Alex Jones Calls For Fauci's Execution, While Refusing To Sit For Deposition During Deadly Pandemic
CHUTZPAH, as the, um, globalists might say.
Human-troll chimera Alex Jones continues his quest to become the first defendant to cause a judge to spontaneously combust on the bench. After three years of ducking discovery, he’s already earned himself a default judgment in two lawsuits brought by survivors of students and teachers killed in the Sandy Hook school shooting, whom he described on his show as “crisis actors.”
The only outstanding issue is how big a check he’s going to cut these families. And just as Connecticut Judge Barbara Bellis is getting out her damages calculator, Jones has switched to openly defying court orders.
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Last week, he failed to show up for two days of scheduled depositions for which the plaintiffs’ attorneys had flown to Austin, Texas, where Jones lives and broadcasts his Infowars show. During an emergency hearing on March 22 as Jones’s lawyers attempted to convince Judge Bellis that their client was under medical care and too sick to be deposed, entering ex parte a seven sentence note from a COVID quack named Dr. Marble. Plaintiffs’ counsel Christopher Mattei turned on Jones’s show and demonstrated that, at that very moment, the performer was broadcasting live from his studio in the company of Dr. Marble, who was calling for the death of Dr. Anthony Fauci as punishment for combining a “man-made Frankenstein virus . . . into COVID-19” and thereby becoming the “greatest mass-murderer in the history of the world.”
It should be noted that back in 2019, Jones used this program to call Mattei “a little, white Jewboy jerkoff son of a bitch” and accuse him of planting child pornography on Infowars’s servers.
“We all know who did it,” he shouted, offering, “One million dollars to put your head on a pike.”’He then turned to his attorney Norm Pattis, who was with him on the program of course, conceding, “Anyways, you’re my defense lawyer.”
Jones’s esteemed defense lawyer was back in court on the 23rd to explain why his client should not be held in contempt of court for failing to appear a second day running for scheduled depositions. He conceded that Jones had gone to work as usual, but insisted that he’d really been instructed by a doctor to stay home, and thus should be able to pick and choose which obligations to attend to against doctors’ orders without fear of sanction.
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The proceedings started out auspiciously, with the court referring to the “willfully inadequate letter” from Dr. Marble she’d received the day before. Then Pattis requested to seal the hearing and shut off the public access line, to which Judge Bellis responded that “there is not a chance in this case, not a single chance in this case. Every word in this case, every single word in this case, has been on the record since day one, and there is not a chance I will have any discussions off the record.”
Ruh roh.
The court mused on the possibility of denying Jones the ability to call witnesses at the trial if he refuses to be deposed, before inviting the parties to brief her on whether and what sanctions should be imposed.
Calling it “impossible to overstate the level of contempt” shown for both the court and the plaintiffs, the plaintiffs note that Jones gleefully reported on his podcast that he’d been suffering a sinus infection which miraculously cleared the day after he’d missed the scheduled deposition.
With dignity and courage, the plaintiffs subjected themselves to hours and hours of painful questioning by Mr. Jones’s lawyers – and Mr. Jones plays sick when it is his turn to tell the truth under oath. He begs his audience to send him money to support his legal defense. and then ducks his deposition.
It is absolutely no surprise that today – the day after he skipped his deposition – Mr. Jones was back on the air from his studio, explaining to his audience that the emergent medical condition that supposedly manifested just days before his deposition turned out to be “a blockage in his sinus.” Now that the blockage has cleared, he feels “like a new person.” Id. It is no coincidence that Mr. Jones’s sinus cleared as soon as plaintiffs’ counsel cleared Texas airspace.
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They say that Jones be held in contempt, arrested, and fined $25,000 per day and escalating to $50,000 per day until he sits for the deposition in Connecticut.
Pattis, who seems to have no more shame than his client, has a different take, and it is to demand appropriate deference for medical professionals during this deadly COVID pandemic.
For the past year and a half, the world has given more deference to medical professionals than any time in human history. Even courts joined in granting this deference without question, and the world justified that deference as being necessary to protect human life and human health. Many of the recommendations made by doctors were precautionary, and they received the force of law in many instances.
Here, the Plaintiffs have blatantly asked the Court to substitute its judgment for that of Mr. Jones’ doctors. They have publicly made a pseudo-macho challenge as to Mr. Jones’ courage in the media that has sullied this litigation, publicly accusing him of cowardice for ultimately listening to his doctors[.]
The attorney failed to specify whether this applies to Dr. Fauci or just doctors calling for his execution. But he did manage to get the words “pseudo-macho” into a pleading — and not even to describe his client!
Pattis went on to hint that Jones might be suffering from any number of undisclosed ailments, which he couldn’t possibly reveal because of HIPAA. (Sorry, what?)
“That Mr. Jones has chosen to reveal one of his medical conditions – a sinus blockage – on his television show has no bearing on his other medical conditions, which he is well within his privacy rights not to reveal, and the Plaintiffs’ attempt to cast aspersions on his doctors’ recommendations is reckless in the extreme,” the lawyer huffed.
Pattis strenuously objected to any sanctions, pointing out that his client sat for multiple depositions in the lawsuit brought in Texas by other surviving families of Sandy Hook victims. He neglected to mention that Jones’s non-compliance with discovery earned him a default judgment in that case, too.
And it really takes balls to complain that the plaintiffs “show a complete disregard for Mr. Jones’ health and border, if not cross the border, on an attempt to exacerbate Mr. Jones’ health conditions” when those plaintiffs suffered years of harassment after the deaths of their loved ones thanks to lies trafficked by Jones on his show.
Well … good luck to ’em.
Lafferty v. Jones [Docket]
Liz Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.