Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones cannot use his personal bankruptcy to escape paying at least $1.1 billion in defamation damages stemming from his repeated lies about the 2012 Sandy Hook elementary school massacre, a U.S. bankruptcy judge ruled Thursday.
I think punishments should be realistic and not make a man pay 1 billion fucking dollars because he said something stupid. Take the money he made from such statements, with maybe a little bit more on as punishment. There is no world in which a 1.1b amount makes sense. The only purpose is to put him in debt for his entire life, and since this is a political hot button issue people will cheer it along.
If you were the one who actually killed the kids you would have a lower damages value.
Yes, lets all cry tears of sorrow for the poor persecuted Alex Jones.
How dare he be subject to the find out after spending so long fucking around.
I’m advocating for reasonable punishments for crimes rather than a small nation’s gdp in damages because he is politically controversial. I think we can all agree that courts should not be handing out unfathomably large punishments in civil cases just because the person is politically unpopular.
The dude has enough resources to casually spend more money in a month than most of us make in multiple years, he got those resources by deliberately and knowingly telling lies that ruined the lives of multiple grieving families, he took a giant shit on the entire judicial system by refusing to appear for multiple hearings and repeatedly telling bald-faced lies to the court, and then he handed direct evidence of those bald-faced lies to opposing counsel and let them use it in court. If there’s anyone who deserves life-ruining punishment, it’s this shithead.
He does not have 1b dollars, don’t be ridiculous. And don’t pretend he made all his money from sandy hook conspiracies either. Journalists tell lies all the time, and they’re never hit with 1b in damages
This is what we call a soft hand conservative.
not screaming bloody murder about killing their political rivals and calling everyone groomers.
But trying to sound sane and reasonable, but still dropping gems that reveal their true intentions and nature like
and demanding sympathy for poor, mistreated alex jones and how its a miscarriage of the justice system for him to lose the empire built on lies, misinformation, conspiracy theories, and fake medical products, and using that to incite violence and harassment against others, all because of his own actions, that he chose to take.
Bet if this was Rachael Maddow he wouldnt be wringing his hands so hard over it.
You guys pathologize normal opinions a lot of people have way too much. There were journalists that created entire false narratives around the Iraq war, which is almost certainly of much bigger negative effect on the world than Alex Jones saying some retarded conspiracy shit.
Yes, it was the big bad evil journalists that lied.
Not Bush.
not Colin Powell
Not Donald Rumsfeld.
You realize there is a world in which many different people are liable, right?
Between all the shit he’s hidden in various shell corporations and offshore bank accounts, I wouldn’t be surprised if he did have a billion dollars.
Besides, people get hit with fines that far exceed their ability to pay ALL THE FUCKING TIME. Grandmas were getting hit with 6-figure judgements back in the early 2010s before the RIAA figured out that suing random individuals for music piracy was bad publicity. Nintendo got a $10 million settlement and $4.5 million criminal fine from one guy selling devices to hack the Switch.
But once, just once, a fine is high enough to fuck over a rich guy after he did literally everything wrong and invented a few new ways to fuck up, and suddenly it’s “Ohhhhhh no, this is a MISCARRIAGE OF JUSTICE, how DARE the courts hold a rich man accountable for their actions, why won’t anyone think of the poor, oppressed rich guy ruining people’s lives so he can hawk fake diet pills?” Cry me a fucking river.
Don’t you think it’s fucked up that it happens at all? But suddenly it’s fine when it’s against someone you hate?