Supposedly some of the texting is with a yet-unnamed senator.
My hope too, but Jones may have standards.
I feel like Ted Cruz is too slippery to talk with Jones directly. Hawley, maybe.
Yeah, Hawley seems by far the most likely.
https://twitter.com/annamerlan/status/1555206287159308288
"intimate messages to Roger Stone"
I like the rest of that thread. He sent the plaintiff's lawyer the link but didn't think he would click on it! Because he wrote "please disregard"!
If you can't expect professional courtesy when representing a man who intentionally exposed bereaved parents to death threats for personal profit.....
A friend speculates that Jones' lawyer is pissed off about the bankruptcy process of Jones' businesses, thinks he isn't going to get paid, and deliberately sandbagged him. I have no idea whether this is really a plausible scenario.
Presumably, those who work closely with him all hate him.
9: Not completely plausible. A lawyer intentionally sandbagging a client would do it in a way that looked like client evil, rather than lawyer incompetence.
I've been on both sides of these situations. The best was in the pre-internet days when I received ten boxes of documents from opposing counsel, about 15,000 pages (much less than the contents of a phone, but in those days it was a lot) every single one stamped PRIVILEGED ATTORNEY CLIENT COMMUNICATION. We did read some of them before returning them, but didn't find anything interesting.
A better lawyer misconduct story today:
"Lawyer Sanctioned for Failing to Play Call of Duty"
https://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/lawyer-sanctioned-for-failing-to-play-4233820/#_ftnref7
Sanctions appropriate because
"Plaintiff's counsel could have easily verified these facts prior to filing the factually baseless Complaint, just as the Court easily verified them within the first hour and a half of playing the game."
full opinion at
https://casetext.com/case/brooks-entmt-v-activision-blizzard-inc
It's turning into quite a day for legal news.
I think the obvious explanation here is that the kind of lawyer who would work for Jones is simply not good at their job. Imagine being a conservative lawyer and somehow having your best job option being working for Jones instead of the huge number of jobs reserved for conservative lawyers. Like even if you want to make a bunch of money specifically on issues around the 2nd amendment, you've got so many better options.
I had been following live-tweets of the trial, and the whole thing was bananas even before the phone was introduced. Couldn't have happened to a more deserving team.
Yeah, the whole thing has been a clown show from the very beginning. The phone leak is particularly bad for Jones because he refused to participate in discovery, which meant he lost the actual case by default, and the trial is just to determine the amount of damages he owes.
I would guess that Jones at least partially is as paranoid as his stage persona and wouldn't trust a normie (competent) lawyer.
Alex Jones headline: $4.1 million damages to the parents.
I was outraged at the headline because such an award would be hideously inadequate, but there is a second phase for punitive damages, and that's where the son-of-a-bitch needs to be eviscerated.
Texas caps punitive damages so it probably won't end up being evisceration-scale. But we'll see.
He's also facing several other trials over this. The verdict here is far from the end of his ordeal.
Especially once the texts from his ex about how his "crisis actor" doesn't work anymore are leaked.
That sounds like a job for InstaHard. ("When Seconds Count.")
All in on schadenfreude for this. What a worm.
15: another triumph for the Sink Trap Theory of Far-Right Incompetence!
27: Sure, we know that Trumpism carries the seeds of its own doom. The question is: Where is the bottom? How low do we have to sink before the tide turns? The obvious historical parallel suggests that maybe things will start to turn around once we reach the modern equivalent of Stalingrad.
(But Kansas is encouraging!)
The bottom surrounds the balloon knot.
Punitive damages of ~$45 million. That'll get whittled down a lot by the Texas cap rules, but it does send a statement.
Interesting: they ask the jury to decide punitive damages but the law says not to tell them about the cap, apparently.
There seems to be a lot of confusion about whether and how the cap applies in this case.
The people writing the law probably didn't realize anyone would be that big of a shithead and have incompetent counsel.
Maybe it wouldn't be illuminating but I've been wondering about a comparison with the Hogan vs Gawker suit and whether there's any real chance of Jones shutting down. Maybe there's enough wealth willing to support him to pay any cost.
Suing probably wouldn't have shut down Lord Haw Haw. I don't think it will work here for the same reason.
I believe there are also several other pending lawsuits.
An aspect of the Whole Alex Jones thig that still burns me is the way the Jones/Trump stuff from the 2016 campaign* was reported (or not reported). Trump had a notorious interview with Jones in December 2015 that got some notice ( interview mediated by ratfucker extraordinaire Roger Stone) but as he became the likely nominee (and then when he was the nominee) the relationship seemed to get diminished attention. Except briefly in August when Clinton brought notice to it and Trump's other far-right pandering and connections. To which Trump responded basically "No, you're the racist." To which Chuck Todd lamented that it had become a "race to the bottom." It was just so sad for him to have to witness such incivility.
But somehow in all of that, the fact that Jones was this monstrous abuser of the families of Sandy Hook (and other farcical lies and conspiracies) did not seem to raise much alarm. You know,,, just Trump being Trump,. Which umm, well yeah-ah.
*Yes, I indeed still do have red-hot burning rage from so many aspects of that election** and its coverage and reception by "average" folks, and I will carry them red-hot to my grave whilst occasionally giving semi-coherent voice to those demons. .
**Also see 2000 and 2004. In descending order of rage: 2016, 2000, 2004, 1988, 1972, 2020, 1980, 1968.
I guess I'm not really enraged about 1988. The guy I voted for didn't win, but the guy we got was sometimes capable of being less a shithead than most of the people who've had that job since 1969. He didn't reject assholery as often as he knew he should, and I guess that can be counted against him: he's the only R who, IMO, actually knew better than to act like that, even if he didn;t always (often?) live up to his own standards.
And Danny Quayle may have done more to save democracy in recent times a bunch of others. (As much as the QAnon shaman? I've come to think so.)
38: Yes. My rage in that case is somewhat tempered by behavior of the president and administration that followed, it was the campaign itself (and press coverage that enraged me). And in retrospect should have moved it down a few notches.
No rage about 1984? I am disappointed in you, JP.
43: That was the first election I got to vote. I guess I was one of the few stupid enough to think Mondale had a chance.