| So, I think that if you're in a position like Adan, you always have to, whether you believe it or not, put on the front-facing facade. | ||
| Company line. | ||
| That you are reporting facts. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| You're doing factual reporting. | ||
| You're doing the God's work. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Do you consider yourself... | ||
| To be reporting facts, or do you consider yourself to be writing your opinion? | ||
| How do you consider the type of writing you're doing? | ||
| Objection to form. | ||
| I believe it's probably you write the facts with maybe like a right-leaning slant instead of the left-leaning slant the mainstream media portrays. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| So if I understand you correctly, in your writing, you are reporting facts, but to the extent there's any sort of editorializing of those facts, you put a right-leaning slant on them. | ||
| Yes, and it's usually yes, I think so. | ||
| And is that because you know that your audience is used to the right of the political spectrum? | ||
| My audience and me, I mean. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Right, I mean, if you started writing, you know, left-wing manifestos, your audience would wonder what the heck happened, right? | ||
| Right, yeah. | ||
| Well, I think the journalistic outfits, like the AP and stuff, they pretend to be objective, but they're not. | ||
| And we don't pretend to be objective. | ||
| I'm sorry, what? | ||
| When you say you pretend to be objective, I assume you don't mean that... | ||
| We wear our bias on our sleeves, sorry. | ||
| Not really. | ||
| No, absolutely not. | ||
| Alex's entire brand is he's above the left-right paradigm. | ||
| That's the whole thing. | ||
| Yeah, the right-leaning slant of this is absolutely a betrayal of the central premise of Infowars. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| But also quite obvious, so not revelatory. | ||
| It's just embarrassing that Adan would phrase it this way in an under-oath setting. | ||
| Because Alex probably disagrees. | ||
| Yeah, I mean... | ||
| I'm not right-wing. | ||
| The hard part about these depositions is I always feel like we should really, really, you know, no matter how basic a concept you think you're dealing with, you need to go further and further down, you know, like just... | ||
| What do you think a journalist does? | ||
| Well, they tried to do that with Kit Daniels. | ||
| Right. | ||
| That didn't go well. | ||
| That was weird. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Good point. | ||
| And to be fair, I think that you could probably find some fertile ground in there. | ||
| Right. | ||
| But... | ||
| This is already four hours long, this deposition. | ||
| That's true. | ||
| Probably don't need to get down to, like, first principles. | ||
| That's true. | ||
| Basic core concepts. | ||
| I mean, I would really like to get down to the very nitty-gritty and be like, let's go with a glossary of words, my man. | ||
| I would love that, too. | ||
| What do you think this means? | ||
| There's nobody in the world who would love if, like, every one of these depositions was a Ken Burns documentary more than me. | ||
| Right, naturally, naturally. | ||
| That's what I want. | ||
| Of course. | ||
| But yeah. | ||
| Can't do it. | ||
| Other humans have other things to do. | ||
| I understand, I understand. | ||
| John gets to talking about his research methods. | ||
| They're good. | ||
| When you are reporting facts to your audience, I take it that it is important for you to accurately report what those facts are, correct? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| And when you're writing about a particular topic, what do you do to educate yourself about the topic and the facts that you're going to convey? | ||
| I do research and pretty much read everything I can before I jump into an article. | ||
| Where do the sources of information come from that you read? | ||
| I do a Google search on Google News and also we'll look back at anything that Infowars has written and maybe look at a YouTube video or two, try to find, you know, look at various different Data points to try to formulate facts and opinions on the subject. | ||
| And so, typically, when you are doing research for a piece you're writing, you are doing that research exclusively from internet sources, correct? | ||
| Yes, yes. | ||
| Including InfoWars' own previous material? | ||
| Yes, sir. | ||
| That doesn't inspire confidence. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| My research methods are Googling things, looking at InfoWars articles from the past, and maybe some YouTube videos. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yep. | |
| Yep. | ||
| Huh. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, if he weren't... | ||
| This is the dream. | ||
| You know, like, he's living the dream. | ||
| Isn't that what he's doing? | ||
| Well, it's easy. | ||
| In a certain sense, he doesn't have to do anything but occasionally Google stuff and then steal it. | ||
| I imagine that there's a lot of, like, you gotta get this out fast because this isn't gonna be interesting to people in six hours. | ||
| Sure, sure, sure. | ||
| You know, so some of that is probably a hectic, frustrating schedule. | ||
| I'm sure there's emails flying around. | ||
| Did you see this? | ||
| Did you see that? | ||
| Sure. | ||
| Yeah, and then I also... | ||
| I also don't know how much he's getting paid, because that doesn't come up. | ||
| So it could also be 1.1 cents a word. | ||
| And if that's the case, then maybe this isn't such a good gig. | ||
| But if he's making as much as some of the other InfoWars employees, then holy shit. | ||
| Holy shit. | ||
| Get the fuck out of here. | ||
| God, yeah. | ||
| Yeah, I wouldn't go back to Google Analytics either, or whatever it was he was fucking doing. | ||
| Nope. | ||
| Also, he didn't even read these 5,000 words that he needed to read for this deposition. | ||
| What confidence does that give you that he actually does any fucking research? | ||
| Well, this deposition isn't an article that he needs to read. | ||
| He takes that very seriously. | ||
| I read everything I can on Google. | ||
| So he has an editor now. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Sort of. | ||
| Not really. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| He has a copy editor. | ||
|
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|
Who reviews your work now before it's published? | |
| I send my work to editor Jamie White, and if he's not there, I'll just reread my own work and edit myself. | ||
| Whenever Jamie White is available, he reviews your work? | ||
| Yes. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And for what purpose does he review it? | |
| Typos. | ||
| Pretty much just typos and make sure I've got my I's and T's crossed and stuff. | ||
| When you say I's and T's, you're referring to, like, no typographical errors? | ||
| Yeah, or words and stuff. | ||
| Yes, exactly. | ||
| He's essentially just proofreading, correct? | ||
| Yeah, proofreading. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| Amazing. | ||
| He's not checking for the accuracy of what you've written? | ||
| Technically, no. | ||
| No. | ||
| Technically no. | ||
| Well, certainly it's technically no. | ||
| Technically no. | ||
| There's no way you could say technically. | ||
| They have like a whole conversation about whether or not anybody has ever done that in his time at Infowars. | ||
| And he mentions only one person. | ||
| There's this guy, McHale Thalen, who isn't with the company anymore. | ||
| He now writes for the Daily Dot. | ||
| I don't know what the fuck his deal is, but he has managed to transition out of the Infowars stink into some... | ||
| Somewhat legitimacy? | ||
| Like, he's actually writing somewhere. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| I bet he has an editor. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I don't know what his deal is, but he was there, and apparently, when he was there... | ||
| He would point out things. | ||
| No wonder he got fired. | ||
| Well, maybe. | ||
| But Adan doesn't understand that action. | ||
| Right. | ||
| He experiences it as like, oh, he was just doing that because he wanted to. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Like, it was just, you know, kind of fun for Mikhail. | ||
| It was like, you know, we were having a little game between us. | ||
| I would lie, and he would be like, you can't do this. | ||
| And I would be like, ha ha ha, and then post it. | ||
| You get the strong sense that he didn't listen to the advice that Thalen was giving him. | ||
| Wild. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So he can just write about whatever he wants and apparently has never been told not to write something. | ||
| Have you ever been instructed that you couldn't write about a particular topic? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No. | |
| Have you ever had a request to publish an article turned down? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, I don't think so. | |
| This is directly contradictory to Alex's entire thing about how he told people not to write about Sandy Hook. | ||
| We're done with this topic. | ||
| You got it. | ||
| So that's that's interesting. | ||
| And because that I believe that that email from Paul to to Bob. | ||
| To Buckley. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| It mentions Adon. | ||
| Adon wrote something about this. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| And so he would be the person who was told don't write about this. | ||
| That would be the only person. | ||
| And so someone has their picture wrong. | ||
| Oh, that's not good. | ||
| So I don't know how you picture the workplace environment at Infowars. | ||
| The kind of like... | ||
| Co-worker... | ||
| I just... | ||
| After I find out that nobody's even... | ||
| Like, does Adan Salazar even live in the country? | ||
| Yeah, he lives in Austin. | ||
| Right, but I mean, there's no way to know. | ||
| Based on what he's describing of his job, he could be in fucking South America right now, and nobody would have any difference. | ||
| I think that's probably part of why it's so easy for Paul to have worked there the entire time living in England. | ||
| In England, yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| But yeah, the workplace environment seems really cold, and this bums me out. | ||
| During the course of your employment at Infowars, No. | ||
| How often are you in communication with Mr. Jones? | ||
| In communication, I would say maybe I pass him going to the bathroom or something, say hi, so once a week or something. | ||
| How often are you in communication to him about the substance of your work in InfoWars? | ||
| Seldom, if ever. | ||
| This is bizarre. | ||
| Living the dream. | ||
| No boss? | ||
| Going into a cubicle every day? | ||
| I mean, he's worked there for a decade. | ||
| A decade! | ||
| And Alex still doesn't know his name. | ||
| Adon who? | ||
| Oh my god. | ||
| It's inconceivable. | ||
| I don't believe this. | ||
| But if that is true... | ||
| So rude. | ||
| Totally. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Totally. | |
| There aren't that many people who work there. | ||
| No. | ||
| How do you ignore one that close to you? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| That's bananas. | ||
| And somebody who's responsible for creating so much of the content that you use to lie on air. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Ugh. | |
| Wild. | ||
| It's like, that is... | ||
| Impersonal to the point of being hostile. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| There's no way to experience that except as, like, this is a clear rejection. | ||
| I'd feel like I was being iced out or something. | ||
| He's been there ten years. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It would feel like, oh, Alex is clearly trying to get rid of me. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Mm-hmm. | |
| Wow. | ||
| And then it just never happens. | ||
| I guess. | ||
| So yeah, you just hide out in your cubicle and just wait until someone notices you're there. | ||
| Yeah, you know, I mean, I go back to the forensic financial analyst and he's like, a competently run business should have this to this amount of money. | ||
| And when you hear shit like this, you're like, either they've got an absurd amount of money hidden in gold somewhere because they are hiding it from everyone, or this place just doesn't even know where money comes from. | ||
| Like, they just don't. | ||
| Yeah, well, they do have a very serious distrust of fiat currency. | ||
| Exactly! | ||
| Yeah, I don't know. | ||
| It's a weird, weird picture. | ||
| And if it wasn't InfoWars, it would be like Wonka Factory nonsense. | ||
| Yeah, absolutely. | ||
| It would be like, everyone's running around in costumes and like, what the fuck is this place? | ||
| When do you see Alex? | ||
| Well, occasionally he calls the entire staff out. | ||
| We have to put on our elf costumes and we have to do a little dance for him. | ||
| And then we go back to work. | ||
| That question wasn't asked. | ||
| That could be what happens. | ||
| Do you have to wear a little dance rack? | ||
| You never know! | ||
| So, we finally get to Sandy Hook coming up, and the question that's posed is, when did you find out about the shooting? | ||
| Mr. Salazar, do you recall how you first learned about the Sandy Hook shooting? | ||
| I believe I was at work when it happened, so it was kind of playing everywhere on CNN, in the break room. | ||
| Then it was everywhere on the internet. | ||
| And so given your job as a writer, I take it that you started following that coverage very closely as soon as it broke? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| And you knew immediately that the Sandy Hook shooting was going to be a subject of InfoWars reporting, correct? | ||
| I didn't know that immediately, no. | ||
| You weren't able to immediately to intuit that this was going to be a major news story that InfoWars was going to cover? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Objection? | |
| No, I didn't immediately realize that, no. | ||
| Until days after, you know, and then it came off the news. | ||
| So, at that time, like two days after the event happened, I was like, okay, this is a big news event. | ||
| This is something to keep an eye on here, because Don is testifying that in this first month, he was unaware of an intent to cover the shooting at Sandy Hook as being fake. | ||
| And that timeline is going to be in trouble as information is revealed. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| But yeah, your response to that is, I think, very appropriate. | ||
| Like, it's very bizarre to imagine that you could see this shooting happen. | ||
| You work it in for, you know how they've covered shootings in the past. | ||
| You were there for Aurora, which just happened. | ||
| Just happened. | ||
| Pretty recently. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And, like, a couple days later you realize, oh, this is a big story? | ||
| What? | ||
| I mean... | ||
| It's very weird. | ||
| Either he's lying or he's insane. | ||
| Like, there's no other explanation. | ||
| I think it's lying or just trying to... | ||
| Give a softer appearance to what they did. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| We weren't taking this as seriously as we could or maybe thought we would. | ||
| Something along those lines, but there's no way. | ||
| You don't want to give the impression that you're seeing this and getting excited for the coverage that you're going to do. | ||
| And so I can understand how that isn't the perception you would want to give. | ||
| Like, I saw this and I immediately knew this was going to lead the news. | ||
| Right, right, right. | ||
| Okay, fine. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| Whatever. | ||
| There's going to be a problem. | ||
| Yeah, but a couple of days. | ||
| I would even be like, oh, it was a few hours afterwards when I realized it was going to be what it was. | ||
| A couple of days makes you sound like you're hiding underneath rocks. | ||
| Oh, true. | ||
| And like this timeline is just completely fucked. | ||
| You'd say then about two days after the event is when you first realized that you would be writing about Sandy Hook, correct? | ||
| I didn't think I'd be writing about it yet. | ||
| I was looking at different anomalies and stuff, so I hadn't really put my foot down that I'd be writing about it yet. | ||
| So I think the first time I did was when I heard the Halbig interview, which was, I don't think it was immediately after the shooting. | ||
| No, it was in 2014. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So there was an interview that Halbig did, and we'll talk about that a little more later, with the American Free Press. | ||
| And that was in February, I think. | ||
| I think it was February. | ||
| Maybe not. | ||
| Maybe December? | ||
| No, I don't know. | ||
| It was in 2014. | ||
| Two days, two years, same difference. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And so Adan wrote an article about Wolfgang's interview, and that is true. | ||
| But that amount of time... | ||
| If you're pitching that as your timeline until 2014, I didn't know who was going to be writing about this stuff. | ||
| Well, I didn't think it was a big story. | ||
| That is... | ||
| Outrageous. | ||
| And you don't want this to be the foundation that you're laying in terms of explaining what happened in a deposition setting. | ||
| Because you're going to directly contradict yourself repeatedly. | ||
| You know that authority experiment where they've got somebody and the doctor's like, press the button and it increases. | ||
| Yeah, that whole thing. | ||
| This is one of the few situations where if you did that experiment here, it'd be like five minutes max. | ||
| Press the button every time he lies and it'd be like, ah! | ||
| Ah! | ||
| And they're like, it's going to get larger, and he might die on this one. | ||
| And you're like, listen, I think I know how electricity works, buddy. | ||
| Press that button. | ||
| I mean, look, I don't know if that's one of those experiments that has been debunked. | ||
| Yeah, is that one real? | ||
| I'm not sure. | ||
| I know the prison experiment wasn't that one debunked. | ||
| More or less, yeah. | ||
| There's problems with it. | ||
| But leaving all that aside, there is such a frustrating... | ||
| The path that this goes down. | ||
| Adan is such a bad stonewaller. | ||
| We'll get to it. | ||
| It is so frustrating. | ||
| What you need to know for now is that after the shooting, Adan thought it was real. | ||
| I'm just trying to understand in the immediate aftermath what your perspective was. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
| No, no, please. | ||
| I was going to say, in the immediate aftermath, my perspective was a school shooting happened. | ||
| So I was on board with the shooting. | ||
| I'm sorry, what? | ||
| When you say on board, in the immediate aftermath, and let's try and time this out, within two days of the shooting, it was your own view at that time that children and educators were killed at Sandy Hook, correct? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| I would have phrased that differently, but yeah. | ||
| It is what it is. | ||
| I was like, I'm on board with this shooting. | ||
| Oh, man. | ||
| Strange. | ||
| Mehdi almost even gave him a chance to rephrase it. | ||
| He gave you another go at it, man! | ||
| So Adnan, his perspective on this is he was only going to report on Sandy Hook if there were anomalies. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| I take it from your testimony earlier that you anticipated that you would likely only write about it to the extent... | ||
| You thought that there were anomalies associated with the shooting worth writing about, right? | ||
| Something that I found interesting and I thought the readership would find interesting, yes. | ||
| And that eventually happened, correct? | ||
| Where you felt that you wanted to report on anomalies around Sandy Hook because you found them interesting and you thought the audience would find them interesting, correct? | ||
| Yes, yes. | ||
| So we come to this idea of anomaly. | ||
| And it's one of the words that Alex uses to sort of rationalize a lot of his coverage. | ||
| But it is kind of a vague term. | ||
| There isn't really a concrete definition of this. | ||
| And so in order to move forward, we try to get a definition of what is an anomaly. | ||
| That's a great idea. | ||
| Yeah, it's helpful. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| We're talking about anomalies. | ||
| I just want to go back. | ||
| Can you give me your definition of anomaly? | ||
| Maybe something that doesn't really jive with the story. | ||
| So some fact that you believe exists that calls into question other facts surrounding the shooting, correct? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Objection. | |
| Why are you objecting to that? | ||
| I wouldn't say that it's something that calls into question everything else. | ||
| It's just something peculiar or odd. | ||
| That you really don't know what its purpose is, like I said, until you have more pieces. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| And in considering those anomalies, when it came time to report on them, I take it that it was important to you for anything you published concerning Sandy Hook to be true and accurate, correct? | ||
| Yes, to the best of my knowledge. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And you'd agree with me that the shooting of 20 children and six educators is a horrible atrocity, correct? | ||
| Yes, sir. | ||
| And so if you're going to be reporting facts about that situation, it's incredibly important to you that they be accurate, correct? | ||
| Yes. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And your audience relies on you to provide them with truthful and accurate information, correct? | |
| Yes, sir. | ||
| And you understood at the time of the Sandy Hook shooting, And your coverage of that shooting that the InfoWars audience included millions of people across different platforms, correct? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| And so you considered it a tremendous responsibility of yours to make sure that they were well and accurately informed, correct? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Injection? | |
| Yes, I would say so. | ||
| You take that responsibility seriously, don't you? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| And so it was important to you that the sources of information you had concerning Sandy Hook be credible, correct? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| So Adan has repeatedly now said, yes, I take this very seriously. | ||
| It's very important to me that the facts and we're informing. | ||
| And that's fun. | ||
| But yeah, we have a sort of vague definition of anomaly, but at least it's something you can kind of work with. | ||
| Right, right, right. | ||
| I was surprised that the lawyer objected to Maddie really doing a really good job of rephrasing. | ||
| Anomaly is something that doesn't jive. | ||
| Doesn't jive with the story. | ||
| I appreciate his dictionary. | ||
| Anomaly, doesn't jive, anteater, groovy tongue. | ||
| Like, I like the way this man thinks. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| He's got it. | ||
| Uh-huh. | ||
| Don calls Matty Daddio later. | ||
| He's hip. | ||
| He smokes a jazz cigarette in between. | ||
| So, there's a phenomenon called, you know, motivated reasoning, wherein you try and create an argument for something based on a conclusion that you already have. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| You go looking for information. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| You succumb to confirmation bias and find information that supports your conclusion that you were going to have already. | ||
| Now, this conversation here with Adon and how he was approaching questioning the shooting. | ||
| Has some of the hallmarks of that, you might think. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| In the immediate aftermath, and I'm talking about, when I say immediate aftermath of the Sandy Hook shooting, let's talk about a month, okay? | ||
| So December 14, 2012 to January 14, 2013. | ||
| You with me? | ||
| During that period, did you develop a concern that the shooting at Sandy Hook, Could be used as a pretext for gun confiscation legislation? | ||
| I'm not sure if it was specifically gun confiscation, but yeah, it was going to be used to curtail gun rights, I believe, yes. | ||
| That was a concern you developed within the month after the shooting, that the fact of the shooting could be used as a pretext for curtailing gun rights, correct? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| And was that a concern to your knowledge that Alex Jones shared? | ||
| I believe so, yeah. | ||
| Maybe if you go back and see some of the episodes following the incident, Alex might have been mentioning that concern. | ||
| I can't recall that it was a specific concern or not, but it might have been. | ||
| Was that a principal reason that it was important to you? | ||
| To question whether or not the shooting, in fact, occurred? | ||
| Yeah, that was one of several reasons, yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And what were some of the others? | |
| Just trying to keep the media honest and, you know, trying to sift through actual news and not fake news. | ||
| That is a shocking admission. | ||
| I can't... | ||
| Understand how Adon wouldn't recognize what he just said. | ||
| He said that principally one of the reasons it was important for him to question whether or not Sandy Hook happened was because he was worried they were going to use it to take guns. | ||
| Right. | ||
| That has nothing to do with the reality or falsity of an event. | ||
| No. | ||
| That is a fucked up thought process. | ||
| Right. | ||
| So here's what I thought, okay? | ||
| I thought that people would exploit this tragedy to pass gun-grabbing legislation, right? | ||
| So I went out and I looked for the truth, you know? | ||
| And everybody who said that it wasn't, I called fake news. | ||
| And everybody who said that it was, I called true news. | ||
| So obviously it's true, my man! | ||
| Right. | ||
| I mean, thinking about it this way, that you're worried about them exploiting this tragedy in order to push a political goal that you are opposed to. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Instead of supporting the political point that you are in favor of and engaging in the argument about it, wherein people are like, hey, there's this school shooting, we should probably get better gun regulations in place and common sense reform. | ||
| Instead of responding to that with like, well, no, I don't believe that that is an appropriate thing to do and here are the reasons why. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| Instead, you're like, well... | ||
| They wouldn't have any argument if the shooting didn't happen. | ||
| So maybe I should try and prove that. | ||
| Right. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Or maybe I should try and get people to insist that. | |
| Right. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Because that's a shortcut that I don't have to make my argument that. | |
| Right. | ||
| that's basically the way you could interpret what Adan is saying. | ||
| And obviously... | ||
| On some level, I am fully aware that this is part of it for War's sort of ideological and information model. | ||
| But to hear Adon not try and mask that in some way is very shocking, and it strikes me as somebody who doesn't realize what he's saying. | ||
| Yeah! | ||
| I mean, how do you say it out loud? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Because you'd hear it then. | ||
| You'd hear it spoken into the world. | ||
| You know, maybe he's got one of those... | ||
| I can't believe his lawyer didn't just, like, spill water on the computer or something. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, 100%. | ||
| That's a revelatory thing. | ||
| The lawyer should have a shot caller for these people. | ||
| Like, that is an insane thing to say. | ||
| How can you say that out loud and not be like, oh, I get where we went wrong now. | ||
| Thanks, guys. | ||
| Listen, we had a great deposition. | ||
| I'm in the 100% of the wrong. | ||
| Whatever it is you say is true, I'm going to get out of here. | ||
| I'm supposed to give the presentation that we're just looking for the truth and asking hard questions that no one else will and exposing cover-ups and what have you? | ||
| No, you're just trying to... | ||
| Take shortcuts and push your political agenda in a different way because you know that if you did it on the merits, no one would be interested. | ||
| Right, right, right. | ||
| If I argued with you about the thing you want to argue about, I would lose because you're right and I'm wrong. | ||
| So instead, what if I pretended that you don't exist and neither does anybody else and it's just me and everything I think is true? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Uh-huh. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| So that's good. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| Good way to live. | ||
| The day of the shooting, or within the 24 hours-ish time frame, Don got an email. | ||
| And this is an email where we get an appearance from an old friend of ours who likes to hide in the bushes. | ||
| Oh, no. | ||
| I think you know the guy. | ||
| Oh, Batman? | ||
| That's the guy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, boy. | |
| John Rappaport. | ||
| Hang up that picture, Rappaport. | ||
| He has sent an email to John Bowne, who then has forwarded it to a Don Salazar. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Exhibit number one, it should be coming up on your screen. | ||
| Do you see an email before you, Mr. Salazar, in the from line is Jonathan, john at infowars.com, to you? | ||
| Oh, yes. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| And do you see the date that that, this is Mr., whoever Jonathan is, and your testimony is that you don't know who that is? | ||
| That's probably John Bowne. | ||
| How do you spell his last name? | ||
| B-O-W-N-E. | ||
| And who is that? | ||
| He's a video producer. | ||
| Is he still there? | ||
| I think he works off-site, but I think he's still employed by free speech. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| And you knew who Mr. Rappaport was at the time, correct? | ||
| I was barely becoming familiar with him, yeah. | ||
| It's my first year there. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| And Mr. Bowne is forwarding you an email and an attached document that he received from Mr. Rappaport on the day of the shooting, correct? | ||
| It appears so, yes. | ||
| And if we scroll down, the document that was attached to the email is dated December 15, 2012. | ||
| And it says, here come the grief counselors over the hill pouring into Newtown, Connecticut. | ||
| Do you recall reading this piece by Mr. Rappaport? | ||
| No. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| Do you have any understanding, as you sit here today, without going through it, what it says? | ||
| No, no. | ||
| Do you have an understanding of what Mr. Rappaport's view was concerning the Sandy Hook shooting in the immediate aftermath? | ||
| No, I don't know what Mr. Rappaport's view was. | ||
| Do you know why Mr. Bowne forwarded you this email? | ||
| Probably because he thought it was interesting and thought I might find it interesting maybe to republish. | ||
| Do you know if this was republished by Infowars.com? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| It's a little weird. | ||
| It's a little weird. | ||
| I mean, Rappaport's an unhinged weirdo, so the idea that he's writing blogs questioning Sandy Hook the day of, or the next day. | ||
| Yeah, regular. | ||
| Yeah, that's to be expected. | ||
| Yeah, par for the course. | ||
| But, the idea that John Bowne has found this and thought, hey, you know who will enjoy this? | ||
| A Don Salazar. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| That is a little weird. | ||
| It definitely, if someone were to email me that. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| I would take offense. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That would be a problem. | ||
| That's why I don't think they would. | ||
| That would be a problem. | ||
| There's something about a Don that people know. | ||
| It's totally cool to send him weird shit about Sandy Hook. | ||
| Yeah, man. | ||
| I just feel like if I were in being deposed by anyone and they asked me a question and I gave my response and then they were like, okay, do you see this on your screen? | ||
| Point to Exhibit 1. My first response would be like, fuck! | ||
| Something went wrong with my answer. | ||
| How is that not your response, right? | ||
| Like, the moment they go, did you say this? | ||
| Bring this up. | ||
| You'd be like, well, obviously I didn't say that now. | ||
| Now I know that. | ||
| I didn't know that just a moment ago. | ||
| Oh, no. | ||
| Yeah, something! | ||
| But not Adon. | ||
| He sticks to his guns and is presenting the idea that he did not know in the immediate aftermath that they were going to cover it as if it were... | ||
| Really trying. | ||
| Really trying. | ||
| In the immediate aftermath of the shooting, that is the month following the shooting, is it fair to say that you understood that your coverage was going to frame Sandy Hook as a staged event? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Bye. | |
| I wouldn't say. | ||
| I didn't know that in the immediate aftermath now. | ||
| So your testimony is that in that first month, it was not your, you were not aware at that time or you did not have a view at that time. | ||
| InfoWars coverage of the event would frame it as a staged event. | ||
| Correct, yes. | ||
| So that is important in as much as we've now sort of laid the framework of what we're talking about when you say the immediate aftermath. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| We're talking about that month. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And I think that's helpful. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I don't believe Adan here, but... | ||
| I'm going to throw this out there. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| Adan, earlier in the deposition, says, why did I join InfoWars? | ||
| Aha! | ||
| 9-11 was an inside job. | ||
| Right. | ||
| So your very first moment of joining InfoWars is based entirely around something being a false flag. | ||
| True. | ||
| You knew exactly how they were going to fucking cover it. | ||
| You know that they're the false flag place. | ||
| They're the false flag people! | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| They're the one-stop shop for false flaggery. | ||
| Yeah, and I mean, you've just done Aurora. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Like, they have just done all of their coverage about how that was fake. | ||
| And you were listening. | ||
| We know. | ||
| No, you were working there. | ||
| Oh, yeah, exactly. | ||
| Yeah, that's right. | ||
| Oh, my God, yeah. | ||
| So it's a little bit tough pill to swallow. | ||
| Yeah, I'm not going to buy that one. | ||
| And especially because, you know, obviously he said that the interest they would have in reporting on this is based on seeing anomalies. | ||
| Of course. | ||
| And he started to see anomalies pretty fast. | ||
| Well... | ||
| In the immediate aftermath of the shooting, am I correct that... | ||
| You did become aware of what you consider to be certain anomalies. | ||
| Fair to say? | ||
| Yes, sir. | ||
| How is it that you became aware of those anomalies? | ||
| What did you do to discover them? | ||
| Objection. | ||
| I'm not sure if I received tips on emails or found videos on YouTube, but it was maybe a combination of the two. | ||
| In order to find videos on YouTube, you would have to search for something that you were looking for, correct? | ||
| Or a link is provided somehow by a social media or email. | ||
| Do you recall doing any affirmative work on your own to search YouTube or any other sites for anomalies? | ||
| No. | ||
| I didn't search the site. | ||
| I was probably provided with links to videos about it. | ||
| And you think those links may have come either through you viewing social media or through the writer's email, correct? | ||
| Right, or on Reddit, yeah. | ||
| Various places you can find links to YouTube, yes. | ||
| Were you looking for those things? | ||
| I wouldn't say I was looking for them, no. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Everything just fell into my lap, man. | ||
| All this information, these anomalies just kept popping up. | ||
| I wasn't doing anything looking for them. | ||
| They just, ah, out of nowhere, tips. | ||
|
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|
Yeah. | |
| Social media. | ||
| Yeah, I think this is the... | ||
| Who am I to not follow the story? | ||
| This is the first... | ||
| This is the only episode, I think, of our show where if you just put Liz in my chair, based on his descriptions of her job, she would be making... | ||
| She would be screaming. | ||
| I can't imagine anybody who works in media or journalism hearing this and not being offended. | ||
| Not being like, I will kill this world! | ||
| Nothing means anything anymore! | ||
| Right. | ||
| I'd rip my hair out. | ||
| There's so many people who have worked so hard and just in the trenches, grinding. | ||
| For one story. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Months! | ||
| Months of research! | ||
| They've got people who actually go out there, fact-checkers, everything, everything. | ||
| Yeah, or even people who do a lot of the behind-the-scenes stuff that facilitates good journalism and stuff. | ||
| I don't know, maybe I saw a link somewhere. | ||
| Somebody emailed me a link. | ||
| Maybe I was on Reddit. | ||
| Somebody emailed me a link so I get paid six figures. | ||
| But! | ||
| There's also emails that come in. | ||
| That's true. | ||
| Like from Rappaport. | ||
| Naturally. | ||
| Or this other email from Rappaport. | ||
| Uh-oh. | ||
| Do you see that this is an eight-page document and page one is an email from Jonathan to you with an indication that there is an attachment entitled Adam Lanza Mask? | ||
| Yes, I see that. | ||
| And you see that the email from Jonathan is a forwarded email again from Mr. Rappaport. | ||
| Yeah, it looks like it was sent from John Rappaport to John Bowne, and then John Bowne forwarded it to me. | ||
| Correct. | ||
| And the date that Mr. Bowne received it, I'm sorry, the date that Mr. Rappaport sent it to Mr. Bowne was December 16, 2012, correct? | ||
| I see that, yes. | ||
| Okay, that would have been two days after the shooting? | ||
| I believe so, yes. | ||
| And if you scroll down in the document, Again, similar to the last email we looked at, there is an attachment with a written piece that appears to be authored by Mr. Rappaport, correct? | ||
| Yes, sir. | ||
| And the title is Two Movies, Two Mass Murders. | ||
| Yes, I see that. | ||
| With a subtitle that says The Dark Knight Rises in The Hunger Games. | ||
| Okay, yeah. | ||
| Correct? | ||
| It doesn't look like it's the subtitle. | ||
| It looks like it's the lead sentence in this. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| All right, fine. | ||
| So Rappaport has sent this to Jon Bowne, and again, it seems like there's sort of a tunnel, a sort of pipeline. | ||
|
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|
Yes, it does seem like there's a very clear pipeline. | |
| Yeah, I mean, like, the first one that Jon Bowne sends me, and maybe if I'm not interested, I say, don't send me shit like that. | ||
| Weird, there's another one, like, the next day. | ||
| Kind of sounds like maybe this happens regularly. | ||
| Yeah, but look, you know, Adon doesn't know if he actually even read this. | ||
| Okay, you're not sure if you read this. | ||
| Fair to say? | ||
| Right, yes. | ||
| You eventually did develop an interest in the nexus between the movie The Dark Knight Rises and the Sandy Hook shooting, correct? | ||
| Yes, there was an interest in it, yes. | ||
| And it's possible that that interest may have been sparked by this particular piece, which I can scroll down, draws a connection. | ||
| Between the Batman movie, the Aurora shooting, and Sandy Hook. | ||
| My question to you is, it's possible that this particular email, which you received, sparked your interest in the nexus between the movie The Dark Knight Rises and the Sandy Hook shooting, correct? | ||
| It's possible. | ||
| I can't say for sure. | ||
| I don't know if I read this article at the time. | ||
| But in any event... | ||
| It appears that you received this email shortly after the shooting, correct? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| It's honestly too bad for Adan that he didn't read this article, because if he had, he could defend himself here. | ||
| The conspiracy that Adan spread about Sandy Hook and Batman had to do with the name Sandy Hook appearing on the map in the movie Dark Knight Rises. | ||
| That was in an article Rappaport wrote on December 18th, but the one from the 16th, which is being discussed here since it was forwarded to Adan, is actually about something else. | ||
| The Batman part of this has to do with the Aurora shooting happening at a screening of Batman, and the theories about James Holmes thinking he was the Joker. | ||
| In this article, Sandy Hook relates to The Hunger Games. | ||
| I'm just going to read you here some of John Rapoport's brilliant work. | ||
| Oh, please. | ||
| Quote, We now have the boggling connection to The Hunger Games. | ||
| In that sci-fi novel and film, 24 children are picked to take part in a competitive national blood sacrifice killing ritual. | ||
| One child survives at the end and 23 die. | ||
| 20 died in Newtown, and the author of The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins, lives in Sandy Hook next to Newtown. | ||
| And this means? | ||
| This is just the kind of bizarre and insane op secret societies are reputed to enjoy. | ||
| Ordinarily, I would ignore this sort of thing and just call it a coincidence, but it's too improbable. | ||
| I can't prove the killings in Newtown were part of a kind of op, but I can't disregard it either. | ||
| The quote coincidence is just too stunning. | ||
| And if the Hunger Games connection is... | ||
| I'm sorry, what? | ||
| The coincidence that Rappaport finds too stunning is that Suzanne Collins lives nearby and the number of children who were killed in the Hunger Games doesn't match the number dead at Sandy Hook. | ||
| But it's kind of close. | ||
| Plus or minus five. | ||
| Plus or minus five. | ||
| There's a margin of error. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| This is the kind of dumb shit that Rappaport was writing two days after the shooting that John Bowne thought it was worth sending to a Don who I almost guaranteed did read it. | ||
| He may think it's in his best interest to not know anything about the article in this deposition, but the idea that he wasn't interested in this, it just flies right in the face of everything I've been able to tell about him from his work. | ||
| Far more suspicious. | ||
| It's ridiculous. | ||
| I mean... | ||
| Fuck out of here. | ||
| I think I would have made it two sentences into that email before I would have thrown my computer out the window. | ||
| I'd have been like, get this away from me! | ||
| I think the computer is scary now! | ||
| Or I would have told John Bowne to stop sending me bullshit. | ||
| Look, if it says John Rappaport on it, I'm not interested. | ||
| How about that? | ||
| No, thank you. | ||
| Pass. | ||
| Yeah, do better, Bown. | ||
| Where's Thalen at? | ||
| Let's get him back in here. | ||
| So, Adan, he apparently is not only a receiver of emails, he's a sender of emails. | ||
| He sent an email to Melissa Melton, who is a former employee of InfoWars, on December 19th. | ||
| That's a little interesting. | ||
| Do you have this email before you, sir, which is an email from you to Melissa Melton? | ||
| On December 19th, 2012? | ||
| I see that here. | ||
| Who is Melissa Melton? | ||
| She was a previous employee. | ||
| And what was her role in InfoWars at the time? | ||
| Video producer slash, I guess she wrote some articles, so she was a partial editor. | ||
| And can you read the subject line, please? | ||
| It says, forward. | ||
| Connecticut Police Radio, purple band, masked men, one dressed as nun. | ||
| And can you read the text that you emailed to Ms. Milton? | ||
| Look at this, sent in from a reader. | ||
| Don't know if you caught the show that day, but a caller said a nun gained entry to the school. | ||
| And why did you share that information with Ms. Milton? | ||
| It looks like I was going off the email before it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, he's probably interested in the anomalies. | |
| So you were sending this to Ms. Melton because you were interested in the possibility that someone dressed as a nun had gained entry to the school on the day of the shooting? | ||
| More of the sharing of weird. | ||
| Weird tale. | ||
| It's a weird tale! | ||
| It's a weird tale! | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, sure, I thought it was true, but then when you said it out loud back to me, now I think it was a weird tale. | ||
| It's a weird tale. | ||
| It's a weird tale! | ||
| It's like that publication where Lovecraft's stories were originally published. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Submitted to the secret society. | |
| Okay, so you sent a weird tale to Melissa Melton about someone dressed as a nun gaining access to the school. | ||
| Obviously, this is because there was another shooter. | ||
| And that same day, something else happened at InfoWars. | ||
| This exhibit, does it appear to you, Mr. Salazar, to be a headline in the text of an article that was published on InfoWars.com on December 19th, 2012? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| This is the article you referenced earlier that I believe you attributed to a particular staffer, Aaron Dykes, correct? | ||
| Yeah, I think it was he that wrote this document. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Were you aware of this article at the time it was published? | |
| Only when it went up on the website. | ||
| I was aware of when the readers were. | ||
| And you read it at the time? | ||
| I'm pretty sure I did. | ||
| So here's something that Maddie might not know or just isn't bringing up that makes this all a bit suspicious. | ||
| These two clips that we just heard. | ||
| On the same day, December 19th, Adon is emailing Melissa Melton about a Sandy Hook conspiracy theory and Aaron Dykes is posting this article defaming Robbie Parker. | ||
| The connective tissue that's missing is that Aaron Dykes and Melissa Melton were a couple. | ||
| They ended up leaving InfoWars together and they started their own outlet called Truthstream Media and now have spoken pretty poorly about Alex but are still lunatic conspiracy theorists. | ||
| They're married now and Melissa has taken on Aaron's surname. | ||
| It seems difficult for me to imagine that you have Aaron actively posting this Sandy Hook conspiracy shit and Adon emailing his girlfriend other Sandy Hook conspiracy shit and that doesn't translate to a group of people intensely interested in Sandy Hook conspiracy shit. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That, to me, is something that doesn't pass the smell test. | ||
| I used to be pretty good at pool. | ||
| I used to be pretty good at pool. | ||
| And one time I was watching these two really, really good hustlers who accidentally wound up playing against each other. | ||
| Like, they fucked up. | ||
| They were so good. | ||
| After the first couple of games, they realized what was going on, and then they would just move so fast. | ||
| It'd be like if there were four balls left on the table that they think you could run those out, they'd just rip them off the table and they'd be like, next game, next game, like that. | ||
| If we were in this kind of high-level situation, I think Adan would have been like, all right, you got me on this one. | ||
| Next questions. | ||
| Let's go. | ||
| Next one. | ||
| We'll swipe these off the table. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm going to punt. | |
| You've won. | ||
| You've won this one. | ||
| I've got to play the next game, though. | ||
| I'm down a lot of money. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| I think that I would be very interested in that. | ||
| Piece of information being brought as a rebuttal. | ||
| You know they're a couple, right? | ||
| These two people that you're communicating with on the same day about conspiracy theories about Sandy Hook. | ||
| Or I guess Adan doesn't necessarily have a concrete proof that he was talking to Aaron Dykes about his article about Robbie Parker, but how many writers are there at the time? | ||
| Not many. | ||
| They all work in the same office. | ||
| I find it unbelievable that the two of them wouldn't have been, at least in some kind of context. | ||
| I would go so far as to call that an anomaly. | ||
| It is anomalous. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Should that be the case, that's anomalous. | |
| Ironically. | ||
| It sort of has the hint of a conspiracy. | ||
| Listen, I'll tell you what, that's a fact that doesn't jive. | ||
| That's for the truth. | ||
| So Adan also sent Paul Joseph Watson an email looking for tips about a Sandy Hook conspiracy article he was writing. | ||
| Do you have an email before you, sir, from you to Paul Joseph Watson? | ||
| Can I see that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| Balls off the table. | ||
| Next question. | ||
| You got me. | ||
| Can you read that for me, please? | ||
| Paul, if you have the time, can you take a look at the article I have pending publishing on the back end of Infowars? | ||
| I did a little bit of research into the Sandy Hook Batman coincidence, and I've come to the conclusion that Sandy Hook was substituted for another name on the map, a South Hinckley. | ||
| Maybe you've got some tips or something you'd like to add. | ||
| I think I should mention any article or a better headline. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thanks. | |
| Do you have a question about the article that you were referencing? | ||
| I think it's the one about Sandy Hook maps and stuff. | ||
| I mean, Batman maps. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| This is an article that you wrote in which you reported that a map that appears in the movie The Dark Knight Rises had a location that had been changed from South Hinckley to Sandy Hook, correct? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Do you know if Paul Watson ever got back to you on this? | ||
| I don't think he did. | ||
| He wasn't as interested in this story as I was. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Because we were pretty interested in this. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| That's revealing. | ||
| I mean, we already knew that Paul wasn't down with this shit, but like... | ||
| For you to say he wasn't as interested in it as I was, it belies like a real interest on your part, which doesn't look great. | ||
| So this is about December 20th. | ||
| Now here's where things got a little bit confusing for me, because there was an article posted on the 17th. | ||
| On InfoWars about the map in The Dark Knight Rises. | ||
| And then there's another article that's an update of it that's the one Adan is talking about, I believe. | ||
| I'm not sure if he wrote the original one on the 17th because they both have InfoWars.com as the writer. | ||
| There's no attribution. | ||
| But he said that he wrote the one and obviously he's emailing Paul about it. | ||
| So he wrote that one. | ||
| Presumably, I would think he wrote the first one too. | ||
| But who knows? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, that could have been just a... | ||
| Fuck, they could have stolen that one too. | ||
| Who knows? | ||
| Can't nail it down. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Who knows? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yep. | |
| But what we do know is that when it did get published, the 20th one, someone else got a little update about that. | ||
| Uh-oh. | ||
| This is an email from you to the Drudge Report, correct? | ||
| Oh, no. | ||
| Yes, Drudge and Drudge Report. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, no. | |
| And the subject line that you wrote was Bizarre Sandy Hook Dark Knight Rises Connection, correct? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| And you wrote, InfoWars has exposed that a section of Gotham City was renamed Sandy Hook in the latest Dark Knight release. | ||
| And you include a link to the story, correct? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| That was a story that you wrote? | ||
| That's the one I wrote, I believe, yes. | ||
| And that story was written and published six days after the Sandy Hook shooting, correct? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| And you then ask, Drudge will help us spread the news of this very strange coincidence, correct? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| So at this point, we have at very least, Infowars has a story about this Batman thing three days after the attack. | ||
| Then six days after the shooting, there's another one that Adan has written, and now he's trying to enlist the Drudge report to disseminate it more widely. | ||
| The argument that they weren't pushing a lot of this stuff and they weren't responsible for the spread of it, especially in the early days, it flies very out the window in terms of... | ||
| The size of the reach that InfoWars has at this time, their active courting of Drudge, the largest link aggregator in the right wing, maybe all of... | ||
| Yeah, at the time, it was like the biggest one. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| The internet. | ||
| So that, to me, is like really damning. | ||
| That email is pretty... | ||
| It's a bad look. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| I could not be deposed. | ||
| If you listen to the video of me being deposed, if this was me, it would just be like... | ||
| Don't read it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Come on. | |
| Oh, come on, man. | ||
| I know I sent it. | ||
| You know I sent it. | ||
| It's also fucked up because it's not like an interrogation where you can just confess. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, exactly. | |
| It just keeps going. | ||
| You can't just be like, I did it. | ||
| Let's just move on. | ||
| Make the trial fast. | ||
| Let's make it over. | ||
| Charge me whatever you want. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I did it. | |
| No, no, no. | ||
| We have more questions. | ||
| No, no. | ||
| Can't we be done? | ||
| Can I just go to jail instead of talk to you anymore? | ||
| So the reason that this is something that would be interesting to a Don Salazar, now you might imagine that the obvious answer is because if somebody... | ||
| Who worked on Batman, that had already come out, had changed the name of this place on the map to Sandy Hook as some kind of a message, and then later Sandy Hook happens, it would lead one to think, maybe they did that as a message. | ||
| There's this whole idea of predictive programming that is really big in Alex's coverage of stuff. | ||
| So the argument here, the shorthand, is very clear that it's trying to argue for foreknowledge. | ||
| There's no other way to... | ||
| Unless you're a Don, you could argue that it's not. | ||
| Is he going to argue that there was a psychic power? | ||
| No. | ||
| Just a coincidence, man. | ||
| Oh, well then, yeah! | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes! | |
| Mr. Salazar, the reason you were reporting on this is because the fact that a map location in The Dark Knight Rises had been changed to Sandy Hook caused you to suspect whether there had been some sort of advanced knowledge by somebody. | ||
| That the Sandy Hook shooting was going to take place, correct? | ||
| Injection. | ||
| I don't know if that was my belief at the time. | ||
| I just thought it was a very bizarre, strange coincidence that I thought needed to be highlighted. | ||
| Why did you think it needed to be highlighted? | ||
| And what relevance was it to your coverage? | ||
| I think it's relevant if the name of a map changes on a movie, you know, when it's supposed to be something else and then Sandy Hook. | ||
| It changes to Sandy Hook and then something happens. | ||
| A place called Sandy Hook in the same year that the movie was released. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And so help me explain why that is relevant. | ||
| It seems, and correct me if I'm wrong, that what you are inviting your audience to consider is that it's not a coincidence at all, correct? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Objection to form? | |
| I wasn't inviting the audience to consider that. | ||
| I was asking if... | ||
| Maybe they perhaps thought the coincidence was bizarre, too. | ||
| I think I'd point out the fact that the prop manager of the movie lived in Sandy Hook, maybe, in one of the articles over in Newtown, Connecticut, which is the same place the shooting took place. | ||
| I thought that was all bizarre coincidence, yes. | ||
| I wasn't trying to tell the readers that it was a staged false flag. | ||
| I was just trying to point out a bizarre coincidence. | ||
| Just so we're clear, here's the second paragraph of the article Adan wrote and sent to Drudge. | ||
| Quote, Since that, quote, minor coincidence, we've scoured the Batman movies and poured over various Gotham City maps to find anything that could support the theory that the movies may have had hints of foreknowledge of the tragic massacre that occurred last week, because where there's smoke, there's usually fire. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh my god. | |
| What we found is interesting, to say the least. | ||
| It seems like this isn't quite how he's describing his writing in this deposition. | ||
| Jesus Christ. | ||
| From the article, it sounds like they were studying these maps, searching for clues to prove that there was foreknowledge and that they found interesting stuff, and where there's smoke, there's usually fire. | ||
| Seems pretty overt in its point, I would say. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And Adan doesn't point out that the prop master was from Sandy Hook. | ||
| He does bring up that there's a Sandy Hook in New Jersey, but it's kind of a non sequitur between heavy insinuation of a conspiracy and then this. | ||
| Quote, for those who are left asking, why would someone do this? | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Alfred Pennyworth, butler to Bruce Wayne, says of an evil force in the Dark Knight movie, some men aren't looking for anything logical like money. | ||
| They can't be bought, bullied, reasoned, or negotiated with. | ||
| The article ends with this. | ||
| Oh my god. | ||
| Jess, any time I'm in a deposition, I just want to make sure that I've never written the word guarantee. | ||
| I'm such a fucking shithead. | ||
| That moment you say guarantee, you're fucked. | ||
| I think that it's an interesting approach that Adon is taking. | ||
| Because Maddie is asking, why is this relevant? | ||
| It's just something kind of interesting. | ||
| It's a weird coincidence. | ||
| But it's only a meaningful coincidence if you're trying to argue X, Y, or Z. Nope. | ||
| And this, when I told you about this being an incredibly frustrating kind of thing. | ||
| Are we going to be here for a while? | ||
| This seems to be a stumbling block. | ||
| There are difficulties in getting Adan to admit at all that he was making a point. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Adan, what do you do as a writer? | ||
| I just throw words out. | ||
| I just say, isn't this weird? | ||
| Whoa! | ||
| Whack-a-doodle-doo! | ||
| But then you read the article and I say, we have a scintillating revelation of a smoking gun tomorrow. | ||
| I guarantee! | ||
| So anyway, it's just coincidence. | ||
| It's really just pointing out coincidence. | ||
| Oh, okay. | ||
| That really is like, to the extent there would be any salience to the coincidence, it's that, right? | ||
| Define salience. | ||
| That the fact that a map location in a movie had been changed to the name of a place where a shooting later occurred could potentially be evidence that somebody involved in that movie had awareness that a shooting would later occur there. | ||
| Correct? | ||
| Objection. | ||
| I don't know what it signified. | ||
| I just thought it was a bizarre coincidence that people should maybe look into. | ||
| I highlighted it for the audience because I thought it was interesting and I thought they'd find it interesting as well. | ||
| It's just a bizarre coincidence. | ||
| It doesn't mean anything. | ||
| I didn't have any suspicions about this. | ||
| I wasn't trying to make a point. | ||
| Don, come on. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Uh-oh. | |
| Come on, man. | ||
| Unfortunately, he also had a Facebook account, and this happened. | ||
| I'm going to show you exhibit 8A. | ||
| You actually posted your article. | ||
| To Facebook, and that's Exhibit 8A before you, correct? | ||
| I see that, yes. | ||
| And contrary to the testimony you just gave, which is you were just pointing out the coincidence, you included commentary there that called the coincidence very fishy, correct? | ||
| Objection. | ||
| It looks like it says that. | ||
| Can you zoom in a little more? | ||
| Yeah, that's the problem. | ||
| Yeah, I put very fishy. | ||
| Which you meant to sow doubt about whether there was in fact foreknowledge on somebody's part of the shooting, correct? | ||
| I'm just pointing out that it's a bizarre coincidence. | ||
| I'm not trying to sow doubt. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Pointing out that it's fishy? | ||
| Yeah, it seems like I'm pointing out that it's a bizarre coincidence. | ||
| I don't know if I'm trying to sow doubt. | ||
| I think that Chris Maddy's delivery of that it seems fishy is just right on point. | ||
| Because that is the kind of thing that you could just repeat to somebody and you're shaming them. | ||
| It seems fishy? | ||
| I wasn't trying to sow doubt or make this look suspicious. | ||
| When you said it seems fishy? | ||
| Yeah, I think that's one of the moments where a doll probably didn't think like, well, you know, I didn't post anything on Facebook. | ||
| They don't have my Facebook. | ||
| It is such like, of course you're constantly surprised that they're bringing this up to you. | ||
| You didn't research the things you did. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And you're used to working with a bunch of ding-dongs who don't do anything. | ||
| They're not going to ask questions. | ||
| You don't understand, like, how a process of actual exploration might work. | ||
| I mean, it really does feel like he's like, how did you get that? | ||
| You know, like, no, it's public, man. | ||
| You can find it any time you want. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Crazy. | ||
| It was fishy mean. | ||
| Really. | ||
| It's more of an anomalous word, really. | ||
| Have you seen fish? | ||
| There's a lot of anomalous fish. | ||
| I'll tell you what, that fish doesn't jive. | ||
| So, the next day after this, Adon is working on another Sandy Hook conspiracy theory. | ||
| On December 21st, and this will be exhibit number 11, you latched onto A different anomaly. | ||
| Do you recall becoming aware that an online movie review of a movie entitled Sandy Hook Lingerie Party Massacre had been published in the days prior to the shooting? | ||
| Do you recall that? | ||
| Yes. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And you referenced an Exhibit 11 but have not shown it. | |
| Correct. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I have not. | |
| You recall, as you're sitting here without looking at an exhibit, becoming aware of and interested in the fact that somebody had published an online review of this movie before the Sandy Hook shooting, correct? | ||
| I don't know about the review, but I was aware of the movie or something. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Somehow it crossed my path. | |
| Probably some... | ||
| Dumb John Rappaport email. | ||
| Some dumb shit you saw on Reddit. | ||
| That lawyer should have been like when he was like, objection, you haven't shown Exhibit 11. And he's like, correct. | ||
| Oh, fuck. | ||
| That means Exhibit 11 is going to make my client look real dumb. | ||
| Oh, no. | ||
| Shit! | ||
|
unidentified
|
Uh-huh. | |
| Oh, so did you think that this movie was fishy? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| So, yeah, Don's working on this article about the lingerie party massacre, and there's some emails. | ||
| These have come up in other depositions where Don is emailing the guy who wrote the review, I believe, and discussing how, like, hey, you know, there's a bunch of people who are spreading a rumor. | ||
| But, you know, you were maybe at foreknowledge of the attack. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| And we think that's dumb. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But we're going to write it anyway. | ||
| Oh, no! | ||
| That's a bad idea. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So it's always fun when, in a deposition setting, you get to make someone read their own email. | ||
| Oh, don't make me read it. | ||
| And here's how it goes. | ||
| Don't make me read it. | ||
| And I'm going to scroll down to the beginning of the email. | ||
| And I'll just go down so everybody can see this one page. | ||
| And am I correct, sir, that you sent an email? | ||
| On December 21st, seven days after the shooting, to a Ms. Gonzalez. | ||
| Is that correct? | ||
| Mr. Gonzalez, yeah. | ||
| Mr. Gonzalez, I'm sorry. | ||
| Mr. Gonzalez. | ||
| And your email reads... | ||
| Actually, can you read it for me? | ||
| There is a vicious rumor that the date you posted your review of the Sandy Hook lingerie party massacre on your site, aslashabove.com. | ||
| Shows foreknowledge or prior planning of the events that have taken place as of late at first. | ||
| And I include two links. | ||
| At first, we thought this was surely ridiculous. | ||
| However, we're going to point it out in an article and we would like to give you the opportunity to provide a comment. | ||
| I'm sorry, I think you missed a word there. | ||
| You said we're going to point it out in an article anyway, right? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| I'm sorry. | ||
| Wonder if that's an intentional omission on his part of reading it, because the anyway there really is. | ||
| The anyway is the darkest word. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's a hinge word. | |
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| It is a word that shows, like, you're sending this person an admission that you don't even believe the shit you're going to post, but you're going to do it anyway. | ||
| Yeah, the anyway is a shiv to your gut. | ||
| Like, that is what the anyway is for. | ||
| But I don't understand what the goal would be of not reading the word. | ||
| I mean, it's there. | ||
| Well, because you don't want to read it, because the anyway really makes you sound like you just shivved somebody in the gut. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Maybe. | |
| It's a weird instinct. | ||
| Don't make me read my own email. | ||
| I mean, again, I can't be deposed. | ||
| The whiny voice, don't make me read it. | ||
| I would just say no, probably. | ||
| Yeah, you read it. | ||
| You do it. | ||
| Arrest me. | ||
| The email that he's sending. | ||
| That involves a notion of foreknowledge, because that's literally what he says in the email. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| So you might think that covering this story, as Adan does, is an attempt for him to cast dispersions on the reality of the shooting and imply that the audience maybe should consider that there's foreplanning, foreknowledge. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| Nah, man, he wasn't making a point at all. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm sorry, what? | |
| He wasn't making a point. | ||
| I'm sorry, what? | ||
| But the rumor that you were informing Mr. Gonzalez of was that the fact that he had posted the review sometime in advance of the Sandy Hook shooting could be evidence that he was aware the shooting would take place, correct? | ||
|
unidentified
|
All right. | |
| I believe that's what I was questioning. | ||
| And you thought that it was surely ridiculous at first, right? | ||
| Yes, yes. | ||
| Were you going to include it in an article anyway? | ||
| Because it was just another bizarre coincidence that I found interesting that I thought our readership would find interesting. | ||
| And the reason that you thought they would find interesting is because you were trying to highlight evidence for them suggesting that this was an event of which certain people had foreknowledge, correct? | ||
| Objection. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I wasn't particularly trying to highlight that there was an event that people had poor knowledge of, more so that I thought this was a weird anomaly that people should keep their eye on and maybe... | |
| Keep their eye- Eye on! | ||
| Uh-huh. | ||
| This is infuriating. | ||
| That is... | ||
| Wow! | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Fuck you! | ||
| This is kind of... | ||
| It reminds me a little bit of a child being like, I'm not hitting you, I'm not hitting you, getting right in your face. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Insane. | |
| This... | ||
| I mean, Jesus Christ. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| At a certain point, just be like, if you're gonna play dumb... | ||
| You're playing the wrong amount of dumb. | ||
| I think so. | ||
| This is dumb enough where I'm like, you're fucking playing. | ||
| You're an asshole. | ||
| You've got to go way too far if you're going to try. | ||
| You've got to be like... | ||
| Holy shit, that is the first time that I have thought of that connection. | ||
| I can't believe I didn't consider that. | ||
| Are you kidding me? | ||
| You know what? | ||
| Honestly, now that you've brought that up to me, that sounds like a crazy thing I did. | ||
| I'm so sorry. | ||
| Now, you know what? | ||
| It's weird that I completely unknowingly and accidentally speculated about that in the articles that you're asking me about. | ||
| It is crazy. | ||
| It is crazy. | ||
| That's wild. | ||
| Or, like, just, like, I don't know, have, like, an entirely open mind and be like, oh, yeah, that is what I was... | ||
| You're right, that doesn't make sense. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| I don't know. | ||
| Maybe that's a bad road to go. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, there's no way to go. | ||
| This one's just very dumb. | ||
| There's no good way to go, but this is bad. | ||
| So, Maddie asks Adan about, like, these anomalies and stuff. | ||
| And actually, this moment, it was revelatory for me because it was something that I'd never really thought about. | ||
| You yourself weren't convinced at this point that the evidence you were collecting established that... | ||
| Somebody other than Mr. Lanza had foreknowledge of the event, correct? | ||
| At the time, I was still trying to convince myself to put the pieces together. | ||
| You didn't report any of your coincidences to law enforcement, did you? | ||
| No. | ||
| I'd never thought about that. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| That if they took this stuff seriously, why wouldn't they tell somebody in law enforcement? | ||
| Why wouldn't they try to... | ||
| I mean, obviously, people don't believe any of this shit. | ||
| Right, right, right. | ||
| But, like... | ||
| That would be something that you'd probably have some kind of at least moral obligation to do if you took any of this seriously. | ||
| That's one of those things that when you're too close to stuff, you can't see it. | ||
| But if you step back and you look at that, that's so simple and it demolishes everything. | ||
| It's so simple. | ||
| It's so taken for granted by us because of how long we've been doing this, how much it's been repetitively borne out. | ||
| They don't take this seriously. | ||
| Yeah, we just know. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And so that isn't even, like, a consideration. | ||
| But yeah, you're right. | ||
| It just does, like... | ||
| What a great question. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| If you really thought this, wouldn't you have at least talked to somebody? | ||
| Yeah, because it's very, very serious. | ||
| Well, the implications of this are earth shattering. | ||
| So wouldn't you at least try? | ||
| Right. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And you can be like, well, no, because the whole system is going to be against you. | |
| But like, well, that's not an excuse to not try. | ||
| Are you guys that stupid? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Come on. | ||
| Come on. | ||
| Come on! | ||
| Come on! | ||
| So, this next clip. | ||
| I really enjoyed this clip. | ||
| It's a little longer, but it has to be. | ||
| And you were, at this time, aware that of allegations that one or more of the parents of Sandy Hook children were crisis actors, correct? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| I heard the rumor at that point, yes. | ||
| You heard the rumor. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Did you believe it yourself at that point? | |
| I didn't really go into that so much as everybody else did. | ||
| Could have been a factor, but I wasn't really interested in trying to figure out whether they were crisis actors or not. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You weren't interested in that? | |
| Not really, I didn't. | ||
| It didn't really matter to the case we were trying to make or prove or to any of the bizarre anomalies that I was writing about. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Can you let me know, and this will be exhibit number 12, why on January 6, 2013, you attempted to establish an account at crisisactors.org? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm not sure why. | |
| Maybe to look into people listed on the site or something? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I don't know. | |
| Okay. | ||
| You agree that exhibit number 12 is an email from Crisis Actors, that is a website, to you asking for you to verify your address so you can sign into the Crisis Actors website, correct? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Get the balls off the table. | ||
| Yeah, exactly! | ||
| About three weeks from the shooting, correct? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| But your testimony here today is that you don't know why you did that. | ||
| Well, it looks like I was trying to investigate, see if maybe one or maybe if they're listed as crisis actors on there. | ||
| I don't know what. | ||
| I was just trying to, you know, any avenue I can possibly investigate. | ||
| I wanted to do my due diligence. | ||
| I see. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| Your assumption is that you were trying to gain access to the site. | ||
| In the hope that you might be able to see if any of the crisis actors appearing on the website were the same as individuals who were family members of Sandy Hook victims, correct? | ||
| At the time, it looks like I was trying to figure out if any of the people involved in the Sandy Hook event were crisis actors. | ||
| That's what appears, yes. | ||
| Including family members, correct? | ||
| I'm not sure. | ||
| Could have been anybody. | ||
| I might have been looking into some guy that was, you know, just interviewed. | ||
| You know what? | ||
| And what were the results of your query of the Crisis Actors website? | ||
| Honestly, I cannot tell you because I do not remember. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Really important information I got from that. | ||
| Yeah, got some expose-level stuff. | ||
| And Maddie makes another great point after that, and that is like, well, I mean, if you'd gone on there and found somebody that was one of the Sandy Hook people, you probably would have reported that, right? | ||
| Would have. | ||
| Kind of, the fact that you didn't kind of shows that maybe you didn't. | ||
| And you didn't report to your audience that you didn't find anything. | ||
| Did you? | ||
| Nope. | ||
| It appears that you said earlier today that you did not know why that assassin killed your wife. | ||
| Now, do you know why the day before you signed up for CanAnAssassinKillMyWife.org? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I mean, look, it was a long time ago. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I think I was just looking to see how assassins are doing these days. | ||
| Are they making good money? | ||
| What's their world like? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I've always wanted to interview an assassin. | ||
| And as far as the day before it goes, I think that's just a bizarre coincidence. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Totally. | |
| I gotta go. | ||
| Oh my god. | ||
| That's so fucking terrible. | ||
| Yeah, but that's a pure comedy moment. | ||
| I wasn't really that interested in the Crisis Act or stuff. | ||
| Three weeks after the shooting, you tried to join CrisisActors.org. | ||
| Yeah, well, I guess I did do that. | ||
| There's just so many, so many stepping on a rake moments. | ||
| It's bananas. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| So there's another conspiracy that was going around, and that has to do with the idea that there was a fundraiser for Sandy Hook that was published before the shooting. | ||
| Right, right, right, right. | ||
| And so Adan has to address this. | ||
| On January 13th, well, you agree that you are the recipient of this email? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| And the sender, Sean Knoll, do you know who that is? | ||
| I do not. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| The sender, Sean Knoll, in this email is encouraging you to go to a link where, according to the link, a Sandy Hook relief fund page appeared three days before the shooting, correct? | ||
| Yeah, that's what Mr. Knoll seems to be pointing out in this email. | ||
| Did you do anything to investigate that? | ||
| I might have clicked the link. | ||
| I can't recall. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| and showing you exhibit number 13A. | ||
| Fair to say that this is an image of your Facebook account in which you shared the post concerning this issue of a Sandy Hook fundraising page being created three days before the shooting. | ||
| Yes, sir. | ||
| And you did that on January 11th, 2013, right? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Oh, boy. | ||
| Again, you didn't do anything to investigate whether, in fact, a relief fund had been created three days before the shooting. | ||
| You just posted the link, right? | ||
| I posted a link to Natural News on my Facebook, yes. | ||
| And you did that because, as you say, this was another Coincidence, right? | ||
| Is that how you felt? | ||
| The Google thing I wasn't too sure about. | ||
| Since I knew a little bit about how Google worked, I wasn't so ready to follow that. | ||
| How much do you know about how Google works? | ||
| Anomaly. | ||
| You were prepared to post about it, but you weren't going to write an article about it, right? | ||
| I was prepared to post. | ||
| Post it on Facebook for other people that might find it interesting, yeah. | ||
| So that's interesting because he's willing to spread this bullshit that he knows is bullshit. | ||
| Yeah, he knows that this is nonsense, but he's still more than willing to put it out as if it is. | ||
| Now, the interesting thing is that was a fun trap because you've got this email where this guy is sending him an email on... | ||
| January 13th. | ||
| And he's like, did you research this at all? | ||
| Maybe I clicked the link. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
|
unidentified
|
He posted about it on Facebook two days prior. | |
| That's fucking... | ||
| Ooh, that's not good. | ||
| No. | ||
| Ooh. | ||
| Oh, that's bad. | ||
| There's a decent chance that this guy is emailing him about the article that Adan had posted on his Facebook. | ||
| That same article might have been what spurred this email. | ||
| Jesus. | ||
| And he'd already admitted that he didn't look into it. | ||
| He didn't research it. | ||
| I mean, one of the little pet peeves that I have, especially in situations like this, is whenever it's like, you can't say it seems like that's what he's doing. | ||
| I'm giving you a... | ||
| Thing that happened in the past that cannot be changed anymore. | ||
| It is done. | ||
| So this does not seem like he says this. | ||
| He said this, correct? | ||
| Seems like it. | ||
| So when they were talking about the Batman article that Don had written, he said that he thought he mentioned that the prop master was from Newtown. | ||
| And that was not true. | ||
| He had mentioned that the New Jersey, there's an island, Sandy Hook. | ||
| The reason that Adam thought that he brought up the prop master is because this became another big conspiracy for him. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh. | |
| So basically, the argument or the theory that goes around is that this guy, Scott Getzinger, is the name of the prop master. | ||
| He died in a car wreck. | ||
| Prior to the release of the movie and prior to Sandy Hook. | ||
| Right. | ||
| So the theory that people had was that he was responsible for changing the name to Sandy Hook. | ||
| And that's why they killed him. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| Because he knew too much. | ||
| Right, right, right. | ||
| Which sort of raises the question of why it was still in the movie. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, if they knew that he did it, but they also killed him for it, and then they left it in anyways? | ||
| Right. | ||
| That seems silly. | ||
| And it appears that Adan was pretty... | ||
| Into this conspiracy. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And so this is discussed a little bit here, and I don't know. | ||
| He just can't. | ||
| Don is boring as a dodger, let's say. | ||
| This is, am I correct, Mr. Salazar, another email that you sent this one to Elliot Brown? | ||
| Yes, sir. | ||
| And you see that it's dated there January 28, 2013? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| And in this email, you are asking him if he's free for an honest journalist's question, correct? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| And you're referring to yourself there, correct? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Even he laughed at that! | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| Even he laughed at that! | ||
|
unidentified
|
Exactly. | |
| Fuck you! | ||
| Fuck you! | ||
| And in the body of the email, you ask him about The change in the title of the map in Dark Knight Rises. | ||
| And you ask him about this gentleman, Scott Getzinger, who was the prop master, according to you, who passed away in a car accident, correct? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| And so does this situate you in time, that the time when you were inquiring about The death of Scott Getzinger was in January of 2013. | ||
| Yes, it looks like. | ||
| And the coincidence that you were referring to, and we'll go back to your, we'll go back to exhibit number 14. This is the email to Health Ranger Direct, was that Mr. Getzinger was associated with the movie The Dark Knight Rises. | ||
| And he was killed in a car crash and lived in Newtown, Connecticut, correct? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| And you say what struck me as extremely odd is that this dude hailed from, you guessed it, Newtown, Connecticut, right? | ||
| Right. | ||
| And then you say at the end, definitely something fishy about it all. | ||
| What was fishy about the fact that Somebody associated in the props department with the Dark Knight Rises was from Newtown and had died in a car accident. | ||
| Objection to form. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Uh, I thought it was very odd in the same year that this movie is put out and Sandy Hook has changed on a map and something happens at a place called Sandy Hook. | |
| And what you were suggesting were you... | ||
| Was that Mr. Getzinger's death was somehow due to the fact that he had knowledge about why the map had been changed. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Objection. | |
| Honestly, I did not have like a theory as to why Getzinger was, if he was murdered or killed or why he died in the car accident. | ||
| So I didn't really have an answer, but it did seem like a strange anomaly worth pointing out. | ||
| So, there is this infuriating thing where it's just... | ||
| The way that Adan is presenting what Infowars does is like, I guess we're just a journalistic or media outlet where we post weird coincidences that mean nothing. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's... | ||
| I find to be an offensive... | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Just sort of characterization. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's silly. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's fishy. | ||
| Adan. | ||
| Adan. | ||
| You are theoretically... | ||
| A writer. | ||
| And you're trying to insist to me that words don't have meaning. | ||
| This is a problem. | ||
| More or less. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| And so, Matty makes this point, and I think that this is important, and that is that coincidences don't mean anything unless there's a point to them. | ||
| No! | ||
| You'd agree with me that if something is a mere coincidence, meaning just happenstance, And there's nothing to note about it, correct? | ||
| There's no relevance to noting it, right? | ||
| Objection. | ||
| Well, there are big coincidences and little coincidences. | ||
| I think some of the big coincidences deserve to be noted. | ||
| Small ones probably not. | ||
| And the reason they deserve to be noted or investigated is because they signify that it may not be a coincidence at all, correct? | ||
| Objection. | ||
| I'm not sure what the coincidence would point to, honestly. | ||
| It's just something that people have to look into on their own. | ||
| What is relevant if it points to something? | ||
| Right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Objection? | |
| Not necessarily. | ||
| I think coincidences can be highlighted without them having a point to them yet. | ||
| So your testimony is that when you're highlighting what you refer to as these coincidences, you are... | ||
| Not intending to suggest anything about what they signify. | ||
| That's your testimony? | ||
| I'm trying to tell the reader that this is going on, and it's kind of weird. | ||
| What do you think about it? | ||
| I think at the bottom of one of my articles, I'm like, what do you think? | ||
| Sound off in the comments below. | ||
| So, just kind of bringing this to people's attention. | ||
| It's just, what value is there to coincidence? | ||
| That's the question you have to ask yourself. | ||
| I mean... | ||
| I think at that point I'd be like, Mr. Salazar, I am now going to bounce a tennis ball off your forehead every time you say something about your job that's pants-shittingly insane. | ||
| What are you talking about? | ||
| Just coincidences, man. | ||
| What are you talking about? | ||
| I mean, you know, that time that Infowars ran a huge expose about how Carmen Electra's birth name was Tara Patrick and she couldn't use that name because it was already a porn star's name. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Isn't that an interesting coincidence? | |
| That's a big coincidence, so we investigate that one. | ||
| Not one of those little coincidences. | ||
| Right, I mean, it's like, do you really think, like, maybe you would run an article about how some people have the same middle name? | ||
| I mean, what do you understand the word coincidence to mean? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| No, there can't be, I mean, I understand what you mean by big coincidences, little coincidences, but that is not a description of their meaningfulness. | ||
| That's insane! | ||
| Yeah, I'm not sure you do know what he means by big or little coincidence, because I'm not sure I do. | ||
| Now that you say it like that, I know what I would mean by saying that, but what he means, I do not know. | ||
| And I certainly feel for Chris Maddy quite a bit, because there is just a real attempt to be like, come on, you're making a point. | ||
| There's a point that you're trying to make. | ||
| Words have to have meaning. | ||
| And Adon will not go for it. | ||
| God damn it. | ||
| Isn't it true, Mr. Salazar, that the reason you're... | ||
| Highlighting what you claim are coincidences is because you want your audience to suspect that something like Sandy Hook, in fact, did not occur as has been reported. | ||
| Isn't that your purpose? | ||
| Objection. | ||
| My purpose is to point out the coincidences and let the reader make up their own minds. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You have no interest then. | |
| And suggesting to the reader what the relevance of the coincidence might be. | ||
| That's your testimony? | ||
| I think I present the evidence. | ||
| I gather it for them and allow the reader to make up their own mind. | ||
| So we have one sort of coda here of the Sandy Hook prop portion. | ||
| And so we'll ride this out here. | ||
| And then this is exhibit number 16. This is your Facebook page, correct, Mr. Salazar, in which you are posting on February 6, 2013, less than two months from the shooting, something from Intel Hub concerning Sandy Hook, and you post Google Scott Getzinger, correct? | ||
| Oh, my God. | ||
| And that's because you wanted people to... | ||
| Discover the same nexus that you believed you had discovered between Mr. Getzinger's death, the map in The Dark Knight Rises, and the Sandy Hook shooting, correct? | ||
| Yes, I was pointing people to the anomaly. | ||
| The anomaly which you've testified had absolutely no significance to you, correct? | ||
| Objection. | ||
| I think I said it had no significance. | ||
| I think I said it was a bizarre coincidence that people should be aware of. | ||
| But that did not signify anything to you, correct? | ||
| Well, it didn't signify that it was a staged mass shooting, but it did signify something very bizarre. | ||
| Bizarre coincidence. | ||
| What did it signify? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It was just a bizarre coincidence that needed to be found out. | |
| For what purpose? | ||
| I'm not going to let this go, man. | ||
| So they could investigate it on their own? | ||
| So they could investigate it on their own and potentially discover that, in fact, it wasn't a coincidence at all, but that Mr. Getzinger had been killed so as to silence him because he was aware that the change in the Sandy Hook map signified some advanced knowledge of the shooting, correct? | ||
| Objection. | ||
| I'm not sure what they would discover. | ||
| Honestly, it was... | ||
| Very strange, though, kind of putting it out there. | ||
| You just wanted them to Google it, right? | ||
| I wanted them to Google Scott Gensinger and see all the anomalies, yes. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| Just see what happens. | ||
| Just Google it. | ||
| See what you find. | ||
| Maybe you'll find some of his other work from his storied career in other movies, like The Truman Show. | ||
| Maybe that's a good reason to Google him, you know, to see the work that he's done over the course of his career. | ||
| Yeah, what's his IMD page like? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Oh, boy. | ||
| I mean, it's infuriating. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| I don't know Chris Maddy personally as a no... | ||
| Some of the Texas attorneys. | ||
| But I get the sense that maybe he enjoys that back and forth a little bit. | ||
| It does seem a little bit like that. | ||
| There is a like, aha! | ||
| How about this one? | ||
| How about we try these words? | ||
| So there is a meaning to this for you. | ||
| It's a coincidence that people should look into. | ||
| Look into and find what? | ||
| Come on, man! | ||
| Alright, you're not gonna... | ||
| Okay, frontal assault isn't gonna work for you. | ||
| I'm gonna go around the back. | ||
| Let's see. | ||
| Okay. | ||
|
unidentified
|
All right. | |
| So a lot of this stuff is fairly annoying, certainly. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| But there is some positivity that comes in. | ||
| Unfortunately, it's positivity in the worst possible way. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| You received an email, did you not, on March 7th of 2013 from Daniel DuPont. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| And Mr. DuPont wrote to you, please stay on top of the story. | ||
| No names of deceased to be released, etc. | ||
| The attack appears to be completely staged. | ||
| The public knows that they are being lied to. | ||
| And you wrote back to him, thank you for the encouragement. | ||
| Jesus Christ! | ||
| Come on, man! | ||
| Come on! | ||
| YouTube video that Infowars had published in January, correct? | ||
| Yeah, it looks that way. | ||
| Boy, I would regret responding to a random email like that at this point. | ||
| Like, that would be like, I didn't have to write back to that. | ||
| He didn't give us a true moment, though. | ||
| A true moment of comedy where he was like, yeah, I don't think I read that one. | ||
| And he's like, let's see the reply that you sent to them. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Oof. | ||
| Oof, oof, oof. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| So now we finally get to conversation about Wolfgang Halbig and his role in all of this and how Adon first learned about him. | ||
| One of the articles you wrote introduced the Infowars audience to Wolfgang Halbig, correct? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| How did you first learn of Mr. Halbig? | ||
| I heard he was interviewed, and I went and listened to the interview on American Free Press. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Do you remember the interview? | |
| Not sure. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Not sure. | |
| Do you recall when that was? | ||
| No. | ||
| I'd have to look at the date on the article. | ||
| Let me show you what has been marked as Exhibit 19B. | ||
| Do you see an email from Tom Bastien to you? | ||
| Tom Bastien. | ||
| Could you bet this guy? | ||
| And yes. | ||
| If legit, ask Alex to bring him on as a guest. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| Do you know who Tom Bastien is? | ||
| I have no idea. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| And you understood Mr. Bastian to be asking you to vet Wolfgang Halbig, correct? | ||
| Yes, it looks like that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So, in 2014? | |
| Yes, sir. | ||
| Okay, but you don't know who Bastian is? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No. | |
| So this interview on the American Free Press was released on February 11th, 2014. | ||
| So the email from Bastien asking Adan to vet him came the next day. | ||
| It's probably not unreasonable to assume that Adan heard about the interview from this email, unless he was closely monitoring everything put out by the AFP. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| It's really good that Adan seems to not know who did that interview, because if he did, he'd have to say that it was Dave Geharry, a friend of David Dukes, who actually was the publisher of Jim Fetzer's book, Nobody Died at Sandy Hook. | ||
| Ooh, Nazi shit. | ||
| Well, and the guy who published that book that you're not supposed to really know all that much about. | ||
| He was the guy who was interviewing Wolfgang Halbig that brought Halbig to the attention of... | ||
| Oh, man. | ||
| Of InfoWars. | ||
| Oh, boy. | ||
| Actually, I was looking around on Geharry, and he recently has made some comments about, like, I think I might be responsible for Alex and Wolfgang Halbig getting sued. | ||
| Yeah, maybe. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah, yeah. | |
| That's possible. | ||
| It could be you. | ||
| Even leaving aside who this interviewer was, American Free Press is a rag that was founded by Nazi and general white supremacist Willis Cardo, which has a strange trend of Holocaust deniers as writers, so it's not a great sign that this is where Adan was cruising to get new guests, particularly ones he's going to use to inflict severe trauma on the parents of murdered children. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Maybe do better. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| That's not good. | ||
| I would, a tip for depositions. | ||
| Ask how many exhibits there are. | ||
| Get as much information as you can beforehand. | ||
| And in fact, I would say even prepare. | ||
| Because then when you go in... | ||
| See, this goes back to the first clip. | ||
| Prepare a little more. | ||
| You don't run into this, now let's go to Exhibit 19 shit. | ||
| You know what exhibits are coming. | ||
| That's what's important. | ||
| That's my pro tip. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| Pro tip. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Or, like, just be aware that you tried to sign up for CrisisActors.org before you say, I wasn't interested in Crisis Actors. | ||
| You really gotta know what websites you signed up for that are exactly the thing that you shouldn't have. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So, Don, having heard this American Free Press interview, he felt the need to vet Wolfgang Hallberg. | ||
| showing you exhibit 19 again. | ||
| Where Mr. Halbig says down here in this paragraph, I think it's a scripted event that took place. | ||
| planning for maybe two, two and a half years. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Okay. | ||
| And that was Mr. Halbig's allegation, correct? | ||
| Yes. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Now, the idea that a mass shooting at which 20 children were killed and six educators were killed Have been scripted and planned for two and a half years in advance is a serious charge, correct? | |
| Correct. | ||
| And you knew it was a serious charge at the time. | ||
| Serious charge, yes. | ||
| And that's why you felt like you needed to establish Mr. Halbig's credentials, right? | ||
| Objection. | ||
| I think it's good to establish anyone's credentials if you're writing about them. | ||
| But you'd agree with me that you did not do that in every article in which you reported what somebody else was saying, correct? | ||
| I don't check credentials for everybody I write about, yes. | ||
| But you did for Mr. Halsey? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| And the reason you did it is because you knew that these allegations were particularly serious. | ||
| Objection. | ||
| I thought he was bringing to the table some important information that only a school safety consultant could provide. | ||
| Did it occur to you how families who had lost loved ones at Sandy Hook would react to an allegation that, in fact, their children were murdered in an event that was scripted and planned over two and a half years? | ||
| Did that occur to you? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Objection. | |
| I didn't. | ||
| Think about that. | ||
| Hey, why would you? | ||
| Yeah, I mean, they're not real. | ||
| They're not real people. | ||
| See, I am in Austin, Texas working for Infowars, and they are not there. | ||
| Right. | ||
| It's solipsism. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| Also, people might have heard what sounded like a gasp. | ||
| That was you hiccuping. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You did not have... | ||
| I did not gasp. | ||
| I hiccup. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So, the vetting process, pretty light. | ||
| Almost like the vetting process to get hired at Infowars, it turns out. | ||
| There are parallels here. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You Googled it? | |
| Other than visiting the website, which you acknowledge Mr. Halbig may have put up himself, and reviewing the interview, did you do anything further to investigate the claims that he made relating to the threatening conduct of law enforcement officers and the scripted nature of the Sandy Hook event? | ||
| No, I didn't. | ||
| I just published what he said in the interview. | ||
| Wise. | ||
| And you're aware that shortly after you published this article, Mr. Halbig appeared on the InfoWars broadcast. | ||
| You're aware of that? | ||
| I think I recall, yeah. | ||
| Probably a coincidence. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Bizarre. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So, he did a little looking around. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| Looked at a website that maybe Halbig put up himself. | ||
| Yeah, well, I mean. | ||
| Listened to that interview. | ||
| If it's on the internet, you can trust it. | ||
| Unless it's the mainstream media. | ||
| He said, bingo, let's go. | ||
| Let's do it. | ||
| This looks good. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And then, a guy named Robert Heath sent an email to InfoWars that said, hey, this guy looks shady. | ||
| Maybe check into his credentials a little bit. | ||
| Yeah, maybe don't do this. | ||
| And Adon wrote back to him and said, hey man, it looks like he's got plenty of credentials. | ||
| Oh my god. | ||
| You're being too unspecific. | ||
| Oh my god. | ||
| And so Heath wrote him back and had a long list of things that were of concern. | ||
| Right. | ||
| We've talked about this on a bunch of the deposition episodes because it's come up in... | ||
| The corporate reps and with Alex. | ||
| And so I didn't want to play it all over again. | ||
| But we got this discussion about the email here. | ||
| So Mr. Heath followed up in his email to you with the results of inquiry he had made online about Mr. Halbert's past, correct? | ||
| Appears that way, yes. | ||
| And it seems as though he did According to his email, quite a bit more than you did to investigate Mr. Halbig's background, correct? | ||
| I wouldn't say he did more, but it looks like he did ample research. | ||
| Well, all you did was visit one website that Mr. Halbig himself may have created, correct? | ||
| He may have created it. | ||
| I think I did a little bit more searching, but I think it was mainly based off of that one website. | ||
| Okay, your testimony earlier today was that it was just the website. | ||
| Are you expanding that now to testify that you think you may have done other searches? | ||
| Objection. | ||
| I don't recall what kind of searches I did for Mr. Halbig's information other than that website, but it's possible that I did do more research other than what I stated I did. | ||
| I'd like to stipulate that I might have done something. | ||
| Yeah, that makes you look way better. | ||
| Ah, I did this bad thing, but I might have done... | ||
| I will say that if I were in a Don's position and the lawyer asks... | ||
| Is it fair to say that this random guy emailing you did more work than you on the story you're doing? | ||
| If my lawyer didn't then object, I'd be furious. | ||
| That would be a position where I would... | ||
| You're getting fired. | ||
| You're getting hanging out to dry. | ||
| That's what's happening if your lawyer's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, answer that question, buddy. | ||
| So these emails come in warning about Halbig's credentials. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And as it turns out, Halbig just kept coming back on the show. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Did Mr. Heath's email to you, in which he expressed concern that he was not able to find information concerning Halbig's activities, professional activities, caused you to question whether Mr. Halbig could be relied upon? | ||
| I think the appointees bring it up are valid. | ||
| Yeah, I think it probably maybe made me question. | ||
| I can't recall how I felt at the time. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| In fact, you don't even recall receiving this email, correct? | ||
| It's been so long. | ||
| It's been nine years. | ||
| So, no, I definitely don't recall receiving this email. | ||
| And you don't recall whether you raised Mr. Heath's concerns with anybody else at InfoWars. | ||
| Is that correct? | ||
| I don't recall doing that either. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| If you had, do you suspect you would have forwarded Mr. Heath's email along to whoever you wanted to notify about it? | ||
| Yes, I probably would have, yes. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| And whatever you may have done or not done in response to this email, Mr. Halbig continued to appear on InfoWars after March 15, 2014, correct? | ||
| I believe that's the case, yes. | ||
| And you don't recall whether you did any additional vetting of Mr. Halbig yourself in response to receiving this email, correct? | ||
| I don't believe I did any vetting after this email now. | ||
| Wow, that certainly shows that you care. | ||
| Ah, Mr. Metty, I think you misunderstood our process here. | ||
| You see, what we did was we used him because his narrative... | ||
| We bolstered our own credibility, and that was so we could make money. | ||
| Oh, no, now I see why we're in trouble. | ||
| Yeah, that makes sense. | ||
| And honestly, at the time, we kind of figured that if anybody was going to get in trouble, it would be him. | ||
| Yeah! | ||
| Yeah, we thought we were off the hook. | ||
| Yeah, we kind of thought we were going to be able to throw him under the bus. | ||
| I'm going to throw this out here. | ||
| Screwed up. | ||
| We're not good at law. | ||
| I mean, based on their choice of lawyers. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Real bad at law. | ||
| Yeah, fine. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So there is clear evidence that there were people who were raising concerns that Adan had heard, because he did respond to that email. | ||
| Yeah, that's an issue. | ||
| About Wolfgang Halbig's credibility. | ||
| But there were other people, maybe even Infowars employees, who were saying, you gotta be careful here. | ||
| Other than Mr. Heath, did anybody else ever warn you about relying on Mr. Halbig in your reporting on Sandy Hook? | ||
| Maybe. | ||
| I can't recall. | ||
| Possibly. | ||
| Do you know an individual named Robert Jacobson? | ||
| Yes, Robert Jacobson. | ||
| How do you know Mr. Jacobson? | ||
| He was a video producer for Alex. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| Did your work intersect at Infowars? | ||
| He was down the hall from me, so once in a while we'd chat. | ||
| When did he leave Info Wars, do you recall? | ||
| Maybe 2017 or 2018? | ||
| Somewhere around there, I don't know. | ||
| And was he at Info Wars when you started in 2012? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Okay, so you were colleagues for five, six years? | ||
| Yes, sir. | ||
| Did you have a friendly relationship with Mr. Jacobson? | ||
| Yes, I did. | ||
| Are you in touch with him today? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I mean, not really, but do you communicate with him? | |
| I don't. | ||
| Did Mr. Jacobson ever advise you of his concerns about relying on Mr. Halbig as a source for reporting that Sandy Hook was a scripted event? | ||
| Mr. Jacobson I think did raise concerns, but I didn't really regard them because Mr. Jacobson has some wild. | ||
| Theories about a lot of things. | ||
| Oh, he does! | ||
| He has wild theories. | ||
| Amazing. | ||
| Wild theories! | ||
| Just amazing. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Truly an incredible thing for a human being to say in the context within which he's telling it. | ||
| Yeah, he's telling me that maybe I shouldn't listen to this wacko about Sandy Hook being fake, but I don't listen because he's got weird theories. | ||
| He's a wacko! | ||
| Mic down for this because we get into what those theories are. | ||
| Oh, no! | ||
| And this is really unfortunate for Adan. | ||
| Your testimony is that Mr. Jacobson raised concerns about Mr. Halbig's credibility, but that you ignored those concerns because he tends to have wild ideas? | ||
| Yeah, he thinks Michelle Obama is a man, so, I mean, for one. | ||
| And you've actually posted on your own social media suggesting that Michelle Obama is a man, haven't you? | ||
| I've gone along with that conspiracy theory, yes. | ||
| You've actually posted a picture of Mr. and Mrs. Obama kissing and saying, essentially, Happy Gay Pride Day, correct? | ||
| I might have done that. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I don't remember. | ||
| So I guess you don't think that Mr. Jacobson's view of that is quite as wild, right? | ||
| I think I entertain the theory, but I don't espouse the theory. | ||
| In any event, you discounted Mr. Jacobson's warning because you believe he held views like that. | ||
| Mr. Jacobson wasn't completely credible in my opinion, but he did give the warning and I didn't think much of it, honestly. | ||
| So the best way you can really interpret this, and I mean, otherwise it's something that I couldn't even imagine translating, but the best way I can figure is what Adan is saying is that... | ||
| Rob actually believes this thing. | ||
| Whereas I'm willing to post this trolling shitpost meme about it in order to push my transphobic and homophobic ideology. | ||
| I'm willing to use something that I don't even come close to believing because it spreads the hate that I want to spread. | ||
| Whereas Rob is crazy because he actually believes this. | ||
| That's as close to making sense of this as I can. | ||
| Yeah, it does appear that he is saying that Rob is crazy for believing the things that I say. | ||
| Yeah, the things that we promote and make money off of, he might actually believe this stuff, and that's worrying. | ||
| So, see, the thing is, you gotta see, see, Mr. Matty, the thing you gotta know is none of us actually believe the shit that we say. | ||
| And Rob does. | ||
| So that guy's crazy. | ||
| I was invested in spreading Sandy Hook conspiracy theories and implying that it's fake because I needed to attack the event as a way to get around the obligation to make arguments in favor of guns being everywhere. | ||
| Because of the liberals. | ||
| I have a kind of second-order interest in it, whereas I'm actually just manipulating the audience into thinking these things are real, these concerns are real. | ||
| Again, in order to make money. | ||
| Rob kind of believes this stuff. | ||
| Wow! | ||
| It seems like that's one of the readings you could make of this. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's the only one that makes sense. | |
| Well, there's another one, I think, and that is that it's another rake in the face, and you're just sort of punch drunk from the rake. | ||
| You're like, I don't fucking know. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah, yeah. | |
| How am I supposed to respond to this? | ||
| What am I going to say? | ||
| Right. | ||
| Why didn't I listen to this guy's warning? | ||
| Because I didn't. | ||
| What do you want? | ||
| Well, no, and how would Adan expect that Matty has knowledge of this thing he posted on Facebook? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right, right, right. | |
| He didn't expect that. | ||
| No, of course not. | ||
| He thought he was going to get away with saying something that would be offensive to most people, this belief that Rob allegedly has, and then they'd be like, oh, that is a crazy idea that Rob has. | ||
| Maybe you have demonstrated that he is not trustworthy. | ||
| But instead, he gets confronted with, you believe the same thing. | ||
| I mean, it's just amazing. | ||
| It's just amazing for a human being to be. | ||
| And it's even more amazing because... | ||
| Rob, when he was there, raising these concerns about Wolfgang, Adan decided that the best course of action would be to make fun of him. | ||
| Oh my god. | ||
| Your general recollection that he raised concerns about relying on Mr. Halbig as a source for the claim that Sandy Hook was scripted. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I believe I brushed it off. | |
| I might have... | ||
| Poked fun at him for saying that. | ||
| Did you report his concerns to anybody else at InfoWars? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No. | |
| Do you recall saying in his presence that you wanted to have t-shirts and bumper stickers made and have printed on those t-shirts and bumper stickers how big was right? | ||
| Did you ever take any steps to have those t-shirts or bumper stickers made? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No. | |
| Did you say that because you believed, in fact, Mr. Halbig was right? | ||
| I tend not to throw my beliefs behind everything fully, so it's potential that he could have been correct, and I just know that it was getting under Jacobson's craw to say that he was right, so I kind of threw that in there as a joke. | ||
| See, it's a joke, but it's also kind of serious. | ||
| Oh my god. | ||
| I'm kind of making this point, but it's also a joke. | ||
| I want to have entire plausible deniability about this stuff, but I also really want the benefits of people thinking that I'm serious about it when they're available. | ||
| How is it that a human being can lay out this clear a pattern of behavior? | ||
| That you engaged in. | ||
| That is so obviously everything wrong. | ||
| And not be like, now I get it. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Because you know going in that what you're doing is full of shit. | ||
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
| And I think that that moment of the constant banging your head against the wall of like... | ||
| You had these things that you were bringing up about anomalies with Sandy Hook, but you weren't making a point. | ||
| You didn't have a conclusion of the foreknowledge. | ||
| If he realized the thing that was laid out about 9-11 at the beginning of the, like, I had anomalies and it made me believe that the government did it. | ||
| Totally. | ||
| There should be a moment where it's like, ah. | ||
| Fuck. | ||
| Yeah, absolutely. | ||
| That's what I want. | ||
| I just want that moment. | ||
| Like, with Norm dropping his bullshit. | ||
| Like, to me, that's the moment that I really want, is when you have to finally admit that you're an idiot. | ||
| And I have boxed myself in. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Exactly. | |
| I can't exist in this space and make any sense. | ||
| You did this to yourself. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| A decade of working at InfoWars. | ||
| Causes no problems because no one gives a shit. | ||
| No one is monitoring your work. | ||
| I've never been asked a follow-up question in my life. | ||
| Integrity and the point doesn't matter. | ||
| Nope. | ||
| But yeah, when you're asked follow-up questions, when you're in a place where people don't believe your nonsense, you can't do it. | ||
| It's hard. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Also, this was really funny. | ||
| I mean, it's not funny because the result of it, but this being said to Adon is very funny. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Up until relatively recently, you had a pinned tweet to the top of your Twitter account, which was a link to your first ever article about Wolfgang Halbig introducing him to the Infowars audience, correct? | ||
| I don't recall a pinned tweet about Halbig, but maybe. | ||
| I don't know why I'd be publishing that on Twitter in 2018 or 2019. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| Good question. | ||
| Showing you exhibit number 19A. | ||
| Oh my god. | ||
| This is the landing page of your Twitter account, correct? | ||
| Yes. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| And you joined in September 2017, right? | ||
| Okay, yes. | ||
| And then you have a pinned tweet at the top of your account. | ||
| Which, according to the page, was posted on April 17th, 2018, correct? | ||
| Oh my God. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| And you can see the partial headline there, school shooting expert threatened over Sandy Hook. | ||
| That's the first article you ever wrote concerning Mr. Halbig, correct? | ||
| Yes, that's it. | ||
| So at least as of 2018, you were leading your Twitter landing page. | ||
| With an article in which Mr. Halbig referred to Sandy Hook as a scripted event, correct? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Objection. | |
| It appears I pinned the tweet to the top of my Twitter account on April 17, 2018. | ||
| And the pinned tweet linked to an article in which Mr. Halbig referred to Sandy Hook as a scripted event, correct? | ||
| Yes, the article... | ||
| It's the one we covered earlier, actually. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Ah, boy. | ||
| Well, I guess I did do that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Excuse me. | |
| Why did I post that article in 2018 and pin it as my top tweet on my account? | ||
| Mr. Metty, I'm starting to see a pattern of behavior here. | ||
| So you ask me a question, then I answer it, and then whenever I answer it, you pull out an exhibit. | ||
| Proving the opposite or at least something different from what I said. | ||
| Is it too late for me to blame this on them not training me? | ||
| Have you considered telling me what your exhibits are before you ask the question? | ||
| Then I will be able to answer truthfully. | ||
| So we have one last thing that comes up. | ||
| One last line of questioning that has to do with Adon writing the FBI says no one was killed at Sandy Hook. | ||
| Right. | ||
| That article that was one of the most popular stories ever drove a massive spike in traffic, went all over social media, was a huge thing for Infowars. | ||
| And yeah, it was all just based on one table from a report that Adon found. | ||
| Somehow, I guess. | ||
| In your article in which you reported that the FBI had reported zero murders in Newtown for 2012, you cited a Table 8 from From that report, correct? | ||
| Do you recall that? | ||
| It might have been Table 8. Okay. | ||
| And I'm going to pull that up for you. | ||
| That's 25B. | ||
| And I'll acknowledge, Mr. Salazar, that because of the way this was PDF'd, it's kind of partly cut off on the left side, but we'll be able to see what we need to see. | ||
| You recall the look of this graphic header? | ||
| You included that in your article, did you not? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| And if you go down to page 3, to the Newtown row, now I'll concede that the N is cut off, but if we can just accept for purposes of this that this is the Newtown row, you see that zero are reported in that particular row for murders and non-negligent manslaughter for that year, correct? | ||
| Yes, I see that. | ||
| And that was the quote anomaly you were reporting on, right? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| But you didn't look in any other part of the report to see if the deaths that occurred in Newtown at the Sandy Hook shooting were in fact reported in another section, did you? | ||
| Objection. | ||
| I didn't think there would be another term for what happened at Sandy Hook. | ||
| I thought the murder would encompass the whole thing. | ||
| No, any further for other definitions or other places. | ||
| And you didn't look any further to see whether those murders were reported under a different law enforcement organization that had jurisdiction to investigate them, correct? | ||
| I only was reporting on what the FBI was saying in this report. | ||
| Well, that's what I'm asking. | ||
| Good question. | ||
| This report wasn't just Table 8, correct? | ||
| There were other parts of the report. | ||
| Did you know that? | ||
| Objection. | ||
| I figure there's one through seven at least of, you know, there's table eight, so we're on one through seven. | ||
| Exists probably somewhere. | ||
| And you didn't think to look for table nine or table ten or any other tables, right? | ||
| Objection. | ||
| I think my story was mainly about table eight, so I didn't go through the entire list of tables that the FBI has. | ||
| So I was listening to this, and it just kind of struck me how clearly this demonstrates that there's no curiosity. | ||
|
unidentified
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Nope. | |
| Because curiosity isn't useful for someone like Adan. | ||
| Like, when your job is to write a story about a predetermined thing, curiosity is just going to get in the way. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| In order to do the work that he has done and is doing, you have to... | ||
| Actively not ask questions. | ||
| You have to actively not question events. | ||
| You're branding yourself in some way as like, ah, we're out there, you know, we're questioning things. | ||
| But this is literally not asking questions. | ||
| It's stopping yourself from asking natural questions that one would have upon finding information. | ||
| It's wild. | ||
| I don't understand how they can't understand. | ||
| Not that they don't understand it, but I don't understand how they can't see how transparent that is. | ||
| Well, what's interesting to me about that is I feel like it's very similar to why they're so susceptible to being trapped in these depositions. | ||
| It's because the way their brain thinks is they go into the forest, they get their apple, and then they go back home. | ||
| You know, like, you could put an apple under... | ||
| Underneath a box. | ||
| And I'm talking about this now, in real life. | ||
| You could put an apple underneath a cardboard box with a little thing attached and they'd be trapped every time. | ||
| They'd go in there, they'd grab the apple, they'd be like, ooh, good apple, and then they'd be trapped. | ||
| It wouldn't be hard. | ||
| They don't think clearly, well, words, all of the things. | ||
| They don't think them. | ||
| Yeah, I just, I wonder if it is just a thing of like... | ||
| No one cares in their lives, so why would they think that anybody else would see through the fake game that they're playing? | ||
| If he did have curiosity somewhere deep within him, I really feel like his answer to those would be like, oh, that would be a good idea to look for a table nine. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Ironically, I'm curious about this lack of curiosity, and that is not a healthy place to be. | ||
| Where does it come from? | ||
| Yeah, but he really only was interested in that table because it made his argument. | ||
| He got his apple. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You only went to the one table that a tipster pointed out to you, correct? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Objection. | |
| I only went to the table that showed there were zero deaths in Newtown. | ||
| Right, but you had to have a reason to know that that's what that table showed, and I think your testimony was that a tipster had provided it to you, correct? | ||
| It was either a tip or something I found on social media, yeah. | ||
| Okay, and you only wanted to go to that table because that's the table that reported zero deaths, right? | ||
| That's the only table that pertained to the story I was writing. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Well, the story you were writing reported that the FBI reported zero deaths in Newtown, correct? | ||
| Yes, and that's why I pointed to Table 8 showing that it showed zero deaths in Newtown. | ||
| And what you were conveying to your audience was, this is an anomaly. | ||
| If there had been deaths in Newtown, you would expect the FBI to have reported them, correct? | ||
| We're trying. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Back down. | ||
| Point out was that the FBI did in fact report them in a separate table in the same report, correct? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Objection. | |
| Mischaracterized the evidence. | ||
| You didn't point that out, did you? | ||
| I wasn't aware that the FBI had reported the deaths elsewhere. | ||
| I don't know why they would not list the deaths where it says murders in Newtown zero. | ||
| You don't know why they might do that, correct? | ||
| It seemed like it should all be listed in the table eight. | ||
| And more did you ask? | ||
| Or make any inquiry about whether those deaths may have been reported elsewhere in the same report, correct? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm sorry. | |
| I didn't ask the FBI if that's what you're asking. | ||
| You didn't ask anybody? | ||
| No. | ||
| This is a dangerously uncurious and unserious person. | ||
| That's insane. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's bananas. | ||
| I feel like he's now a completely unique person to me. | ||
| I don't know how this person exists. | ||
| Like, how do you tie your shoes? | ||
| My God! | ||
| So, did you think that there could be a Table 9 or they could report it anywhere else? | ||
| I don't know why they would. | ||
| You can answer that question! | ||
| Right. | ||
| You can go be like, why would you? | ||
| And then find the answer! | ||
| Things that you don't know, if they aren't, like, necessarily in your interest, it's a dead end. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| There's no reason to explore this because the only thing you could possibly find ruins the ability to use this for your purposes. | ||
| Which is what they won't just come out and say. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But it's pretty obvious. | ||
| If I looked any further, I would find out that I'm lying and I don't want to do that because I want to plausibly deny that I'm lying. | ||
| I would get past the point of plausible deniability and then we're in trouble. | ||
| Like these emails you keep reading back to me. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Whoops. | |
| So, speaking of emails, I'm going to skip this next clip, because it's long, and honestly, I only kept it in for one reason, and it's because there's an email that he sent to his cousin that was about these cyclists who were going from Newtown to Washington to, like, bring attention to gun legislation. | ||
| And he sent an article about it, and the subject headline was, Fuck these cyclists! | ||
| That's pretty good. | ||
| I'll take that one. | ||
| Yeah, but it's a long clip. | ||
| We can skip it. | ||
| So the subject comes up, as we're dismounting here, of a documentary that InfoWars had promoted called We Need to Talk About Sandy Hook. | ||
| And here is Adan's sense of what happened there. | ||
| Are you familiar with the documentary We Need to Talk About Sandy Hook? | ||
| I believe I tried to get through it. | ||
| It was so long that I probably just got through the 30 minutes worth of it or something, yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Fair. | |
| I'm familiar with the documentary. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| And you didn't have anything to do with making that documentary, did you? | ||
| No, sir. | ||
| Did you promote that documentary on your social media platforms? | ||
| I might have. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I can't recall. | |
| Do you know whether Infowars ever promoted that documentary? | ||
| I believe I wrote an article about it when it was taken off of Vimeo or something. | ||
| Other than that, I don't think we promoted it. | ||
| I just read about it being censored. | ||
| Did you express your own disagreement with the fact that certain platforms had chosen not to publish it? | ||
| Well, I did write an article about it. | ||
| I don't know if I expressed a personal opinion in that article. | ||
| Did you know at the time that the We Need to Talk About Sandy Hook documentary I figured that was the central tenet of the documentary, but I didn't watch it in its entirety, so I kind of had to just guess that that was what they were going for. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| And you reported that in your coverage of the ban? | ||
| I believe so. | ||
| On December 2nd, 2014, Infowars posted the video of this documentary on their site with the sub-headline, quote, Documentary Blows the Lid Off Suspected Sandy Hook Cover-Up. | ||
| The article includes this, which sounds pretty laudatory. | ||
| A loose coalition of concerned citizen journalists known as the Independent Media Solidarity have produced an in-depth, well-researched documentary regarding the countless anomalies, inconsistencies, and discrepancies evident in the Sandy Hook school shooting investigation. | ||
| The video is a tell-all, leave-no-stone-unturned work that coalesces hundreds of data points which researchers laboriously spent countless hours compiling. | ||
| That certainly sounds like what you might write if the video was too long, you couldn't even make it through the whole thing, and you can't even really nail down what the point of it was. | ||
| Also, the article includes this update. | ||
| Quote, A previous version of this video was removed from YouTube due to a copyright claim by Lenny Posner. | ||
| Posner is reportedly the parent of one of the children supposedly killed at Sandy Hook. | ||
| Reportedly and supposedly, both in that sentence. | ||
| It's pretty overt. | ||
| Perduver, go fuck yourself. | ||
| If that's the article that Adan wrote, he makes himself look quite a bit worse. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, man. | ||
| He should have watched the last ten minutes of that documentary, because they go, ha ha ha ha ha, fooled ya, and then... | ||
| We were just doing this to fuck with Rob Jacobson. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, this is all to fuck with Rob! | ||
| So, um, Matty is done with his questioning, and unlike some of the other depositions, here at the end, the defense lawyer asks a couple questions. | ||
| And so the first one has to do with that only using Table 8 of the FBI's stats. | ||
|
unidentified
|
There were some questions about this Table 8. At the time you reviewed Table 8 back in 2014, did you have any reason to doubt that the number for Newtown as zero was accurate? | |
| No. | ||
| That's bullshit. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Don absolutely had reason to question the interpretation of the table given here because the rest of the world was saying that these kids, it did in fact die. | ||
| There is a direct contradiction here, and any curious person would see that table, and it wouldn't even really be a choice to question things. | ||
| It would just be a reaction. | ||
| You'd start asking yourself things like, how is this possible? | ||
| Is there information I'm missing? | ||
| What's the context here? | ||
| Is it possible for both this table to be accurate and the shooting happened as was reported? | ||
| The not questioning is actually a choice Adan is making, and he does that because if he scratched even an inch below the surface, he couldn't make the insane claims that he does make for a living. | ||
| He's woefully unqualified and doesn't have the tools to be in the role he pretends to be in, which is that of a writer and reporter. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| That ability to turn off the instinct to question things when something conforms to your narrative while simultaneously yelling at your audience about how you're the people who question things, that ability actually makes him perfectly qualified to be an in-house liar at Infowars. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So, he better hope they don't go out of business, because there's not many other games in town. | ||
| Yeah, that's the way to... | ||
| Well, there are, but they don't pay well. | ||
| No, no, see, see, see, the problem is, alright, I just misread it. | ||
| I didn't know it was table eight. | ||
| I thought it was table infinity. | ||
| So, of course, I didn't think there were one through seven. | ||
| This is all the tables! | ||
| Yeah, I didn't think there were imaginary number tables. | ||
| Yeah, come on, man. | ||
| So, here's the last clip. | ||
| The defense lawyer also has a question about his research that he did about the qualifications presented by... | ||
| Yeah, let's hear this. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Switching over to Mr. Halbig, there was some... | |
| You don't have to have that open anymore. | ||
| There was some discussion of an email you received questioning his credentials. | ||
| Do you recall that? | ||
| Yes, I recall that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Now, when you first wrote about Mr. Halbig, you referenced one website, but was that necessarily the entirety of your research? | |
| I can't recall how much research I did. | ||
| I know that one website did probably provide a majority of the credentials that I credited to him. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But is it possible you could have come across, say, Orlando Sentinel articles from the 90s referring to him as a director of security for Seminole schools? | |
| Objection. | ||
| It's entirely possible, sir. | ||
| Could you have come across new articles in the LA Times mentioning him? | ||
| In the late 90s, early 2000s. | ||
| Objection. | ||
| It's possible, sir. | ||
| This is fishy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, man. | |
| This sort of behavior. | ||
| I love it. | ||
| Is it possible that you could testify better here? | ||
| Use this. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| Excuse me, my own witness. | ||
| Could you do a better job? | ||
| Let me give you an up. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Jesus Christ. | ||
| Here would be a better answer for you. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| If you had prepared for that, then you would have had that in the can! | ||
| Maybe. | ||
| If your lawyer knows that, then you should know that! | ||
| Oh, you'd hope. | ||
| Why is this hard? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I don't know. | |
| I feel like this is not that hard! | ||
| So, we reach the end of this deposition of Adan Salazar, and like I said, this peeled away a bit of the mystique around him, and sort of... | ||
| I don't know, a sense of menace that I felt about his body of work. | ||
| It certainly, I think, is defanged a little bit in my mind. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| Like, if the Wizard of Oz was revealed to be a puddle of mayonnaise that could handle a lever. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| Maybe part of it was just because he was the one who was following us and then stopped following us. | ||
| Maybe that is kind of part of the menace that I felt. | ||
| I mean, whatever the case, I feel like... | ||
| The way he answers questions, the way this is all processed is very sad. | ||
| Transparent and... | ||
| I think unnecessary. | ||
| He didn't have to answer any of these questions this way. | ||
| Nope. | ||
| He clearly has an interest in the company. | ||
| He's a company guy. | ||
| Paul... | ||
| I think, you know, we covered his deposition, and certainly I hate Paul Joseph Watson, but we weren't as cruel about that because he comported himself decently. | ||
| This was, you know, there is obviously more actions that Adon Salazar took in the past that are relevant to this case, and that is unique for his position as some being deposed. | ||
| But... | ||
| There is such a refusal to accept reality. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| In the, like, no, I wasn't making a point. | ||
| It's just a weird coincidence. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Stop it. | |
| Stop it. | ||
| Like, that stuff is like, come on, man. | ||
| You're a child. | ||
| It makes you lose a little bit of respect, even as a villain. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| In my mind, that you can't just be like, yeah, this is what I was thinking at the time. | ||
| I found out I was wrong and, you know, whatever. | ||
| Right. | ||
| There's a way to do this that isn't... | ||
| Like, completely disqualifying, and he failed to reach that standard. | ||
| No, it is like he was trying to half-lie about everything. | ||
| Like, I'm gonna try and obfuscate just enough, like, yeah, I'll say yes or no, but whenever they want to get me on something, I'll be like, uh, I don't recall, or something like that, and that's just not gonna do it. | ||
| But then there's the accidental revelations of, like, my vested interest in questioning the reality of Sandy Hook had to do with my fear of them using it against the guns. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| Like, there's stuff like that that's just like... | ||
| You can't be real. | ||
| How can you be so slippery? | ||
| About a bunch of these other things and then just give that one. | ||
| Give it away. | ||
| Give it all away. | ||
| It's very weird. | ||
| Wild. | ||
| Anyway, we have a bit more where this came from. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| There's some more depositions that'll be coming up in the future because us bottom feeders... | ||
| We gotta do it. | ||
| We gotta feed. | ||
| We love feeding on the bottom. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, there isn't quite... | ||
| I mean, immediately after being called a bottom feeder to then talk about Adan Salazar doesn't make me feel great, but, you know, there are worse things. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| Anyway, I mean, we'll be back with another episode in the near future. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Indeed. | |
| But until then, we have a website. | ||
| We do. | ||
| It's knowledgefight.com. | ||
| Yep, we're also on Twitter. | ||
| We are on Twitter. | ||
| It's at knowledge underscore fight. | ||
| And someone's been fighting. | ||
| No! | ||
| I hate him so much! | ||
|
unidentified
|
I hate him! | |
| We'll be back. | ||
| But until then, I'm Neo. | ||
| I'm Leo. | ||
| I'm DZX Clark. | ||
| I run a cooperative in my brain where people are free to squat. | ||
| You know, it's an artist space. | ||
| Sure, sure. | ||
| Rent is not really so much a thing where I charge rent. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Barter is acceptable. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| I don't know what I'm saying. | ||
| And now here comes the sex robots. | ||
| Andy in Kansas, you're on the air. | ||
| Thanks for holding. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello, Alex. | |
| I'm a first time caller. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm a huge fan. | |
| I love your work. |