The Conspiracy Theory Thread

[Smitty]

Geng, since you're here and I don't think I've asked about this, how were they able to force liquidation of his company because of what he said about Sandy Hook in the first place? I'm no expert on the details, but from what I've seen you just file the case in a jurisdiction that hates you, get a sympathetic judge and jury, and there's not much recourse if the appeals court doesn't overturn it.

But no matter what you think, it seems like a total violation of the first amendment for a court to eradicate someone's company and livelihood over what they say on the radio, no matter how dumb.

@Cowboysrock55, chime in also.

Yeah when these things are political in nature there' no forum free from bias, sadly.

You'll end up in a conservative district that will favor you or a liberal one that will punish you. It's the same thing with the Trump huge civil penalties for "misvaluing" his properties in NY. Every developer in the state ran to his defense to say "There's no victim, this is how things are done," and it didn't matter to the plaintiff, judge or jury.

......

The parents of the Sandy Hook kids sued him for defamation in Connecticut and received a judgment of $1.4 billion. Seems completely reasonable, eh?

How do they force the liquidation? You can force someone who owes you money into bankruptcy. Alex Jones had assets, they can be liquidated to pay his debts. The problem is that the debt he owed was a sham. A political shoehorning to punish him.

I'm not disputing that he said some hurtful things but the judgment amount was absurd and unjustifiable.

 

[Smitty]

Here's another way you know this was a hit job attempt to punish and silence him.

As I said, the families were awarded a completely unjustifiable $1.4 billion in damages. For mean words.

This was deliberately set so high as to apply untenable, inescapable pressure to him. Then the families offered to settle for $85m over 10 years, so $8.5m a year basically. He didn't have that much income to pay it, and he countered with $55m over 10 years. They rejected it.

Instead they are gonna liquidate what, like his $10m in personal and business assets?

They'd rather $10m now than $55m over 10 years?

They'd rather take the company because it punishes him. That's all.

 

[Genghis Khan]

Caveat that I know almost nothing about the specifics of this case in particular.

But.

how were they able to force liquidation of his company because of what he said about Sandy Hook in the first place?

That's a result of the verdict. Once a verdict is ruled against you in a lawsuit they're going to make sure you pay if at all possible.

from what I've seen you just file the case in a jurisdiction that hates you, get a sympathetic judge and jury, and there's not much recourse if the appeals court doesn't overturn it.

Sad but unfortunately true. The venue makes an enormous difference.

it seems like a total violation of the first amendment for a court to eradicate someone's company and livelihood over what they say on the radio, no matter how dumb.

Well... that's an issue with laws like defamation, libel, and intentional infliction of emotional distress. If you can prove the elements of the statute and prove damages ( which is the big part if I remember correctly), the defendant is going to have a bad time.

The idea is that it's not just that the defendant said outrage things that aren't true, but further that he knew or should have known that the things he said weren't not just false but would likely cause significant harm (emotionally and financially) to the plaintiff.

The high amount of the judgement is likely punitive, in order to not just punish Jones for the harm against the plaintiff but also have a chilling effect on anyone who might otherwise be willing to do the same thing.

 

[Genghis Khan]

I'm not disputing that he said some hurtful things but the judgment amount was absurd and unjustifiable.

Yep.

received a judgment of $1.4 billion.

Completely absurd.

 

[Smitty]

The punitive nature of the damages are unjustifiable when the conduct we are talking about is political speech. Yeah, let's have a chilling effect on that. Par for the course from fascist libs.

Listen, no doubt what he said went beyond the pale. But you have to take into account most of the infliction of distress per the families were the ongoing harassment they allegedly received from Jones's listeners, not from Jones' words themselves.

And there's no way that they suffered a quantifiable $1.5 billion in emotional distress. That's just bullshit. As a parent there's no price tag you can put on someone saying terrible things about a deceased child but as a Judge and Jury that is exactly what you have to do and from that perspective words simply cannot be worth that much.

Finally they have overtly said this judgment is meant to "prevent," Jones from doing this again (aka silence his political speech). Even if it was knowingly fabricated, you should not be awarding punitive damages to prevent speech.

 

[Genghis Khan]

you just file the case in a jurisdiction that hates you

Probably should say a little more about this.

Jurisdiction is a big deal and it has to "touch and concern" the case.

In other words, you can't just file in a jurisdiction that hates you, you have to have justification for where the case is filed. In other words, basically, one of the litigants has to reside where the case is heard, or the issue has to have occurred there.

 

[Smitty]

Another of Alex Jones' problems though is that he's a kook and has no allies that could keep this hammer from dropping on him.

He has to rely on eventually getting this case in front of a Court that has morals.

I'm surprised he can't forestall the bankruptcy liquidation since he has an open appeal of the verdict.

 

[Genghis Khan]

The punitive nature of the damages are unjustifiable when the conduct we are talking about is political speech. Yeah, let's have a chilling effect on that. Par for the course from fascist libs.

Listen, no doubt what he said went beyond the pale. But you have to take into account most of the infliction of distress per the families were the ongoing harassment they allegedly received from Jones's listeners, not from Jones' words themselves.

And there's no way that they suffered a quantifiable $1.5 billion in emotional distress. That's just bullshit. As a parent there's no price tag you can put on someone saying terrible things about a deceased child but as a Judge and Jury that is exactly what you have to do and from that perspective words simply cannot be worth that much.

Finally they have overtly said this judgment is meant to "prevent," Jones from doing this again (aka silence his political speech). Even if it was knowingly fabricated, you should not be awarding punitive damages to prevent speech.

Don't get me wrong, I agree with you.

 

[Smitty]

Probably should say a little more about this.

Jurisdiction is a big deal and it has to "touch and concern" the case.

In other words, you can't just file in a jurisdiction that hates you, you have to have justification for where the case is filed. In other words, basically, one of the litigants has to reside where the case is heard, or the issue has to have occurred there.

Yet for a national figure, anyone in any state can hear his words and be affected by them. They get to pick a plaintiff in whatever evil state wants to shut him down the most.

Seems like the defendant should have way more power to remove jurisdiction to a place that's not so obviously a set up.

 

[Chocolate Lab]

Here's another way you know this was a hit job attempt to punish and silence him.

As I said, the families were awarded a completely unjustifiable $1.4 billion in damages. For mean words.

This was deliberately set so high as to apply untenable, inescapable pressure to him. Then the families offered to settle for $85m over 10 years, so $8.5m a year basically. He didn't have that much income to pay it, and he countered with $55m over 10 years. They rejected it.

Instead they are gonna liquidate what, like his $10m in personal and business assets?

They'd rather $10m now than $55m over 10 years?

They'd rather take the company because it punishes him. That's all.

Right. Of course I knew what the liquidation process to satisfy a judgment was. :) But I don't see how the court could even come to this verdict unless it was completely crooked.

There's no end to this: Otherwise, to use an extreme example, why can't I sue someone in Biden's administration, or someone on The View, for calling me a Nazi? I could just find the reddest county in the West Virginia or Wyoming or wherever I knew I'd win and the judgment could be for a gazillion dollars and bankrupt them, too.

This lawfare to silence political opponents cannot stand. There has to be some kind of recourse to this.

And BTW, I meant to @ you also, Smitty.

 

[Smitty]

Right. Of course I knew what the liquidation process to satisfy a judgment was. :) But I don't see how the court could even come to this verdict unless it was completely crooked.

There's no end to this: Otherwise, to use an extreme example, why can't I sue someone in Biden's administration, or someone on The View, for calling me a Nazi? I could just find the reddest county in the West Virginia or Wyoming or wherever I knew I'd win and the judgment could be for a gazillion dollars and bankrupt them, too.

This lawfare to silence political opponents cannot stand. There has to be some kind of recourse to this.

And BTW, I meant to @ you also, Smitty.

You can, but you have to prove damages, and the great state of Wyoming isn't full of evil fascists willing to manipulate the justice system to invent a fake damage award that you could use to drive the View out of business.

But the fascist leftist states have done it twice now, they did it to Jones for defamation and they did it to Trump over the valuation of his properties. Be forewarned the Democrats and their leftist, fascist judges are completely willing to lie about the law and fabricate damages to try to take people out.

Oh, they did it with Giuliani too. So that's three times.

Yeah, like two poll workers in Georgia really suffered $148m in damage based on the things Giuliani said. How are they POSSIBLY coming up with these numbers? It's all "punitive." ON ITS FACE they are saying "We are inventing this number to punish (silence) you."

Defamation is supposed to be about the financial damage you suffer if someone says a lie about you. Like if you say something terrible about me that's untrue and it causes me to lose my job, or if I have a business and people don't patronize my business anymore and I go out of business. Defamation is supposed to make whole the financial losses you suffer.

Two bimbos in Georgia making $40k a year cannot possibly justify $148m in damages. That's political silence money.

I think the Supreme Court may need to step into these. I think the Giuliani one in particular was filed in federal court so there may be a fast track to the Supreme Court there, whereas the Supreme Court might be reluctant to overrule a state court that decided a defamation issue on state laws (Connecticut for Jones).

But I think they still might have to, because how can you be suing an out-of-state nationally known party and getting to pick a biased forum? It seems to me the defendant should have the ability to get a better venue.

 

[Chocolate Lab]

You can, but you have to prove damages, and the great state of Wyoming isn't full of evil fascists willing to manipulate the justice system to invent a fake damage award that you could use to drive the View out of business.

Exactly. The difference is that our side doesn't believe in this garbage.

Obviously, too many of their side are from the Saul Alinsky "By any means necessary" school.

 

[Smitty]

Exactly. The difference is that our side doesn't believe in this garbage.

Obviously, too many of their side are from the Saul Alinsky "By any means necessary" school.

That's really the long and short of it.

Conservatives aren't running up hundred million dollar judgments on liberals because conservative states are full of conservatives and the justice systems in those states are conservative, which means they actually believe in the law. They believe the law is written to govern outcomes.

Liberals believe the exact opposite. Liberals believe in outcomes first, and shape the law to generate the outcome that is fair. The problem is, without an unbiased system producing the outcomes, then whatever outcome is "fair," is up to the person in charge. Republicans respect the system and honor it's outcomes, liberals fly off the handle if the outcome they want isn't produced by the system, and they attack the system.

And yea, they will do or say whatever they have to do to get the outcome they want. It's what the last few years of lawfare are teaching us.

And it's why every single person on here needs to make sure they champion the idea that the US Constitution is NOT a living document, that the founders' intent matters, we need to appeal Wickard v Filburn, etc, etc, etc.

John Roberts has really betrayed the right in a lot of ways but I will give him a tiny bit of credit, he may have surreptitiously put a nail into the coffin of unlimited congressional power by holding that the Affordable Care Act violated the Interstate Commerce Clause, one of the first times in history that a congressional statute has been found to do so. He allowed the act to continue under a completely ridiculous line of logic, that it survives under the Tax and Spend clause. I suspect he might have given the act a lifeline (because he was trying to paint the court as non-partisan and didn't want it to appear that a group of conservatives judges was striking down popular Democratic legislation at every turn) with a completely ridiculous theory that he knows will never withstand the test of time, in order to take the opportunity to kill off some of the power of the commerce clause.

 

[Chocolate Lab]

I'm surprised he can't forestall the bankruptcy liquidation since he has an open appeal of the verdict.

That's really the part I don't understand legally, again not that I've really looked into it. It seems like this couldn't be* enforced while it's still on appeal. Otherwise any unreasonable thing a court finds could be executed before it's even fully appealed.

*Or I guess I should say it "shouldn't" be.

 

[boozeman]

Ahem. Take this to the legal thread or whatever.

 

[Chocolate Lab]

John Roberts has really betrayed the right in a lot of ways but I will give him a tiny bit of credit, he may have surreptitiously put a nail into the coffin of unlimited congressional power by holding that the Affordable Care Act violated the Interstate Commerce Clause, one of the first times in history that a congressional statute has been found to do so. He allowed the act to continue under a completely ridiculous line of logic, that it survives under the Tax and Spend clause. I suspect he might have given the act a lifeline (because he was trying to paint the court as non-partisan and didn't want it to appear that a group of conservatives judges was striking down popular Democratic legislation at every turn) with a completely ridiculous theory that he knows will never withstand the test of time, in order to take the opportunity to kill off some of the power of the commerce clause.

Not sure I'd give Roberts that much credit. I think he's just a squish who puts too much weight in being liked by the Post and others in the DC cocktail party crowd.

 

[bbgun]

Howard Stern insinuated that the girls of Columbine were to blame for the massacre because they didn't give the dorky culprits sex. No one sued him.

 

[Genghis Khan]

Howard Stern insinuated that the girls of Columbine were to blame for the massacre because they didn't give the dorky culprits sex. No one sued him.

To be fair, that's a clear joke.

 

[Cujo]

To be fair, that's a clear joke.

Not a very funny one.

 

[bbgun]

To be fair, that's a clear joke.

The moon landing hoax people are serious yet Armstrong and Aldrin never sued. I mean, that's a deliberate attack on their reputations.