Seriously. How are civil judgements so laughably toothless that Jones was able to keep broadcasting on Infowars for years after the ruling, keep selling his snake oil, not pay a cent of the judgement against him, and now have multiple new channels across platforms? This is not someone who should be a free man, let alone allowed to keep his bullshit media empire.
He was able to continue broadcasting because his entire net worth is tied up in Infowars, so the only way for the families to get the money they’re owed is to extract it from Infowars. Basically, he’s more or less obligated to keep the business running so that the new owners (the Sandy Hook families) can squeeze some kind of value out of it.
This comes down to the fact that what they won was a monetary judgment, rather than some kind of injunction against Jones having a platform. I’m sure the families would have been happy with either, but the latter is much harder (if not impossible) to pull off because it runs afoul of the first amendment. But just piledrivering someone’s business with debt is fine.
And yes, it’s gone on for as long as it has because Jones has been able to consistently tie things up in court. That’s one of those double edged swords. It sounds bad when Jones is the defendant, but imagine if we were talking about a queer podcast being sued by JK Rowling. Then we’d want all the legal protections in the world. The knife cuts both ways.
Obviously, in a sane world the families wouldn’t have to sue to get him off the air because there would be things like hate speech laws to stop him doing this shit in the first place, but America isn’t a big fan of those.
Just. Lock. Him. Up.
Seriously. How are civil judgements so laughably toothless that Jones was able to keep broadcasting on Infowars for years after the ruling, keep selling his snake oil, not pay a cent of the judgement against him, and now have multiple new channels across platforms? This is not someone who should be a free man, let alone allowed to keep his bullshit media empire.
He was able to continue broadcasting because his entire net worth is tied up in Infowars, so the only way for the families to get the money they’re owed is to extract it from Infowars. Basically, he’s more or less obligated to keep the business running so that the new owners (the Sandy Hook families) can squeeze some kind of value out of it.
This comes down to the fact that what they won was a monetary judgment, rather than some kind of injunction against Jones having a platform. I’m sure the families would have been happy with either, but the latter is much harder (if not impossible) to pull off because it runs afoul of the first amendment. But just piledrivering someone’s business with debt is fine.
And yes, it’s gone on for as long as it has because Jones has been able to consistently tie things up in court. That’s one of those double edged swords. It sounds bad when Jones is the defendant, but imagine if we were talking about a queer podcast being sued by JK Rowling. Then we’d want all the legal protections in the world. The knife cuts both ways.
Obviously, in a sane world the families wouldn’t have to sue to get him off the air because there would be things like hate speech laws to stop him doing this shit in the first place, but America isn’t a big fan of those.
The issue is that’s not NECESSARILY true. Jones is a co-owner in multiple companies that sell that snake oil.
Because the alternative is a return to debtors prisons and fuck that with a rusty pole.