Tom Kirvan
Legal News, Editor-in-Chief
Legal News, Editor-in-Chief
It’s a presidential election year, which means that we will be bombarded by outlandish statements from fringe politicians who take special joy in bending the truth beyond recognition.
Perhaps the most bizarre comment came recently from Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Georgia Congresswoman who has made it her life mission to distort facts for political gain. Her latest step into quicksand came over the weekend at a MAGA rally in Las Vegas when she likened the presumptive Republican presidential nominee to Jesus, otherwise known as the son of God.
“The Democrats and the fake news media want to constantly talk about, ‘Oh, President Trump is a convicted felon,’” Greene bellowed to an adoring crowd. “Well, you want to know something? The man that I worship is also a convicted fellow. And he was murdered on a Roman cross. We’ve seen political corruption. We have seen this throughout history. This is nothing new.”
Nor, of course, are the politicians who push falsehoods and promote conspiracy theories that defy all reason. Unfortunately, that is the current state of our body politic, which is inching ever closer to the autopsy table.
Greene undoubtedly has been inspired by the likes of such blowhards as Alex Jones, the master of all conspiracy theorists whose disdain for truth-telling has reached legendary proportions.
For Jones, his first day of reckoning arrived on August 5, 2022 in a Texas courtroom, when “truth” had its rightful day in the spotlight, taking lies, misinformation, and hate speech to the legal woodshed. On that day nearly two years ago, a Texas jury sent a loud and clear message to those who are in the business of fabricating falsehoods across their airwaves and social media platforms.
It was a $45.2 million message that hopefully will serve as a warning sign to anyone who wants to profit from the intentional infliction of emotional distress.
The multi-million-dollar sum represented the punitive damages the jury awarded the parents of a Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting victim in a defamation case brought against radio host Jones, who is the brains behind the far-right Infowars website.
He founded the outlet in 1999 after he was fired from a local radio station for a series of outrageous claims about this, that, and the other.
A day earlier, the jury awarded the plaintiffs $4.1 million in compensatory damages, penalizing Jones for repeatedly lying about the Sandy Hook massacre in December 2012 that cost the lives of 26 people, including 20 elementary school students.
Over the past decade, Jones has claimed that no children died in the mass shooting and that the families of the dead children were “crisis actors” in a “giant hoax” perpetrated to take away guns from law-abiding Americans.
Of course, this is the same fellow who proclaimed the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013 that killed three and injured hundreds of others was “staged by the FBI” and that the 9/11 terrorist attacks were an “inside job” orchestrated by the Bush administration.
In short, he has taken the phrase “a mile wide and an inch deep” to an entirely new level when it comes to his contempt for the truth.
Jones has since suffered a series of other legal setbacks – to the tune of more than $1 billion in damages, money that he hopes to avoid paying by seeking bankruptcy protection from the very justice system that he has spent years deriding.
The fact that Jones was finally held accountable for his pack of lies speaks volumes about the strength of our legal system, which served as the forum for making him answer for promulgating such fictions.
The legal profession can take satisfaction in helping make that happen, for operating within the confines of a justice system that is built on honesty, integrity, civility, and respect for the rule of law.
Those elements are at the heart of the system, where lawyers are assigned the task of peacefully and fairly resolving conflicts, of diffusing potentially explosive situations, of untangling complex civil and criminal matters, and in ensuring legal accountability when penalties must be paid.
In recent years, the justice system and our democracy have come under attack from inside and outside our borders, as we now fight a two-front war to preserve precious freedoms and liberties that we can no longer take for granted. That stark reality was driven home by a home-grown insurrection on January 6, 2021.
The echoes from that dark day continue to be amplified by those bent on eroding public trust and undermining our democracy. The narrative they push comes in the form of a template created to cast doubt where there should be none. The harm that they cause is felt deeply at an individual and societal level.
Just ask the parents of those slaughtered in the Sandy Hook shooting, many of whom have been subjected to harassment and death threats by those who buy into the bogus claims that Alex Jones trumpets online and across his radio network.
Now, thanks to our legal system, the nation’s king of conspiracy may begin to experience some of that pain even if it’s only in the realm of the financial. It will be his price to pay for leading an assault on the truth and for making the peddling of lies his own political artform.
Perhaps the most bizarre comment came recently from Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Georgia Congresswoman who has made it her life mission to distort facts for political gain. Her latest step into quicksand came over the weekend at a MAGA rally in Las Vegas when she likened the presumptive Republican presidential nominee to Jesus, otherwise known as the son of God.
“The Democrats and the fake news media want to constantly talk about, ‘Oh, President Trump is a convicted felon,’” Greene bellowed to an adoring crowd. “Well, you want to know something? The man that I worship is also a convicted fellow. And he was murdered on a Roman cross. We’ve seen political corruption. We have seen this throughout history. This is nothing new.”
Nor, of course, are the politicians who push falsehoods and promote conspiracy theories that defy all reason. Unfortunately, that is the current state of our body politic, which is inching ever closer to the autopsy table.
Greene undoubtedly has been inspired by the likes of such blowhards as Alex Jones, the master of all conspiracy theorists whose disdain for truth-telling has reached legendary proportions.
For Jones, his first day of reckoning arrived on August 5, 2022 in a Texas courtroom, when “truth” had its rightful day in the spotlight, taking lies, misinformation, and hate speech to the legal woodshed. On that day nearly two years ago, a Texas jury sent a loud and clear message to those who are in the business of fabricating falsehoods across their airwaves and social media platforms.
It was a $45.2 million message that hopefully will serve as a warning sign to anyone who wants to profit from the intentional infliction of emotional distress.
The multi-million-dollar sum represented the punitive damages the jury awarded the parents of a Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting victim in a defamation case brought against radio host Jones, who is the brains behind the far-right Infowars website.
He founded the outlet in 1999 after he was fired from a local radio station for a series of outrageous claims about this, that, and the other.
A day earlier, the jury awarded the plaintiffs $4.1 million in compensatory damages, penalizing Jones for repeatedly lying about the Sandy Hook massacre in December 2012 that cost the lives of 26 people, including 20 elementary school students.
Over the past decade, Jones has claimed that no children died in the mass shooting and that the families of the dead children were “crisis actors” in a “giant hoax” perpetrated to take away guns from law-abiding Americans.
Of course, this is the same fellow who proclaimed the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013 that killed three and injured hundreds of others was “staged by the FBI” and that the 9/11 terrorist attacks were an “inside job” orchestrated by the Bush administration.
In short, he has taken the phrase “a mile wide and an inch deep” to an entirely new level when it comes to his contempt for the truth.
Jones has since suffered a series of other legal setbacks – to the tune of more than $1 billion in damages, money that he hopes to avoid paying by seeking bankruptcy protection from the very justice system that he has spent years deriding.
The fact that Jones was finally held accountable for his pack of lies speaks volumes about the strength of our legal system, which served as the forum for making him answer for promulgating such fictions.
The legal profession can take satisfaction in helping make that happen, for operating within the confines of a justice system that is built on honesty, integrity, civility, and respect for the rule of law.
Those elements are at the heart of the system, where lawyers are assigned the task of peacefully and fairly resolving conflicts, of diffusing potentially explosive situations, of untangling complex civil and criminal matters, and in ensuring legal accountability when penalties must be paid.
In recent years, the justice system and our democracy have come under attack from inside and outside our borders, as we now fight a two-front war to preserve precious freedoms and liberties that we can no longer take for granted. That stark reality was driven home by a home-grown insurrection on January 6, 2021.
The echoes from that dark day continue to be amplified by those bent on eroding public trust and undermining our democracy. The narrative they push comes in the form of a template created to cast doubt where there should be none. The harm that they cause is felt deeply at an individual and societal level.
Just ask the parents of those slaughtered in the Sandy Hook shooting, many of whom have been subjected to harassment and death threats by those who buy into the bogus claims that Alex Jones trumpets online and across his radio network.
Now, thanks to our legal system, the nation’s king of conspiracy may begin to experience some of that pain even if it’s only in the realm of the financial. It will be his price to pay for leading an assault on the truth and for making the peddling of lies his own political artform.
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