Today, Dan and Jordan discuss an early deposition in the Texas case against Alex Jones. This installment features a complicated and confusing appearance by Rob Jacobson, the Infowars resident documentary filmmaker who was mocked for warning against covering Sandy Hook. Tickets for our March 2 show in Milwaukee are on sale at 10 AM Central
| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
|
unidentified
|
Knowledge Fight. | |
| I'm sick of them posing as if they're the good guys, saying we are the bad guys. | ||
| Knowledge Fight. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Dan and Jordan, knowledge. | |
| I love your word. | ||
| Knowledge fight. | ||
| KnowledgeFight.com. | ||
| I love you. | ||
| Hey, everybody. | ||
| Welcome back to KnowledgeFight. | ||
| 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 today is actually a very recent bright spot, and that is right before we started recording. | ||
| I started reciting the lyrics. | ||
| Okay, all right. | ||
| Okay, all right. | ||
| To Will Smith's Welcome to Miami. | ||
| Son of a bitch. | ||
| And you were freaking out. | ||
| You freaked out a little bit. | ||
| Your response was pretty, pretty... | ||
| It makes me feel deeply uncomfortable. | ||
| Well, and I realized that maybe there's something that people don't know about me, and that is that I know all the lyrics to a number of Will. | ||
| That is true. | ||
| Uh-huh. | ||
| You have demonstrated that on multiple occasions. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yep. | |
| And I want the audience to know, regardless of drunk or sober... | ||
| True. | ||
| True. | ||
| Wild Wild West in particular, that one I go... | ||
| Anytime. | ||
| Right now. | ||
| Without a beat. | ||
| Nope. | ||
| Wild Wild West. | ||
| Jim West. | ||
| Desperado. | ||
| Rough Rider. | ||
| No, you don't want nada. | ||
| None of this. | ||
| Six gun in this. | ||
| Brother running this. | ||
| Buffalo soldier. | ||
| Look, it's like I told you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
All right. | |
| Okay. | ||
| Any games that let's in distress should be out of that dress once you meet Jim West. | ||
| Roughnecks. | ||
| Go check the law and abide. | ||
| Watch your step. | ||
| Get a hole in your side. | ||
| Swallow your pride. | ||
| Don't let your lip react. | ||
| This is a problem with not having a boss. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| Autonomous. | ||
| From the start of this. | ||
| Running the game. | ||
| James West. | ||
| Tame in the West. | ||
| Remember the name. | ||
| I could go for hours. | ||
| And the Men in Black theme song. | ||
| Maybe not Men in Black 2. I think you did a song on that soundtrack. | ||
| Did you do the soundtrack for that? | ||
| Was it just Here Comes the Men in Black again? | ||
| You know what? | ||
| Ironically, I don't think I know all the words to Big Willie Style. | ||
| That's not surprising. | ||
| Or Getting Jiggy With It. | ||
| I guess Big Willie Style was the name of the album. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| That's fine. | ||
| Getting Jiggy With It, as I like to say. | ||
| Not that good of a song. | ||
| I'm going to throw that out there. | ||
| On your mark. | ||
| Not memorable. | ||
| You know I go psycho with my new joint hit. | ||
| Just can't quit. | ||
| Gotta get jiggy with it. | ||
| Ooh, that's it. | ||
| Honey, honey, come ride. | ||
| DKNY. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We're like two seconds away from you saying that we have four clips today. | |
| It's going to be a short show. | ||
| Ah, boy. | ||
| That was just my bright spot. | ||
| I like annoying you with stuff like that. | ||
| So anyway, what's your bright spot? | ||
| My bright spot is something that I, I mean, obviously one good turn deserves another, my friend. | ||
| So my bright spot is the Australian Open! | ||
| Tennis! | ||
| Tennis! | ||
| All right. | ||
| So what are the highlights of this year's Open? | ||
| Well, it's going to be a tough one. | ||
| First off, Kyrgios had to drop out with a knee injury. | ||
| Oh, no. | ||
| Sucks. | ||
| This was his best shot to win his own Australian Open. | ||
| That would have been amazing. | ||
| That would have been cool. | ||
| Not going to happen. | ||
| Rafa's coming in off a bad stretch. | ||
| He's lost six of his last eight. | ||
| Oh, no. | ||
| And he won his first round match, but you don't know if that means anything. | ||
| How's Sampras looking? | ||
| Oh, Sampras is looking great. | ||
| He's about 70 years old now and his arm hair has established a colony on other people's arms. | ||
| My money's on Agassi. | ||
| Agassi's good. | ||
| His skull is now actually visible. | ||
| He used to glue a wig on his head. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| Then he got rid of that and he was bald and now it's all come back to haunt him and his exposed skull is there for us. | ||
| I don't have any other old tennis references except for maybe like John McEnroe. | ||
| John McEnroe. | ||
| Still doing great. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Number three seed. | ||
| He's lost three of his feet to diabetes. | ||
| That's how bad it is. | ||
| He got two foot transplant. | ||
| So you said Rafa's not in it? | ||
| No, Rafa is in it. | ||
| Oh, sorry. | ||
| Kyrgios has dropped out. | ||
| Kyrgios has dropped out. | ||
| And this is... | ||
| Djokovic is back this year. | ||
| Because the vaccine... | ||
| Because they just got rid of him. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| COVID is still an issue. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Vaccine's still very important. | ||
| But I mean, come on. | ||
| It was a year ago. | ||
| Whatever. | ||
| Yeah, so Djokovic won't get as much press this year, perhaps. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, I'm excited for you to enjoy that. | ||
| It'll be great. | ||
| I hope you have a great time watching people go bong. | ||
| Oh, old man Andy Murray. | ||
| Andy Murray. | ||
| He won against young man Berrettini. | ||
| Whoa, Berrettini! | ||
| Berrettini! | ||
| Hot Italian playing tennis. | ||
| You gotta love it. | ||
| Wait, so who's your favorite to win? | ||
| Who's my favorite to win? | ||
| Who's most likely to win? | ||
| Probably Djokovic or Medvedev. | ||
| The Russian president? | ||
| No. | ||
| Former Russian president. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| No, Dmitry Medvedev is a very, very good tennis player. | ||
| Did you say Andy Murray? | ||
| Andy Murray. | ||
| Old man Andy Murray. | ||
| Wait, who was the young guy? | ||
| Matteo Berrettini. | ||
| Matteo Berrettini. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| For some reason, I thought, like, was Andy Murray married to somebody famous? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Andy Murray's the Scottish tennis player. | ||
| He's knighted. | ||
| No, but was he married to somebody famous? | ||
| I don't know who anyone is married to. | ||
| That is the one thing about pop culture I have never known about anyone. | ||
| Every time somebody's like, you know who he's married to? | ||
| I'm like, that's amazing, and I don't remember. | ||
| I don't know if it's him or I'm thinking of some other person, but I feel like he might have been married to some pop star. | ||
| Some pop idol? | ||
| Anyway... | ||
| Enjoy, Jordan. | ||
| Yes, thanks. | ||
| So today we have four clips. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Just kidding. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| So, Jordan, we have an episode to do today, and we are going to be having another deposition. | ||
| Ooh! | ||
| So we're going to be talking about the deposition in the Lewis case. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| The Texas case with Rob Jacobson. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Interesting character, Rob Jacobson. | ||
| He's a cat, that's for sure. | ||
| He is a fella who worked at InfoWars. | ||
| From 2004 to 2017. | ||
| He was there a long, long time. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And was responsible for such hits as Endgame. | ||
| Great. | ||
| The Obama Deception. | ||
| Top of the marks. | ||
| Well, that was kind of more of his bread and butter. | ||
| It was a bit more of the video production and the documentary side of stuff. | ||
| And he sent leaving Infowars by being fired. | ||
| He filed an EEOC complaint against Infowars alleging anti-Semitic treatment that he endured on... | ||
| From other employees and from Alex. | ||
| I mean, that's not a hard jump to make. | ||
| No. | ||
| Notably, he has alleged, and I certainly believe this is true, that Rob Dew and Owen Schroyer would refer to him as the resident Jew, and among other things that were made a hostile work environment. | ||
| Owen tracks. | ||
| So since he's left, he has also taken on a bit of an anti-Alex posture. | ||
| Let's say. | ||
| He appears in various documentaries that will be made on... | ||
| CNN, I guess? | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| He's one of the people you go to whenever you want to have interviews with past Alex employees. | ||
| He's willing to talk to those folks, whereas maybe a Jakari Jackson isn't going to show up for the interview. | ||
| Doesn't want that part of his life to be analyzed. | ||
| And I think that there is a part of it that Rob feels a desire for some penance. | ||
| And I can understand that on some level, but I also... | ||
| Find it uncompelling in many ways. | ||
| So we're gonna go through this deposition, but it's challenging a little bit because of that dynamic that I do feel like he is probably, in many ways, sincerely guilty about what he was involved in. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| To the extent that it relates to Sandy Hook. | ||
| Now, I don't see a ton of examination of... | ||
| The larger catalog of his work that he did. | ||
| Sure, sure, sure. | ||
| And how very similar it is to the coverage of Sandy Hook. | ||
| And how he does not seem to have necessarily a problem with his endgame. | ||
| That's a problem. | ||
| So that's tough for me. | ||
| And we'll wrestle with it as we go along. | ||
| Before we do, let's say hello to some new wonks. | ||
| Ooh, that's a great idea. | ||
| So first, all right, and here it is, guys, in all its fine glory. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| You are now a policy wonk. | ||
| I'm a policy wonk. | ||
| Thank you very much! | ||
| Next, Napoleon Bonifarte. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| You are now a policy wonk. | ||
| I'm a policy wonk. | ||
| Thank you very much! | ||
| Next, the former Chicagoan who likes rants about jewel and skilling. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| You are now a policy wonk. | ||
| I'm a policy wonk. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| That's not a real former Chicagoan, because they would want rants about the jewels. | ||
| Next. | ||
| Where's Danny Callis when you need him? | ||
| My guinea pigs sing when Jordan laughs, but they no longer run from Alex Jones' voice, so your show is one for two in fostering healthy rodent behaviors. | ||
| Four stars. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| You are now a policy wonk. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm a policy wonk. | |
| Thank you very much. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Next. | ||
| Married moms need abortions, too. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| You are now a policy wonk. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm a policy wonk. | |
| Thank you very much! | ||
| Next, Trudy the Tasmanian Tiny Titty Baby. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| You are now a policy wonk. | ||
| I'm a policy wonk. | ||
| Thank you very much! | ||
| And Robert Evans sent me Love Becca from New Zealand. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| You are now a policy wonk. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm a policy wonk. | |
| Thank you very much! | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you! | |
| Now, the first couple clips are a bit long. | ||
| And the reason for that is there is chaos at the beginning of this deposition. | ||
| Mark Bankston is taking the deposition, and he begins trying to just say, please introduce yourself. | ||
| Good luck. | ||
| And then Alex's lawyer, Enoch, he comes in and gets out of line. | ||
| It's very hard to present this in small chunks, so I have about a five-minute clip here, and I think it needs to be presented as a whole thing in order to really get the feeling of this and how... | ||
| There's an ickiness to it. | ||
| Oh, boy. | ||
| And a discomfort. | ||
| And you can see it in Rob's face, too. | ||
| Can I ask a quick question? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Alex is lawyer, and does Rob also have a lawyer? | ||
| Rob does not have a lawyer. | ||
| Rob doesn't have a lawyer. | ||
| He is unrepresented. | ||
| Right. | ||
| The judge has signed off on this deposition taking place, and that Mark can ask questions on behalf of the plaintiffs. | ||
| But he is not representing Rob, and Rob has no lawyer there. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| On behalf of free speech systems and all those other entities, Enoch is there defending the deposition. | ||
| Gotcha. | ||
| But according to Mark, and I think he makes a decent case, he has no right necessarily to take discovery from Rob Jacobson. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| The cross-examination has not necessarily been signed off on. | ||
| If I understand what you're saying correctly, Mark can ask questions, but Enoch cannot ask questions. | ||
| Well, he can be there to object, and the drama and the chaos here at the beginning largely comes down to the fact that Rob Jacobson signed an NDA when he worked at InfoWars. | ||
| Gotcha, okay. | ||
| And so, on behalf of Free Speech Systems and Alex Jones, Enoch can say things like, I don't think you should answer that based on the NDA or something like that. | ||
| He can exist in that space, but then it's kind of an open question and a little bit unclear. | ||
| Well, at least Mark believes one thing and Enoch believes the other in terms of whether or not Alex's lawyer has the ability to question the witness. | ||
| And so that is a problem. | ||
| Their disagreement is a mess. | ||
| Good afternoon, Mr. Jacobson. | ||
| Can you introduce yourself for our record? | ||
| I am Robert Jacobson. | ||
| Mark, I'd like to ask a couple questions and make a comment real quickly. | ||
| I don't think you've been given any orders from the court to do any discovery, so no, Mr. Enoch, you're not asking this witness any questions. | ||
| Mr. Jacobson... | ||
| Mr. Enoch? | ||
| Mr. Enoch, please point me to the order in which you've been allowed to do any discovery or take any questions of any witness. | ||
| Point me to it, Mr. Enoch. | ||
| Please do not interrupt. | ||
| Right now, point me to it. | ||
| Please do not interrupt. | ||
| Then you're not going to... | ||
| Mr. Enoch, stop talking to the witness. | ||
| Mr. Jacobson. | ||
| Mr. Enoch, this deposition will be suspended, and I will sink sanctions if you speak one more time to this witness. | ||
| Mr. Jacobson, have you been served? | ||
| Mr. Enoch, we're going off the record. | ||
| We're done. | ||
| No, we're not going off the record. | ||
| Deposition is suspended. | ||
| You have no ability to take any testimony, Mr. Enoch. | ||
| None. | ||
| Zero. | ||
| Mr. Bankston, I suggest instead of getting emotional about it, you let me ask the questions that I ask. | ||
| No, we're not going to let you have any questions, Mr. Enoch. | ||
| Please don't interrupt me again. | ||
| Mr. Enoch, you have no right to answer questions. | ||
| Before you ask a single question to that witness again, direct me to what authority you think you have the ability to... | ||
| Did you serve a subpoena on this witness? | ||
| I served notice of deposition on this witness. | ||
| Sir, if you didn't serve a subpoena, he's under an NDA and a confidentiality agreement. | ||
| He is not excused from that. | ||
| You did not provide him with an order of this court. | ||
| He cannot testify today. | ||
| You should have served him with a subpoena and you did not. | ||
| You want to take this up with the judge? | ||
| No, sir. | ||
| That's what I want to talk with this witness about. | ||
| You're not going to talk to him about it. | ||
| You don't have the ability to do discovery. | ||
| I'm going to ask this witness questions. | ||
| If you instruct him not to answer and try to prevent this deposition from happening, I will take it up to the court. | ||
| Mr. Bankston, you are the one preventing me from asking any questions. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I am. | |
| Yes! | ||
| Duh! | ||
| Do what you need to do, sir. | ||
| I want to make sure this witness knows of his obligations under the non-disclosure agreement and confidentiality agreements that he signed. | ||
| Are you going to... | ||
| You sent him a letter. | ||
| Telling him what his confidentiality agreements are, telling him to observe them. | ||
| You have already had these communications with this witness. | ||
| You have no reason to ask this witness any questions today. | ||
| The court has not granted your client any discovery whatsoever, and you will stop interfering with this deposition. | ||
| You have no reason to be asking this client about confidentiality when you have already informed him of his obligations. | ||
| Mr. Bankston, I'm going to ask the question, and if you instruct him not to answer... | ||
| I don't represent this witness. | ||
| Mr. Jacobson, did you receive a letter from me in December or so advising of my client's insistence that you maintain confidentiality under your agreements that you reached with Alex Jones and with Free Speech? | ||
| I don't recall. | ||
| Do you still have those confidentiality and non-disclosure agreements? | ||
| I don't recall. | ||
| Since whatever happened to me at work... | ||
| My files have been scattered around. | ||
| I'd also like to add that that NDA was forced upon me after employment with Alex for over eight years, on the record. | ||
| Sir, you can... | ||
| I'm not arguing with you whether... | ||
| Mr. Enoch, objection. | ||
| You've already done what you said you were going to do. | ||
| Don't start having conversations with the witness. | ||
| Don't do it. | ||
| Don't influence his testimony, Mr. Enoch. | ||
| Mr. Bankston, please stop interrupting me. | ||
| Well, then I will put... | ||
| First, before you ask your question, I object and my objection is to the form of your question. | ||
| Very well. | ||
| Mr. Jacobson, are you familiar with the requirements and the documents that you signed that you maintain confidentiality unless you are subpoenaed or ordered by a court? | ||
| I'm familiar with the action that was forced upon me after being employed by him with language in that NDA which includes things like the known universe and stuff. | ||
| It's garbage. | ||
| No, no, I am not aware of any... | ||
| I know that it was forced upon me. | ||
| I was employed by Alex for over eight years, and they forced it upon me. | ||
| I was a... | ||
| So, I don't know where it is, I don't know what the language is, and I don't recall anything. | ||
| I'd like to mark as an exhibit, please, madam, if you could. | ||
| Object to any exhibits being offered by you? | ||
| Mr. Enough, what are you doing? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good question. | |
| Let's just talk. | ||
| What do you think you're doing? | ||
| You're not questioning this witness anymore. | ||
| This is not your deposition. | ||
| You have no ability to do discovery. | ||
| I've had extraordinary patience with allowing you to ask the questions of the witness to ascertain whether he knows there's a confidentiality agreement. | ||
| I will also be asking him about that same confidentiality agreement. | ||
| Now that that's been done, you have no reason to be questioning. | ||
| The only reason you're doing it is to influence this witness. | ||
| That's literally the only reason you're doing it. | ||
| I consider what you're doing highly improper, and I am asking you once again. | ||
| Knock this off, Mr. Enoch. | ||
| What are you doing? | ||
| Mr. Jacobson, do you recognize exhibit number one? | ||
| I don't have any recall of this exhibit. | ||
| Would you look at your signature on the last page and please identify that? | ||
| We need to go off the record and call the court right now. | ||
| Mr. Enoch? | ||
| Mr. Jacobson, I want you to notice the date. | ||
| When was my employment started? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sir, I don't have any representation here. | |
| When was my employment started? | ||
| When was the first day I started working? | ||
| Mr. Jacobson, let's stop for a second. | ||
| When was the first day I started? | ||
| We're going off the record right now. | ||
| We're calling the court. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Very well. | |
| Ooh. | ||
| So, yeah. | ||
| That's how we start! | ||
| It's an ugly little bit of business there at the beginning. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| This is not like any of the other ones I've seen. | ||
| Right, right, right, right. | ||
| For sure. | ||
| So, Enoch is his strategy. | ||
| He's coming in and he's thinking, here's what I'm going to do. | ||
| Before Mark can say a word, I'm going to interject. | ||
| I am going to talk over him, try and bully him, push him. | ||
| Yeah, there is a feeling of trying to influence the testimony by way of veiled intimidation. | ||
| Yeah, absolutely. | ||
| That's not hard. | ||
| And, yeah, you can see for sure that Rob is getting agitated. | ||
| But I don't think that he's... | ||
| I wouldn't describe it as like a breaking down or anything. | ||
| No, no, no. | ||
| He is holding his own to whatever extent you can, really. | ||
| But also, I mean, he's not represented, and so he is going to... | ||
| You know, possibly yell back. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, fuck you! | ||
| And there's not really much you can do. | ||
| I mean, Mark isn't his lawyer. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Can't really control the situation. | ||
| No. | ||
| Enoch is clearly out of pocket and just in business for himself here. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And so it's a mess. | ||
| I mean, from what I understand, here's what I'm understanding is going on, right? | ||
| Mark and Rob are there. | ||
| To do a job. | ||
| And Enoch is there to stop that job from occurring. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And it's predicated on the idea that there wasn't a subpoena. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And that, like, if there had been a subpoena, then he would be free from his NDA. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And because there was only a court order, that isn't enough. | ||
| Or whatever. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right, right, right. | |
| And then Rob's feeling about it is... | ||
| It's two-pronged. | ||
| The first is that the NDA was forced upon him after years of working there and that's not appropriate. | ||
| And then the second thing that he brings up in this next clip that we're going to hear as the fight continues is that he has an understanding of the NDA that has to do with business secrets, business practices. | ||
| It doesn't cover other things. | ||
| Actually, I don't think that's in this next clip. | ||
| I think that's a little bit later. | ||
| But if I understand the reality of the dynamics here, there are two people there, and then there's a lawyer who's just being an asshole to somebody. | ||
| Yeah, trying to protect the business. | ||
| But that's like, if I was outside and Enoch came up to me and asked me that shit, I don't have to answer a goddamn word that Enoch... | ||
| Like, I could say, go fuck yourself, and that's fine. | ||
| And conceivably, it's the same thing for Rob with him. | ||
| He can't say, go fuck yourself to Mark, but he can say, go fuck yourself to Enoch. | ||
| Well, I mean, he could, but it's supposed to be a deposition or whatever. | ||
| The two of them clearly have... | ||
| At least a mutual respect. | ||
| Like, Rob and Mark are... | ||
| Adults. | ||
| Somewhat. | ||
| Conceivably on the same page, too. | ||
| In terms of, like, I have questions, you are willing to answer those questions. | ||
| You got it. | ||
| Yeah, and in this next clip, they come back from that pause. | ||
| Right. | ||
| What ends up happening is they try to call the court. | ||
| They're unable to get a hold of the people at the court. | ||
| And so they realize, well, we've got to go forward with this. | ||
| Right. | ||
| So let's try and see how we can do that. | ||
| Oh boy. | ||
| Well, Mr. Enoch, before I stopped my deposition and you said you were going to ask him one thing about one document and whether he had a signature and now you say you're done. | ||
| When I asked... | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hold on. | |
| He refused to answer the question. | ||
| He sure did. | ||
| And when I asked you, okay, you've asked him, are you done? | ||
| You completely ignored me, continued to berate this client, I mean this person, and he expressed to you that he was very agitated for you. | ||
| Are you now saying you have asked the totality of the questions you intend to ask this witness? | ||
| Of course not. | ||
| Then we are suspending this deposition. | ||
| I don't know what I'm going to ask or if I'm going to ask anything until you're done with your examination, Mr. Bankston. | ||
| Well, apparently you did because you started asking questions before I even started my examination, Mr. Enoch. | ||
| And you know that's highly improper. | ||
| I'm asking you right now. | ||
| Do you intend to question this witness today? | ||
| Mr. Bankston, I am alarmed that this witness is not represented by counsel. | ||
| I am concerned that he is not aware of his rights and obligations under legally binding contracts with my client. | ||
| I want to make sure he is aware of those to protect himself or to get counsel of his own choosing. | ||
| You've been able to... | ||
| Excuse me, do not interrupt me again. | ||
| Intimidation. | ||
| I did not interrupt you. | ||
| You did three fucking times! | ||
| Oh, motherfucker! | ||
| ...interested in getting him to voluntarily disclose information that he's obligated not to do without court order. | ||
| You did not serve a subpoena. | ||
| You did not... | ||
| Tell him of the effect of that under his agreement. | ||
| He now knows it. | ||
| You may continue your deposition. | ||
| Mr. Enoch, let's make this clear for the record. | ||
| I do not have his agreement. | ||
| When you sent this letter that informed him of that agreement... | ||
| You do now. | ||
| I asked you at the time. | ||
| Didn't I, Mr. Enoch? | ||
| When I sent you a letter, said your letter's very unclear. | ||
| It could, in fact, cause this witness to think he's not supposed to testify today. | ||
| Wouldn't it be best if you disclosed to everybody what that agreement is? | ||
| You didn't do that. | ||
| You waited until we walked into this room to put it down on the table. | ||
| You say you have every right to inform this client of this person, of his obligations, and you are worried that he doesn't understand what those were. | ||
| I understand that, which is why you sent that letter, which I think is a perfectly reasonable thing to do. | ||
| And if you wanted to call this witness, talk to him, or contact him, that's perfectly appropriate. | ||
| To ambush him at the moment of his testimony is not appropriate. | ||
| And it is not appropriate to start asking questions before I even ask questions. | ||
| If you intend to ask more questions today, let me know because we will suspend the deposition so that Mr. Jacobson can get counsel and so that we can take it up with the court to see if your actions today were proper. | ||
| Do you want to ask questions today or not, Mr. Enoch? | ||
| Mr. Bankston, I did not know until my first question to this witness that you had not served him with a subpoena, as I think you were obligated to do to obtain his... | ||
| His testimony. | ||
| Therefore, I wanted to make sure he was aware of Exhibit 1 that does not allow his voluntary participation in your discovery without a court order or subpoena. | ||
| Now, with respect to questions of this witness, I can't answer that now because I haven't heard your questions. | ||
| I think I'm entitled to ask questions under the rules. | ||
| You think I'm not. | ||
| So go ahead and ask your questions. | ||
| Let's see if I have questions. | ||
| If I do, the rules allow me to make my record. | ||
| You can object as you wish, and then we can take it up with the judge. | ||
| But we spend a lot of time haggling right now. | ||
| We've taken the witness's time. | ||
| Ask your questions. | ||
| You've taken the witness's time. | ||
| Ask the questions. | ||
| You've taken my time, Mr. Renak. | ||
| That's what you've done. | ||
| Ask your questions. | ||
| And I can tell you this. | ||
| I don't represent this witness. | ||
| And when I'm done asking my questions, if he wants to get up and walk out of this room without saying another word to you, I'm not stopping him. | ||
| On what basis? | ||
| I'm not stopping him. | ||
| I have no control over this man, Mr. Enoch. | ||
| I have none. | ||
| I don't represent him. | ||
| You understand the witness under your notices here from day to day, and you understand cross-examination is allowed. | ||
| And what do you want me to do to stop him? | ||
| What do you want me to do? | ||
| Why don't you just ask yourself? | ||
| Should I chain him to the chair, Mr. Enoch? | ||
| Please start asking your questions. | ||
| Let's get on with the deposition. | ||
| Will you do that, please? | ||
| Yeah, now we'll do that, Mr. Enoch. | ||
| We sure will, too. | ||
| Oof. | ||
| So, I think we've gotten a number of different vibes from Alex Lawyers. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And I think Enoch is maybe one of the worst. | ||
| It is. | ||
| This guy's an asshole. | ||
| It is hard to really wrestle with the feeling that I have right now, which is like... | ||
| Does a man sometimes need to be slapped in the face? | ||
| Not in a violence kind of manner, but in a remind you of who you should be kind of way. | ||
| Perhaps... | ||
| Pistols at dawn would be in order for this man. | ||
| Or El Cabong. | ||
| Yes, absolutely. | ||
| Knock him out, right, for a couple hours, and then when he wakes up, you can be like, oh, you fell asleep. | ||
| It'll be fine. | ||
| This is where, like, you splash some water on your face. | ||
| Yes, this really is. | ||
| Let's take it out of the realm of violence. | ||
| Hold the fucking phone, sir. | ||
| Excuse me. | ||
| I just, it's pretty outrageous. | ||
| Although, if I were Rob and I were hearing this, I would be like, Okay, now I know that I can just leave. | ||
| I mean, yeah, that's the idea, right? | ||
| And that's probably good to be aware of. | ||
| Like, I don't have to be subjected to this person's questions. | ||
| Yeah, Mark made sure he knew that part of his rights. | ||
| Yeah, that's for sure. | ||
| And so, with this all behind us... | ||
| This unpleasantness. | ||
| We jump into the actual questions. | ||
| Is it behind us? | ||
| No, not really. | ||
| It hangs over the rest of this. | ||
| But, you know, certainly we've gone through a lot already. | ||
| Man, what an asshole. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Total dick. | ||
| Don't interrupt me. | ||
| When were you hired by InfoWars? | ||
| I was hired in 2004 by Alex Jones. | ||
| Do you know what corporate entity you were hired by? | ||
| At the time, I felt I was hired by Alex Jones, and he was an independent proprietor. | ||
| Do you know today what entity your former employer claims you worked for? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| What entity is that? | ||
| Free Speech Systems, LLC. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| When did your employment end? | ||
| My employment ended in May. | ||
| 1st of 2017. | ||
| So keep that time frame in mind. | ||
| And just consider all of the stuff InfoWars did between those 13 years. | ||
| You know, obviously Sandy Hook is a... | ||
| Sure. | ||
| Particularly bad piece of business that they were involved in. | ||
| Right. | ||
| But if you look at the totality of their coverage of things over that time, I mean, think about all the stuff that went on. | ||
| You had the Boston bombing. | ||
| You had Anders Breivik. | ||
| You had other school shootings, certainly, that Alex denied. | ||
| You had the Aurora massacre. | ||
| So many things that went on during that time, and he was employed through all of that. | ||
| And I think it's important to keep an eye on that and remember that. | ||
| And then secondarily, it is important to recognize that he was directly and intimately involved in the creation of the Obama deception and Endgame, along with a bunch of Alex's other bullshit films. | ||
| So, like, it's one thing. | ||
| To work somewhere. | ||
| It's another to work somewhere for 13 years and be engaged in constant horseshit. | ||
| So, I mean, just keep that in the back of your mind. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, it does feel like what we have seen from even the most contrite info warrior types is selective responsibility for things that they've perhaps already received consequences for or are regularly pointed out. | ||
| I have a tough time agreeing with you universally, but I generally do. | ||
| I think there may be some folks who... | ||
| And I think maybe some people who work there shorter... | ||
| I think Rob is a pretty unique case. | ||
| 13 years is a long time and a lot of shit to fuck up. | ||
| And one of the earliest employees, really. | ||
| In 2004, Alex did not have a robust operation going. | ||
| And someone who went along the whole time until he was fired in 2017. | ||
| He didn't quit. | ||
| He was fired. | ||
| I struggle with this, because I want to believe the best in folks, and I do believe that he does have misgivings about what he was involved in. | ||
| But I don't necessarily... | ||
| And maybe it's a shortcoming of a deposition setting. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| Because, like, obviously, it's not in Mark's interest to be like, what do you feel about... | ||
| Do you regret everything you have ever done there? | ||
| Yeah, what about in the game? | ||
| Have you figured out that everything you've done has brought misery to this world? | ||
| Yeah, and so maybe you can't really get a sense of that from this deposition, but I do feel from some of the questions that we'll get to... | ||
| I feel like he wouldn't say the things that he's saying if there was an actual recognition of the nonsense and inappropriate sort of... | ||
| material and content that was put out over the course of those 13 years. | ||
| This isn't an isolated thing of Sandy Hook that is a problem. | ||
| It's a systematic problem of all of the information that comes out in this information war. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right, right, right, right. | |
| I think from... | ||
| Here's what I'm getting is like in terms of the whole, you know, like... | ||
| When they talk about their faults or responsibility for Sandy Hook, they're really talking about the symptoms of what happened there, as opposed to realizing that Sandy Hook, what they did to Sandy Hook, was unique only insofar as the way that it has ended up, as opposed to it being any different from how they would have covered any other story like that, you know? | ||
| Sure. | ||
| It may be... | ||
| Maybe by degree a little more ghoulish in some ways. | ||
|
unidentified
|
For sure. | |
| I mean, of course, yeah. | ||
| But not really that different than a lot of other coverage that they did. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's an event that occurred out of their regular process, not an anomaly. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| And if you are somebody who believes the stuff that Alex believes, there's no reason why you wouldn't believe the stuff about Sandy Hook. | ||
| Totally. | ||
| It's... | ||
| If you believe all the narratives about the globalists and how they do false flags all the time in order to achieve their goals, the stuff Alex was saying about Sandy Hook falls in line with that. | ||
| It's not as outrageous as it sounds to people who aren't in that way of thinking, in that headspace. | ||
| And that's something that I don't really feel like I see any kind of grappling with in this deposition, at least. | ||
| The truth is, people wouldn't have gone along with the belief of Sandy Hook if it weren't for the years before that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| That made it make sense. | ||
| Yeah, if it weren't for the priming to get us to this place. | ||
| So, in effect, everybody involved in the lead-up is just as involved in the act itself. | ||
| Uh-huh. | ||
| You know? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And Endgame might have been a part of that. | ||
| Yeah, you better believe it! | ||
| So anyway, Mark shows Rob the letter that he got sent about the NDA. | ||
| Apparently I wanted to show you something I wanted to mark as Exhibit 1, but I believe Mr. Enoch has already hijacked that exhibit, so I am going to mark this as Exhibit 2. Someone hit this man! | ||
| Have you ever seen a copy of that before? | ||
| Do you remember seeing that? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| I want to direct you to the second page. | ||
| I'm going to read the paragraph that appears on this page to you. | ||
| You were reminded that you have important continuing obligations under your confidentiality. | ||
| Nondisclosure agreements with my clients. | ||
| You are expected to strictly observe those duties and obligations. | ||
| Do you feel like you understand what obligations are being referred to here? | ||
| I do. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| Have you abided by those obligations? | ||
| Yes, sir. | ||
| In fact, may I add something? | ||
| To my understanding of the nondisclosure is not to reveal any company secrets. | ||
| I don't think abuse or abusive behavior inside the company constitutes company secrets. | ||
| I don't think misbehavior inside the company by an adult who runs the business constitutes company secrets. | ||
| In fact, I'm here to try to bring light to the truth of abusive and behavior inside the walls of InfoWars. | ||
| And I don't think anything that I say today violates the NDA, which would be constituting of company secrets, their formulas and how they produce the news. | ||
| Nothing like that is going to be revealed today. | ||
| What will be revealed is abusive behavior and the behavior of Mr. Jones and his staff. | ||
| Objection numbers. | ||
| I think I can get down with that thinking. | ||
| You know, I think that makes sense. | ||
| In some ways, he's acting as a whistleblower if he's reporting on abuse within the company. | ||
| Right. | ||
| You know, misbehavior. | ||
| Well, I mean, if you want to claim that abuse is a company secret, then you have to be like, well, see, that's my management style. | ||
| And that, in and of itself, might be a larger problem. | ||
| Look, the way I mistreat employees is proprietary. | ||
| Exactly, yeah, yeah. | ||
| The specific ways that I harm people. | ||
| It's part of the business plan. | ||
| I filed it with my bank 30 years ago, okay? | ||
| Yeah, that could be trouble. | ||
| But yeah, I can get down with that. | ||
| And I think that that is a responsible way. | ||
| Like, if Rob were to be giving out business secrets or whatever... | ||
| I think that might be inappropriate, but I don't feel that anything that's done within the context of this deposition comes close to something that should be covered by an NDA. | ||
| Well, I mean, illegal business practices are not covered by an NDA. | ||
| But he doesn't know any of them. | ||
| Well, I understand. | ||
| He doesn't know any illegal business practices. | ||
| Right, right, right. | ||
| Well, I mean, you know, half of what they do is... | ||
| It's immoral. | ||
| But one of the things that I really got a sense of, and we have a clip... | ||
| Kind of that really made that clear to me was that I don't think he was that inside with stuff. | ||
| Yeah, that sounds right. | ||
| Yeah, I think that Rob might have been a bit on the outside. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And I also don't think that he has a very good sense of the specific coverage that they were doing, even. | ||
| Well, based on the way the other people have talked about him in their depositions, everybody seems like they've kept him at arm's length for one reason or another. | ||
| Yeah, probably unfairly, probably cruelly. | ||
| It does seem that way quite a bit, yeah. | ||
| You get the sense that maybe there was some bullying, even, that was going on within the walls of the building. | ||
| Yeah, totally believable. | ||
| So, Mark asks about when he began at Infowars, and, you know, what was, you know, do you believe in that stuff? | ||
| How'd you feel when you started? | ||
| When you first... | ||
| When you joined InfoWars, did you believe in its mission? | ||
| For the most part, yes. | ||
| Tell me about the kinds of stories or things that you wanted to be working on when you first came to InfoWars. | ||
| When I first arrived at InfoWars, my understanding of InfoWars and Alex's subject matter was the occult. | ||
| Esoteric politics, let's say. | ||
| What's going on behind the curtain. | ||
| Things that politicians don't tell us and expose in that fashion. | ||
| Fringe media off the mainstream, but still honest, was my impression. | ||
| Were you passionate about journalism at that time? | ||
| I was passionate about filmmaking. | ||
| And I wanted to be a documentary filmmaker, so in that aspect, yes, that does, I believe, fall under a broader umbrella of journalism, so when it comes to documentary films, I was on board. | ||
| Did you want to do good journalism? | ||
| I did. | ||
| Well, that's nice. | ||
| The stuff that he's describing, like the stuff behind the curtain, the esoteric, the power... | ||
| How they act secretly. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's the stuff that leads to globalist false flag beliefs. | ||
| Yeah, that's the problem there. | ||
| It seems very difficult for me to disconnect the way Alex treated those subjects and what it led to. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Well, I mean, but that comes back again to, like, it's the entirety that is the problem. | ||
| We're dealing with the results of if that problem is left unchecked. | ||
| And it's not like this specific event is the only problem. | ||
| That is just part of the problem. | ||
| And to pretend like it's anything other than that is willful ignorance or a complete misunderstanding of what you've done wrong, if anything. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You know, he's very much into the filmmaking and the documentary stuff and wants to do good journalism vis-a-vis that avenue. | ||
| One of the issues that I have, and I don't understand exactly what happened or what was done, but, like, Alex didn't put out a documentary for, like, ten years at this point now. | ||
| So, like, what was Rob doing after, like, 2012? | ||
| Like, Strategic Relocation, I think, was the last documentary Alex put out, and that's basically just him talking to Joel Skousen about places he could bug out to. | ||
| Like, I don't know what documentary work was being done. | ||
| I don't know if he was involved in field pieces or, you know, like... | ||
| Maybe he was just a basic video editor at that point. | ||
| Like, you know, Bowne would do those reports and maybe he just edited the videos together. | ||
| But if he was, then he would be far more intimately involved and aware of the content that was being put out than he's presenting himself as being. | ||
| And I don't think that that's necessarily dishonest because the way he answers questions about, like, you know, what did you know about this? | ||
| I don't know if he was intimately aware of literally everything. | ||
| I don't know what he was doing. | ||
| If you're the documentarian in-house at InfoWars and they haven't put out a documentary forever, you're still on the payroll. | ||
| This is another continuing problem. | ||
| I don't know what anybody fucking does for a job beyond Owen and Alex. | ||
| And Harrison, he's on air. | ||
| And Harrison, yes. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, it's confusing. | |
| What do any of you do? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So, Mark asks, what is this good journalism to you that you wanted to do? | ||
| Good question. | ||
| Mr. Jacobson, what does good journalism mean to you? | ||
| Good journalism means an objective... | ||
| Reporting of facts, somebody who can, or if the journalist can remove his emotion and theory as much as possible from reporting what he sees or she sees with their own eyes and ears, | ||
| empirical evidence reported to the public with very little bias. | ||
| In your mind, what is the relationship between good journalism and corroboration of facts? | ||
| I think good journalism, if you're going to have a corroboration of facts, I believe the more witnesses and points of view of the same action or activity that is being reported on, the better. | ||
| For example, just theoretically thinking one person can't see both sides of the cup at once. | ||
| So when two people are observing it at the same time, you get a better description of the object in question. | ||
| And so the more witnesses that have viewed it, the more impressions we can get after the fact of what has actually happened in the object that we're observing. | ||
| In your first few years at InfoWars, were you comfortable with the style of journalism and the stories you were working on? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Any time I make a suggestion like that, sir, you can go over and answer. | |
| Okay. | ||
| Um... | ||
| Let me say one thing. | ||
| I may ask you not to answer based on a privilege. | ||
| That's your choice. | ||
| That's my client trying to protect the privilege. | ||
| But when I object, say objection form or leading, you can go ahead and answer. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Would you like me to ask that question again? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, please. | |
| Okay. | ||
| In those first few years at Infowars, were you comfortable with the style of journalism and the stories you were working on? | ||
| I was comfortable with the films I was producing and helping Alex produce. | ||
| I found them interesting, and I found that Alex did present enough expert testimony that it held water in my mind. | ||
| That's absolutely terrible judgment. | ||
| That's an insane thing to say. | ||
| I think that some of the stuff that he's saying makes a lot of sense, like the idea that he can't see both sides of the cup at the same time. | ||
| Perspectives on the cup allows you to know what the cup is. | ||
| Great. | ||
| That's good on paper. | ||
| There's one viewpoint in those documentaries that he put out, and that's Alex's. | ||
| It does seem to be the case. | ||
| You know, there's not anything unbiased in that. | ||
| There is complete... | ||
| Misrepresentation of very basic facts. | ||
| It's nonsense. | ||
| If you really wanted to do the kind of work that you're describing, then your documentary would have had people who were like, this is a load of bullshit. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Or giving at least some kind of a counter perspective to Alex's utter nonsense. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Instead of just interviewing Big Jim Tucker in a bar while he smokes cigars and hangs out with Daniel Estelin. | ||
| Right, right, right. | ||
| So maybe what he's more thinking is his style of journalism is one person can't see both sides of the cup. | ||
| But one person can tell you that the cup is actually a goat, and if you have a thousand people behind that one person convincing you that that cup is a goat, then you're probably going to believe that cup is a goat. | ||
| Right. | ||
| That makes sense. | ||
| And if you present things with enough quote-unquote experts, people who appear to be experts, like dumbass Big Jim Tucker and Daniel Estelan, then you give the appearance of something that can hold water. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| Yeah, I think if that's the perspective that you have in like 2018, 2019 about the work that was done on Endgame, then you're missing the forest for the fucking trees. | ||
| Yeah! | ||
|
unidentified
|
Because... | |
| That was a bad documentary. | ||
| I don't want to denigrate STEM education because I do think it's very, very important. | ||
| But a lot of the times I feel like maybe one of the larger problems that we have is just the inability to translate words into concepts and have them make sense. | ||
| And maybe that starts young. | ||
| That's all I'm saying. | ||
| I think that there's a difficulty that I have combining this Seeming being fine with the documentary work. | ||
| Right, right. | ||
| That holds water. | ||
| And simultaneously being somebody who within InfoWars was saying this coverage of Sandy Hook is bad at the time. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You know, like being aware of that and still being fine with what you did with Endgame. | ||
| That's trouble. | ||
| That's very weird for me. | ||
| Well, I mean, you have to stop and say, okay, well, what are the problems that you had with this, specifically, and in what way do those not apply to literally everything you've ever done there? | ||
| Right. | ||
| So, there's an issue of, like, fact-checking that Alex does. | ||
| Sure, sure, sure. | ||
| This seems dumb. | ||
| Mr. Jacobson, in terms of InfoWars'consistency or process for corroborating facts, in your mind had that changed between the start of your employment and the end of your employment? | ||
| I feel that from the beginning, when I first started working there, the fact collection was mostly Alex and... | ||
| Mostly himself was the researcher. | ||
| By the end, Alex did let a lot of others do research for him, and I don't know if these people were specifically qualified or experienced enough to do that kind of work. | ||
| Ah, now here's the twist. | ||
| Neither was Alex. | ||
| Yeah, there we go. | ||
| That's the interesting... | ||
| That's the problem I'm having with this explanation. | ||
| Wait, wait, wait. | ||
| Things weren't sunny in 2005, 2006. | ||
| It's not like things were so rigorous and everything was by the book and Alex and his precise fact-checking methodology. | ||
| No, he was full of shit and he hired a bunch of other people who were full of shit. | ||
| And they carry... | ||
| Even less. | ||
| Yeah, well, see, when Alex stopped making up his own bullshit, that's when it all went downhill. | ||
| That's when he gave creative control over fantasy reality to other people. | ||
| Now God knows what could happen. | ||
| Well, like, when Alex says he has the documents... | ||
| It makes sense. | ||
| When Owen says Alex has the documents, that's bullshit. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Okay. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Great. | |
| All right. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Whatever. | ||
| What do you think? | ||
| What is the issue that people... | ||
| Oh, man. | ||
| So I will say that one of the things I do appreciate, and you can't really take away, is that Rob does own up to and clearly feels bad about being involved in whatever capacity he was with the coverage of Sandy Hook. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| And so he talks about that a little bit and what he tried to do at the time. | ||
| A few months back, do you remember calling me about this case? | ||
| Yes, sir. | ||
| Why'd you do that? | ||
| I was concerned. | ||
| I wanted to make sure. | ||
| I felt I was part of something just being in that building when all this was going down. | ||
| I felt terrible what happened. | ||
| Even though I myself... | ||
| No, I wasn't directly... | ||
| I'm involved in putting this out there directly. | ||
| Just being in the building, I feel complicit. | ||
| I feel I have to right a wrong that I was involved in. | ||
| And even though I was part of that wrong, I want to at least stack a couple of correct decisions up with some of the mistakes that I've made in the past. | ||
| When you say that you weren't directly involved in putting... | ||
| This out there. | ||
| What is this? | ||
| This would be Sandy Hook. | ||
| Anything that Infowars put out concerning Sandy Hook, I had absolutely no involvement in. | ||
| During your employment, were you exposed to Infowars coverage of Sandy Hook? | ||
| During my employment, I had other assignments to do and I wouldn't much pay attention to the show. | ||
| However, when I did and I heard about Sandy Hook, it actually bothered me. | ||
| Tell me what you mean by that. | ||
| What did you hear that bothered you? | ||
| I heard them making accusations based on extremely narrow cross-sections of information that I... | ||
| Did my best to make the writers and the staff aware that what they were doing was speculation based on not enough information. | ||
| It bothered me. | ||
| That bothered me that I felt they had no concept of journalist ethics. | ||
| Did you tell anyone at Infowars your feelings about the Sandy Hook coverage? | ||
| I attempted to make it as clear as possible to the writers that there is something called journalist ethics and how what they were doing was in a direct violation of that. | ||
| Anytime I caught wind of the Sandy Hook story on Infowars, now mind you, I would like to add that it's not something I was thinking about all the time considering I had other things to do. | ||
| I'd be working on other projects, but when it would come on the screen, I would make it my business to go into the writers and explain to them as clearly as possible that there is journalist ethics. | ||
| And I tried to demonstrate what those ethics are and why they are violating them and what the damage could possibly be. | ||
| In fact, I remember... | ||
| I must have been in that room four to five times at least. | ||
| Only to be received with laughter and jokes. | ||
| I don't understand what the journalist ethics he's talking about here is, because if it's like taking a small cross-section of information, that's all Infowars does. | ||
| Yeah, I mean... | ||
| The principle behind whatever he's describing is exactly the same as 90% of the work that he does. | ||
| Now, if this is the case, and he's working on these other projects, and whenever he catches wind that Sandy Hook is being covered, there's some offense that he takes at that. | ||
| I don't understand how you... | ||
| Let's say you're barely ever watching the show, and sometimes you catch it, and they're talking about Sandy Hook, and you're like, this is fucked up. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I don't understand why your next step wouldn't be like, maybe I should watch more of the show and see if they're doing this all the time. | ||
| Maybe I should see if they're treating other subjects with this much disrespect and lack of care. | ||
| Maybe I'm involved in a really awful thing here. | ||
| But it seems like, and I think that everybody wants to pretend this, especially everybody who worked at Infowars, that this is... | ||
| Like a unique, isolated thing. | ||
| It's just an aberration. | ||
| It's crazy that this happened. | ||
| It's not connected to anything. | ||
| The only way I can make sense of it is... | ||
| It's easy to understand when you fucked up if you received negative consequences or if people make it aware to you that you fucked up. | ||
| It's really hard to understand you fucked up if people give you positive consequences for it or encourage you to keep doing it. | ||
| So to me, it does make sense in a certain way for him to think that he's done a good job on some stuff because people gave him positive reinforcement for it. | ||
| And it's easy for him to understand that this is bad because people have been negative about it. | ||
| He's in a deposition, right? | ||
| Right, but he didn't do anything wrong. | ||
| I know. | ||
| That's the weirdest part about this. | ||
| That's the thing I don't understand. | ||
| I can't reconcile that. | ||
| On all accounts... | ||
| He did things right. | ||
| His coverage of stuff and his work product didn't involve Sandy Hook. | ||
| When he caught wind internally that it was being covered, he told people, this is bad, don't do this. | ||
| I know. | ||
| You know, it's not... | ||
| He doesn't have... | ||
| I get working at InfoWars is bad, and all of it is bad, but... | ||
| That's what he has to feel bad about. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Not the Sandy Hook stuff. | ||
|
unidentified
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I mean... | |
| He doesn't have any business being in this deposition, honestly. | ||
| Yeah, normally I would be like, oh, well, obviously he's lying, but we have evidence that he did say, stop it. | ||
| Yeah, and then Adon Salazar bullied him. | ||
| Yeah, I don't understand this at all. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Just no way to reconcile this in a way that makes sense, and there's no consistency. | ||
| It feels like the aberration is him being like, oh, well, this is wrong. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Well, but... | ||
| That's the weird thing. | ||
| It's confusing. | ||
| I don't really... | ||
| I don't, yeah. | ||
| So anyway, Rob talks about his complaints that he made to Adan Salazar. | ||
| Whenever this subject came up, I would immediately clarify to the writers that there is a journalistic ethics that they're violating. | ||
| And what I've pointed out to Adan specifically... | ||
| Is that you're taking the word of one witness primarily and a couple of speculative other facts and calling it the truth without actually going down and investigating it ourselves or actually going with our own reporters and corroborating what these people are saying. | ||
| I made it aware to Adan that Wolfgang Halbig could have a lot of issues that we're not considering. | ||
| That by taking the word of this one man So heavily, with such a great accusation that he's accusing people of, was so irresponsible, so damaging. | ||
| I asked him, consider the size of the audience. | ||
| And Adan Salazar responded with, and I'm going to quote him, because he said it to me many times, I want to print up a t-shirt that says, Hal Big was right. | ||
| I want bumper stickers that say Hal Big was right to a laughing room. | ||
| Yeah, there's been other people who have said that. | ||
| That story checks out. | ||
| And he's emotional about it. | ||
| I don't understand. | ||
| What is it about this that is different from the Aurora? | ||
| Sure. | ||
| Or what about this is different than, like, he's saying relying on Wolfgang Hal Big, maybe he has other problems. | ||
| Like, what about thinking about Endgame and relying on Jim Tucker, who works for a Holocaust-denying publication, or maybe has severe alcoholism, even as demonstrated in the fucking film? | ||
| You made it clear. | ||
| Or what about relying on Daniel Estelin, who's a lunatic, and citations to people who think they're space gods in his book? | ||
| Like, this is the product that he was put out. | ||
| That Rob Jacobson, this documentary that he thinks is not like these other things that InfoWars has done. | ||
| And it just doesn't make sense to me. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I don't get it. | ||
| I don't get it because I don't think he has... | ||
| Honestly, as it relates to Sandy Hook, the only thing he has to apologize for, I guess, is that he didn't quit. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's all he has to apologize for. | ||
| And that has no real relevance. | ||
| In a courtroom. | ||
| It has no real relevance in a deposition. | ||
| As they go through the questions about this stuff that is relevant to Sandy Hook, he doesn't know that much. | ||
| The only thing that you could really concretely take away from this, perhaps, is that he's an AV guy, and he can speak with some credibility about the idea of Anderson Cooper's nose on a blue screen. | ||
| So there is that that he can offer as my expert... | ||
| Witness-ness, but there's other people you could get to do that. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I appreciate on some level that he feels bad about him being connected to this, but I don't know. | ||
| It feels like he's asking for forgiveness or penitence for the wrong thing. | ||
| It just doesn't make sense. | ||
| It is... | ||
| Group of thoughts that I cannot imagine having in your brain simultaneously. | ||
| Like, I did wrong, but I didn't do wrong, but also I did do wrong, but also I didn't. | ||
| Like, it's wild. | ||
| I don't understand how many different possible avenues that he can both excuse his behavior. | ||
| Be excused for his behavior, and then still not understand that his behavior is reprehensible, and there's no excuse for it. | ||
| You know, like, I don't get it. | ||
| Yeah, the behavior that's the problem is being a part of creating, like, foundational texts within the Infowars canon that are relied on to lend credibility to things like the coverage of Sandy Hook. | ||
| Right. | ||
| There is that to wrestle with, and let's not... | ||
| That's not present here at all. | ||
| It's somebody who helped build a church, who helped build this entire church, and then is like, oh man, I'm really sorry for those guys who put that steeple on there. | ||
| The church is terrible now, you know? | ||
| I just don't, and not even that, I don't even. | ||
| It's, I don't know, it doesn't make a lot of sense. | ||
| So anyway, Rob explains a problem that he has with InfoWars coverage, and I would say, if you have a problem with this, you gotta go back to page one, baby. | ||
| When you were at InfoWars, In general, if a person did something in public that was agitating, was that good for their career at InfoWars or bad for their career at InfoWars? | ||
| It was excellent for their career. | ||
| I can point to several examples where it's not reporting at all. | ||
| It's pure agitation by many members of the staff. | ||
| And I have also been very critical of that. | ||
| It's been pure. | ||
| In fact, some of it is so agitating. | ||
| It's almost to the level of public disruption. | ||
| So, including... | ||
| Can I go on? | ||
| Please. | ||
| Objection, non-responsive so far. | ||
| Let me ask you another question. | ||
| Can you give me an example of some of the things you're talking about when you say agitation? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Miss Millie Weaver, last year or the year before that, I'm not sure when, but it was in the last perhaps 12 months, I believe, because it was after I left. | ||
| She showed up at a Hillary Clinton book signing event that was at Book People. | ||
| These people were not there to protest. | ||
| These people were not there to... | ||
| Hillary, this is far after the election. | ||
| Nobody was campaigning. | ||
| But Miss Millie Weaver decided to show up with a lot of Trump gear, which obviously is going to be, as we follow the news, we know is agitating towards... | ||
| In a very political way, you know, so in my opinion, just by looking at that, I noticed that reporters don't show up sponsoring politicians. | ||
| So for her to go there and say, and in fact, the name of this video on YouTube is called Journalists Harassed or something. | ||
| She identifies herself as a journalist while she shows up wearing political gear directly aiming at the opposite end of the spectrum. | ||
| Asking abrasive questions about Hillary Clinton. | ||
| Now, that's not journalism. | ||
| That's agitation. | ||
| And that is a clear-cut case example of them swapping out the words agitation for journalism and vice versa. | ||
| But this is fundamental. | ||
| Alex's family crest might as well have a bullhorn on it. | ||
| That's his whole claim to fame. | ||
| He agitates people. | ||
| He goes and yells at people and makes a scene. | ||
| That's who he is. | ||
| It's not tyranny journalism. | ||
| It's tyranny crusher. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No. | |
| Most of a large portion of Endgame is him yelling at people in a bullhorn. | ||
| He's going to a place where people are, not protesting or whatever, and he's going. | ||
| Yeah, this is the InfoWars model. | ||
| Alex paid people to yell Bill Clinton as a rapist. | ||
| That was on TV! | ||
| That was the thing! | ||
| How is that journalism? | ||
| It's in a contest for people to do that. | ||
| Again, this is missing the forest for the trees entirely. | ||
| You take issue with Millie Weaver doing that, but that is what InfoWars is. | ||
| That is the business that you were involved in for 13 years. | ||
| And how could you not know that? | ||
| You obviously know that. | ||
| You have to know that. | ||
| Maybe you're blocking yourself from being aware of it or showing awareness. | ||
| It's possible. | ||
| But that is not in any way different than what they do. | ||
|
unidentified
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Nope. | |
| This is what the business model is. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Bing. | ||
| If you have a problem with it, then... | ||
| I don't know what to tell you. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, did he have like four years of reflection and therapy and stuff? | ||
| Can he honestly say like, oh, we've all done this? | ||
| No, because this is a year after he left or he got fired. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Maybe at a year of therapy. | ||
| Wow, I mean, I hope so. | ||
| That would be nice. | ||
| It seems like he's passionate about them fucking up in this case. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I would love to see a larger understanding or reflection on the way that the things that he's complaining about are actually essential pieces of InfoWars. | ||
| Not things that are recent. | ||
| Not things that have only to do with Sandy Hook. | ||
| They are what Alex does. | ||
| These are not bugs. | ||
| These are features. | ||
| And what his documentaries featured as well. | ||
| Yeah, absolutely. | ||
| Not just Infowars outside of his projects and things. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So, I don't know. | ||
| I don't know what to say. | ||
| Anyway, he definitely had some complaints internally. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Sandy Hook was happening. | ||
| The coverage. | ||
| And there was another person who did, and that is Paul Joseph Watson. | ||
| And so Mark asks about Paul's opinion. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Can you tell us who Paul Watson is? | |
| Paul Watson is sort of Alex's alternate host. | ||
| He's basically like Alex's sidekick. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| Were... | ||
| Have you ever been aware of Mr. Watson's opinions about the Sandy Hook hoax allegations? | ||
| No. | ||
| See, that is one of the reasons that I think he's pretty outside any kind of internal stuff. | ||
| Well, he doesn't really communicate at all with Paul Watson, right? | ||
| Yeah, but also Paul made a big deal out of it. | ||
| That email, he had Buckley on it. | ||
| They were supposed to tell everyone to stop. | ||
| Talking about Sandy Hook, conceivably that might have involved an all-hands meeting. | ||
| You would expect. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| It seems like if you didn't know that Paul took great issue with this, and you also took great issue with this, that seems to me that everybody is disconnected, and Paul is clearly on the inside, and maybe Rob is over here. | ||
| Well, and I mean, I would assume they didn't necessarily... | ||
| I mean, I don't think they... | ||
| Really publicized internally that people didn't like it. | ||
| They definitely seem to think they did. | ||
| Well, no, I mean, like, in the other... | ||
| Like, I don't assume that Rob Dew and Alex were both going around being like, hey, make sure that we don't do this thing after that. | ||
| They say that they did. | ||
| Well, they say that they did, but they clearly obviously didn't. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| All right. | ||
| I don't know what to believe. | ||
| Anyway, like I said, one of the things that Rob's testimony could be good for is the audiovisual aspect. | ||
| And so they talk about the blue screen situation. | ||
| And I think, unfortunately... | ||
| Obviously, Rob affirms Alex's conspiracy here. | ||
| Oh, no. | ||
| Would anybody with competent video experience have serious doubts about saying this was blue screen? | ||
| I feel they would. | ||
|
unidentified
|
They would be on the fence. | |
| If they saw this video, they would have questions. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| Can I go further and explain that? | ||
| Actually, let me ask you a question on that, okay? | ||
| Your opinion about whether or not it could be fairly asserted that this is clearly blue screen, informing your opinion on whether that could be asserted, can you tell me about any of the things you see in this video or any of your experience that would inform that opinion? | ||
| There's nothing in that video that will clearly indicate to me that that was... | ||
|
unidentified
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Okay. | |
| If a witness, if anyone was to say, I can look at that video, I work with blue screen, it's got all the telltale signs, that's clearly blue screen. | ||
| In your opinion, is that person acting responsible? | ||
| No, I don't. | ||
| I think that based on what we see on that screen, that could be that Error in the nose could have been caused by a number of different reasons. | ||
| And none of them are clear from what we see there without knowing what happened behind the scenes with the operating room controllers and so on and so forth. | ||
| That could have been a natural glitch that happens all the time on YouTube. | ||
| We see it all the time where pixels smudge. | ||
| There is no secret about that. | ||
| There must be a million videos or more. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We're pixels smudge all the time. | |
| In order for that... | ||
| Should I continue? | ||
| If you have more facts that you better... | ||
| The only thing I could tell you about that is the only way that that is possibly green screen is if Anderson Cooper is not standing next to that woman. | ||
| Yeah, that is what Alex claims. | ||
| Yeah, that would be... | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So, I mean, like, obviously there is a usefulness there in terms of, like... | ||
| Now, if you know about green screen, blue screen technology, that is not something you would immediately jump to. | ||
| You'd have questions, and there would be a hundred explanations for what you see there. | ||
| Blue screen is not definite. | ||
| Alex saying it's definite is irresponsible. | ||
| But then the only way that's blue screen is if Anderson Cooper wasn't there. | ||
| It's like, that's what Alex is saying. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| That's kind of the point. | ||
| Do they have... | ||
| It's like, okay. | ||
| So, I'm envisioning now, like, Rob is working in an office, right? | ||
| Okay, and sometimes Alex comes and sees him, so he thinks that he's working in an office with Alex, but it's actually, like, entirely across town. | ||
| You know, like, he's not even in the same building as those people. | ||
| No, because he said he goes to the writer, he's gone to the writer's room, so, like, he's in the facility. | ||
| It's insane to me how far away from... | ||
| The reality of the business he seems to be. | ||
| Yeah, and you know what? | ||
| Here's the other thing. | ||
| Maybe I've been in some jobs in my life. | ||
| Let me just say this. | ||
| Haven't we all? | ||
| And there have been times when I have not done a lot of work, but... | ||
| Definitely wanted to look like I was doing a lot of work. | ||
| Sure, that's been there. | ||
| And maybe Rob's other assignments were just killing time. | ||
| I mean, has he just been doing nothing for 10 years? | ||
| Just hoping Alex doesn't notice. | ||
| Is that really it? | ||
| Is he like, if I keep my head down, I think I can just stay here. | ||
| I have definitely done that at certain jobs in the past. | ||
| So I don't think it's outside the possibility in terms of how... | ||
| You know, sometimes you can fly under the radar. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| You know, don't bring too much attention to yourself. | ||
| I have in the past asked myself the question, how long can I get away with this for? | ||
| Yeah, that's definitely true. | ||
| Yeah, my days are numbered here at Groupon. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah, might as well just hang out and see what happens. | |
| Can't believe I made it three months longer than I thought I would. | ||
| Great. | ||
| So, Rob, his awareness of the fact that parents of victims were not happy did not come from anything internal. | ||
| Turns out he was watching PBS. | ||
| At any time during your time at InfoWars past 2013, were you aware that Clarence had been complaining about this coverage? | ||
| No, not immediately. | ||
| I really became aware of it sometime afterwards when I saw, actually, I think a PBS special on what was going on, and it really hit home at that point. | ||
| I was like, this is... | ||
| He watched a PBS special, and that's how he became aware the parents weren't happy. | ||
| And this PBS special also is where he learned that there was harassment going on. | ||
| Did you ever become aware that parents were being harassed by believers in the Sandy Hook hoax conspiracy theory? | ||
| Yes, I became aware of that. | ||
| When do you think you became aware of that? | ||
| Somewhere around 2014, 2015. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Maybe 2015? | |
| Like I said, when I saw that PBS documentary. | ||
| So the PBS documentary you saw, that was when you were employed in Florida? | ||
| I was still employed there. | ||
| He was still employed there, saw this, it all became very real to him, and then he still worked there for two more years. | ||
| Then I put my hat on and I said, good morning, Sam. | ||
| Good morning, Ralph. | ||
| That's weird. | ||
| I don't understand that at all. | ||
| Really? | ||
| I mean, I feel like... | ||
| No, I don't. | ||
| I feel like maybe I am just, I guess, morally inflexible in a way that I thought was far more reasonable, but maybe is just unusual. | ||
| Because that seems to me like the moment you find that out... | ||
| You can't be like, well, at least it's not my department, and then just go back to work the next day. | ||
| You kind of, I think, have to shut down any pretense that you have a moral connection to what you're doing. | ||
| Totally. | ||
| It's so cynical to go back to work after saying it became very real to you and becoming aware that parents are being harassed. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| And you know what? | ||
| I mean, like, he got fired two years later. | ||
| He didn't even quit eventually. | ||
| Like, he presumably would still be working there under harassing, awful, abusive conditions. | ||
| Like, I'm not saying he deserves that or anything. | ||
| Sure, sure. | ||
| But had he not been fired, would he still be working there? | ||
| Possibly? | ||
| Maybe. | ||
| I don't get this. | ||
| I don't understand. | ||
| I recognize that concept of like, well, that's the business's fault, not mine. | ||
| Right. | ||
| I get that. | ||
| But it's not like you're working for Chase Bank as an analyst of insurance or something like that. | ||
| Where it's like, yeah, I get it. | ||
| The company you work for is evil. | ||
| I understand that. | ||
| But it's not like a business where you can go talk to the CEO doing evil shit and be like, hey, stop it, and he can tell you to go fuck off. | ||
| You're just a cog in that little machine. | ||
| This is a different story. | ||
| Well, I think that he has obviously marketable skills. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| He has talent. | ||
| In a way that a lot of other people who work for Infowars don't. | ||
| A lot of the writers are not employable anywhere else. | ||
| They do shit work. | ||
| Because they're bad writers. | ||
| The reporters suck. | ||
| They can't work anywhere else. | ||
| The people on air don't have the chops to cut it anywhere else. | ||
| He has audiovisual skills. | ||
| He has a trade, basically, that could be employed somewhere else. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, he could walk into a local TV station. | ||
| I'm fairly certain that... | ||
| I'm not saying those jobs are just available for anybody, but you know what I mean. | ||
| He could find a job somewhere else much more easily than I think a lot of the other people who are mucked up in Infowars. | ||
| Totally. | ||
| I'm not saying it would be the simplest thing ever, but it is a possibility in a way that a lot of other people probably think I'm completely unemployable anywhere else because of this being on my resume. | ||
| Maybe not as much for Rob. | ||
| I don't think that it's always the simplest thing when people work in places that, you know, like, you have some misgivings about the ethical nature of what you're doing. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But that's on a different scale a lot of the time from the reality of InfoWars. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And I don't know. | ||
| I don't... | ||
| I find it to be worse that he knows... | ||
| How bad this is. | ||
| Yeah! | ||
| That might be the issue. | ||
| The fact that he was saying to people while the Sandy Hook coverage was going on that this is bad, that makes it more difficult for me to understand his non-quitting. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Because it should have war on him more. | ||
| Because he does have a moral compass. | ||
| He's demonstrated that certain things are beyond a line for him, and it turns out that maybe just the line doesn't matter. | ||
| Yeah, I don't know. | ||
| I mean, I guess now we're kind of getting into a more deeper conversation about the diffusion of responsibility, you know, to, like, at what point do you say, well, I can't work on an oil derrick? | ||
| Like, it's morally reprehensible. | ||
| Because it is. | ||
| I mean, that's a true thing. | ||
| So what do you say to that, you know? | ||
| You have to ask yourself that question. | ||
| I get what you're saying, and I think the difference is abstraction. | ||
| Yeah, I agree. | ||
| The abstractness of the harm that you're causing by working on an oil derrick or something is different than the very clearly traceable line from the dissemination and promotion of Sandy Hook conspiracy theorists and the harm you're seeing brought home in very vivid light in this PBS special. | ||
| There is a very clear line. | ||
| When the line started, you were aware of how bad it could be. | ||
| And when the line ended, you saw, oh, I was right about how bad it could be. | ||
| And these are people whose lives are clearly severely negatively impacted by the work that we do at my job. | ||
| Yeah, I suppose that's kind of it. | ||
| That's really the line there. | ||
| It's just like, hey. | ||
| I saw this, you do this, I told you not to do this, that it's wrong, and then you continue doing it, so I can't work here anymore. | ||
| Right. | ||
| If you are somebody who works at an oil rig, and you have an understanding of harm that's being done to the world and stuff, there is not all that much... | ||
| That you can do to remedy that harm in the broad sense outside of, like, quit, stay. | ||
| It's not really going to make a difference in terms of... | ||
| Well, and you can make an argument maybe that Rob quitting wouldn't have made that big a difference either towards the damage done. | ||
| But, like, in order to make any kind of headway... | ||
| You need to change the energy consumption patterns of the world. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You know, there is a much larger thing that needs to be done to assway your concerns. | ||
| With Rob, you can... | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I don't know if it's the same. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I don't think it's the same. | ||
| It doesn't feel the same. | ||
| Nope. | ||
| So, it was severe for him when he was concerned about the behavior of the writers. | ||
| He does say it is a 10 on the outrageousness scale. | ||
| When you were, as you mentioned earlier, communicating your thoughts to people at Infowars about the Sandy Hook coverage. | ||
| Can you describe to me on a scale of 1 being not outrageous at all and 10 being extremely outrageous? | ||
| On that 1 to 10 scale, what is the level of outrageousness of this conduct that you were trying to impart? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I thought it was a 10. Tell me why you thought that. | |
| I mean, it's one thing to make a mistake. | ||
| It's another thing to have somebody come in, and I'm not aware if I was the one and only person or not, but I know I was doing it. | ||
| To come in and say, hey, this is wrong, you're making a mistake. | ||
| It's one thing, you know, to actually have a mistake and something else to have it pointed out to you, not just once, but over and over and over again. | ||
| And to not only hear... | ||
| The damage that you're doing to people outside of your zone, but to actually laugh about it, I thought that's a 10. If it's a 10, what are you doing? | ||
| I just don't understand why you don't quit. | ||
| If you're saying that that's a 10, then nothing can make you quit, is also what you're saying. | ||
| True, because there is no 11. There's no 11. Now, and here's the other thing that is something you should grapple with. | ||
| If this is a 10 out of 10 on the outrageousness scale, and... | ||
| The people who are doing it are not fired by Alex. | ||
| They are congratulated, maybe lauded, maybe given bonuses and shit, which we know has happened! | ||
| Maybe that should be a strong indication that this rot goes to the core of the entire business. | ||
| Alex incentivizes 10 out of 10 on the outrageousness scale because his sign on his family crest is a bullhorn. | ||
| I mean, that's such a weird... | ||
| I don't understand it at all. | ||
| If you plumb into that kind of moral relativity, that's just insane. | ||
| At a certain point, that just means like, oh, well, listen, I want him to keep it at a seven of outrageousness. | ||
| That's where I think it's supposed to be. | ||
| That's good journalism. | ||
| Like, that's insane. | ||
| Well, I would argue that it's possible to make the argument that a seven is not what you'd call good journalism, but maybe it's something sustainable and like... | ||
| You could get along with. | ||
| Like a publicity stunt might be a seven. | ||
| Like a semi-tasteless publicity stunt. | ||
| Like yelling Bill Clinton as a rapist and paying people to do that. | ||
| Maybe that's a seven out of ten on the outrageousness scale. | ||
| And I could see you staying employed and being like, whatever. | ||
| Maybe I'm not a huge fan of that, but we'll do our work. | ||
| A ten out of ten. | ||
| It's like, you gotta quit, man. | ||
| What are you doing? | ||
| I know! | ||
| I don't understand this person! | ||
| Unless there's like blackmail or a gun to his head or something. | ||
| Make more sense. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I can't make it make more sense. | ||
| You know, I don't know. | ||
| It's an abusive relationship, and we can't really judge him for not being able to exit that relationship the way that he wanted. | ||
| You know, if you experience that much abuse, and you think that's where you belong or deserve to be placed, perhaps his penance really was enduring the continued abuse. | ||
| Fuck if I know the psychology of this man is beyond me. | ||
| That's what I'm trying to say. | ||
| If that's the case... | ||
| I don't even want to get into it! | ||
| I don't even want to get into it! | ||
| I don't understand you! | ||
| So, in this next clip, Rob discusses that he has guilt. | ||
| And that's good. | ||
| I guess. | ||
| Do you today have any sense of guilt about the coverage about Sandy Hook that came out of InfoWars? | ||
| Yes, as I've mentioned in my statements previously, the reason why I'm here... | ||
| It's because a tremendous amount of guilt that I didn't act faster. | ||
| Maybe I should have quit. | ||
| Maybe I could have caught the story faster or been better at explaining, but yes, I do. | ||
| Are you still on friendly terms with Infowars? | ||
| No. | ||
| Were you terminated? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| So, I don't... | ||
| Like I've said already, I don't understand why he has any guilt. | ||
| Now, the notion of, like, maybe I should have quit, yeah, but that's about you. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's for you to wrestle with. | ||
| Has nothing to do with anything else. | ||
| The idea that maybe I could have done something better, or maybe I could have, you know, gotten this story, I could have acted more internally. | ||
| No, you fucking couldn't. | ||
| Paul Joseph Watson is one of the most powerful people within Infowars. | ||
| True. | ||
| He was opposed to this, made it clear to Alex, got Alex's cousin, who was a manager at Infowars, Who agreed with him looped in on the same thing and didn't do shit. | ||
| There was not anything that could have been done because this is what Alex wanted. | ||
| That's true. | ||
| This is how things were going to go no matter what. | ||
| So, yes, the only thing I think maybe he should feel guilt about, maybe not the only thing, but the primary thing here is that he didn't quit. | ||
| And that's about his own well-being. | ||
| That is about his own shit. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| He owes... | ||
| No real apology necessarily. | ||
| I don't... | ||
| But that actually I can understand. | ||
| I can understand the feeling because if you do believe that this is something of an anomaly... | ||
| Right. | ||
| I can understand the feeling of someone just being like, oh, well, there's more I could have done. | ||
| You know, if one of my friends gets into a car accident and we were supposed to do something and they quit or whatever, maybe I would feel like, oh, I could have done more to keep them from getting in that car. | ||
| Like, I can recognize that kind of guilt there. | ||
| I can't recognize the feeling of like, well, this is my fault. | ||
| It's somewhat misplaced, though. | ||
| It is very misplaced. | ||
| The guilt that we're dealing with here is... | ||
| Misplaced. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I feel like everywhere is misplaced. | ||
| Well, but here's the thing. | ||
| All these other people that we've heard talk about stuff, it's misplaced in the sense of trying to evade responsibility. | ||
| Whereas with Rob, there is a feeling of trying to dodge into it. | ||
| It's an overcorrection, yeah. | ||
| Yeah, and I don't understand why. | ||
| I obviously can't speak for anybody who's involved or anything, but he didn't do things that contributed to making this story worse. | ||
| Right. | ||
| As far as we know from all available information. | ||
| Right. | ||
| He did what he could internally to de-incentivize people to do it. | ||
| Speaking out, saying it's wrong, what have you. | ||
| But, you know, I mean, that's part of what he's recognizing, though, is like, maybe I could have done more. | ||
| I should have done more. | ||
| Maybe I could have quit. | ||
| I should have quit. | ||
| Maybe you should have quit in 2004. | ||
| That's what would have made the most sense. | ||
| But we can't relitigate this deposition. | ||
| Otherwise, I'd have to start talking shit to Enoch, okay? | ||
| True. | ||
| That's where we'd really get into trouble. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Like I said, I'm just confused. | ||
| This is a very different deposition in terms of what you can walk away from it from. | ||
| Because there isn't a lot of super relevant information that you glean from it. | ||
| There is just somebody who is really seeking some kind of forgiveness. | ||
| Absolution. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| In a way that doesn't make sense. | ||
| None. | ||
| And I hope he finds whatever he needs, and I wish him the best. | ||
| I don't want to sit around and shit on him or anything, because I think that certainly the ability to feel guilt, even if misplaced, is a drastic improvement from the other people that we see. | ||
| It'll serve him better than everybody else. | ||
| But yeah, it's just very confusing. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So one of the things that is also relevant is that Rob has his EEOC complaint at this time. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| And it's still to be seen how it'll play out. | ||
| And there is a question about like, you know, if this case does go forward, do you stand to profit from that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| And Rob says no. | ||
| And in fact, he stands to lose. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| In as much as like... | ||
| He won't be a primary creditor even if he did. | ||
| He would be far less likely to receive any percent of his money, period. | ||
| Yeah, so he only stands conceivably to the opposite of benefit from this. | ||
| And he makes the point that he's not... | ||
| I mean, one of the remedies for an EEOC complaint is to immediately receive your job back, which I do not believe. | ||
| No thank you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No thanks. | |
| But he makes a point, and I think it's fair to make note of, that he's not interested in compensation in terms of his involvement here. | ||
| I'm not doing any of this for compensation. | ||
| I'm doing this because Alex is disgracing himself so badly. | ||
| And the way he has made the parents suffer, as well as myself, he's still on the air to this day saying things that are arguably true or arguably false. | ||
| not true, we don't know. | ||
| But we do know that he affects his audience in a way that angers them and mobilizes them And it's unclear if anything he's saying is fact or fiction, opinion or speculation. | ||
| Isn't it? | ||
| But what he does do is mobilize a large amount of people in irrational thinking, because there's no way to tell with whether what Alex is saying on the air is news or not, true or false, speculation or opinion, jokes or not, but he advertises it all as news. | ||
| He is the Infowars. | ||
| But when was that not the case? | ||
| Granted, I agree with him to the extent of if I'm going to try and make this better, I would say that Alex has gotten more outrageous, more unhinged, but not... | ||
| Knowing whether he's saying things that are opinion or fact. | ||
| Constantly, when we go back to 2003 and we're listening to these episodes, he's like, this has been proven! | ||
| He's saying all this complete bullshit, and he's inciting people. | ||
| He's making them angry about this existential threat to their life. | ||
| This has been his MO the entire time. | ||
| It's not a recent thing. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I feel like if there was a sincere belief that this is the problem, then it would always be a problem. | ||
| Maybe you're not aware of it earlier on. | ||
| Maybe you become aware of it. | ||
| But then these complaints should be much more holistic. | ||
| I suppose here's the questions that I would want. | ||
| I would want to ask, what was the first time Alex did something that Broke your moral framework. | ||
| You know, what was the first time that he's overstepped those boundaries? | ||
| And then, why did you decide to... | ||
| Stay. | ||
| That would be a good question for, like, a grilling. | ||
| Maybe not for Mark's purposes. | ||
| Well, not for Mark's purposes, but, I mean, for our purposes of this conversation. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| That's what I would like to know before I can be like, oh, here's why. | ||
| And I wonder if you'd get an answer. | ||
| I wonder if... | ||
| Because the answer should be the documentaries I worked on. | ||
| You know, it is like, I wonder if the answer is something that he would even be able to express. | ||
| Not just honestly, but, like, truly. | ||
| You know, like, is the answer that he would give something? | ||
| That he's created in his own mind as an answer for that question. | ||
| And it's not a true answer, even though he may believe it to be. | ||
| It's that question. | ||
| And I'll grant that there have been other interviews that he's done that I haven't listened to. | ||
| So I don't know if he explained some of that stuff in those interviews, but I'm not covering those. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Here we are. | ||
| We're in a deposition. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| So Mark wraps things up. | ||
| And let's Rob go to the hallway. | ||
| How is he not going to be a dick? | ||
| That's all I believe I have for you at this time. | ||
| I appreciate that. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
| I'm sorry. | ||
| I didn't mean to end up with you. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| That's all I have for you in terms of questions. | ||
| I have a few things I need to put on the record. | ||
| Mark, can you check your email? | ||
| Yeah, sure. | ||
| They don't need to concern you. | ||
| If you would like to be excused while I put this on the record, I can do that. | ||
| And I would like to ask questions. | ||
| Are you going to prevent me from doing that, Mark? | ||
| We're going to talk about that on the record in just a minute. | ||
| That's what I'm asking you. | ||
| Yeah, so we're going to let Mr. Jacobson go because we're not going to have this discussion in front of a witness. | ||
| No, sir. | ||
| We're not going to let him leave the building, Mark. | ||
| We're going to let Mr. Jacobson go to the bathroom. | ||
| And then I am going to put something on the record. | ||
| And then if you have some things to say about it, you can say whatever you want on the record. | ||
| I just have a simple question. | ||
| Then Mr. Jacobson will be in the building. | ||
| Are you going to permit me to ask questions, yes or no? | ||
| I don't think I can stop you. | ||
| I literally don't think I can. | ||
| I think I would have to go over there and physically restrain you because you won't abide by rules. | ||
| But if Mr. Jacobson is just going to go to the bathroom, now he's going to come back and he's going to sit down in that chair. | ||
| And whether he wants to sit around and listen to anything you say is not my choice. | ||
| But I'm not releasing him from the building right now. | ||
| Mr. Jacobson, would you like to step out of the room maybe for a moment? | ||
| You can use the restroom if you need to. | ||
| Otherwise, just wait in the front room for us. | ||
| So the questioning has come to a close. | ||
| Rob goes out in the hallway, and then Mark puts some things into the record. | ||
| And one of the things that's important in the things that he's putting into the record are... | ||
| Things about Enoch's behavior in the previous depositions. | ||
| And this is troubling. | ||
| I need to put this on the record, because we are now in our third deposition of this case. | ||
| And in the first deposition of Mr. Jones, which Mr. Enoch was not defending, but was merely an observer, his name appeared in all caps, where he's speaking and interjecting into the record 28 times. | ||
| During the testimony of Mr. Jones, and that's taking out the times that it appeared for housekeeping matters, like getting the witness water, or talking about the PO at the end of the deposition. | ||
| And I don't want to be tag-teamed, and it was ridiculous and improper, but I normally wouldn't call it out on the record. | ||
| But I've reviewed the transcript, and I've done this to confirm this, that there were questions on the floor about what a certain building was, and whether it was the school or not. | ||
| And as part of his interruption, Mr. Enoch blurted out to the witness that it's the firehouse in the video, a word that had not previously appeared in the deposition. | ||
| So, of course, right after that, Mr. Jones says, quote, and I later corrected, you know, that was one of the things that had been said that wasn't true, was that they were at the firehouse. | ||
| There was other footage from the school. | ||
| At best, this was highly improper conduct, and it's exactly why we don't allow speaking objections in Texas. | ||
| At worst, it was an attempt to communicate an idea to the witness, conduct which is absolutely repellent to the idea of justice. | ||
| Yet on the following day, the problems continued. | ||
| I only have a video, not a transcript, but once again, Mr. Enoch repeatedly interrupted a deposition he was not defending, at which he was simply an observer. | ||
| And again, I've watched the video to confirm, and so has my co-counsel to confirm both of ours' memories, that Mr. Dew, the corporate representative, Visibly reacted to a gesture from Mr. Enoch during a difficult question, and Mr. Ogden had to call him out on it. | ||
| And you can see Mr. Dew's reaction and where his eyes are in the deposition. | ||
| During both depositions, Mr. Enoch was repeatedly asked to leave the deposition. | ||
| If he refused to stay quiet, he stayed but continued to interrupt. | ||
| I am putting this all on the record right now because this deposition began rather contentiously, and my reaction to it was one of significant disturbance. | ||
| So there's a bit of a pattern of behaviors here, of disrupting these depositions in such a way as to give answers to questions. | ||
| That's bad. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| What year is... | ||
| This one's... | ||
| 2018, I believe. | ||
| 2018. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Ish. | ||
| It's pretty early on. | ||
| I just want to remind people, alright? | ||
| This happened year one. | ||
| And Mark had to deal with this continued type of shit for five fucking years. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And Mark... | ||
| Yeah, this was one of the first depositions that they did. | ||
| I mean, if Mark was a serial killer right now, I'd be like, well, I think it's wrong, but I can understand how you get there. | ||
| And it's such an interesting way that these other lawyers that Alex has had have been so frustrating and dickish in different ways. | ||
| And Enoch is kind of like... | ||
| One of the more lawyerly dickish kinds of vibes. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| He feels like he's trying to use law to be an asshole, whereas some of the other folks have just been like, I don't know. | ||
| You're a dick. | ||
| You want to fight? | ||
| Yeah, it has been a little bit of childish kind of thing. | ||
| This is very much if you were watching a movie and an asshole lawyer was showing up, this is what the asshole lawyer would do. | ||
| Every single time, this is the asshole lawyer. | ||
| Yeah, whereas Norm is more of the pull your pants down and say the N-word kind of lawyer. | ||
| 100%, yeah. | ||
| He's Lionel Hutz. | ||
| He's evil, but he's also ridiculous. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So also, Mark needs to put onto the record the discomfort surrounding what's happening because he is not in a position to defend Rob Jacobson's rights. | |
| I do not feel I am equipped to defend this witness's rights. | ||
| I don't represent him. | ||
| What is happening is totally inconsistent with the court's order. | ||
| We have attempted to contact the court because I believe the court would be wanting to have some sort of input. | ||
| On when an order like this only gives me the right to question whether Mr. Enoch should be allowed to question this witness who does not currently have counsel. | ||
| I'm very disturbed by this turn of events. | ||
| I want this all on the record in case these matters need to be brought to the court in any kind of connection with sanctions. | ||
| Right now, I'm going to finish, and I am going to ask Mr. Jacobson to return to the room. | ||
| I'm going to tell Mr. Jacobson that I have concluded with my deposition, the deposition that was ordered in the court's order. | ||
| And that I have no further need of him to be here. | ||
| I do not know what Mr. Enoch's going to do at that point. | ||
| I do not know if Mr. Enoch's going to attempt to try to keep the witness here. | ||
| I don't know what's going to happen. | ||
| I do know that I am extremely concerned about a lawyer who has already exhibited an incredible pattern of astonishing bad conduct in deposition to now take this very unorthodox turn. | ||
| That being said, those are my comments on the record. | ||
| I will allow Mr. Jacobson to return to the room and allow him to make the decision in his own best interest. | ||
| And I do not intend to respond tit for tat, which is what I think is a self-serving diatribe. | ||
| And I will respond appropriately when appropriate. | ||
| What a dick. | ||
| What a dick. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Just a real piece of shit. | ||
| But that is a pretty valid concern that Mark has about if he's going to be grilled and questioned by his clearly antagonistic former employer's lawyer, Mark can't act as his lawyer. | ||
| No. | ||
| And so that is going to be ugly. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And so Rob comes back in from the hallway. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Mr. Jacobson, that's all I have for you today. | |
| Thank you for your time. | ||
| Mr. Bankston, if I ask questions, are you going to seek sanctions against me? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Mr. Jacobson, are you leaving? | |
| So he just left immediately. | ||
| He just gets up. | ||
| He comes in, takes off his mic, and then just... | ||
| Fucking come get me! | ||
| Why would I give a shit what you have to say? | ||
| You subpoena me if you want me to ask questions. | ||
| You're the one who introduced the bullshit subpoena thing. | ||
| Fuck you! | ||
| I am not here to answer your questions. | ||
| I don't have to be here. | ||
| I literally don't work for you. | ||
| So that's kind of a nice resolution and to the proceedings. | ||
| But yeah, as we reach the end of the deposition, I find myself feeling a lot different than I do with our deposition episodes. | ||
| True. | ||
| Like I told you on the last one that we did that there was a couple that we had that are conflicting. | ||
| They're a little bit strange. | ||
| And this is a little bit strange to me because I think that the only thing that he has to be... | ||
| I mean, obviously, I think he should own up to how shitty his entire career's work has been at InfoWars, but that's a matter for maybe a different venue. | ||
| But the only thing he really has to apologize for is not doing more, which is pointless. | ||
| It wouldn't have done anything. | ||
| And he did something to his credit while he was there, and then the only other thing he has to feel guilt for is not quitting, and that is something he has to deal with on his own. | ||
| It feels strange. | ||
| It is consistent, though, with Topsy-Turvy World insofar as the one thing that Rob Jacobson should feel like he did commendably, which is try and intervene in this situation, is the one situation he feels guilt for. | ||
| Not doing more or something? | ||
| And everything else he seems to be fine with. | ||
| Yeah, he seems to think that there's a plausible way to claim what, like, Endgame is good journalism or a good documentary. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| He should check out that bibliography for Endgame. | ||
| Yeah, no shit! | ||
| Is good journalism putting a Microsoft Encarta as just your pure reference? | ||
| It helps. | ||
| It's a good thing. | ||
| I feel a little bit even conflicted about the idea that this is, like, we're covering this, but, I mean, it's a deposition. | ||
| There's something interesting. | ||
| There's an insight into Infowars in some way. | ||
| And so, I don't know. | ||
| Here's where I'm at. | ||
| Here's what I come back to over and over again. | ||
| He and Paul Joseph Watson are two people who spoke out against the Sandy Hook coverage demonstrably at the time. | ||
| And I think that Paul's reaction makes much more sense. | ||
| In his deposition, he was like, yeah, I thought that was shit. | ||
| I thought that was really bad. | ||
| I told them not to do it. | ||
| But he's not bending over backwards to try and pretend that Like, there isn't a larger thing that it's a part of. | ||
| Right. | ||
| That's the thing that makes this so different for me. | ||
| Like, when I hear Paul's deposition, I'm like, yeah, that all makes sense. | ||
| This doesn't. | ||
| I mean, I suppose that's an argument of different expectations for different psychopaths. | ||
| I mean, like, Paul just as much is on the hook for not quitting. | ||
| But he doesn't care. | ||
| That's the difference. | ||
| But that makes sense. | ||
| It only makes sense if you don't care. | ||
| It really does. | ||
| No, I understand. | ||
| I understand. | ||
| And we're grappling with somebody who appears to care, and who appears to not be lying, or at least I can't sense any lies from him. | ||
| don't track with somebody who cares. | ||
| No. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And that's the part that is really, really tough to understand. | |
| Yes. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And I guess, you know, people act differently in different circumstances. | |
| Sure. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I don't know what other pressures existed in his life or whatever. | |
| Oh, what a strange animal is man. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I... | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I don't know, man. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I wonder how things would be different if he didn't get fired in 2017. | ||
| I wonder how things would be different if they got sued for Endgame. | ||
| I wonder how different these things would play out in slightly different circumstances. | ||
| Yeah, I don't know. | ||
| I just don't. | ||
| No. | ||
| I've not been as confused by deposition as I have this one, perhaps. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, because I don't know if there's much to take away from it other than this person is uniquely situated inside of this company at this time. | ||
| For 13 years! | ||
| For 13 years. | ||
| And look at how weird this shit is. | ||
| He was there for 13 years, doesn't seem to understand that his fundamental complaints about stuff apply to the entirety of the time he was there. | ||
| Man, what is he thinking? | ||
| It hurts my brain to try and put myself in a space where what he's done can be reconciled with what he's saying. | ||
| That's, yeah, that's the difficulty. | ||
| It hurts my brain to try and fit cognitive dissonance in there that is so expansive as to encompass a man's entire career. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, I guess we'll continue to wrestle with that. | ||
| Someday, somehow, perhaps we will discover the truth. | ||
| But I still, on whatever level, I appreciate that he... | ||
| I appreciate, first of all, that he internally stood up about this at the time. | ||
| I commend that. | ||
| And I think it takes a certain amount of courage to come out in the way that he has. | ||
| While someone like Enoch is trying to intimidate you with this NDA, I guess I wish... | ||
| And you can't always get what you want, as Dr. House once said. | ||
| He said that multiple times. | ||
| So many times. | ||
| But I would wish that the diagnosis was more comprehensive. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Because I think that he could conceivably have a wealth of information about how these same problems that he has about the Sandy Hook stuff and about Millie Weaver and all this applies to the... | ||
| Fundamental business model in the way Infowars operates. | ||
| But I don't... | ||
| I mean, I don't really know quite how to react to somebody who is clearly contrite or at least giving off every appearance of such and experiencing remorse for that. | ||
| But it's not an incident. | ||
| It's not a thing that they did. | ||
| It is their entire career. | ||
| So how exactly do you say that, oh, well, we're on a redemption arc or anything along those lines when it's like... | ||
| There isn't a redemption. | ||
| No, there isn't. | ||
| The incident doesn't involve you. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| It only involves you in as much as you worked there and you didn't stop working there. | ||
| And the redemption that you want is impossible to get because you didn't... | ||
| Do it, and the redemption you need is something that you're not looking for. | ||
| What are you doing, man? | ||
| It's confusing. | ||
| Anyway, we're not going to get answers on this. | ||
| Not today, at least. | ||
| We will just end this by saying it is Wednesday, and so the tickets to the second live show should be live at 10 a.m. Central Time. | ||
| Central Time. | ||
| And so if you'd like to grab those, please do. | ||
| That'd be nice. | ||
| And we'll be back. | ||
| But until then, we have a website. | ||
| It's true. | ||
| It's knowledgefight.com. | ||
| Yep, we're all 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 also Dan. | ||
| And you know what? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I like Dan. | |
| And now here comes the sex robots. | ||
| Andy in Kansas. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You're on the air. | |
| Thanks for holding. | ||
| Hello, Alex. | ||
| I'm a first-time caller. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm a huge fan. | |
| I love your work. |