Today, Dan and Jordan still don't have Alex's 2023 predictions to discuss, so they take the opportunity to break down the deposition of Alex's head of business operations, who doesn't seem to like Alex or his show all that much. (Note: there is a little audio problem around the 54:00 point in the episode that I couldn't repair. Apologies to your ears)
| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
|
unidentified
|
I'm sick of them posing as if they're the good guys saying we are the bad guys. | |
| Knowledge fight. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Dan and Jordan. | |
| Knowledge fight. | ||
| I need money. | ||
| Andy in Kansas. | ||
| Andy in Kansas. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Stop it. | |
| Andy in Kansas. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Time to pray. | |
| Andy in Kansas, you're on the air. | ||
| Thanks for holding. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello, Alex. | |
| I'm a first-time caller. | ||
| I'm a huge fan. | ||
| I love your room. | ||
| Knowledge Fight. | ||
| KnowledgeFight.com. | ||
| I love you. | ||
| Hey, everybody. | ||
| Welcome back to Knowledge Fight. | ||
| I'm Dan. | ||
| I'm Jordan. | ||
| We're a couple dudes like to sit around, worship at the altar of Selene, and talk a little bit about... | ||
| Alex Jones. | ||
| Oh, indeed we are. | ||
| Dan. | ||
| Jordan. | ||
| Dan. | ||
| Jordan. | ||
| Quick question for you. | ||
| What's up? | ||
| What's your bright spot today, buddy? | ||
| My bright spot, Jordan, is sort of, I mean, some of our bright spots are a little bit trivial in nature. | ||
| Some are just like an album we enjoy. | ||
| Bright spots need to be sometimes trivial. | ||
| You've got to enjoy the trivial in order to enjoy the rest of life. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And today I had a good ice cream flavor, so this is some serious stuff. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's great! | |
| I've long struggled with sleep and such, but it's been going a lot better over the past week. | ||
| I've been managing to keep... | ||
| Oh, I know. | ||
| in terms of like the path of my life. | ||
| Oh, I know. | ||
| Like laying in bed for hours, not being able to fall asleep and, and, and such. | ||
| It's been great. | ||
| And this is partially... | ||
| This is my bright spot. | ||
| And then partially a bit of an announcement. | ||
| And that is that this episode's going to be coming... | ||
| You will never sleep again. | ||
| Ever. | ||
| No, this episode's going to be coming out a little bit early. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| And the reason for that is I'm going to... | ||
| I have to test advanced publishing. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Like with a scheduled post. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. | |
| I gotcha. | ||
| I haven't done that for a really long time, but when I tried to do it like years and years ago, it didn't work right. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And so I'm going to set up this episode. | ||
| Next episode to post. | ||
| At a decent hour so I can in the future schedule posts ahead of time. | ||
| That's fantastic. | ||
| So if you're hearing this at like 9 central, that might be why. | ||
| Proud of you. | ||
| But yeah, I look forward to hopefully being able to keep this up because it feels so much better. | ||
| Honestly, that's a brighter spot for me than it is for you. | ||
| That's been a chief source of concern for me for goddamn years now. | ||
| And I'm trapped in this helpless space. | ||
| I can't sleep for you, Dan. | ||
| No, but you could kabong me or something. | ||
| I have tried! | ||
| You can hit me with a... | ||
| If only. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh man, those were good days. | |
| By the way, not Bright Spot. | ||
| Not Bright Spot? | ||
| I know that we discussed this. | ||
| I'm a little bit worried about Uncle Howdy. | ||
| Just an update on that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| Still worried about it. | ||
| Still worried about Uncle Howdy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| All right. | ||
| Anyway, what's your bright spot? | ||
| Any greater concern? | ||
| Or is it similar? | ||
| Just reporting that I'm still worried. | ||
| Well, my bright spot is today. | ||
| It's that time of year. | ||
| Today is the start of Awesome Games Done Quick. | ||
| The marathon that lasts for a week or whatever. | ||
| It feels like that's always happening. | ||
| Because there's the summer one. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| It happens twice a year. | ||
| So, you know, every six months, like a solstice. | ||
| You kind of feel it. | ||
| You're like, oh, is it a solstice? | ||
| I thought it was just yesterday. | ||
| But, yeah. | ||
| Great times. | ||
| It's going to be fun. | ||
| They're going to raise a lot of money for, you know, whatever. | ||
| Good causes. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| Totally. | ||
| And people will play games really fast. | ||
| Totally. | ||
| Glitch through stuff and what have you. | ||
| The story, though, is that the founder is done after this year, right? | ||
| And they started the whole thing. | ||
| So whoever can play the awesomest game quickest gets to take over. | ||
| It becomes the new AGDQ master. | ||
| It's also a competition. | ||
| No, he started in his mom's basement 13 years ago. | ||
| And 13 years later, it's $40 million plus in donations. | ||
| How cool is that? | ||
| That is really cool. | ||
| That's amazing. | ||
| What a true achievement for that person. | ||
| I'm amazed at them. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Congrats. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yep. | |
| So, Jordan, today we have an episode to go over and listen to the situation that we find ourselves in. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| We need to know the predictions for 2023. | ||
| It's January 8th! | ||
|
unidentified
|
We need to know what is going on. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| Because... | ||
| What's going to happen on January 15th, January 16th, 17th, 18th? | ||
| Don't know. | ||
| How are we going to live our lives if we don't know what's coming? | ||
| Paralyzed with fear of the future. | ||
| I can't leave the house now, granted. | ||
| I didn't leave the house to begin with. | ||
| Well, that's fair. | ||
| Because I don't know the predictions. | ||
| The reasons can change, but the facts are the same. | ||
| Yes, and so I regret to inform you that Alex has still been out of studio. | ||
| He was gone all of the week, and then Saturday rolled around. | ||
| Maybe he'll come in and do a Saturday show. | ||
| As of the time that we're recording this, which is on Sunday, he has not. | ||
| He has not done a Saturday show. | ||
| Nope, so I'm guessing he's not going to. | ||
| Doubtful. | ||
| Sunday's show is still yet to be broadcast from his studio, so we don't know if he's going to be back on Sunday. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Of course. | |
| We're left in a lurch. | ||
| The time is where it is. | ||
| That's a big reason why we had you fill in and do an episode, which was fantastic. | ||
| Thank you for doing that. | ||
| It was enjoyable. | ||
| People really enjoyed it. | ||
| And now we're here again. | ||
| And what are we going to do? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| Is he going to be better today? | ||
| No. | ||
| We are not going to talk about Alex, actually. | ||
| And that is because we have a deposition. | ||
| Oh, shit! | ||
| We have another deposition to go over. | ||
| And this is exciting because this is a behind-the-scenes guy. | ||
| And we'll get down to business on this and I'll explain what's going on. | ||
| But first, let's say hello to some new wonks. | ||
| Oh, that's a great idea. | ||
| So first, anti-racist tubist. | ||
| Tubaist? | ||
| How would you spell? | ||
| How would you say that? | ||
| I'm gonna go with tubaist. | ||
| Tubist. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Tubaist. | ||
| Tubaist. | ||
| Available to play Psychopomp and Circumstance at your next graduation. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| You are now a policy wonk. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm a policy wonk. | |
| Thank you very much! | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Next, I made my girlfriend listen to Knowledge Fight and now every argument is a false flag. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| You're now a policy wonk. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm a policy wonk. | |
| Thank you very much! | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Next, I'm fast at sex! | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| You are now a policy wonk. | ||
| I'm a policy wonk. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Next, Policy Joseph Wonkson. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| You are now a policy wonk. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm a policy wonk. | |
| Thank you very much. | ||
| And Alex the Space Ace. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| You are now a policy wonk. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm a policy wonk. | |
| Thank you very much. | ||
| We got three technocrats. | ||
| Count them. | ||
| Three. | ||
| So first, Merry Christmas to Chance Love. | ||
| That's with an S. Chance. | ||
| Vinesse. | ||
| Chance. | ||
| Chance. | ||
| Chance love. | ||
| Chance amour. | ||
| Oh, that's good stuff. | ||
| Joyeux Noël. | ||
| You're now a technocrat. | ||
| And Chris Labonte, purveyor of dark arts and listener of only the best podcasts. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| You are now a technocrat. | ||
| And I became a technocrat even though Dan likes ska and Jordan sang the English version of the girl from Impanima. | ||
| Vossanova rules. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| You are now a technocrat. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm a policy wonk. | |
| Four stars. | ||
| Go home to your mother and tell her you're brilliant. | ||
| Someone, someone sodomite sent me a bucket of poop. | ||
| Daddy Shark. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Bomp, bomp, bomp, bomp, bomp. | |
| Jar Jar Binks has a Caribbean black accent. | ||
|
unidentified
|
He's a loser little, little titty baby. | |
| I don't want to hate black people. | ||
| I renounce Jesus Christ! | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| Yes, thank you very much. | ||
| So, Jordan, today we have a deposition that is from the Connecticut case. | ||
| That is where we are at. | ||
| And this is a fella by the name of Tim Fruget. | ||
| Oh, it's the Fruget! | ||
| Yeah, I don't know if you know much about the man. | ||
| What do you know about Tim Fruget? | ||
| I mean, beyond the mentions of him in emails and such, and he's got something to do with... | ||
| Not marketing, but the internet, right? | ||
| He has stuff to do with the online sales and stuff. | ||
| Yes, exactly. | ||
| That's what it is. | ||
| And he's the business director, basically. | ||
| He has a large umbrella set of things that he's responsible for. | ||
| Having grown from the position of just being in charge of some warehouse stuff, he was the seventh employee that Alex hired ever. | ||
| Michael J. Foxed it from the mailroom to the top of the board. | ||
| Yeah, he's been around pretty much forever. | ||
| As he tells in his backstory for this deposition, he was working at a dry cleaner kind of business where he was delivering things and trying to sign up new clients for the service. | ||
| And then from there transitioned into Alec's mailroom stuff, as you put it. | ||
| Yeah, obviously not. | ||
| And then just things kept going. | ||
| As it grew, more responsibilities added on. | ||
| Yeah, you know, I mean, if it weren't for them being part of InfoWars, there's a certain charm to their ragtag hiring process that, I mean, I don't disagree. | ||
| It's mostly contest-based, to be fair. | ||
| Exactly, that's the problem. | ||
| Yeah, this was not a contest. | ||
| Although, maybe Alex had his dry-cleaning delivered. | ||
| That's kind of the other concern I have! | ||
| He's like, yo boy, that was the fastest I've ever had that directly delivered. | ||
| You got the goods. | ||
| You got it. | ||
| I need you in my warehouse. | ||
| I'm starting a project. | ||
| I have long been interested in Tim Fruget because it's a name that rings out through the entire time that I've done this podcast. | ||
| He is someone that Alex references obliquely. | ||
| His name shows up places as like, oh, run it by Tim. | ||
| He's the money man. | ||
| I wouldn't put it that way, basically. | ||
| Having heard this, I don't know if he's the money man, but he's somebody who has a lot of admin kind of... | ||
| Various places he pops up. | ||
| Gotcha. | ||
| And I realized when I sat down to look at this deposition that I had never seen Tim Fruget before. | ||
| Holy cow! | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| And he is a charming-looking 42-year-old, I don't want to, you know, I'm not saying this in any kind of pejorative way, but he's a thick boy. | ||
| Sure, sure. | ||
| He's a thick king. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Thick king? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I've heard Carl Tart say it before. | |
| Okay, all right. | ||
| I'll co-opt that. | ||
| I'm fine with it, just that's the first time I've heard it. | ||
| He's got a beard, and he strikes you as a cool guy that your dad knows. | ||
| He's a young Santa Claus. | ||
| I'm looking at him right now, and yeah, maybe. | ||
| It's not a big beard, though. | ||
| No, no, no. | ||
| It's an under-control beard. | ||
| 20, 30 years from now, that's a Santa Claus. | ||
| But right now, he's cool Santa. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I picture young Santa Claus with a giant beard, but it's like... | ||
| Not white. | ||
| Just brown, brown. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah. | |
| Well, that's fair. | ||
| Regardless of, and I should also say that I was routinely called Young Santa Claus while I was in college. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right, right, right. | |
| This is personal. | ||
| This is personal for you. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, I understand. | ||
| I think people were saying that pejoratively, though. | ||
| That was not a situation where they just thought I was a thick king. | ||
| I wasn't trying to be that. | ||
| But yeah, he strikes you as a pretty generally decent fella. | ||
| Interesting. | ||
| And that is interesting. | ||
| Yeah, it's very interesting. | ||
| Because you're not used to it. | ||
| No! | ||
| And I'll say, I had a fairly positive impression of him through this, and then by the end of this, I think he's maybe one of the worst people who works at InfoWars. | ||
| Okay, good. | ||
| I was gonna say, this is freaking me out, man. | ||
| No, it's a very interesting path that it takes to get there, but yeah. | ||
| So anyway, Tim Fruget. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| He sat for a deposition in January 2022, having previously sat for like a really brief one. | ||
| And then he comes back and doing this remotely. | ||
| And we're going to start here with the first clip. | ||
| There's obviously at the beginning quite a bit of like, you know... | ||
| You know, introduction, what did you do to prepare for this? | ||
| Like lie detector questions, you know, like answer yes or no just so we can calibrate the device and then we'll get into it. | ||
| Getting into the rhythm of questions and what have you. | ||
| Sure, sure, sure. | ||
| And we get to jumping in here while they're discussing the period of Infowars growth. | ||
| They were seeing quite a bit of growth and in the context of that we learn Tim's salary. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| And you were aware of the increasing volume of sales leading up to No. | ||
| I was never involved in the sales at that point. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Somewhere in that time frame, yes. | |
| As we grew, there was just need for people to step up. | ||
| And I was there and I was willing to learn and step up and help where I was needed. | ||
| Where you were needed around that time was to oversee the online store at Mr. Jones's Correct. | ||
| As well as ordering office supplies and handling your AC guys, your plumbing guys, your construction guys. | ||
| That was sort of my, what I was doing at that time. | ||
| What was your salary when you first came on as a salary? | ||
| The best I can remember, it was either $45,000 or $50,000 annually. | ||
| What was it when you resigned in September 2020, or when you separated from Free Speed Systems in September 2020? | ||
| It was $200,000 a year. | ||
| Goddamn! | ||
| Is it right now? | ||
| $200,000 a year. | ||
| So, we have the on-air personalities that we've seen, like Owen Troyer. | ||
| He makes $100,000 about a year. | ||
| Daria makes about $100,000 a year. | ||
| And, yeah, Tim Fruget, $200,000. | ||
| I mean, hey, you know, you start at $50,000, you have more responsibilities that are added on. | ||
| That is kind of like a normal sort of trajectory and path. | ||
| It's just, it's got quite high. | ||
| Yeah! | ||
| I mean, here's the problem. | ||
| I don't know capitalism. | ||
| Anymore. | ||
| You know, like, for my decade in... | ||
| Because I was kind of in sales, you know, so I never got raises or anything. | ||
| It was either I did good or bad. | ||
| There's commission. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| There's that whole thing. | ||
| I don't feel like that is... | ||
| That is absolutely not how Tim describes his compensation. | ||
| No, he went to work every day, and at the end of the year, he either got a promotion or he did... | ||
| He did the corporate thing that people have talked about in my world that I've never experienced. | ||
| Even though some of his responsibilities did veer into sales and advertising. | ||
| Right, right. | ||
| Strange. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Is that a lot? | |
| To me, it's a shit ton of money, but I don't know if it's still that in the real world anymore. | ||
| To me, it is also. | ||
| And then if you look at it just on the scale of what we know of other InfoWars people, what they're making, obviously... | ||
| You pay people what, like, you think they deserve. | ||
| I mean, I would think that. | ||
| That's kind of how payroll generally works. | ||
| You would think. | ||
| And according to this, obviously Tim Fruget's role is more important than Alex's second banana on-air personality. | ||
| That kind of makes me feel like he is the money man, though, insofar as like, yeah, he's more important than Owen. | ||
| You can replace Owen, but you gotta keep the money flowing, like it or not, you know? | ||
| The only problem I guess I have is I'm not sure exactly what's... | ||
| I feel like Money Man is the guy who injects money into something. | ||
| Like Ted DiBiase, the million dollar man. | ||
| No, I'm talking more about the guy who's in control, who's at the like... | ||
| Loggerhead of the flow of money. | ||
| Right, right, right. | ||
| He's there, and all the money flow comes towards him, and then he kind of directs it elsewhere. | ||
| Yeah, I do think that's probably fairly accurate. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah, yeah. | |
| You pay that guy plenty. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Because that guy knows a lot, too. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Mm-hmm. | |
| And Owen's not that great. | ||
| Nope! | ||
| Nope! | ||
| You can replace him with another contest tomorrow. | ||
| Whereas this fella, he's grown with the company, too. | ||
| He knows tons of shit. | ||
| I really... | ||
| Man, I'm conflicted about this guy. | ||
| Anyway, he left InfoWars in September 2020 and then was gone for about a year and came back. | ||
| And he came back. | ||
| He came back. | ||
| Well, I mean, 200K, you can't really earn quite as much everywhere else, as far as I've ever experienced. | ||
| He might have been doing fine. | ||
| We'll find out where he landed in a minute. | ||
| But his return makes some sense to me, actually. | ||
| Because you could look at it suspiciously, and they're in the middle of this litigation, and get this guy back in the fold, or whatever. | ||
| Of course. | ||
| But as he describes it, him and his wife are both from Texas, and they'd moved to Utah for another job. | ||
| And they... | ||
| Visited Texas and they saw their family and they realized, I miss my family. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Totally. | |
| I want to come back. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| And so Alex offered him his job back and, you know, he came back. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's great. | |
| That makes total sense. | ||
| That makes total sense. | ||
| That's great. | ||
| That doesn't feel suspicious to me at all. | ||
| But it is weird. | ||
| Well, I mean, it's the type of loyalty that I wouldn't expect from any company I've ever worked at, you know? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No. | |
| If I left for a year, they'd probably be like, sorry, you shouldn't have fucking left, asshole. | ||
| You know, that kind of thing. | ||
| True, true. | ||
| But then you got to consider how things ended. | ||
| And we get into that in this next clip. | ||
| I was stressed to the max. | ||
| I have some health conditions. | ||
| And the stress was getting to me. | ||
| And everything kind of came to a head when me and Alex got into an argument. | ||
| I grabbed my bag, told him to go off, and walked out. | ||
| And that was the end of it. | ||
| Who's the catalyst for the earlier year? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I Him being Alex Jones. | |
| He was just complaining about everything I was trying to help. | ||
| He was complaining about something else. | ||
| I don't remember too much of the details, but it was... | ||
| It was Alex being Alex as far as just... | ||
| I can't say the word because I don't want to swear, but he was just being a jerk. | ||
| So Alex was being an asshole. | ||
| He was being a real piece of shit. | ||
| Get the sense from listening to this and watching this that maybe Tim doesn't like Alex that much. | ||
| I mean, you know, that's the problem with your foreshadowing on him being the worst person, maybe, potentially. | ||
| He's up there. | ||
| You know, that kind of thing. | ||
| But for a very interesting reason. | ||
| Well, see, here's what I'm getting. | ||
| Here's why my first hackles are being raised. | ||
| This seems like a person who is capable of agency and thought. | ||
| And that makes him terrifying to me. | ||
| Because that means he chooses to go be the worst person. | ||
| And he's a bit of a straight shooter. | ||
| He's willing to say, Alex is a fucking asshole. | ||
| He got into a fight and that's why I quit. | ||
| That's concerning. | ||
| Why did you quit? | ||
| Alex was being Alex. | ||
| He's not going to not be Alex. | ||
| What are you talking about? | ||
| Why do you think I quit? | ||
| Yeah, absolutely! | ||
| Of course! | ||
| Of course I would quit! | ||
| Very understandable. | ||
| And because this is fairly early in the deposition, it starts to give you a good impression. | ||
| Because you're like, yeah, that makes total sense. | ||
| You know, you put up with it for a long time. | ||
| You're probably making way more money than you would have been in some other career. | ||
| It makes sense. | ||
| And then you finally had enough of this asshole, and you left. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| I mean, the problem, though, is the more agency you have, the more responsibility you have for your actions. | ||
| You know? | ||
| That's the way it's always kind of the math has worked out in my head. | ||
| I think Alex is a piece of shit, but I also don't think Alex really can control his behavior at this point. | ||
| You know? | ||
| He's the slave of many decisions that he made years and years ago. | ||
| And pressures that he has put upon himself. | ||
| Right. | ||
| But he still has complete agency. | ||
| I disagree with you on that. | ||
| I don't mean that so much. | ||
| But there are influences that are pushing him in various directions. | ||
| Totally. | ||
| But I do agree with you that Tim has more awareness and more sort of clarity of decision making than a lot of the other people that we've seen deposed or just generally in the Infowars sphere. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And he doesn't seem as desperate either as some of these other people. | |
| You quit. | ||
| You quit. | ||
| I quit. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I quit. | |
| It indicated that you were under a lot of stress, and that stress had to do with your responsibilities or the way in which Mr. Jones was supervising you, or some combination of all of that. | ||
| The way, all of the issues, at that place there are forest fires every day, and at that moment, the reason I walked out, it was the way Alex Jones was treating me. | ||
| So that's interesting in that, like, he seems like if there's forest fires every day, then a high-pressure work environment isn't necessarily something that's going to be, like, why you quit. | ||
| Right. | ||
| So something you're used to, that's how things work around here. | ||
| Right. | ||
| It's just Alex being a dick. | ||
| It's Alex being an asshole. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yep. | |
| Which, but that's another thing about the choices there, is that if he is saying that that is happening, and that's why he quit... | ||
| And also saying there's forest fires every day. | ||
| What that means is that he's watched Alex be an asshole to countless people and watched them run out. | ||
| And this is when Alex started being a real piece of shit to him personally. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Yeah, well, that could be. | ||
| I have some slight theories that are maybe impossible to prove. | ||
| But they're risen by this next clip. | ||
|
unidentified
|
When you left in September of 2020, you moved to Utah. | |
| Is that right? | ||
| That is correct. | ||
| And did you find work in Utah? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Where were you working? | ||
| Ready Alliance Group. | ||
| What's that? | ||
| It is actually a dry cleaning company. | ||
| The storable food company that supplied Alex with the storable food that he sold. | ||
| One of Alex's suppliers. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| You're in a relationship then as a result of your work with free speech systems. | ||
| Correct. | ||
| So there's a part of this that is, you know, kind of understandable. | ||
| You're the guy who's working in these business relationships. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| You would know these people and you could go like, hey, you know, you got a place? | ||
| Totally. | ||
| That makes some sense. | ||
| But then you also have to consider that this is September 2020. | ||
| This is during the, you know, sort of... | ||
| Middle beginning of the COVID time. | ||
| This is when Alex is pushing the storable food super hard to the point where they are needing to expand. | ||
| They are setting up new warehouses. | ||
| They are a company that is in severe growth. | ||
| I would not be too surprised if there was an understanding. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Or something. | ||
| Where it's like, you go work for them for a bit. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Or something. | ||
| I can't prove that. | ||
| Just a total theory. | ||
| But Alex maintained a very, very close relationship with the storable food people. | ||
| That continued through this time. | ||
| I don't even remember when it was. | ||
| There was a time that he went to Utah himself for the storable food, visiting that. | ||
| It seems like this is all way too closely connected for it to just be like, I quit Infowars and I got a job at one of their main sponsors. | ||
| Yeah, I will say this about that, though, is that to me that makes a lot of sense just from a... | ||
| Like, no malicious behavior kind of situation, just because if you're making $200k a year and you want to leave that job, there aren't many jobs where you could step into a similar kind of salary point without having an intense personal relationship with the people already there. | ||
| It's true. | ||
| So, you know, maybe he's not going to go start... | ||
| At McDonald's or some shit. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No. | |
| He gets over there, maybe he doesn't make as much money, but he's got a position over there. | ||
| He's not starting over. | ||
| There's a benign explanation for it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Totally. | |
| And I understand that. | ||
| And I think that there's a very decent chance that that is what is at play. | ||
| I also have some misgivings about how Alex would take that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Totally. | ||
| If he leaves on bad terms with Infowars... | ||
| Totally. | ||
| I find it... | ||
| Kind of hard to believe that Alex would be okay with him taking a role that earns somewhere in the ballpark of $200,000 at one of his main sponsors. | ||
| I find that difficult, but it is possible. | ||
| I don't know, it's just weird. | ||
| With people such as they, who have established a track record of malicious behavior in situations that... | ||
| Do not require it or even ask it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| You know? | ||
| And, you know, this is definitely a situation where it's like, hey, it's possible to read too much into this. | ||
| I acknowledge that. | ||
| Totally. | ||
| It's just weird. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| But, I mean, you know, I bet ordering dinner there's something shady going on with these assholes. | ||
| You know? | ||
| You can't tell. | ||
| You don't even know why. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| They're the type of people who drink half a drink. | ||
| And then send it back and say, that's not what I ordered. | ||
| Alex made his kid a rope swing under a tree branch. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Uh-oh. | |
| Shady. | ||
| Shady shit right there. | ||
| So they discuss the revenue streams that come into Enforce. | ||
| Obviously, back in the day, it was, you know, the supplements weren't there. | ||
| So you had things like... | ||
| Advertising, gold sales, the kickbacks of all the filters, the whole thing. | ||
| You had a lot of that. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But then there was... | ||
| Another thing. | ||
| And Mr. Jones continued to sell advertising, correct? | ||
| So what I believe, yes, at that time he was still selling advertising. | ||
| When you're talking about that time, I'm basically talking about the period between 2007 and 2020, right? | ||
| So there were times where no, there were no, like, advertising, sponsors of anything. | ||
| At certain time periods, I couldn't tell you which ones throughout that time frame, there was no sponsors or advertisers. | ||
| And that's in part because Mr. Jones would advertise his own products rather than third-party products on his program, correct? | ||
| correct and in addition to advertising products he would also charge individuals who wanted to appear on his show and wanted to highlight their own products correct correct This is the first time that there has been concrete recognition of pay-to-play. | ||
| Yeah, we've been talking about that for years. | ||
| It's been suggested by a number of folks. | ||
| It's something that's been discussed on message boards and people have theorized about it. | ||
| Anonymous comments. | ||
| But yeah, this is the first time that I can say that there is actually definitive, this is something that Alex offered. | ||
| You can pay to get him to promote your stuff and pretend that it is just a regular interview. | ||
| You got it. | ||
| And that's pretty shady. | ||
| That's shady shit. | ||
| Pretty shady. | ||
| We're going to get more into this later in the deposition, so put a pin in that. | ||
| But that was a really big moment in terms of my understanding of how this operates. | ||
| There's so many times where it's like, there's no way that this is not pay-to-play. | ||
| But to have them concretely say it, that's comforting. | ||
| Yeah, and you'll be surprised to learn what the rates were. | ||
| Oh no, but not high enough or too high is the question I have. | ||
| We'll get to it. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| So in terms of the products that they ended up selling, you know, like the supplements and what have you, Alex likes to pretend that they have InfoWars labs and they're developing all these products. | ||
| Yeah, of course. | ||
| Because it gives more intimate connection with the product itself. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It feels like it's something that's more directly... | ||
| It's personal. | ||
| Yeah, but unfortunately that's all a lie. | ||
| Of course. | ||
| And Mr. Jones selected the products that he intended to sell online, correct? | ||
| Correct. | ||
| And was it your understanding that Mr. Jones was personally involved in negotiating the purchase of those products from third-party suppliers? | ||
| I guess so. | ||
| I'm not sure. | ||
| I know I was not involved in that. | ||
| Something that Anthony Gucciardi was involved in? | ||
| Possibly, yes. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm not aware of Free Speech Systems ever investing any money in research and development of the supplements that it sold to Craig. | |
| I'm not aware of any of that. | ||
| Why would they? | ||
| It's been your understanding as the director of business operations that Mr. Jones and Free Speech Systems purchases dietary supplements from third-party suppliers and then brands them as A Alice Jones product, correct? | ||
| That's my understanding. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, of course. | ||
| Obviously, that's what they do. | ||
| They just put a different label on shit. | ||
| Why in God's name would they also be... | ||
| Listen, we put our labels on everything and we sell it, but also, why not? | ||
| Sometimes we just do R&D? | ||
| No! | ||
| Fuck off! | ||
| You're not a supplement company! | ||
| You take cheap shit, add a mystique to it, and pretend that it's magical in some way, and then put another fun label on it, and boom! | ||
| Totally. | ||
| Mark it up. | ||
| The markup is Alex holding a picture of it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's it. | |
| That's the whole thing. | ||
| And saying something like chaga mushroom. | ||
| Totally. | ||
| Really salaciously. | ||
| Force. | ||
| Adding force to all of it. | ||
| That's all you need. | ||
| Or super blank. | ||
| Super blank. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So, one of the other things that Alex likes to pretend is that he's not that connected to how his show is moving products. | ||
| He's just talent. | ||
| He's just talent. | ||
| It's just all he is is on air. | ||
| And look, obviously he's got to be concerned with some of the business side of things. | ||
| Wow, it's his business. | ||
| But he is not doing things in order to push. | ||
| That's not his expertise! | ||
|
unidentified
|
No! | |
| Mr. Jones' online store expanded more and more of your time. | ||
| You spent essentially managing the principal revenue-generating aspect of Mr. Jones' business, which is the online store, right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Correct. | |
| But Mr. Jones was also involved in that operation on a daily basis, correct? | ||
| Correct. | ||
| In fact, he would call you pretty much every day after his program to discuss the store's performance during the show, right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| pitch his products and encourage his audience to buy them, correct? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| And so he would check with you on the effectiveness of his pitch to his audience. | ||
| Effectiveness measured by the amount of sales that were transacted during the show, right? | ||
| That's correct. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Woo! | |
| Wow! | ||
| Shady! | ||
| Cynical! | ||
| Alex gets out there, starts screaming about God and all this stuff, and then gets off air and is like, hey, Tim, how'd we do today? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Excuse me, Pharisees. | ||
| Let's change some money in the church real quick. | ||
| Come on now. | ||
| It is a bleak portrait. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Every day. | ||
| That sucks. | ||
| What? | ||
| What about it? | ||
| That sucks. | ||
| If we had a TV show or something like that. | ||
| That would be the part that sucks the most, is, like, having to give a shit about what the sales were on your thing. | ||
| Like, all I've ever wanted to do is do the show part, you know? | ||
| That sucks. | ||
| It seems like that is a part that Alex enjoys, though, maybe. | ||
| Yeah, right? | ||
| Because he's all about them bucks. | ||
| He's all about the bucks. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You know, one of the things that you get looking at this, too, is that it's... | ||
| Kind of a bummer to recognize that InfoWars is, like, a business business. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You know, like, there is that mystique that Alex has about himself where it's just like, fly by the seat of our pants. | ||
| Totally. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We know where tomorrow's money's coming from. | |
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
| He's calling his business guy every day and being like, hey, did my ads work today? | ||
| Totally. | ||
| Hey, did it work? | ||
| That sucks. | ||
| Did I scare the people enough to buy my stuff? | ||
|
unidentified
|
That sucks! | |
| It does suck. | ||
| That's such a bummer. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| I'm so glad we don't sell shit. | ||
| We're so... | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So, David Jones, Alex's dad, in his deposition mentioned how whenever they see big spikes in traffic, they try to replicate what that was. | ||
| Of course, as you would. | ||
| And so this is brought up, and we see if Tim is in on this, this sort of game. | ||
| I'll represent to you that Mr. Jones testified, David Jones testified in substance that if there was a day or time when... | ||
|
unidentified
|
And... | |
| And I don't know. | ||
| There was a spike in activity that folks would try to determine what might have caused that and then replicate it. | ||
| Are you familiar with that concept? | ||
| No, I don't recall. | ||
| I never read or watched David Jones' thing, but that makes sense in business if something is working to keep doing it. | ||
| Yeah, man. | ||
| I don't know what he's thinking, but, you know, like I said, I would provide him the information. | ||
| What he does on a show is his thing. | ||
| I never talk to him about what he does on the show or anything, but if he requested the information, I would give it to him, and he did what he does. | ||
| But you yourself were personally, well strike that. | ||
| You were responsible, just as Mr. Jones was, perhaps less so, but responsible for maximizing the store's performance, right? | ||
| I mean, to what I could do on my side, yes. | ||
| And one of the things that you could do was, when there was a spike in revenue on a particular day, was trying to assess what may have caused it so that you could replicate it, right? | ||
| Objection. | ||
| No, I never... | ||
| If there was a spike in sales during his show, I would tell him, whatever you did worked because the sales increased. | ||
| But I never looked at a show. | ||
| I mean, I can't listen to his show. | ||
| It's too much for me. | ||
| It's very distracting while I was working. | ||
| I never, I have no idea what he was doing on a show. | ||
| But you would take him, look, whatever you did, it worked. | ||
| Yes, that is correct. | ||
| Alex's show is too much for him. | ||
| That is some psychopath shit right there. | ||
| It really is. | ||
| That is some really terrifying like, oh yeah, no, I get that he slaughters young boys, but I... | ||
| I don't watch it. | ||
| Just because I work there doesn't mean that I care. | ||
| Right. | ||
| All I'm concerned with is selling ads for the slaughter. | ||
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
| All I do is I sell ads that say, if you want to be a part of the slaughter, then join the slaughter. | ||
| That's all I do. | ||
| I'm a good guy. | ||
| I'm a good guy. | ||
| I put my head down, put my hard hat on, and then I go home after work is over. | ||
| Obviously not necessarily as extreme as slaughter. | ||
| No, of course. | ||
| It's not far enough off. | ||
| Honestly. | ||
| It really is just the head in the sand kind of thing, and that to me is bleak. | ||
| There is a real cynical approach to ethics. | ||
| That's the type of shit that I got from the second clip of it. | ||
| It's like, this dude knows what he's doing and is choosing, like, fuck it. | ||
| I don't care. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You know? | ||
| Consider he's been around for a decade. | ||
| So long. | ||
| He's the seventh employee Alex ever brought on, and he was there for a decade while Alex... | ||
| Just did all this shit that he's like, I don't fucking want to watch this nonsense. | ||
| Every day I choose to go to work. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Uh-huh. | |
| Yep. | ||
| Alex is out there helping storm the Capitol. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Totally. | |
| He's just like, hey, listen, I'm just gonna go to work that day. | ||
| Oh, look, Alex is in the Capitol building. | ||
| That's interesting. | ||
| Hey, it seems like we've got a spike in sales while Alex is in the fucking Capitol building. | ||
| Hey, Alex's lawyer in court is saying that Sandy Hook families are exaggerating their grief. | ||
| Oh, boy. | ||
| Do sell some ads. | ||
| Fucking insane. | ||
| And we'll get more into this a little bit later, too. | ||
| So put a pin in that. | ||
| You know what's crazy about it to me is, like, they really do... | ||
| Evaluate Alex's show like any ad campaign would be evaluated. | ||
| Like, oh, if we hired Jon Hamm for this car commercial, does Jon Hamm sell more cars than if we hired Sam Jackson? | ||
| That kind of thing. | ||
| Only it's Alex's entire show. | ||
| The show itself is the ad for the shit. | ||
| And I mean, as this goes on, they talk about being able to have hour-by-hour breakdowns of when more traffic was going to the store. | ||
| There's so much more awareness of what they're doing from a business standpoint than you'd ever get from any interview or deposition with Alex or a corporate representative. | ||
| Yeah, we never use Google Analytics. | ||
| I mean, that's stupid, honestly. | ||
| This peek into that is like... | ||
| I mean, it's cynical. | ||
| I won't say that he's worse than people who do shit intentionally or who do bad. | ||
| He didn't dance on a Black Lives Matter flag on fire. | ||
| Right. | ||
| There's blame to go both ways. | ||
| But this is someone who knows better. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| And is not a true believer. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And that, to me, is scarier a little bit. | ||
| Totally. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| I mean, it seems extreme to be like, oh, this person watches the kid slaughter, but we're talking about somebody who lost a lawsuit for $1.5 billion fucking dollars for truly awful behavior. | ||
| And he was like... | ||
| Hey, man, I just go to work. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You know? | ||
| That's fucked up. | ||
| I was there selling ads the entire time Alex was defaming these families. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Totally. | |
| And now that he's lost $1.5 billion, I still work for him, and I don't really care that much. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah, yeah. | |
| I'm just willing to say in a deposition, I don't listen to his show. | ||
| It's stupid. | ||
| I mean, on the stand at the Nuremberg trials, his defense is not going to go well. | ||
| True. | ||
| But that's the other thing. | ||
| And we'll get more into this later in the deposition, but... | ||
| Tim knows that the stuff Alex is saying is bullshit. | ||
| He knows. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Totally. | |
| He knows that, like, the ads... | ||
| That's why I can't watch his show! | ||
| The ads that are being sold are based on tricking people with bullshit. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| With stuff that he knows is bullshit. | ||
| Yeah, 100%. | ||
| And that sucks. | ||
| Anyway, Tim would tell Alex about the traffic that came to the website, and then Alex decides what to do about it. | ||
| I would tell him if there's, you know, like I just said, the more people that are in Town Square, the more people that are going into the shops. | ||
| So just by default, the more people going to the news website, I mean, you're going to pick up traffic coming over to the store because we had banner ads running. | ||
| Right, and not only that, but during the show, he's telling his audience to go to the store, right? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| And now, how to get those audience members to Infowars.com, that was Mr. Jones' purview, right? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| He would decide what he wanted to talk about in order to generate audience, correct? | ||
| Correct. | ||
| But as you testified, he was aware and you would inform him that the more people that come there to the show, the more people that are coming to the store, right? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| And showing you exhibit number 27, I got an email before you, Mr. Fruget, from Chris Ellison to you, dated March 11, 2016. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Okay, good. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And who's Chris Ellison? | |
| Chris Ellison was the e-commerce manager for a certain period of time. | ||
| Worked under you? | ||
| Yes, he reported to me. | ||
| And in this email, and by the way, your email address is Tim at InfoWars.com, or at least it was. | ||
| It was, yes. | ||
| And Chris is still employed there? | ||
| No, Chris is gone for quite a while now. | ||
| But he is sending you an email with the subject line, largest traffic spike ever, correct? | ||
| Oh, that's not good. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Oh boy. | ||
| And he says, hey Tim, yesterday we saw the largest traffic spike ever. | ||
| And he's sending this on March 11, 2016, so fair to say from March 10, 2016, right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Things into perspective, we hit 26,858 sessions on the 29th of February. | ||
| By far a big number. | ||
| Yesterday we capped out at 118,712. | ||
| So we got a giant spike here. | ||
| The biggest spike that has ever been recorded, according to this email. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And we already also have an understanding that, you know, Tim would report these things to Alex. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yep. | |
| So he should be aware of this, and seems to not really be... | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I never used Google Analytics. | ||
| This is in your email. | ||
| Never even heard about this stuff. | ||
| Oh, did we do better that day? | ||
| That seems crazy. | ||
| So we get a little bit more into the email here. | ||
| But in any minute, we've respected this. | ||
| Largest spike ever. | ||
| Mr. Ellison provides you with some comparables. | ||
| And he says, checking the news feeds, I didn't notice anything that could account for that spike. | ||
| I'll keep a close eye on things that should be posted. | ||
| Do you see that? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| And so this is an example of what we were talking about earlier, where there's a spike in activity in an effort to determine what in the news could have accounted for that, right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Objection. | |
| Yes and no. | ||
| So if there was a big news day, if there was a big story for whatever that CNN, Fox, Drudge, everybody was covering, it would send more traffic to Infowars.com, which in turn would send more traffic to Infowars store. | ||
| So there might be a huge news day that Mr. Jones isn't driving from his own program, but it results in additional traffic to the InfoWars.com website and consequently the store. | ||
| Yes, I mean, yes, correct. | ||
| So Tim tries to play some little what-if games. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| A little bit about, you know, sometimes it's bad traffic, though. | ||
| You're not getting increased sales and stuff. | ||
| Maybe, maybe it's a DDoS attack. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Maybe, who knows? | ||
| You can't know anything based on these traffics. | ||
| Right. | ||
| So here is where he tries to pull some of that. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| By the way, the largest traffic spike ever, that's something you discussed with me. | ||
| Mr. Jones during your daily fall, right? | ||
| Well, yes. | ||
| And typical thing, I would tell him, hey, largest spike ever. | ||
| I don't remember this, but if I'm looking at this and I'm putting myself back in 2016, he's telling me that there was a largest spike ever that didn't contribute to sales. | ||
| And if you scroll down and look at that map, The screenshot he sent, that would tell me that we were being attacked on the store. | ||
| Because that happened all the time. | ||
| Whatever players, whoever players would send bots and all kinds of stuff to try and spike the traffic up on the store to overrun the servers to bring the store down. | ||
| That happened all the time. | ||
| So if I am looking at this today and putting myself in my shoes from 2016, I would say that's the point that is trying to be made, is, hey, something weird happened. | ||
| This could be an attack. | ||
| Would your view change if you knew that on March 10, 2016, the Republican presidential debate was held? | ||
| Yeah, that would change my view. | ||
| I would say we got a ton of traffic. | ||
| That would do it. | ||
| Because, yes. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| Yeah, I guess that's what it was. | ||
| I guess it was a Republican debate, and we did a ton of coverage of that, and it drove a bunch of traffic. | ||
| This big old spike. | ||
| How did that person not see that in the news? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| What was in the news that would have contributed? | ||
| Whoever's sending this email is maybe incompetent. | ||
| I mean, here's the thing that I feel like Tim does not understand. | ||
| All right? | ||
| If you're going to try and avoid the question in the positive of, like, I know what he covered, and therefore we adjusted things accordingly, right? | ||
| That is essentially a true false statement, right? | ||
| If you also say, we know when it's false, that means you know when it's true. | ||
| So if you say, oh, well we figured out when it wasn't a DDoS attack, means you know when it was something else. | ||
| And conceivably, maybe you don't remember this because it was years in the past, but at that moment you were digging into this. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| And trying to understand the traffic. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Explaining it away as a DDoS attack, it reveals... | ||
| You know. | ||
| Investigation. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| And that is heavily implied there. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But yeah, it wasn't a DDoS attack. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No. | |
| No, that was just traffic. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| So in 2016, how much do you think InfoWars was making per week? | ||
| Bring it in. | ||
| Oh my God. | ||
| I don't want to... | ||
| So, I mean, I did hear the one number they tossed out was like almost half a billion dollars one year. | ||
| Right? | ||
| So you got to figure that puts you at... | ||
| What, $100,000 a week? | ||
| Well, here's where we were. | ||
| And again, you have transactions, you have, for me, weekly revenue numbers, right? | ||
| You'd agree with me that two months later, again, the weekly average appears to be hovering right around a million bucks. | ||
| Oh, shit, it was? | ||
| No, a million? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Fuck! | |
| My math is terrible. | ||
| And the reason you're saying that is because you believe that the existence of the presidential race contributed to an increase in your weekly revenue? | ||
| Well, I mean, everyone was, it's the presidential cycle, I would assume. | ||
| That's what it is. | ||
| I couldn't tell you definitively, but that's what makes sense to me. | ||
| But, in fact, in 2017, which was a non-presidential year, didn't InfoWarsStore.com exceed its weekly average revenue over 2016? | ||
| I don't recall. | ||
|
unidentified
|
If you have something, you can show me, but I don't remember. | |
| Okay, fair enough. | ||
| Wait for it. | ||
| Wait for it. | ||
| There's a cameo coming. | ||
| Oh, I want to go back to free speech systems in the early days. | ||
| Love that show. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You talked a little bit about, at the outset, about revenue streams, um... | |
| let's kind of ballpark it as being, you know, prior to the move to Alvin DeVay, okay? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| I'm free speech systems and free speech systems is me. | ||
| So the corporate representative of either of those companies absolutely should prepare for their deposition via extensive conversation with Mr. Jones to fill in all the gaps. | ||
| One, we can hear that. | ||
| That's fine that she didn't talk to him. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Four. | |
| In preparation for her deposition. | ||
| Yes, you have. | ||
| All right. | ||
| I apologize. | ||
| They haven't responded yet. | ||
| Oh my god. | ||
| Oh my god. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You may want to mute. | |
| Oh, my God. | ||
| And for the court reporter, please note that Mr. Pattis, attorney Norm Pattis, is logged on. | ||
| Yeah, he has. | ||
| Yeah, he has. | ||
| Norm Pattis is logged on. | ||
| So his only appearance at all in this deposition is as somebody who's accidentally streaming to... | ||
| Drive it to a grinding halt. | ||
| Oh, my God. | ||
| Love it. | ||
| So it's as good a time as any to bring up that Norm lost his ability to practice law for six months. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| And he stole your joke. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah! | |
| Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| I mean, it's tough for him to call us bottom feeders if you're stealing our bits, man. | ||
| That's kind of harsh. | ||
| Yeah, he tweeted something about a grape job that's pretty shitty. | ||
| I mean, it's funny because the number of people he is fooling is precisely zero. | ||
| You know, like, zero people were like, oh, see, he's got a cool enough sense of humor that he can expand. | ||
| This guy gets it. | ||
| Nope. | ||
| No, no, you were trying, buddy. | ||
| You were trying to deflect and you lose. | ||
| Oh, Norm. | ||
| That's sadder than if you just didn't say anything. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| But I love this kind of thing with Norm where he's just the guy who fumbles onto the scene. | ||
| Totally. | ||
| Him showing up at the deposition like this was just, it was delightful. | ||
| Also, you can see Fruget laughing. | ||
| Yeah, of course. | ||
| Tim doesn't take Norm seriously. | ||
| No, no. | ||
| Norm is the hyper chicken lawyer from Futurama. | ||
| He's very much like, I mean, there is the point where in Futurama, there's the point where the chicken lawyer is talking to Fry, and then the reveal is the lawyer himself was in prison the entire time, and it's like, that's Norm! | ||
| It's 100% norm. | ||
| He's in prison giving you legal advice. | ||
| And also like, hey, can you help me get out of here? | ||
| I need to post bail. | ||
| Right, but also like here, presumably there's billable hours going on. | ||
| He's trying to double dip watching two things at once. | ||
| I mean, the funniest part though, the funniest part, what elevates it is that the audio is of somebody saying that the corporate representative should be prepared. | ||
| I believe it's the judge in the Texas case. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| Judge Gamble. | ||
| The corporate representative should be prepared is absolutely the... | ||
| Of course that's what should be in there. | ||
| Beautiful. | ||
| And there's also an added comedy that he seems to not be able to... | ||
| Mute it right away. | ||
| Can't figure it out. | ||
| Can't do it. | ||
| But yeah, the stuff that was going on before that. | ||
| So you had a million in sales a week, which Tim is trying to attribute to the election year. | ||
| And then it went up in 2017, which kind of ruins that. | ||
| Oh, that's not good. | ||
| And one of the things that's fascinating is all of these people at Infowars, every single one of them, to a person. | ||
| Engages in improvisational explanations. | ||
| Yeah, I know. | ||
| They're presented with a set of facts and they're like, well, here's why. | ||
| Let me try to tell you a fun story. | ||
| And the bottom falls out. | ||
| It happens to every single one of these people. | ||
| I don't understand. | ||
| See, I mean, what I wrote down is like, you should be able to hear at this point, like, oh, this is a question you know the answer to. | ||
| And you are asking it to me. | ||
| I would like you to just tell me the answer and then I'll agree with what you say. | ||
| Because what you're going to say is true. | ||
| And if I... | ||
| If I'm allowed to talk, I'm going to make up some bullshit. | ||
| That's just who I am! | ||
| Tim is a little bit more of a serious person, it seems, but he still has that trait, that habit. | ||
| It's very weird. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's in there. | |
| It's osmosis. | ||
| You spend enough time at the Infowars office, you're going to make up reasons for anything. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So we talked about this tiny bit at the beginning, the notion of Alex doing pay-for-play kind of stuff. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And so this comes back up. | ||
| In addition to donations, Mr. Jones... | ||
|
unidentified
|
Would sell advertising on his show and on his website, correct? | |
| Correct. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Which he continues to do, correct? | |
| Sell advertising? | ||
| Sorry, can you repeat the question? | ||
| He continues to sell advertising on his show and on his website, correct? | ||
| He did, yes. | ||
| He would charge guests who wanted to come on the show, right? | ||
| That is not so black and white. | ||
| So he would charge advertisers to mention their product and stuff on the air. | ||
| I can't remember him. | ||
| Charging a guest to come on the air. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Show you exhibit 16. Just beautiful. | |
| Let me show you this. | ||
| Just set them up and knock them down. | ||
| It never stops. | ||
| It doesn't. | ||
| It's just there. | ||
| Yeah, that was information that Tim is volunteering that is going to be contradicted by the next exhibit. | ||
| Of course, of course. | ||
| Which he didn't need to say. | ||
| He didn't need to say, I've never been aware of Alex asking for money to have people appear on the show. | ||
| Now, saying that he charges to mention a product, that's what we call an ad. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So that is one thing. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| It's not so black and white to call it an ad. | ||
| It's fine to take ads. | ||
| It's fine to do that. | ||
| It's fine to have, you know, brokered content that's kind of revealed as such. | ||
| It is not ethical to have people come on who are paying to have an interview with you as if it's a normal interview that is promoting their product. | ||
| That is kind of messed up. | ||
| Here is an email of Tim trying to sell exactly this. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Of course. | |
| You see, Exhibit 16, I pull up for you, an email from you to an individual named Coleman Wire dated July 29th, 2014? | ||
| Yes. | ||
|
unidentified
|
All right. | |
| Now, there's an email chain here. | ||
| I'm going to scroll down for you. | ||
| But at least in this first part... | ||
| From this, is it fair to say that you are informing Mr. O'Dwyer that you will put him in touch with Nico Acosta to arrange the logistics for somebody to appear on Mr. Jones' show, right? | ||
| That's correct. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You're down in the chain. | |
| It's clear that the individual who is to appear on the show is Bill, right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yep. | |
| You know who Bill is? | ||
| Someone with BonnerandPartners.com. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| All right. | ||
| And now I want to go down further in the chain to an email you sent the day before to call me. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| And in this email, you say, I just spoke with Alex and he likes Bill's work a lot. | ||
| He said he'd do a 20 to 30 minute interview with him next week to help push the book sales. | ||
| Do you understand that to be? | ||
| Bill Rowe, right? | ||
| That's correct. | ||
| Meaning that if Bill comes on the show, they talk about the book, Alex's audience will buy the book. | ||
| Yes. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And then you say he usually charges at least 15 to 20,000. | |
| Woo! | ||
| God damn! | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| So it's fair to say that at least at this time in 2014, if an individual wanted to come on to promote something that they had, Mr. Jones would charge them between $15,000 and $20,000 typically. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Objection. | |
| That... | ||
| He usually charges... | ||
| I mean, that's... | ||
| If I am putting myself back in 2014, this is something Alex asked me to write to him to basically let him know the value of him coming onto the show. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure! | |
| Yeah! | ||
| Good save. | ||
| Solid work, Tim. | ||
| Yeah, I'd buy that one. | ||
| This is just trying to make sure he appreciates... | ||
| That was one of the worst... | ||
| You know, I almost respect him for trying. | ||
| Alex normally charges $15,000 to $20,000 for this, but because he likes you, he's going to do this as a freebie. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I know! | |
| It's like, what? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Oh, man. | ||
| Based on everything I know about it for us, that sounds like something that's just trying to make this guy appreciate and feel special about his coming on the show. | ||
| That is just as psycho as Daria being like, well, don't they feel nice about hearing that their kids might still be alive? | ||
| Just as psycho crazy. | ||
| Gotta push back. | ||
| I think that Daria is way more... | ||
| That instance is way more psycho. | ||
| That's much more hurtful. | ||
| When I said it out loud, I realized that I had gone farther than I expected. | ||
| It's disconnected. | ||
| It's insane. | ||
| They're both disconnected from what normal people would see is going on. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's what I'm going for. | |
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| So yeah, this introduces a really... | ||
| Fucked up kind of thing into Alex's world, because if you know that this is something that he does, then you can't really be sure that any of the interviews that he does, how much of it is stuff that he actually believes in, how much of it is stuff that he would promote just of his own accord, and how much of it is he getting paid 20 grand to just have a little conversation with this person? | ||
| It's free money on the table. | ||
| And who's getting suckered? | ||
| You, the listener. | ||
| Close from being like a Rush Limbaugh clone show to being more like an infomercial at 2am trying to sell you knives, except for the people selling you knives are like, well, one, if you don't get this knife, everyone you know is going to die. | ||
| And two, this person selling knives is maybe the greatest knife salesman that's ever existed. | ||
| They're the best knives, you know? | ||
| But those knife infomercials are fun. | ||
| Exactly! | ||
| They're cutting books in half and stuff. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right! | |
| If you ruined it with Alex! | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I really think that this is something that is... | ||
| It should be a big problem for Alex's listeners, even if they are people who are staunch believers in this stuff, because introducing this kind of doubt into the things that you are seeing on his show, it should really make you question. | ||
| Even if only twice in the course of his career people actually paid him $20,000, it still tarnishes pretty much every interview. | ||
| You can never be sure that it is above board and pure. | ||
| No, your currency in a cult is infallible trust. | ||
| We will do anything that this person says because we completely trust them. | ||
| And this should be... | ||
| A tiny doubt should be the end for you, you know? | ||
| You can't be in a cult if you're not 100% in. | ||
| Yeah, there should be an erosion of trust that comes from this. | ||
| Probably won't. | ||
| Probably not. | ||
| Anyway, Tim had a swing there, which was admirable. | ||
| And then he comes up with another swing. | ||
| So, essentially what you're doing here is... | ||
|
unidentified
|
Mr. Bogd wants to come on the show to discuss a book that he's written. | |
| And you are offering him a proposal, an advertising proposal, pursuant to which Free Speech Systems will receive $46,550 for different ad placements related to the book, right? | ||
| It appears so, yes. | ||
| You tell him that ordinarily Alex would charge $15,000 to $20,000 just for the interview itself, separate and apart from the athletes, right? | ||
| Right. | ||
| And you wouldn't have told him that if that wasn't true, would you? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well... | |
| Where are we going here, buddy? | ||
| That's probably the number that Alex gave me, but that's a typical sales pitch of, hey, we're going to give you a value of this. | ||
| To come on the show if you do this. | ||
| That's the way I'm reading it. | ||
| I honestly don't remember this because it was so long ago. | ||
| I'm just trying to remember. | ||
| And don't ask me how my first wife died. | ||
| But yeah, I mean, I obviously wrote it there and usually charges $15,000 to $20,000. | ||
| It's giving an incentive for him to buy the ad package for $49,000. | ||
| In this case, you're basically saying, "Look, we're going to forego that $15,000 to $20,000, but ask you to purchase ads on our website and also that Alex will read live for $46,000 plus. | ||
| That's what it reads. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Just trying to upsell, man. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Wild. | ||
| Just wild. | ||
| Oof. | ||
| Listen, okay, I get what you're saying. | ||
| I get what you're saying. | ||
| It's not like the warranty package is what drives us, man. | ||
| We'll give you a free warranty. | ||
| That's a sweet in the pot, you know? | ||
| No big deal! | ||
| This is really about giving you value. | ||
| That's what it's about. | ||
| We'll detail! | ||
| We'll detail, man! | ||
| Ironically, Bill Bonner is somebody who Alex should have on. | ||
| You shouldn't need to extort him. | ||
| He's like a guy who wrote for Lou Rockwell. | ||
| He's like a libertarian type conservative finance guy. | ||
| I mean, if you can afford, for a book, if you can afford a budget of 60K in advertising, that book is probably gonna, that book better be doing well. | ||
| No, no, no, no, no, no, no. | ||
| Because if you buy the 46, then you don't have to pay the 15. That's fine. | ||
| If you got 50K to sell on your book. | ||
| 46, it's a big difference. | ||
| Good luck. | ||
| Good luck. | ||
| I hope you make... | ||
| I hope you do. | ||
| I don't believe this either, though. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No. | |
| Absolutely not. | ||
| It's closer than his first explanation, I think, to being believable. | ||
| I mean, I would buy that they open with 15 to 20, and then somebody goes like, how about 10? | ||
| And they'll be like, that's the most money we've ever accepted before. | ||
| We'll take it. | ||
| I think that he probably has a situation where he charges this. | ||
| For people to come on. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But also uses an offer to try and upsell if possible. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Totally. | |
| So I think that these are both probably true. | ||
| There's a pay-to-play thing, and then also it is used to induce people into these larger packages of events. | ||
| But even so, it is still the same issue remains. | ||
| Totally. | ||
| All of it. | ||
| And that's almost even more damning, again, because that's business shit. | ||
| You know? | ||
| That's people who have a business plan who act in terms of what we do to maximize profit. | ||
| Which is exactly the opposite of the way Alex likes to present himself. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Which is a problem. | ||
| You betcha. | ||
| So, Alex has taken this money conceivably any time he's promoted something. | ||
| Sounds about right. | ||
| But he's never told the audience that he does. | ||
| Are you aware of Alex ever telling his audience that a guest he had on? | ||
| Who he was promoting had paid him to come on? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No. | |
| Nor did Alex ever tell his audience, as far as you know, that content he was promoting, like for example a book, had been purchased for, in this case, $36,000 plus. | ||
| Sorry, can you repeat that? | ||
| Yeah, you're not aware of Alex ever informing his audience that books he was promoting on his website, like, for example, this book by Mr. Bonner, he was promoting as a result of being paid $46,000 to do so. | ||
| Not that I recall. | ||
| Well, why would you? | ||
| This is something that's come up over and over and over again. | ||
| In these depositions, in my head, I'm always like, his next question is going to be like, you realize that's bad, right? | ||
| That doesn't happen. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| But in my head, it's like, okay, you just said the things that you said, right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah, yeah. | |
| You realize those are bad things. | ||
| You know, like a deposition isn't a place to scold. | ||
| I know, I know. | ||
| It's not scolding. | ||
| It's incredulity. | ||
| Yeah, are you aware that's shady as hell? | ||
| You know, children would be disappointed in you, right? | ||
| You understand this. | ||
| I think that there are... | ||
| You know, one of the things that's strange about Alex's show is that there are instances of times where you can kind of tell that something is brokered programming, but the line is gray a lot of the time. | ||
| It is! | ||
| And that, even for me, somebody who's watching with a critical eye and looking into stuff, like, sometimes it is... | ||
| Difficult to tell. | ||
| And that introduction of this into the possibility, the range of possibilities, it makes me think whenever it's gray, it's probably paid. | ||
| Yeah, totally. | ||
| And that's not good. | ||
| I mean, to a weird level, it's like he's almost scamming scammers with this scam. | ||
| You know? | ||
| He's scamming the scammer. | ||
| Getting them and then scamming his audience. | ||
| Like, he's taking it from the top and the bottom. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| Well, it certainly tends to make sense of why there are certain people who show up for a little while and then aren't figures. | ||
| And then are never seen again. | ||
| Right. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah, yeah. | |
| They purchased a package, maybe. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Totally. | |
| And their package is good for three months. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Totally. | |
| Or something like why Vox Dei was a big figure for a while and then hasn't... | ||
| I don't know where he is. | ||
| And then they found out that the advertising budget was too much for not enough return. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Scam! | ||
| Mike Cernovich was on quite a bit, pretty regularly, and then was gone for a while. | ||
| I don't know if that's, you know, necessarily what's going on, but I wouldn't be too surprised. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I mean, it's fucking expensive. | |
| True, true. | ||
| So, speaking of things that are expensive... | ||
| Buying Alex's products. | ||
| Not expensive. | ||
| Alex buying his products. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| So the product line that Alex launched called Emmerich's Essentials comes up. | ||
| And this, of course, is like the deodorant and body wash and stuff. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right, right, right. | |
| He was trying to turn... | ||
| Herbal essences for men. | ||
| He was trying to turn this into a, like, hey, you're going to buy this stuff anyway. | ||
| Buy it for me. | ||
| Might as well. | ||
| Yeah, that kind of... | ||
| It didn't work. | ||
| They made a lot of money initially, and then... | ||
| People just were not interested. | ||
| Right. | ||
| In this next clip, we learn a little bit about the markup on Emmerich's Essentials. | ||
| And at the bottom, he indicates that the total gross revenue over that two-week period is $496,640.86, right? | ||
| It appears so, yes. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's the half a million he was referencing using email, yeah? | |
| Makes sense, yes. | ||
| And the cost of those products to free speech systems was $104,699, according to Mr. Ellison, right? | ||
| It appears so, yes. | ||
| For a profit in that two-week period of $359,998, right? | ||
| It appears so, yes. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| So that's a 400% profit on that particular line over those two weeks, right? | ||
| I mean, the numbers are there. | ||
| It appears that I'm not sure about 400%. | ||
| I can't do that math. | ||
| But that profit appears there. | ||
| It looks right. | ||
| That's pretty damn good. | ||
| That's very good. | ||
| So when Alex does like a 60% off, so he's still like marked up. | ||
| At least, like, 150%. | ||
| Yeah, totally. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| So, yeah, his, uh, man, that's good if you can get it. | ||
| Oh, boy. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, the markup on hearing aids for the longest time was anywhere between two and a half to three and a half times, you know? | ||
| And that made sense for a lot of businesses because they're all brick and mortars, you know? | ||
| Like, it's all overhead and shit, and you gotta do the whole thing. | ||
| That's what the business had to do to survive, you know? | ||
| It was the companies making the cartel-level money. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| But I also would guess that in this instance... | ||
| Some higher markup makes sense because the purchases are lesser or they're scarcer. | ||
| Oh, no. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Yeah, totally. | ||
| It's a one-time purchase or maybe once every few years or whatever. | ||
| Right. | ||
| So I feel like a markup on that in order for these businesses to even be able to survive. | ||
| That makes sense. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Whereas you have auto ship and routine purchases. | ||
| Right. | ||
| That level of a markup for something that you're going to be buying more and more and more regularly. | ||
| Right. | ||
| That's high. | ||
| Let me try and put it to you this way. | ||
| That markup was there because the total profit on each one of those was like 10%. | ||
| Of the total amount anybody spent, you get a little bit as your profit. | ||
| Not 400 fucking percent of the actual sale. | ||
| That's price gouging. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yep. | |
| Yep. | ||
| That's thievery. | ||
| It feels that way. | ||
| And it feels very out of sync with the way that Alex describes. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| I'm taking a loss on this. | ||
| How? | ||
| I'm giving it all to you. | ||
| How is that possible? | ||
| I'm taking a loss on 400% profit. | ||
| I'm only getting 300% this time. | ||
| Cool. | ||
| Absurd. | ||
| So, Tim was involved in ad sales for a little while. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And, you know, for a bit. | ||
| He hated it, though. | ||
| Fucking hated it. | ||
| And good for him. | ||
| I imagine that is not, especially at Infowars, probably not the most pleasant thing. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Terrible. | |
| Because you end up, like, selling ads for unscrupulous businesses. | ||
| You remember that email we were discussing earlier where you were pitching a Mr. Harvey from self-lender on some, on advertising. | ||
| Mr. Garvey, excuse me. | ||
| This is example 15. Do you have that email from the announcer? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| If you go down to his email on the screen on July 8, 2014. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm sorry. | |
| Yeah, where he introduces himself. | ||
| He sends in an email that he's the co-founder of Self Lender, a website that helps U.S. consumers build credit by creating a small amount of debt and then paying it off. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We believe that your U.S. consumers would be a great fit for our target demographic, right? | |
| Yes. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| And so what, Mr. It appears so, yes. | ||
| I looked into it a tiny bit, and self-lender itself doesn't seem like it's one of the most shady businesses in the world. | ||
| I think that there are instances where this can be something like a reverse loan, can be something that is helpful for people to build credit. | ||
| But it also is not necessarily always the best thing to do, not necessarily always safe for folks. | ||
| It's not something that I feel like Alex's audience, it doesn't seem like a great thing to offer. | ||
| Any finance thing, if they give you a good offer, alright? | ||
| That means that you have to adhere to everything. | ||
| Their offers are the devil. | ||
| You follow the contract all the way down perfectly and it works out. | ||
| You fuck up one time, you're theirs. | ||
| Oh, I'm sorry. | ||
| The fee is $7 million and also you work for us now. | ||
| And if there's a good deal, then it's a great deal for them. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| Because they're not doing this out of a desire to get you out of debt. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Or get you out of... | ||
| That's not what their business model is. | ||
| The goal isn't like the whole world has good credit at the end of their business. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Cashing places don't want to cash checks for people. | ||
| They don't love cashing checks. | ||
| So, I mean, this is something that I find to be a little bit... | ||
|
unidentified
|
Eh. | |
| As an advertising thing. | ||
| Granted, I think, like, maybe gambling would be worse. | ||
| Right. | ||
| I mean, it's a step above Lone Shark. | ||
| It's a step above being like, hey, today we have Timmy the Bookie over here, and he's going to advertise on betting a lot of money on a losing team so he can break your kneecaps later. | ||
| In terms of things that Alex has promoted, though, like, maybe it's not the worst. | ||
| I mean, there have been ads on his show for cults. | ||
| I mean, there have been ads for Where to Hide Your Guns, I suppose. | ||
| Yeah, and Where Not to Hide Your Guns. | ||
| So, one of the vibes that you get is that Tim does not care. | ||
| He is not an InfoWarrior. | ||
| He is not interested in the InfoWar. | ||
| And maybe doesn't even actually like Alex that much. | ||
| Is it fair to say that your awareness of what Mr. Jones was describing on his show or what was published on the InfoWars.com website was through your conversations with Mr. Jones? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No. | |
| No? | ||
| No, I didn't talk to Alex about news or his show. | ||
| That wasn't... | ||
| I didn't care about that. | ||
| That wasn't my job. | ||
| Did you tell me that day-to-day, you had no idea what Mr. Jones was talking about on his show? | ||
| That was correct. | ||
| I mean, some days, yes, maybe, but most days, I made it a point not to listen to his show. | ||
| Because it was too distracting. | ||
| Did you read the website? | ||
| Yeah, I'd browse through. | ||
| What? | ||
| What was that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I don't know about every day, but most days, yes. | |
| He seems like a guy who wandered in one day and just stuck around. | ||
| I'm not really. | ||
| I didn't know. | ||
| He does a show? | ||
| Alex is on his show yelling about how he's in a war against the fucking devil and stoking hatred against marginalized and vulnerable populations constantly all day. | ||
| Fuck you with your I don't watch his show. | ||
| Sometimes I'll look at it. | ||
| God, what a... | ||
| Just a weasel. | ||
| That is the worst. | ||
| That is the worst. | ||
| Oh my God. | ||
| So this is kind of funny. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Matty asks why he doesn't watch Alex's show. | ||
| How is the show so distracting that you wouldn't listen to it? | ||
| Do I really have to answer that question? | ||
| For me, you do. | ||
| Alex's voice can get to me, and I don't necessarily agree with a lot of what he says. | ||
| Oh my god. | ||
| You don't want to hear it? | ||
| I don't want to hear it. | ||
| Yeah, I don't want to hear his show. | ||
| His voice is annoying, and I don't agree with the stuff he says. | ||
| Oh my god. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| That is fucked. | ||
| That is fucked up. | ||
| It's dark. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's some real worm shit. | ||
| Well, the paycheck was good. | ||
| 200 grand. | ||
| See, that's what I'm saying. | ||
| That's what I'm saying. | ||
| No, I know, and that's why I have this feeling that, like, I think he's maybe... | ||
| He knows better. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| A lot of these other people are true believers, or they don't know any better. | ||
| Money drives people crazy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
He knows better. | |
| Money drives people crazy. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Wanting money is nuts, you know? | ||
| Like, I mean, I have no sympathy. | ||
| I'm just remarking on the phenomena that money can itself be a form of wage slavery, you know? | ||
| Like, he can't not be in that money-making range, you know? | ||
| It's so central to his identity. | ||
| I don't know about that. | ||
| Maybe it is, maybe it's not. | ||
| I don't know much about him outside of the things that I've gleaned from hearing about him over the course of the time doing the show and this deposition, but, like, I have to assume... | ||
| That if you don't like the sound of this person's voice, you seem to not like him that much as a person, you don't like his show, you think the things that he covers you disagree with, if you've been there for a decade, it's money. | ||
| There's no other reason to have stayed there. | ||
| You're making more money than you would elsewhere, so you make peace with the fact that basically your position is facilitating somebody to be a demagogue screaming shit you don't agree with. | ||
| It's unfortunate that this is the word that needs to be used here, but he is a fucking Renfield. | ||
| The irony. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh no. | |
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| It's a Renfield. | ||
| I don't know how else to describe it. | ||
| So the question comes up about whether or not Tim had any feelings about Sandy Hook being fake. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| CJ is sending you an attachment with the daily show log for Friday, March 14th, right? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| 2014. | ||
| Correct. | ||
| And you'll see that on that particular show... | ||
| Wolfgang Halwig joined Alex to, quote, examine the host of peculiarities surrounding the Sandy Hook school shooting, right? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Now, I think that you personally never had any doubt that 26 people, including 20 children and six educators, were murdered at Sandy Hook on December 14, 2012, correct? | ||
| Never a doubt in my mind. | ||
| And you never suspected that the United States government was somehow involved in staging or faking that event in That's correct. | ||
| Never had a doubt and also was fine taking money and working for a guy who was demonizing the parents of those murdered children that I was very aware and convinced and certain actually were murdered. | ||
| This is the type of fucking, like... | ||
| This is the interviews in a crime documentary about the mafia where they black out the guy. | ||
| You can't see his face. | ||
| And he's just like, yeah, we murdered people left and right. | ||
| You get told to murder a guy, you go murder him, and then you go home to your wife. | ||
| And you're like, that's not okay, man! | ||
| You're told to run the online store for a guy who's being a real piece of shit? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You do it. | ||
| Oh, sure. | ||
| Oh, well, I mean, I didn't like murdering that guy. | ||
| It's not my idea, you know, but I was told to do it. | ||
| I didn't like harassing those families for, you know, decades. | ||
| But, you know, you do what you're told. | ||
| Yeah, and, you know, you just look the other way. | ||
| Look the other way, man. | ||
| That's bananas. | ||
| I have not been able to do that. | ||
| No. | ||
| That's why we're unsuccessful, though. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well... | |
| I mean, we're... | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, we're not successful on that level. | ||
| Right, right, right, right. | ||
| Yeah, and it's dark. | ||
| Success isn't the word I meant to use. | ||
| It's dark. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| To me. | ||
| The notion of being intimately involved in this company to the point where you're the business director and you've been there. | ||
| You're the seventh person Alex has hired. | ||
| Probably maybe one or two of those people are still around at this point in 2014 or whatever. | ||
| And you're just like, hey, this sucks. | ||
| That shooting did happen. | ||
| Alex is saying all this crazy nonsense. | ||
| Oh well, I don't care. | ||
| How can it not be a big problem for you? | ||
| That's the thing. | ||
| You know, I can understand everybody else because I understand believers, at least. | ||
| You know, I get belief. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| I understand that. | ||
| If you truly believe, then it is not an ethical problem for you to be a part of this system. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| Because you do not believe it is unethical. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| But for this, this, I don't understand. | ||
| I don't understand just being like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| I know what I'm doing is wrong. | ||
| But $200,000. | ||
| Well, here's the disconnect. | ||
| He probably doesn't think that what he's doing is wrong. | ||
| He believes that he is a morally neutral piece within an immoral system or something. | ||
| Like, what Alex is doing is wrong. | ||
| What I'm doing is just money, man. | ||
| And that sucks. | ||
| For sure. | ||
| But, you know, you didn't care for what Alex was doing on air, that's for sure. | ||
| Did you develop an understanding, though, just through whatever you were able to come into contact with, that over time, Mr. Jones... | ||
| Was featuring the Sandy Hook shooting on his show? | ||
| No, I don't recall that. | ||
| I know that I personally thought it was not right for him to do it. | ||
| But, no, again, I never listened to the show. | ||
| I didn't really care what he did on the air. | ||
| I didn't know. | ||
| I wasn't aware. | ||
| I didn't care. | ||
| But also, I thought what he was doing was bad. | ||
| It was wrong of him to do that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Weird. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| It's really weird. | ||
| Strange. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| It's like capturing Hitler's housekeeper, being like, hey, you know what? | ||
| Listen, I don't know what he was doing out there. | ||
| He had a lot of dusting to do. | ||
| His fucking... | ||
| I mean, his dishes? | ||
| Hideous. | ||
| That's all I know about the guy. | ||
| And you know, the other thing that kind of stands out is that, like, there were people who had a problem with this, and there is demonstrable evidence that they said something about it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| People like Paul Joseph Watson, Rob Jacobson, there's both of them, there are confirmable instances of them having a problem with this coverage and speaking up. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| Tim Frege is somebody who is claiming that he had, like, I didn't believe this stuff, but he didn't care. | ||
| Nope. | ||
| He didn't care. | ||
| He did not give a shit. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Ugh. | ||
| That is some real fucked up shit right there. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Man. | ||
| And so he's asked why he had a problem with what Alex was doing, and he struggles to answer that. | ||
| I don't find this compelling. | ||
| Just by virtue of your employment of free speech systems in your General awareness of what may have been happening. | ||
| You were aware of course that mr. Jones was Discussing Sandy Hook on his programming Publishing articles about it on the website and denying that it occurred, correct? | ||
| I don't know about all the details, but I know he was talking about it. | ||
| You understand why we're here. | ||
| What did you consider was wrong about the way he was talking about it? | ||
| Well, I mean, it's something you don't talk about that. | ||
| That's what you got? | ||
| It's just... | ||
| No. | ||
| It's not something... | ||
| It must be something about the way he was talking about it, though, correct? | ||
| Because there's nothing wrong with just talking about a national tragedy. | ||
| Objectional? | ||
| I don't know what he feels or thinks, but me personally, you know, it was a tragedy. | ||
| And it's not something that you cover it the day when it's in the main news and then you go on. | ||
| That's what I personally would have done. | ||
| And, you know, I just, yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| But instead, you became aware that Mr. Jones talked about it for years, and at least generally you were aware that he had denied it had occurred, correct? | ||
| Generally, I mean, I don't recall specifically, but most likely, yes. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| I find that to be another improvised excuse type answer. | ||
| Like, you can't even articulate why the thing is a problem for you, which leads me to believe that he doesn't care. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's not really that, you know, actually, you really have a problem with what Alex was saying, but you know you're supposed to. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| No, that's him being like, listen, I wouldn't have done it that way. | ||
| But, you know, people do things. | ||
| That's it. | ||
| That's your response. | ||
| You're insane. | ||
| There should be things that you go, this is irreconcilable between you and I. And I am a fundamental part of this operation. | ||
| This workplace, this show existing. | ||
| I am critical to it happening, and I don't give a shit about the effect that it has. | ||
| Even under the most diffuse of responsibilities, it is due to your actions personally that these people were harmed. | ||
| And to have such a blasé attitude about it is just very bizarre. | ||
| The answer of, like, why do you have a problem with it is, oh, it's just not done. | ||
| It's not how you do things. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Please. | ||
| Please. | ||
| First, you must send a letter, all right? | ||
| And then another letter of introduction through your second. | ||
| It's not how it's done in polite society. | ||
| I mean, what are you talking about? | ||
| It's very strange. | ||
| And I think that Matty was trying to hit on something there that would have been another question that Tim wouldn't answer, but... | ||
| It must have to do with how Alex was covering it that is the problem. | ||
| What is the how that is the problem? | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| If you say that you're uncomfortable with it, what exactly are you talking about? | ||
| Your answer determines how we go forward. | ||
| Your answer being that Alex was talking about this obviously isn't a problem because it's a news event. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| And so... | ||
| Tim's attempt to be like, well, it's talking about it longer, that unfortunately reveals that if he actually had a problem, then he was aware that Alex kept talking about this. | ||
| And that kind of undercuts a lot of his pretending to like, I don't even know what Alex is talking about stuff. | ||
| Knowing when not something means you know when something. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| So, Tim disagrees with Alex, maybe like over half the time. | ||
| You talked earlier about one of the reasons you didn't listen to the show was initially you testified that it was distracting and then I asked you why the hard reason you do I agree with some of what he says, but I don't agree with some of what he says, but absolutely I agree with his right to say what he says. | ||
| I just don't agree with him about half the time. | ||
| Maybe more sometimes. | ||
| Fucking Voltaire over here. | ||
| I don't agree with what you say, sir, but I will die for your right to defend it! | ||
| What a thinker. | ||
| If I were somebody who was listening to Infowars and believing this stuff, I would ask myself how it is possible that Alex's seventh employee, who is his business manager, does not believe the shit that he says on air. | ||
| I mean... | ||
| If the stuff that he's saying means something and he's on a holy crusade, I would guess that the person who runs his business would be somebody who was on board with the themes and the content of his show. | ||
| I mean, what you really sell... | ||
| Yes. | ||
| That's what you're going for here. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Ask these questions of yourself. | ||
| How is the maybe number two, number three person at InfoWars, somebody who doesn't believe Alex's shit is real or means anything? | ||
| You know what? | ||
| I find fascinating that these are public. | ||
| Now I need to, I want to know more about the things that I participate in and whether or not there are people in that business who have given depositions that I should know about. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Like, every time I buy a fucking Tide or something, should I be Googling whether or not a Tide executive was shown telling obvious falsehoods about how Tide actually kills people? | ||
| Like, what don't I know about depositions? | ||
| Oh, no. | ||
| See what I'm saying? | ||
| Yeah, this is gonna be... | ||
| You're never going to get out of this hole. | ||
| It's over for me. | ||
| The deposition hole. | ||
| So, the big article, of course, for InfoWars Traffic was the Adan Salazar article, the FBI reports no one died in Newtown. | ||
| Of course. | ||
| And Tim never read it. | ||
| Maybe. | ||
| Okay, sure. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| I'm going to read the article that was published on InfoWars.com regarding the FBI's reporting of deaths at Sandy Hook. | ||
| I don't remember. | ||
| I wouldn't. | ||
| It's not something I would have read. | ||
| Not for me! | ||
| Not my style! | ||
|
unidentified
|
You do have a recollection of something like that being published, right? | |
| Well, I mean, yeah. | ||
| Just look at all this stuff. | ||
| I mean, it's right there in writing. | ||
| It was obviously done, so. | ||
| But you know that that article actually wasn't just any other article. | ||
| actually attracted far more traffic than nearly any other article that free speech systems had ever published on I do not recall being aware of that, no. | ||
| Well, that's interesting because you're aware of all these spikes in traffic. | ||
| Sure seems like that's a big one you would be aware of. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| Very noticeable, even just from a... | ||
| Just scanning a graph. | ||
| I do believe it's very possible he never read that article, and that's because he thinks that everything they talk about is bullshit. | ||
| Why would you waste your time reading this article? | ||
| It doesn't matter. | ||
| It's entertainment. | ||
| It's actively worse for you to know what's going on. | ||
| It's a waste. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Who cares? | ||
| I don't find this entertaining, so it's not for me. | ||
| The FBI says no one died at Sandy Hook. | ||
| Okay, whatever. | ||
| Fine. | ||
| I never had a doubt in my mind that the people died there. | ||
| I mean, he has a reaction that is a normal for most people reaction upon hearing something. | ||
| I wouldn't read something like that. | ||
| Yeah, I'd be like, oh, well, fuck off. | ||
| Get out of here, you know? | ||
| That makes sense. | ||
| I don't fucking work there! | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I'm not the person who's involved with... | ||
| Monitoring traffic to the site and the store, and this is one of the biggest traffic articles they've ever published. | ||
| Easiest reason this is absolute bullshit is because if you're that guy... | ||
| Your job is to find out what it is that caused that huge spike, and that also includes what is in the article that might have contributed to that. | ||
| Oh, and because also Tim and Adan Salazar emailed about the article and the big spike in traffic. | ||
| Do you know who Adan Salazar is? | ||
| He is one of the writers, yes. | ||
| Do you have a relationship with him? | ||
| Work. | ||
| I mean, not really. | ||
| He's production. | ||
| I'm not. | ||
| We have a pickleball league. | ||
| He was a writer, wasn't he? | ||
| Yes. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Did you know that he was the author of the article concerning the FBI's report on deaths in San Diego? | |
| I was not aware of that. | ||
| Oh, shut the fuck up. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You exhibit number 23. You see an email before you dated October 14th, 2014? | |
| Yes. | ||
| It's 23 p.m.? | ||
| Yes. | ||
|
unidentified
|
This is about three weeks after the email last Yes. | |
| unit regarding that article, correct? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| Well, you recall that from the question. | ||
| I just I'm yeah. | ||
| And this is you sending to Don Salazar screenshots of Alexa and Google Analytics. | ||
| It appears so, yes. | ||
| Yeah, it would be upon request. | ||
| No. | ||
| What?! | ||
| Fucking hell! | ||
| This is data from Alexa, correct? | ||
| It appears so. | ||
| And what it shows, Mr. Fruget, is a spike in traffic around September 24th, 25th, and 26th, correct? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| And it's a noticeable spike from the rest of the line on this graph, correct? | ||
| Yes, it is. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And this is the type of spike... | |
| You were testifying about earlier where if there was some sort of spike in traffic, it was something you would make Alex aware of as well, correct? | ||
| I mean, if it was something I noticed, yes. | ||
| So this is a thing? | ||
| What? | ||
| What the fuck? | ||
| I can't say yes to this, because then if I did, then I'm making Alex aware of the giant spike. | ||
| In traffic that was due to this Sandy Hook hoax article, and then we already said that we'd try and recreate spikes. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, shit. | |
| It's not good. | ||
| So, yeah, yes and no, maybe. | ||
| I don't know if I was aware of it. | ||
| I did email Adon Salazar this graph that had a big spike in it. | ||
| Sure, sure, I did do that. | ||
| So maybe I was aware of it. | ||
| I don't know why I emailed him that giant spike. | ||
| Well, obviously you requested it. | ||
| Could have been anything. | ||
| It's probably his fault. | ||
| Yeah, probably. | ||
| There's something so attractive about depositions because I feel like anybody who's ever been in an argument with their partner or significant other or whatever, and they remember something different from you, you know, they're not lying to you. | ||
| But if you know you remember it better, there's a part of you that always wants to be like, you know what? | ||
| Let's go to the tape. | ||
| Let's see exactly what happened real quick. | ||
| I don't think you're going to like the way that it goes. | ||
| That is this to a T. Let me show you this email. | ||
| Let me just show you a little bit of the evidence here. | ||
| Yeah, and these kind of sneaky fucks, they never have to be asked follow-up questions. | ||
| No. | ||
| It never comes up in people like Alex and these folks who work at InfoWars. | ||
| Their lives do not involve follow-up questions. | ||
| They don't involve any difficult positions. | ||
| They avoid it meticulously. | ||
| Alex, for instance, you know, he'll take calls and say he'll take any critical call and he just hangs up on people, yells over him. | ||
| To be in a position where you're forced to, like, answer something and be like, oh, well, how about blank is very fascinating. | ||
| No, they can't defend their actions under any kind of interrogation. | ||
| No, and so they're forced to retreat to improvisational excuse making. | ||
| And it's very transparent. | ||
| It's absurd. | ||
| And bizarre. | ||
| So, Tim has said that, hey, I would tell Alex about that if I noticed it. | ||
| And so here's a discussion that they have about how big this spike was. | ||
| Ask yourself, do you think this guy would notice that? | ||
| At least just eyeballing this graph. | ||
| What this graph shows in this particular tab are unique visitors, right? | ||
| It appears so, yes. | ||
| at the tab we have up. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And the unique visitors goes from... | |
| Don't do it. | ||
| Don't do it. | ||
| Yes. | ||
|
unidentified
|
How could anyone notice that? | |
| Correct. | ||
| Practically the same height on a graph. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Ooh. | |
| Infowars.com, right? | ||
| Yes. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| You have a Google Analytics report, correct? | ||
| Yes. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And that shows the same spike occurring at the same time. | |
| Correct. | ||
| This particular graph shows page views, right? | ||
| Yes. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And this Page views spikes to, from what is kind of a rolling average of 1.3 to 1.5 million to just under 3 million, correct? | |
| Uh, yeah, it appears so. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| I mean, that seems like a lot. | ||
| The total page views of during the date range depicted here, which is from mid-September October, a total pageview is of 36.7 million, right? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| users, right? | ||
| Correct. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And new visitors of about 38.4% Yes. | |
| Oh, boy. | ||
| I don't remember regularly looking at new visitors. | ||
| Really? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Maybe the most important measurement of your continued success? | |
| I couldn't tell you one way or the other, to be quite honest. | ||
| Yeah, who knows? | ||
| Who knows? | ||
| I can't imagine a world where you would ask him, like, hey, is this traffic the kind of thing you would notice? | ||
| And him say no in any believable way. | ||
| This is unnoticeable. | ||
| Right. | ||
| What? | ||
| Tripling our total page? | ||
| That's unnoticeable. | ||
| What was it like? | ||
| Unique viewers goes from 300,000 to 1.75 million? | ||
| Honestly. | ||
| Honestly. | ||
| You know what? | ||
| Chris? | ||
| Can I call you Chris? | ||
| I agree that this seems a little bit unreasonable, but I will tell you, I kind of took a nap that day. | ||
| It's on me! | ||
| It's on me! | ||
| I was asleep! | ||
| You emailed this to a Don Salazar. | ||
| I didn't know somebody broke into my email because I was falling asleep and I didn't want Alex to know. | ||
| He can kind of be an asshole. | ||
| I don't know if you told me. | ||
| I'm sorry, I don't mean to swear. | ||
| He hates it when you tell him that his traffic is quadrupled. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, I didn't want to be a part of that. | ||
| I didn't want to be a part of that. | ||
| He could have reacted really negatively towards me. | ||
| He wouldn't have said, Attaboy at all. | ||
| This is so unbelievable. | ||
| The notion that he is unaware of this is so... | ||
| We're in, David, what do you fucking do territory of answer the goddamn question. | ||
| Now, there is a sort of retreat that he could make, and that is, like, this is traffic to the website. | ||
| I'm really more involved with the store. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| You know, like, granted, I monitor the traffic and stuff and how it relates to the traffic to the store, but, you know, I'm more focused on the store. | ||
| Unfortunately, That spike also was seen in sales. | ||
| Ouch! | ||
| You would expect, with a spike like this in traffic between September, let's say September 23rd through 26th, that that would result in a corresponding spike in revenue. | ||
| Real quick, this is a bit of a longer clip, and also you probably are noticing now that there's voices in the background. | ||
| Wherever Tim is broadcasting from or recording from, there's people talking in the hallway. | ||
| The cafeteria of wherever. | ||
| Yeah, sure, great. | ||
| So that's just there. | ||
| Great. | ||
| But yeah, this is a bit of a longer clip just to preserve context. | ||
| Correct. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Injection. | |
| I mean, possibly. | ||
| But we looked at a report earlier that showed a spike, and there was no cells. | ||
| I mean, it was worthless traffic, so it just depends. | ||
| Let's see if this... | ||
| That's the tone of voice you want. | ||
| Let's see! | ||
| Let's see! | ||
| I'm showing you now. | ||
| Tempting to show you now. | ||
| Exhibit 35. Okay. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, barely, but I do see it. | |
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But this is a spreadsheet that you would have been familiar with as the director of business operations. | |
| If I go to the top of the spreadsheet, you'll see the column headings. | ||
| Am I correct that this spreadsheet shows daily sales beginning May 25th, 2010? | ||
| It appears so. | ||
| But I will tell you I would not be familiar with the spreadsheet because I never looked at spreadsheets. | ||
| 3D Cart had a dashboard that I could log into and see and I would... | ||
| They didn't have spreadsheets there. | ||
| Couldn't find them. | ||
| Whether you're seeing it on a dashboard or you're seeing it in a spreadsheet, this appears to show daily sales as reported by 3D Card, correct? | ||
| It appears so, yes. | ||
| Which would have been the infowarshop.com because the infowarsstore.com website was not in operation until mid-2015. | ||
| That is correct. | ||
| And so if we scroll down to the period of time we were just looking at where there was a spike... | ||
| In traffic to Infowars.com. | ||
| And we scroll down to the same date range of the third week in September of 2014. | ||
| You see, can you not, that beginning on September 24th... | ||
| Well, let's start September 23rd. | ||
| September 23rd shows daily sales of $56,597, correct? | ||
| Correct. | ||
| September 24th shows daily sales of $48,229, correct? | ||
| Correct. | ||
| September 25th shows a daily sales of $232,820, correct? | ||
|
unidentified
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That is correct. | |
| Do you find that noticeable? | ||
| to 232,000 in that one day span, correct? | ||
|
unidentified
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Yes. | |
| And then for September 26th, they stayed well above where they were on September 24th, slightly, somewhat down from the day earlier, but still at $128,854, correct? | ||
| Correct. | ||
| That that is a two-day spike in Lebanon, correct? | ||
|
unidentified
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Correct. | |
| I would say that is... | ||
| Yes. | ||
| The answer is yes. | ||
| It depends, because what days were these? | ||
| I would agree it was a spike, yes. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
|
unidentified
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I mean, you don't typically see a jump from $48,000 to $230,000, correct? | |
| Yes, you do. | ||
| You might see that. | ||
| Right? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Something interesting happening, right? | ||
| If there's a new launch of a new product, that could also be the case. | ||
| But yeah, if something's happening, launch of a new product, absolutely. | ||
| What you're seeing happening with the data I've just shown you is a spike in website traffic and a spike in revenue corresponding with the publication and distribution of data that are concerning the FBI, correct? | ||
| I could not tell you that 100%, but there's definitely a spike in traffic and definitely a spike in sales. | ||
| I cannot tell you that they are correlated at all or happen to, you know, there's no relationship between them, but yes, they are. | ||
| They are there. | ||
| I could not do that. | ||
| I would eventually just start narrating my feelings while he's asking the question. | ||
| I'd be like, oh, no, I know where this is going, don't I? | ||
| Oh, God. | ||
| I mean, what do you want me to answer? | ||
| Yes! | ||
| Okay? | ||
| Yes! | ||
| Fine! | ||
| You know, maybe it's worthless traffic. | ||
| Let's find out if it's worthless traffic. | ||
| Oh, goddammit. | ||
| Why did you do that part? | ||
| I was going to do the thing, and then you were going to leave it there. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So, I think we can see here that there's... | ||
| It's a real difficult argument that Tim Fruget is trying to make about being unaware of this. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| It seems like he probably was fairly aware of this and is playing dumb, and good for him. | ||
| Pulling teeth with these people, man. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It just really is. | ||
| So there's a lot of this deposition that I have not included because it's a discussion of, like, the software that was used to run Infowars Shop and Infowars Store. | ||
| Some discussion of why Alex wanted redundancy in having two stores makes sense. | ||
| Technical support stuff. | ||
| Yeah, if one goes down, you've got the other. | ||
| And if you have a considerate DDoS kind of threat, then yeah, of course you want redundancy. | ||
| That makes sense. | ||
| Yeah, and so there's quite a bit of conversation about that that is interesting, I guess, but not really that important. | ||
| Interesting, but not relevant. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So we have one last clip here, and it's a little bit off the beaten path, and it has to do with... | ||
| The fact that Tim was a bit of a point person in terms of getting people to produce things for Discovery. | ||
| Oh, my God. | ||
| Don't tell me that. | ||
| Oh, my God. | ||
| Mr. Fruget, have the document in front of you dated January 24th, 2019, captioned "Eric Lafferty vs. | ||
|
unidentified
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Alex Jones" affidavit of Timothy Fruget. | |
| Okay, yes. | ||
| Do you mind zooming a little bit? | ||
| Sure. | ||
|
unidentified
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Is that better? | |
| That's much better. | ||
|
unidentified
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Chris, I would note that the second page actually appears to have the correct date. | |
| I don't understand the date in the caption. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Yeah, so I just scrolled down. | ||
| You can see that although the document on the first page is dated 24, 2019, January 24, 2019, you signed it on March 29, 2015, right? | ||
| It appears so, yes. | ||
| That's your signature, yes? | ||
| Yes, that is my signature. | ||
| And when we came back from the break, Attorney Holman clarified that the affidavit you reviewed in advance of the deposition was this affidavit, am I correct, not the affidavit from the guilt workings? | ||
| Let me look real quick. | ||
| Yes, that is correct. | ||
| The question I was asking you earlier had to do with your role in producing responsive materials and if you look at paragraph four you test here that at the request of counsel I ask all employees at Free Speech Systems LLC to perform a diligent search of their paper files, text messages, and instant messages for documents and materials related to the search request. | ||
| No search turned out. | ||
| any response at that point, right? | ||
| Yes, that is correct. | ||
| Do you have a recollection as you sit here today, making that request to all employees by way of an email you sent? | ||
| That sounds right, yes. | ||
| And am I correct that in that email, you instructed employees who have responsive materials to let you know and to provide them to you, correct? | ||
| That is correct. | ||
| And not a single employee gave you a single document, correct? | ||
| That is correct. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, that checks out. | |
| That sounds right. | ||
| And at no point in time did you think... | ||
| Maybe that's not a good thing. | ||
| Maybe I should follow up with some of these people. | ||
| Maybe I should send a second email. | ||
| Just another email. | ||
| Just a reminder email. | ||
| Like, hey guys, in case you were wondering, apologies for saying guys, I meant to say people. | ||
| Hey, people, just send us some documents. | ||
| Infowars went woke. | ||
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
| Woken shirts. | ||
| That's what they're doing. | ||
| So yeah, this glimpse was very different than a lot of the other depositions that we've had. | ||
| It opened a door into another side. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Of things. | ||
| The business guy. | ||
| The guy whose face is never around anywhere. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
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And I think he sucks. | |
| I mean... | ||
| I think that there is a... | ||
| More so, and we've touched on this quite a bit, but more so than any other person in InfoWars that I've seen deposed a complete abdication of any responsibility for what they're doing. | ||
| Just someone who clearly doesn't like... | ||
|
unidentified
|
Here's the thing. | |
| There's a possibility that he clearly doesn't like Alex and doesn't like the show and all this, or he understands that that's... | ||
| What a normal person would do. | ||
| I guess. | ||
| And he's putting on the front of not liking Alex's show because obviously no one in their right mind would think that this is a great show. | ||
| Right, right, right, right. | ||
| Either is pretty bleak. | ||
| Man, I mean, I think to me it's a bit like, you know... | ||
| If you're the executioner doing the lethal injection or whatever, and you're actively against the death penalty, then you're out of your fucking mind. | ||
| You should get a new job. | ||
| You can't do the thing. | ||
| You can't do it. | ||
| I think you have a moral responsibility to leave a job that you ethically are opposed to. | ||
| Yeah, absolutely. | ||
| And for him to just decide callously and cynically, just like, you know what? | ||
| Fuck it. | ||
| Yeah, sure. | ||
| I'll inject him. | ||
| I don't give a shit. | ||
| That's fucked up. | ||
| I think a lot of people in some corporate environments probably do have some misgivings about the companies that they work for and stuff. | ||
| But to the extent that you're working for a right-wing propagandist who agitates against people and communities and you're... | ||
| You have to be aware of. | ||
| I don't believe for a second that he doesn't have a general sense of the stuff that Alex talks about. | ||
| Because, I mean, quite honestly, as you're saying, if you're aware of no, you're aware of yes. | ||
| Doesn't agree with the stuff that's on Alex's show, then he's aware of it. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| You have to be aware of something to disagree with it. | ||
| Right, and so you're aware of what it is that you are a part of. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| Even if you... | ||
| I don't know the details. | ||
| Even if you want to gain points for being against it. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Or like, look, I don't agree with all this. | ||
| You're still aware of what it is. | ||
| You still cash the checks. | ||
| And fuck you. | ||
| Yeah, 100%. | ||
| Yeah, it's like, yeah, you know, I was, sure, I was the campaign manager for Lindbergh, but I'm not an anti-Semite, okay? | ||
| I don't think that, I think that's a way bad idea. | ||
| I was trying to make him president, but I thought it was a bad idea to do it, you know? | ||
| So, I have some more depositions and stuff that we'll get to down the road, but, you know, it's weird. | ||
| There's a batch that I have that I... | ||
| They're more conflicting than some of the ones that we've covered in the past. | ||
| You know, like Alex's, obviously there's just a bunch of bullshit and he's being a dick and, you know, what have you. | ||
| Daria. | ||
| I mean, granted, Daria's was crazy and conflicting and scary, but I also was prepared for that since I was in the room. | ||
|
unidentified
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Right. | |
| So, like, that I knew once we had the audio and video of it, like, I'd sat with it for a while. | ||
| That one, yeah, yeah. | ||
| This Tim Fruget one is a bit conflicting to me, and some of these other ones are too, so, you know, we're entering a new chapter, I guess, of depositions, where it's like, ugh, this is weird. | ||
| I think what's fascinating all too often is that, like, on these shows and stuff, excuse me, on these shows, you know, it's... | ||
| You can create this fictional version of somebody. | ||
| And then whenever you see them in those moments where they're not on camera, where they have to be people, it humanizes them. | ||
| And in this regard, I think every deposition, it's done the complete opposite. | ||
| It has dehumanized these people. | ||
| The more I know what they think, the more I'm like, you're an alien from somewhere else. | ||
| Because this is bananas. | ||
| Yeah, and what's strange too is that... | ||
| For Tim, this is the first time that you have an image of him. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| All you knew is he was some guy who was there in the business section of stuff. | ||
| It wasn't a persona or anything. | ||
| This is just, you're getting a clear first view of him. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And that is something that's a little bit different. | ||
| I mean, Adan Salazar, granted, never seen him on camera. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| But we read his work. | ||
| He's an asshole, yeah. | ||
| You'd seen him on Twitter and read some of these articles, whereas I'd never seen a creative output from Tim Fruget. | ||
| You know, I wonder if that is exactly, though, what you would need to be to be the money person at InfoWars. | ||
| You know, you can't be a believer because a believer is not somebody you want handling money. | ||
| But that's why you have an accountant also. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| He's not the accountant. | ||
| No, I know, but I mean, to do that would require the sort of moral absence that he's exhibiting. | ||
| Exhibiting. | ||
| Uh-huh. | ||
| That's my word. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| Maybe. | ||
| Goddamn. | ||
| That's terrifying. | ||
| I mean, it still sucks. | ||
| That's terrifying, yeah. | ||
| I want to run away from these people. | ||
| And I'll allow it now, because we're done. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yay! | |
| But we'll be back, Jordan, with another episode, hopefully with the predictions for 2023, so we can go about living our lives. | ||
| I think in 2025, 2026, we're going to finally know what 2023 was supposed to happen. | ||
| I'm in such a holding pattern here, man. | ||
| It's tough. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's tough. | |
| You owe us. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Come on, Alex. | ||
| Give us those predictions. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But we'll be back. | ||
| Until then, we have a website. | ||
| It's knowledgefight.com. | ||
| Yep, we're also on Twitter. | ||
| We are on Twitter. | ||
| It's at knowledge underscore fight. | ||
| Yep, we'll be back. | ||
| But until then, I'm Neo. | ||
| I'm Leo. | ||
| I'm DZX Clark. | ||
| I'm... | ||
| Man, I'm getting fucking tired of this Revealo P. Oliver. | ||
| Yeah, I believe it. | ||
| Boy, it just gets worse. | ||
| Oh, yeah? | ||
| Palindrome. | ||
| That guy sucks. | ||
| Oh, I also learned this. | ||
| From the introduction to his book, I don't even want to say the name of it. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| But the introduction to his book, he explains that the firstborn for six generations in his family has been given the pound drone. | ||
| Get the fuck out of here! | ||
| That is even crazier! | ||
| Yeah, so it's a legacy thing. | ||
| And now here comes the sex robot. | ||
| Andy in Kansas, you're on the air. | ||
| Thanks for holding. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello, Alex. | |
| I'm a first-time caller. | ||
|
unidentified
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I'm a huge fan. | |
| I love your work. |