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You are here: Home / Politics / domestic terrorists / Late Night Open Thread: Alex Jones Update

Late Night Open Thread: Alex Jones Update

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There are two trials running concurrently — Jones is on the witness stand in Connecticut, and his finances are being weighed in a Texas court where he lost another suit.

Jones is never going away, any more than a herpes infection does, but with a little luck we’ll be able to reduce his footprint on national media enough to seriously impair his money-making grifts, which he will consider a worse punishment than mere incarceration.

TL, DR (Anna Merlan is always worth reading):


He’ll always have his fan (very) base. But if the law can be enforced, it’ll be a much smaller base, and every new generation of deluded ‘truth seekers’ will have to turn to less slickly poisoned sources.

Earlier, in Judge Bellis’ court:

Comprehensive backgrounder:

Meanwhile, in Texas…

One example: Jones spent $80k on “security” for his trip to CT for his Sandy Hook damages trial, where he is right now. “I don’t like where we are today,” Judge Lopez says. But it’s the right decision under the law.

“I hope I never have to make another decision like this as long as I’m on the bench,” Judge Lopez says.

Judge now expanding the power of DoJ’s Subchapter V trustee to run Jones’s business, citing a “lack of candor in this case.” Wow.

Judge says someone completely independent is needed to run Infowars, citing concerns with disclosure, lack of candor and the $54 million debt to an LLC partly owned by his family, and the need to investigate insider rel’ships

He is also authorizing the trustee to hire outside counsel/help. “And I want folks with no connection to any of these cases to assist you.”

“There has to be greater transparency in this case…It’s gonna cost what it costs.”

This isn’t a comment on the professionals he’s just booted, the Judge said. He respects their work, “But without process and without transparence ppl lose faith in the process…Congress writes laws, judges apply them as faithfully as possible, and that’s what I’ve done today.”

The hearing is over. And Jones’s bankruptcy claim has hit some serious speed bumps./END

‘the Infowars fabulist lashed out… ‘

Reader Interactions

58Comments

  3. 3.

    Ruckus

    @NotMax:

    I’ll be a bit courser – the bullshit is overwhelming with this one.

    This is either a mentally deranged asshole or someone who is making buck off of being a major racist shit.

    And of course it is entirely possible that the answer is – C. Both of the above.

  5. 5.

    NotMax

    @Ruckus

    And someone who never got the memo that, unlike the case of right wing talk radio personalities when a call from a sane person is let though, a witness in court cannot hang up on a judge.

  7. 7.

    Bruce K in ATH-GR

    Weirdly, I would hate to be the trustee assigned to oversee Infowars. Because then I’d have a fiduciary duty to act in the best interests of that undertaking, while at the same time all my instincts as a patriotic American and an empathetic human being would be to shut down all its broadcasting, take all its video archives and other internet presence off line, and basically perform the fiscal equivalent of nuking it from orbit to be sure.

    It’d suck to be legally and morally prohibited from doing the right thing.

  8. 8.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    On good god some of the replies in the tweets screaming “Kangaroo court! Jones was right!” are something else

  9. 9.

    UncleEbeneezer

    I wouldn’t count out incarceration, just yet, for Jones.  Remember his involvement in promoting and speaking at January 6th.  And DOJ has already seized the phone of his sidekick.  Wouldn’t surprise me if he ends up being charged if DOJ ends up bringing Obstruction/Conspiracy indictments.

  11. 11.

    satby

    Alex Jones pretty much destroys the entire “First Amendment absolutist” position I used to hold. I don’t know what the solution is, but allowing these liars to game our system to profit from hatemongering has nearly brought this democracy to its knees; and may end it yet.

  12. 12.

    prostratedragon

    A few years ago I saw video of him at a dead run chasing a reporter or someone down the street for a block or more, bellowing all the way, and thinking that there has to be a way to handle this major jerk without challenging the philosophical basis of the nation. Surely he has provided such an occasion. I think the hurdles involve too many fans among those who would have to take the first step.

  15. 15.

    sab 🐕

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): I’m a dog person so I like it too. I do not like the fact that an emoji in a nym can block the pie filter.

    I don’t use the pie filter much at all. People should be allowed to speak. But there are trolls.

    And sometimes there is content that I personally find extremely objectionable. Like condemning all people from a particular country as monsters because their government is appalling so we should nuke the capital. Russia. Iran. England. That sort of thing.  And if you support such comments and use an emoji and a frontpager clears you then we have to wade through that in every thread.

    Or we could just move on to other activities offline. I am at that point. I have a houseful of projects I neglect because I am online.

  19. 19.

    sab 🐕

    @sab 🐕:Goku- I don’t want a vote of agreement because you probably don’ t agree. But can you block me and my little dog friend in the pie filter?

  22. 22.

    Bruce K in ATH-GR

    @sab 🐕: So you know, not only does the doggy make it impossible to pie-filter you, but it seems to break something in the attempt to remove your name from the pie filter afterwards. Given that what I know about coding could fit on the point of a pin with enough room left over for the souls of the entire Trump clan, I think emojis break something potentially a bit more serious in the pie filter code.

  23. 23.

    Gvg

    @sab 🐕: interesting. I tried pieing you. It did not remove you from the list. I clicked twice to be sure. Then I went to the filtered list and saw without the dog was on that list twice. So I thought I better remove you in case you ever took the dog off your nym. Guess what? It wouldn’t remove you from the filtered list either. The emoji really messes with the filter.

  24. 24.

    Ripley

    I like my Alex Jones like I like my T**** – through the Stephen Colbert filter.

    Speaking of filters, don’t ruin the beauty of the pie function. Please?

  28. 28.

    hueyplong

    It really is nauseating each day to discover that yet another different right winger is the worst of them all.  Why can’t industrial grade bile lead more directly to heart disease and stroke?

  29. 29.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Gvg: I noticed that it’s stripping the dog emoji out of the name when it appears in the pie filter list. I suspect the code is breaking because it’s doing that when it adds the name, but it’s not also doing it when it does string comparisons. That’s the kind of thing that gets you.

    This bug is definitely a vulnerability in the pie filter.

  30. 30.

    Quinerly

    Alex Jones in the news again.  Sigh. Saw something extremely weird in Farmington, NM last weekend.
    Family owned for 30-40 years steak house in the heart of Farmington, NM…I guess it was a landmark of sorts.
    Dillon’s
    Under the signage was lettering
    “ALEX JONES WAS RIGHT
    INFOWARS.COM”
    I went on line to read reviews, try to understand.
    Long story short, Yelp, etc reviews tell a story of a descent into madness and a business that is more concerned with trying to convert innocent customers looking for steak into joining a cult.
    It’s reached a point that no food is served on the weekends.
    Bar open Sat night until 9 AM Sun morning.
    Yes, the bar is open until 9AM.
    Windows boarded up. Still in business. I guess it’s a gathering place…a private club of sorts for devotees of Alex Jones.

  32. 32.

    MisterDancer

    @Bruce K in ATH-GR: I think emojis break something potentially a bit more serious in the pie filter code.

    Most likely the filter looks for ASCII (basically “plain text”) characters, which emojis are…not. They are Unicode, which includes ASCII (not on that page…Unicode is VAST), and in this case it’s likely that whatever text field the pie filter uses, just doesn’t understand Unicode as a “superset” of ASCII.

  33. 33.

    Ken

    @JPL: The cayotes are noisy tonight.  They must be enjoying the cool weathers.

    Or they got a shipment of flying dart bombs.

    (I think that’s my favorite because they really commit to the gag, with the little bombs showing again and again, always at the worst time for the coyote.)

  34. 34.

    WereBear

    I continue to think Alex Jones must have another source of money other than the cash flow from selling his junky “supplements” online.

    Jim & Tammy Bakker got the big bucks from donations, not those buckets Jim’s selling now.

    Jones could be selling his mailing list to other grifters, or money laundering. Online digital exchange is a common medium, I understand. Downloads go in, uploads go out, who can tell how it works?

    Soon, we might know.

  37. 37.

    Bruce K in ATH-GR

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: Corium. Totally lacking in value or usefulness, and staggeringly dangerous to everyone and everything in the vicinity.

    It’s what you get when a nuclear reactor melts down.

  38. 38.

    Tony Jay

    Pre-Rant Alert.

    In the wake of the Forde Report, which Sir Creep Starmer commissioned at the cost a million pounds (that the Labour Party can’t afford) to investigate (and basically verify, much to his disappointment) an earlier leaked report that savaged the Labour Right for internal sabotage and pretty much demolished the rationale behind the four year antisemitism smear that did so much damage to Labour’s reputation, you’d have thought that the British Media might have been interested in Al Jazeera’s investigation into the largest leak of internal Party documentation in British political history, especially since it seems to back up both the Forde Report and the earlier leaked report by showing that the Right of the Labour Party deliberately, willingly and cynically colluded with the Israeli Government and its lobbyists here in the UK to smear, denigrate, bully and harass thousands of Labour Party members, many of them Jewish, and throw the 2019 Election to the Tories by painting the Party and its leadership as the second coming of the Nazi Party.

    You’d have thought that, but you’d have been wrong. None of them are saying a damned thing about it. Total silence from the BBC, the FTF Guardian, The Independent, all of the official Tory Press, the Talk Radio stations – zip, nada, bupkis.

    Funny that. It’s almost like the British News Media are a bunch of Establishment hacks who only want to run approved narratives and don’t give two slippery shits about the truth.

  41. 41.

    Tony G

    @Ruckus: People smarter than me can assess whether Jones is mentally ill.  In any event, he’s obviously an extremely toxic, evil human being.  Some (hopefully small) percentage of the human population are people like him.  What dismays me, however, is that millions of Americans listen to Jones’s garbage and think that he’s just great.  What a damaged country (damaged species) we are.

  44. 44.

    Kay

    I read Williamson’s Sandy Hook: An American Tragedy and the Battle for Truth (very good) and what I think we should take away from her reporting in the book is there is no way to escape, avoid or defend against far Right conspiracy  theories once someone determines that spreading the lies is profitable.

    No amount of “transparency” or “information” satisfies them- there’s no way to “handle” it well or placate them – no amount of “speech” or “debate” or “disclosure” will cure them because they’re bad people. Local government tried, the school district tried, even some of the parents of the murderered children tried. They were met with jeering derision by the Sandy Hook truthers and the harrassment escalated.

    What normal people can do is call the harrassing crackpots liars and then shun them. Chase them back under the rocks they crawled out of. Alex Jones is a greedy, lying. otherwise-unemployable  scumbag and decent people shouldn’t have anything to do with him.

  45. 45.

    Kay

    An example- in the book, the author describes how some of the parents were attacked by Jones and his followers for making media appearances. Other parents (one set of parents in particular- very private people) were attacked for NOT appearing publicly.

    Both the media appearances and the lack of media appearances “proved” the theory that it was a hoax.

    But they’re going to bankrupt Alex Jones. He’s a liar and he’s probably lying about his secret sources of funding. Boasting. Bragging. He’s pissed that his income is dwindling – the damage awards won’t stay where they are- they will be lowered (especially in states like Texas) but either way these parents are going to bankrupt him. He’ll never own anything in his own name again.

  47. 47.

    Matt

    The only way Jones should be allowed near a witness stand is with one of those “shock belts” they use for prisoner control. Every time he tells a lie, he gets a zap and the voltage setting goes up.

  49. 49.

    Doug R

    @satby: The worst of this is funded and pushed from Russia as propaganda meant to weaken us from the inside.

    So don’t feel bad at coming around to realize we need guardrails.

  50. 50.

    Doug R

    @Tony G: When I was a kid, I LOVED wrestling. Now, not so much. I grew up when I realized it takes more skill to not really hurt someone while pretending too.

    Jones is worse than that and does WAY MORE damage.

  53. 53.

    Ruckus

    @Layer8Problem:

    That’s not a verge, a side step, a toe in the water. That is a major march right into the heart of a shitstorm. AJ has decided that hate is his profit maker. And of course because we all have the capacity for hate (how many of us do not hate AJ?) this is just a vicious circle that makes money for him. But his level of hate is way beyond a money making endeavor, it is his entire life and personality. He is his own worst enemy. And it wouldn’t surprise me if vlad is one of his supporters/sponsors, just getting his hate on.

  54. 54.

    Ruckus

    @Tony Jay:

    “It’s almost like the British News Media are a bunch of Establishment hacks who only want to run approved narratives and don’t give two slippery shits about the truth.”

    Two slippery shits. From the news media? Yeah, that sounds about normal for this century. Used to be some of it, now it looks like all of it or at least the vast majority. It’s like it’s a concerted effort to be assholes, to almost fight each other to be the biggest, bestest assholes. Nice that they are succeeding….

  55. 55.

    J R in WV

    I read where the Judge told Jones “Look at me when I’m talking to you, Mr Jones!” I’m sure she is about to explode with his lying and speechifying from the witness stand. I have been on juries for capital murder trials, have never seen anything like what is described in the stories about Jones’s trials.

    What a depraved monster that guy is. Willing to do anything for money, the sacred lucre!!

  56. 56.

    Ruckus

    @Kay:

    “decent people shouldn’t have anything to do with him”

    Decent people don’t. Unfortunately there are a lot of indecent people in the world, people who see their chance of being appreciated for their hate very gradually going away. They keep staging revivals of that hate for hate’s sake routine, electing assholes like SFB – or worse, around the world. What I’m saying is the real difference between say vlad and aj is degree and power, because their hate is very similar, abet their styles of getting there are different. There are aj like assholes everywhere. And a question might be what could aj do if he didn’t sell pure hate? Be a janitor somewhere for minimum wage? Not a good one mind you, all he knows is spreading dirt and hate, not really good janitor qualities.

  58. 58.

    GibberJack

    @prostratedragon: People need to stop thinking of this sadistic motherfucker as merely a jerk. He is emotionally torturing and abusing the parents and inciting death and rape threats.

    I don’t ascribe to the oh he’s obviously deranged thing either. It absolves him of responsibility. He knows what he’s doing.

    Sociopaths do know the difference between right and wrong, they actually like that it doesn’t matter to them and it does to others. They see it as their superpower.

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