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univbee
Jun 3, 2004




This is a situation I've been curious about for a while.

So once things have properly settled into place, Alex Jones will never be able to hold any real assets again and will no longer be capable of "grifting" for his own benefit. Like, he can still sell brain pills/beg for donations, but the proceeds would no longer go to him (assuming it's all above-board, which...more on this later). So I'm mostly curious if he's enough of a "true believer" to soldier on despite everything, or if he gets out of the game because it's no longer profitable to him. Plenty of people justify evil actions if it makes them millions of dollars but that becomes a harder sell to do otherwise, and I'm not sure where Alex Jones falls. A few possible outcomes:

- Alex Jones explicitly tries to kill himself. He may well consider his life to be "over" in the sense that he'll never hold assets again, not see a way "out", and attempt suicide explicitly as a gently caress you to the people who successfully sued him. Things would need to be more solidified in court than they are now, though.
- Alex Jones pulls some illegal shenanigans to try and continue operating "profitably", like by trying to conceal or obfuscate income and assets. This would of course be discovered immediately and could result in him going to prison for contempt.
- He decides to rebrand himself as a martyr of sorts, like by deciding to just stream from a smart phone on YouTube or a chud-friendly video platform, and continues his toxic shtick on principle, without otherwise really being profitable. Just full brainworms.

I'm curious how much he's technically allowed to keep when all's said and done.

I know in a normal bankruptcy at least in my area you're allowed a certain baseline income (anything more than that gets garnished), and a basic minimum standard in terms of a place to live (e.g. you're allowed to rent a place but not own one, and are allowed a certain amount of different types of furniture e.g. you're allowed a table, chair and bed at least), probably you're allowed at least one computer and/or smart device as well as an internet connection. Also you're allowed to shortlist a number of items (I think where I am it's 20) that cannot be seized, usually because they're family heirlooms and that sort of thing.

It's entirely possible bankruptcy is different especially since he's also specifically been sued and not merely insolvent for reasons that didn't stem from a court determining malicious action on his part.

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univbee
Jun 3, 2004




This might not be a viable strategy long-term. Anyone having Jones as a guest may well, depending on what is said/done on their show, get implicated in future court dealings of Alex's (e.g. get asked to come in for questioning regarding what happened on the show) and a whiff of that happening will curtail him getting invited on stuff very quickly. Because even people who "agree" with Alex generally also recognize he's toxic as gently caress and any association with him will damage their brand for no gain.

univbee
Jun 3, 2004




Blurred posted:

This might have been discussed much earlier in the thread, but given that Alex Jones doesn't actually have $1 billion to pay the families then what exactly is he obliged to do from here on? His existing assets get sold off, I guess, and he goes into bankruptcy, but he can keep working as a presenter so long as all his non-essential income goes to his creditors? Can the failure to pay debts land you in prison in the US? And is FSS an entirely separate legal entity, or is it also on the hook for the damages owed here?

It's important to remember that debts, including ones where they're because of a lawsuit, aren't really structured in a "punishment" way, strictly speaking. It's like the difference between going to prison (for simple possession) for being a drug addict and going to rehab for being a drug addict, while many people would consider rehab to be a living hell and a punishment it's coming from a very different place. The point of declaring personal bankruptcy or otherwise having your assets and control of your finances seized is usually something of a cry for help; you (or the courts on your behalf) are more or less saying "my financial situation is out of control and I need an adult". In fact if your reasons for going bankrupt are "I'm getting paid jack poo poo and don't really own anything of value like a house anyway" you can come out largely ahead from declaring personal bankruptcy.

It's also important to remember that being on the losing end of a lawsuit like this doesn't make you a capital C Criminal, so as much as Jones like to scream about how his freedoms are taken away they pretty much haven't. He can still work for anyone who'll hire him, I'm pretty sure he could buy a gun if he wanted to (at least a cheaper one), he can definitely vote etc., and he can still even earn a kind of lower-middle-class income.

Basically once things properly settle he'll just have a "parent" who controls his finances and gives him an allowance that forces him to live the rest of his days as a lower-middle-class person, and InfoWars will no longer exist. In theory, if they were willing to take the no doubt considerable liability risk for inevitable future shenanigans, there's nothing prevent, say, OAN from hiring him and giving him a regular spot on their network, which Alex can then go home from in his beater car to his one bedroom rented apartment. If you saw the ending of the TV Series The Shield it's basically the "from greatness to crushingly boring mediocrity" hell that Vic Mackey is put through at the end, so he "suffers" even though he sees no prison for his heinous crimes.

univbee fucked around with this message at 14:16 on Oct 14, 2022

univbee
Jun 3, 2004




red19fire posted:

The Vic Mackey cubicle hell is a fate worse than death for Alex.

Alex Jones opening the safe at work at the end of the day and taking out his five-alarm chili. He sits and stares at it silently for two full minutes, before sighing and then heading home.

univbee
Jun 3, 2004




Lemniscate Blue posted:

Four hours of uproarious laughter?

That's the weekend special they're planning.

univbee
Jun 3, 2004




Foo Diddley posted:

alex jones got sued for a billion dollars for saying sandy hook was a hoax, and he's paid $0 and is on the air saying sandy hook was a hoax

great job, civil """justice""" system; you've really put another right wing demagogue in his place

Knowledge Fight just released an interview with on the plaintiff’s attorneys. Apparently it will be 1.5-2 years before things reach the point where they take all his possessions.

univbee
Jun 3, 2004




I think an important variable for "who replaces Alex Jones" is the fact that Alex, much like other right-wing conspiracists like Art Bell and Rush Limbaugh, had an insane amount of air time, and I think that carries an awful lot of weight in some subtle ways. Tucker Carlson definitely has pull and some obvious overlap in viewership with AJ's audience, but he's only actually on for an hour every weeknight, at a time when you might have something better to do. Alex Jones was on for up to four hours every weekDAY, during regular work hours, plus two hours on Sundays. The people with the wrong sort of conspiracy-minded brainworms are going to form a sort-of emotional attachment to the beet red alcoholic who's "just like them" and whom they spend half of their working hours with, versus the more obviously disconnected and very rich man in the suit on the TV for an hour every weeknight. There's kind of a clear winner between those two in the "I could have a beer with them" contest, and this matters to the insane viewership.

Anyone wanting to truly replace Alex is going to have put in some serious hours talking into people's ears for almost two dozen hours a week; that's the baseline for the amount of content conspiracists have been expecting for literal decades (Alex Jones' entire career plus those of his predecessors on the radio). As hosed-up as this is to say, as lovely as Alex Jones' empire is there was legitimate work and effort put into it on his part, and putting that much energy into something that insane requires a very specific combination of skills and brainworms.

univbee
Jun 3, 2004




tl;dr there are two possible states for Alex to exist in going forward.

- Relatively poor (probably lower-middle class standard and not allowed to accrue wealth), forced to live paycheck to paycheck forever.
- In jail for felonies from attempting to avoid the above fate.

The most likely outcome of this is probably #2 because Alex isn't a cooperative person and will absolutely think he can outsmart the courts somehow. I think at a minimum he will at least try, I suppose it's possible that the judge might decide to just intercept whatever he does and somehow put some real fear into him, opting not to put him in prison yet.

I think it's more or less impossible for Alex to be "secretly rich", if by some miracle he gets his hands on some decent money that the courts somehow miss initially, it's going to be really obvious when he suddenly has a new car or something like that. At best he could have like a secret offshore account or crypto wallet, but it will more or less exclusively amount to a number he can look at but doesn't actually get him anything useful.

univbee
Jun 3, 2004




I think the way lying to the court generally plays out, if the defense knows what it's doing, is to shine an absolutely huge spotlight on the lie coupled with very clear evidence that it's a lie, and basically corners the person on the stand into either telling the truth or pretty much saying "I'm knowingly and intentionally lying under oath right now, gently caress this court and gently caress you judge in particular." You're right that it's embarrassingly rare for it to actually result in meaningful penalties.


And yeah the big problem with trying to fly under the radar with large sums of money and assets is all of the cool "I'm rich" things you would spend that money on are the kinds of things that are impossible to purchase without looping in the government. It's not like a new TV where you can walk into a retail store with a fistful of cash and buy one without anyone having to know who you are. If you want to buy even a lovely used car or a dilapidated house, those purchases by necessity involve the government for deeds, registration, insurance etc. Even if you obfuscate those things with a shadow buyer or shell company and by some miracle pull off that side of things initially going unnoticed, people are going to notice that Alex has a fancy car and isn't going to the lovely rented apartment at night he'd normally be relegated to, you can't hide a house or car under the floorboards. Even if by some miracle the purchase turned out to be above-board somehow (at least enough that Alex wouldn't go to prison), he'll still wind up getting it seized at the very least.


I didn't know the specifics of OJ's situation before but that definitely makes sense, mega-celebrity with sports stars and actors is a crazy thing and the REALLY rich celebrities have pensions and residuals set up and they technically never have to work again for the rest of their lives, they'll continue making way more money than any of us will ever see no matter what. I think Alex, despite his mega-wealth, wasn't really set up the same way, there's no magical cheque fairy dropping money into his bank account for work he did in the 70s like John Carpenter. In a theoretical world where you somehow emptied every rich person's bank account and their meaningful assets and forced them to never work again, people like OJ Simpson and Tom Hanks are going to be mega-rich again from pensions/residuals while people like Alex Jones are going to stay poor because in a hosed-up way he's still kind of living paycheck to paycheck.

univbee
Jun 3, 2004




SubponticatePoster posted:

As long as the fan retains ownership, no. It's not the fan's debt to pay. However, it could be argued that since AJ doesn't have any living expenses (or has very few assuming said fan doesn't also buy his food) that the normal cap of 50% of disposable income meant for keeping a roof over your head, getting to work etc doesn't apply.

This is also the type of thing that for the owner has a very high chance of causing some sort of legal trouble in the "you're not under arrest but you do have to answer this summons where you'll be questioned about exactly how and why Alex Jones is living in your house for free" sense. I think even among chuds who are Alex Jones fans, that's really sticking your neck out and well beyond what most people rich enough to have a whole extra house would do.

Alex Jones is very much legally toxic right now, any sort of activity you do with him especially any sort of financial handout has a non-zero chance of getting you roped into his mess, and I don't think Alex Jones has truly close friends willing to take that chance.

univbee fucked around with this message at 17:14 on Oct 22, 2022

univbee
Jun 3, 2004




https://twitter.com/jjmacnab/status/1583867495055691777?s=46&t=Z4x_MCe7i_LeOCxEbFlVwA

univbee
Jun 3, 2004




Frank Frank posted:

gently caress it, give them 2.75 trillion

Your honor, we ask that you determine Alex Jones owes the United States' M1 Money Supply in damages.

univbee
Jun 3, 2004




While a good decision, Elon's post is mostly a lie (his firstborn did die of SIDS but not in his arms and he didn't "feel his last heartbeat").

https://www.marieclaire.com/sex-love/a5380/millionaire-starter-wife/ posted:

By the time eBay bought PayPal in 2002, we had moved to Los Angeles and had our first child, a boy named Nevada Alexander. The sale of PayPal vaulted Elon's net worth to well over $100 million. The same week, Nevada went down for a nap, placed on his back as always, and stopped breathing. He was 10 weeks old, the age when male infants are most susceptible to SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome). By the time the paramedics resuscitated him, he had been deprived of oxygen for so long that he was brain-dead. He spent three days on life support in a hospital in Orange County before we made the decision to take him off it. I held him in my arms when he died.

Elon made it clear that he did not want to talk about Nevada's death. I didn't understand this, just as he didn't understand why I grieved openly, which he regarded as "emotionally manipulative." I buried my feelings instead, coping with Nevada's death by making my first visit to an IVF clinic less than two months later. Elon and I planned to get pregnant again as swiftly as possible. Within the next five years, I gave birth to twins, then triplets, and I sold three novels to Penguin and Simon & Schuster. Even so, Nevada's death sent me on a years-long inward spiral of depression and distraction that would be continuing today if one of our nannies hadn't noticed me struggling. She approached me with the name of an excellent therapist. Dubious, I gave it a shot. In those weekly sessions, I began to get perspective on what had become my life.

univbee
Jun 3, 2004




While I don't necessarily think this is what Ye is doing specifically, I think some people will run for US presidency or other office simply because it affords them more protection from pushback on social media on the things they say. Facebook like a week or two ago outright stated that Trump's speech is now immune to being fact-checked explicitly because he's running for office, and some people are definitely brain poisoned by social media enough that they'll run a hopeless ticket simply to insulate them from bans and the like.

univbee
Jun 3, 2004




Knowledge Fight just dropped, 3h40m :stare:

univbee
Jun 3, 2004




Morter posted:

those jerks said "afternoon"

Still (late) afternoon on the West coast :smug:

univbee
Jun 3, 2004




No actual Alex Jones news, but we've reached a new level of Wonkage.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqD-hn_UzuI

univbee
Jun 3, 2004




There are a lot of complicating factors here. There's usually a cap on how much your wages can be garnished for bankruptcy or civil suits, and at least in Canada that amount is typically something like 50% above a certain "untouchable" amount (varies based on factors like marital status and number of dependents), but there are a lot of variables at play that I think can potentially raise this percentage, including the egregiousness of his actions that got him sued in the first place (there are different "degrees" of civil suits in this respect, like two civil suits for the same amount can be handled differently depending on if one of them was at least plausibly the result of an honest mistake that the sued party appears to be showing some degree of contrition and corrective action for, and one where it's because the sued party was acting maliciously and told the court to go gently caress itself). I also think there's the rub that the thing that can hurt Alex Jones isn't so much his wages being garnished, but his ability to earn wages at all, since the courts know he's got a whole shell game with Free Speech Systems LLC and other entities and those can effectively be shut down. Alex and his lawyers are pretty much throwing poo poo at the wall so Alex can squirrel away some amount of money to continue living large and not have to shut his show down. The courts are largely wise to these sorts of shenanigans, but there are likely some "absolute" laws at play that guarantees a certain amount of Alex's earnings are untouchable and that amount might be more than people would consider fair. Depending on the laws at play, it's not impossible for a situation where Alex goes from earning $1 million a year to $500k a year, for example, and for that to be effectively unincreasable due to legal protections to debtors. But I think a bigger situation is the fact that the earnings of Free Speech Systems LLC itself can be hamstrung harder (companies that go bankrupt can usually be hit harder) and that would cause Alex's earnings to drop much more sharply. And, of course, if he tries to pull some illegal asset-hiding poo poo he could wind up in prison, so there's that.

As alluded to above, a company not knowing what it's worth is a pretty massive red flag and not one that passes muster in a bankruptcy court.

univbee fucked around with this message at 17:21 on Mar 13, 2023

univbee
Jun 3, 2004




Pirate Radar posted:

Last month, Mr. Jones’s lawyers submitted a statement of his personal financial affairs prefaced by five pages of disclaimers saying that Mr. Jones did not fully remember where he holds bank accounts, how many trusts he had set up over the past decade and the whereabouts of his 2022 W-2 form documenting his wages. He has not filed a federal income tax return since 2020.

lol yeah he's turbofucked if the IRS gets involved, none of this comes remotely close to being a valid excuse and the only way it becomes their problem to untangle is in a way where Alex is behind bars.

univbee
Jun 3, 2004




Pirate Radar posted:

Ate a big bowl of chili and forgot, uh, where all the money I owe you is

Good news! We have a secure, guarded room to help you chili detox, and where you can spend as much time as you need remembering. Also here's an orange outfit, the colors help you remember too.

univbee
Jun 3, 2004




Outrail posted:

Has this ever happened? Like a judge turns out to be apparently guilty of the crime on trial?

I don't know if that exact thing has happened, but there have been numerous cases where a judge took bribes to ensure the trial was decided a certain way. Actually one of the (possibly only?) times double jeopardy was overruled was in a case where it was found that this had happened; I think it went to the Supreme Court who ultimately decided double jeopardy wasn't applicable. I think there was the added wrinkle of the defendant themselves not being privy to the backroom deals, like the defendant's parents did it or something, but that was probably just an added dramatization from the Law & Order episode based on the case.

univbee
Jun 3, 2004




kw0134 posted:

Jones loving around with the bankruptcy court inevitably means that it'll work overtime to find where all the cash is and disbelieve all his various defenses, including his transparent "I owe money to this guy who might be my dad, who can say" fraudulent transfers. The funny thing is that usually the death penalty for bankruptcy court is dismissal of the petitioner's case, but the plaintiffs probably want him to stay right where he is so they can use the power of that court to shake down everyone he knows, might have known, could possibly have known, or passed in the night that one time for money. Normally you might go back to court to start compelling various people or entities for the cash Jones was trying to hide, but it's all here and they're all pissed at him.

This is another point I hadn't brought up in my previous posts about the workings of bankruptcy. Usually bankruptcy and similar formal debt discharging (e.g. consumer proposals in countries where that's a thing), once formally engaged, are strictly "no debts are getting paid anymore". Every entity that's owed money is officially meant to be incommunicado with the debtor, and if they reach out the debtor (which is normal because the speed at which this information travels allows for lapses like this) has to say "actually I've formally entered bankruptcy proceedings" with maybe a contact/case number. There is no "I'm in debt to this person but they're my buddy and I want to do them a solid", the "buddy" has to deal with the bankruptcy court formally for whatever fraction of debts they can collect, and legally that's the end of it and they don't get any special favors. They obviously never have to work with the debtor again (although there may be exceptions to this for things like national banks), but the debt is a done deal and there's no legal avenues for them to get more money from the person from there. And you do get a formal record saying "you entered into bankruptcy on this date" and if some ancient forgotten debt comes knocking later on, too bad, they legally are owed nothing, it's a very real clean slate.

So in other words, transferring money to "pay off debts" at this stage is probably not allowed, although I'm not 100% sure where exactly in the process the bankruptcy actually is so it might be.

univbee
Jun 3, 2004




I think another angle where people are I think rightly getting upset is that it's not impossible that when everything is done, Alex's life and show still don't really change materially.

- Free Speech Systems essentially continues operating as-is in everything but name, possibly still overpaying uneducated people with sufficiently low ethics, like a lot of them were making 2x what I'm making now.
- He continues making sales on sketchy brain boner pills.
- Alex Jones has a takehome north of 6 figures or, frankly, anything approaching 6 figures from the other side.

Even if it's a step down from what he might have been previously used to, he could still be in the top 1% of earners in the US.

It's a bit like how Jim Bakker went from a 45-year prison sentence to out on parole in 5 years and is now doing exactly the same stuff that got him arrested in the first place. He's even sold things touted as Covid cures and only got a slap on the wrist for it. He's an open criminal with considerably higher current earnings than probably anyone reading this thread.

univbee
Jun 3, 2004




There are limits on how much someone can "burn" money in an irretrievable way (spend it on something consumable like food/drugs or a spontaneous event of some kind), and while Alex could well be petty enough to do something like that, anything of actual significance isn't the kind of thing he can get away with before being intercepted. Like he could probably blow a few hundred at a bar or restaurant if he got his hands on cash somehow, but he couldn't buy a new fancy car or watch, at least not without it being seized eventually.

Stefan Prodan posted:

drat do they really take your pets in bankruptcy

good thing my dog is a little mutt piece of poo poo that nobody loves but me

I think a rough rule of thumb is that a bankruptcy court isn't going to seize anything if they can't somehow flip it in a way that makes money. Remember they're not operating punitively, they just need money from you somehow to repay your creditors, so the only stuff they'll take from you is stuff that'll have some theoretical value to a total stranger at a bankruptcy auction (e.g. they're not going to take your family photo albums). Now, again, since this is the government it doesn't necessarily care about making a profit, so they'll take something that's almost worthless from you because they might be a few dollars or even pennies for it. However, when you can just roll up to an animal shelter and get a dog for free (and where the government has to pay to maintain the animal until they resell it) I think that makes pets an unlikely target of seizure unless they're some young specialty breed that's ordinarily very expensive. But in some jurisdictions you might have to hedge your bets a little, I mentioned before but in a normal bankruptcy where you're "done" owing poo poo once the bankruptcy is settled, you can shortlist a few items that have value to make them immune from seizure. It's basically so you can do things like, say, "this pearl necklace has been in my family for generations" and also to leave you with a few things (because they know a total cleanout isn't good for rehabilitation).

This is what's listed in the filing that Alex is trying to keep in this sense.

Homestead household goods 17,940 Per Appraisal
Expedition 21,463 Kelly Blue Book
Clothes 300 Per appraisal
Cat 200 Internet search results
Stacatto XC 9MM handgun 2500 Internet search results
Falcor Petra 300WinMag 22" rifle 3000 4000 new
Tudor Genva Chronometer 3000 Per Appraisal
Tag Huer Aquaracer 2000 Per Appraisal
Total 50,403

AEJ Homestead Exemption 1,633,000.00 Zillow

So one property, one vehicle, two firearms, two fancy watches, the cat, some generic clothes, and whatever constitutes household goods.

univbee fucked around with this message at 11:26 on Apr 4, 2023

univbee
Jun 3, 2004




Baron von Eevl posted:

Isn't Texas a state where your primary residence can't be seized to pay debts, even in bankruptcy?

Maybe, but I'm assuming you still have to specify it in this kind of filing. You probably do have to actually tell someone what not to seize since it's going to be somewhat subjective in some cases.

univbee
Jun 3, 2004




Yeah. It sucks, but there are historical cases where a judge let their mask slip a teeny tiny bit and then the person was able to (at least eventually) overturn their harsh punishment.

I mentioned Jim Bakker before and his case is actually a good example of this. From Wikipedia:

quote:

The United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit upheld Bakker's conviction on the fraud and conspiracy charges, voided Bakker's 45-year sentence and $500,000 fine and ordered a new sentencing hearing in February 1991.[50] The court ruled that Potter's sentencing statement about Bakker, that "those of us who do have a religion are sick of being saps for money-grubbing preachers and priests",[51] was evidence that the judge had injected his religious beliefs into Bakker's sentence.[50]

A sentence-reduction hearing was held on November 16, 1992, and Bakker's sentence was reduced to eight years. In August 1993, he was transferred to a minimum-security federal prison in Jesup, Georgia. Bakker was paroled in July 1994, after serving almost five years of his sentence.[52] His son, Jay, spearheaded a letter-writing campaign to the parole board advocating leniency.[53] Celebrity lawyer Alan Dershowitz acted as Bakker's parole attorney, having said that he "would guarantee that Mr. Bakker would never again engage in the blend of religion and commerce that led to his conviction."[54] Bakker was released from Federal Bureau of Prisons custody on December 1, 1994,[55] owing $6 million to the IRS.[56]

If it hadn't been for that statement he might still be rotting away in jail instead of out doing almost exactly what got him put in jail in the first place, and richer than anyone in this thread is. It's undeniably stupid as hell, but this kind of thing is exactly what they're trying to avoid, and unfortunately that does mean different treatment for someone who's perceived to have means and legal resources at their disposal (they're more likely to treat poorer defendants like poo poo because they don't have the resources to hire lawyers who'll do the legwork required, because getting this kind of stuff overturned does require a ton of legal work and a lot of money as a result).

univbee
Jun 3, 2004




kw0134 posted:

if he can't talk about Sandy Hook...what else is left?

Any of the 8 million other mass shootings that are definitely false flags with crisis actors.

univbee
Jun 3, 2004




Bankruptcy and its related things do have the advantage of being easier to do the less you have, and while it should be avoided as much as possible it IS a very viable strategy if you're legitimately poor, drowning in dischargeable debt and, say, only own a lovely car and rent a one-bedroom with only the most basic of amenities, because you're not going to "lose" anything if you don't have anything worthwhile to lose (and you're entitled to keep a few things). In fact, in these situations you will probably immediately wind up "richer" immediately, in that you'll suddenly have more money due to longer getting jacked by multiple debt sources increasing every month. Again, bankruptcy isn't supposed to be punitive, and societally it's known that people in unresolvable financial situations, regardless of why they're there, need some type of way out so it's not a de facto "life sentence".

univbee
Jun 3, 2004




Marsupial Ape posted:

Mike Bankston is on today’s Knowledge Fight. He commented that six figure fines are rare for individual lawyers. Real deal consequences.

Yeah, according to Bankston it was an amount that's largely unprecedented outside of fines to huge law firms (read: not aimed at an individual lawyer), the kind of stuff you'd see with the law firms companies like Samsung use.

univbee
Jun 3, 2004




If I understood right, it sounded like the plan was that Free Speech Systems was largely staying in operation in order to keep a good flow of cash going to the plaintiffs.

univbee
Jun 3, 2004




evilweasel posted:

a dollar tomorrow is worth less than a dollar today, and if you're going to lose a lot of money you'd rather lose it tomorrow than today

Again noting this is an atypical case, most bankruptcies do seek to have a set-in-stone plan, where once its details are finalized there's a precise indication of how much the debtor will be paying on a monthly or whatever basis. A lot of bankruptcy, especially personal bankruptcy, is aimed at people who mishandled their finances, possibly due to some misunderstanding or miscalculation regarding things like interest payments and the like, and they try to simplify the process into being as clear as possible so there's an actual goal to work towards and an "out". This is a bit different in Jones' case, of course, since the debt will follow him forever.

univbee
Jun 3, 2004




https://x.com/RealAlexJones/status/1768001305568579704

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univbee
Jun 3, 2004




Froghammer posted:

It's a damned if you do damned if you don't situation. Objections claiming that a grieving mother is non-responsive when she's on her fifth sentence talking about what it was like to bury her child make the jury hate you, because you're cutting off a grieving mother. Reynal let it go, Alex got pissed because he felt like he should be able to do the same ("So she's allowed to talk and I'm not?"), told Norm to make sure it didn't happen again in the second trail, and Norm came off like a monster for cutting off grieving mothers.

I know it's cliché to say this but in all honesty you kind of have to be emotionless or even sociopathic to practice at least this kind of law effectively. You have to be able to put aside your personal emotions when walking into a courtroom and do things like cut off grieving mothers when that's actually what you should do procedurally.

Whoever hired or is considering hiring you doesn't really care about "oh they were mean", they care about the case being well-fought and them getting the best chance in the courtroom, and believe it or not this holds true even for cases that the lawyer in question technically lost. A retired lawyer who teaches a course here says he got plenty of repeat business from clients that he initially lost cases for, because they recognized he did a very good job in those cases and knew what he was doing, and ultimately some cases are just "losers" but a good lawyer can still minimize penalties.

Where things mainly go sideways for clients like Alex and others in the right-wing sphere is that they have horrible attitudes and egos and don't listen to anything their lawyers say. This is also very common in divorces that reach the "we need lawyers" stage (and it applies for both men and women as clients), to the point where divorce lawyers recognize red flags like "wait they're a year or longer into legal proceedings, are hiring me out of the blue now and don't have cash flow issues, that means this client is a pain in the rear end who's burned bridges on their previous counsel" and make decisions based on that. That's really the main thing that impacts the quality of legal representation they're reduced to, if people like Alex and Trump followed their lawyer's instructions even slightly more than they currently do they'd have access to some top-tier shark lawyers and could easily have much lower judgments against them. Then again, someone who's able to listen to advice wouldn't have gotten themselves into the predicaments they respectively did (e.g. Alex Jones probably wouldn't have gone to court if he'd just stopped talking about Sandy Hook within a week or two of it happening and didn't get into the grieving family's faces).

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