Transcription
Well then, let me ask you this one, please. Is Free Speech Systems aware of any other media personality during this time who was publishing information that Sandy Hook was a hoax, that even comes remotely close to his audiences?
Like I said, I can't answer that. I don't know anything about any other company. We'll recap the top three moments from day two of Alex Jones's trial out in Connecticut. Welcome to Sidebar, presented by Law Crime. I'm Jesse Weber. Alex Jones's second trial is well underway, this time in Connecticut. He's facing a very similar trial like he did in the Texas trial, which we covered here on Sidebar in the Law Crime Network. He's being sued for his comments, uh, regarding the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, which he basically called a hoax, said there were crisis actors, that it was staged. In the Texas trial, the parents of a six-year-old who was gunned down in that elementary school shooting, they were awarded almost $50 million in damages. In this case, you have eight Sandy Hook family members, one FBI agent. So you have more plaintiffs, possibly a bigger payout. And they sued under several claims: defamation, both intentional and negligent infliction of emotional distress, unfair trade practices, invasion of privacy. And they've already won. The court has already ruled against Alex Jones. They entered a default judgment against him because he basically chose to not participate in this litigation. He didn't respond to discovery obligations and court orders. And when that happens, you automatically lose. So the question in this case, the same one as it was in Texas for the jury, is how much are they going to pay out to, uh, for the family? How much does Alex Jones ultimately owe?
And in day two, we saw the testimony of Britney Paz. And she's very interesting because she is the corporate representative for Free Speech Systems LLC. And Free Speech Systems LLC is interchangeable with Infowars. That's what we're talking about when we talk about a corporate representative. If you think about it, if a corporation could testify, if it was living and breathing and we get on the stand, that's what she is. She is the embodiment of the company. She is speaking for that company. Um, but I will tell you that Ms. Paz is not really an employee of Infowars. It's not like she's worked there for 20 years or worked for Alex Jones. She was retained by the defense. She's a Connecticut attorney. She was paid about $30,000 for her work. She used to be an actual attorney that worked with Norm Pattis, who is the defense attorney in this case. And her job was to review all the finance, financial records, meet with employees, really study the company as a whole to get kind of a 360-degree perspective of this company. And keeping that in mind, her time on the stand was a bit tense because if you think about it, why was she called? Alex Jones could have been called as the representative of the company. There were other employees of Infowars who could have been called as representatives and who acted in that capacity. But no, they chose to make Ms. Paz the representative.
You met with Alex Jones, right? I did. You took notes of your conversation with Alex Jones? I did. You put in all caps at the bottom of your notes that Alex Jones told you he is not a journalist? Yes. That was very important for, uh, him for you to tell this jury, right? It was important for him to get across to me that that's what he thought. No, no, important again that you tell this jury that because he knew that's what you were going to do. Objection, argumentative. She doesn't know. I don't know if he knew I was going to tell the jury that. But he wanted me to understand that's what his position was. Well, he's paying you $37,000 to testify here, right? I was paid to do a broad array of analysis of the company and to testify in connection with the Texas litigation and here. Yes. So there's no question that he knew you were going to come here and testify to these people, right? Objection, judge, again calls for speculation in what Mr. Jones knew. He'll testify here. He knew you were going to come and testify yourself. Well, I'm sure he knew that I was designated as the corporate rep and so that was my purpose. So yes. I wanted you to tell them that he's not a journalist, right? That is the sum and substance of what my conversation was.
So not only do we get kind of this glimpse into Jones's thinking and strategy, but the implication here is that Ms. Paz was hired for a specific reason. And they didn't want to just have anybody from the company testify. They wanted her to testify. Maybe she could have plausible deniability to certain things that were going on. Maybe she would testify in a way that was beneficial to the defense and Alex Jones. So Chris Maddy, who's one of the attorneys representing the plaintiffs, he spent time trying to impeach your credibility. But then he gets into the money that has been brought in by Infowars and Alex Jones. Remember when we talked about earlier about the business model? Yes. Maximize that audience, get them all to the content websites, and then send them to the store. Right? Right. Because if you have billions of audience members, some percentage of those people are going to end up buying your stuff. Sure. Right? And that huge audience growth translated into hundreds of millions of dollars in sales, correct? Over a broad period of time. What time period are we talking about? Well, let's take 2012 until today. 2012 to this very moment. So in the last 10 years. Last 10 years. Hundreds of millions of dollars, right? I don't know what the exact per year is, but it's it's quite substantial. I don't know if it's hundreds of millions of dollars, but well, let's this is kind of important, right? Right. Free Speech Systems revenue, you know that you were supposed to talk about it. Can we have a question? You knew you were supposed to talk about this, right? Yes. Okay. Um, and all I'm asking you, I'm not even asking you for a precise number. Okay. Okay. Hundreds of millions? Yes, I believe so. Okay. More than 500? I I don't know the exact number, which is why I said I wasn't sure about the exact number. And as a result of all of that revenue, it's fair to say that Alex Jones became a very, very rich man? Well, Alex Jones owns the company and the website is earning money, but um, I don't. Are you do you want to talk about the value of the company? I ca I don't. I can't talk about his personal finances. I'm here to talk about Free Speech. Well, didn't you produce at least some evidence concerning his compensation? Yes, we produced some evidence as far as his draws from Free Speech as well as his compensation for the years at issue. Very, very rich. I know he's made some millions of dollars. Yes. Some millions. Some millions. Would you like to talk about specific numbers? I don't recall the specific numbers. As you may personally, $100 million? I don't know what the number is.
And also how Infowars grew after promoting this false Sandy Hook coverage. Since the same here shooting, Mr. Jones's audience has grown exponentially. Is that fair to say since 2012? Uh, yes. So there has been an increase in the viewership, at least as Mr. Jones has described it, it's been exponential, correct? I think he's used those words. Yes. All right. And as a result of that growth, Alex Jones and Infowars have had billions upon billions of social media impressions, correct? I'm sure that there have been that many. I don't know the num, at the exact number, but I'm not going to disagree with you that there's there's a big social media footprint. And I talked about this in my opening. Um, check. Objection, judge. It's not evidence. So on the top there, you have the again, they're telling their audience just how many million visitors per month, right? Yes. Okay. And they're telling their audience their rankings, right? Their website rankings.
Foreign against the mainstream media. Okay. I see here it's the comparison. Yes. It's comparison like what you're saying. So you see the six different websites listed there, right? Yes. And what they're saying is, um, hey, we're bigger than Glenn Beck, we're bigger than Rush Limbaugh, we're bigger than Newsmax, and we're bigger than wnd.com, whatever that is, right? Yes. Okay. They're the biggest, right? I thought. My question is, I don't know what those numbers mean. Maybe zoom out a little bit. Well, I mean, you know, yes, go ahead and zoom out. But you know that Alex Jones consulted a program called Alexa, right? Holding another traffic. Okay. All right. I see what it is. Yeah. Yes. And this isn't the Alexa you have in your kitchen where you ask what the weather's going to be today, right? No. This is a website ranking program, right? That's the source? Yes. Right. And what Alex Jones, and you know that Alex Jones regularly consulted Alexa to see where infowars.com was in the world rankings, right? I believe he did. Yeah. And here, as of 2014, in the United States, infowars.com was the 301st most popular website. That's what it says, right? Of all the millions of websites in the United States, right? Here, okay. And in the world, all the websites in the world, Infowars was 1,220, 22. Yes. Right. And this is important in a few ways. It's important because first, when you think about this whole case, it's about trying to establish not only the harm that the plaintiff suffered as a result of Jones's commentary on Sandy Hook, but how he profited off of this for years. And by the way, as we recall from day one, Jones isn't allowed to argue that he didn't profit off of Sandy Hook coverage. He lost the ability to do that when he refused to hand over a key document to the plaintiff side. The judge punished him, sanctioned, sanctioned him and said, okay, now what's going to happen is you can no longer make the argument that, uh, you didn't profit off of Sandy Hook, which was a pretty key defense for Alex Jones. And to hear how Jones, you know, during the course of this, would sell these supplements and these products, and how he allegedly misrepresented, misrepresented to supporters where their donations were going. There was testimony that perhaps these donors thought their money was going to Infowars as a, you know, generally, but it was possibly pocketed by Alex Jones himself. And Ms. Paz wouldn't confirm or deny that. But to keep promoting this Sandy Hook coverage, how the numbers are growing, selling this story is working, they're bringing in more money. The plaintiffs are showing that this was a deliberate campaign of harmfulness, information, and Alex Jones was making money off of this. And when you think about that, this could lead to possibly a very significant damages award by the jury.
And while on the stand, Ms. Paz was asked about what Jones does, how he drives traffic, how does he capitalize on on all this? Because he didn't just promote a Sandy Hook hoax. He also said there were other things that maybe shouldn't be believed. The cops on the wrong city, you saw on stage, Fast and Furious, on face Aurora, they staged Sandy Hook. The evidence is just overwhelming. And that's why I'm so desperate and freaked out. This is not fun, you know, getting up here telling you this. I I somebody's got to tell you the truth. Somebody's got to stand against these people. Somebody's got to do it. This is what we're talking about earlier when Alex Jones was telling his audience that somebody's got to tell them the truth, right? Yes. This is five months after Sandy Hook. Yep. I don't recall exactly when the bombing happened, uh, in Boston, but assume, assume with me that this is April 16, 2013. Sure. Okay. Five months after Sandy Hook. Take your representation that it was five months later. Okay. They staged Sandy Hook. The evidence is overwhelming, right? Amongst other. I'm asking you about Sandy Hook right now. Yes. He says Sandy Hook is overwhelming, right? Yes. You'd agree with me that, well, you heard him say also that they staged Aurora? I did hear that, yes. What was he talking about there? Not shooting at the movie theater at Aurora, Colorado. There was a shooting at a movie theater in Aurora in August of 2012, right? I don't recall the date of that shooting, but it was prior to this video, a few months before. Yeah. And he said that was finished? Yes. Because one of the things that Alex Jones does is he tells them that these horrible mass shootings are actually hoaxes, right? The ones that he mentions there? Yes. Now, if this jury wasn't accustomed to Alex Jones before this trial, they certainly are now. So who knows what will happen in day three, but we will cover it here on Sidebar. Well, thanks for joining us here on Sidebar. Please subscribe on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Spotify, wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Jesse Weber. Speak to you next time. [Music]