There Are No Girls on the Internet. As a production of I Heart Radio and unbost Creative. I'm Bridget Tott and this is There Are No Girls on the Internet. Something we talk about a lot on this podcast are the ways that people who traffic and things like lies, conspiracy theory, and disinformation are oftentimes doing it because it makes them money. It's a scam, it's a grift, and I think it's important that we frame it this way because I don't think we will ever truly beat disinformation
until we make spreading it unprofitable. And right now, spreading lies for profit is a booming business. Just ask Alex Jones. So on Thursday, a jury determined that conspiracy theorist Info Wars radio show host Alex Jones will have to pay Scarlett Lewis and Neil Heslin, the parents of a six year old child who was shot and killed in the
Sandy Hook school shooting, four point one million dollars in damages. Now, this is a lot less than what the parents had initially asked for, which was at least a hundred and fifty million dollars, but there's still a chance that I'll have to pay more impunitive damages. This trial was the first of three trials brought by the families are the victims of the shooting. The Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting happened back in twelve in Newtown, Connecticut. Twenty elementary school
kids and six school staff were shot and killed. It was a horrific tragedy, and Alex Jones spent the aftermath of that tragedy baselessly and repeatedly claiming that it never happened and that it was staged in order to increase gun control, and that the children who lost their lives and the parents who grieved them were actually actors. Well, bangin and bringing in all the actors to right down and cry, and I think people and many of the
real parents or whatever. But when you got somebody laughing, you want to watch this and walk over. Now, this is a pretty well worn conspiracy theory, and whenever a mass tragedy like a shooting happens, conspiracy theorists will claim that it didn't really happen and that it was actually a false flag operation like you'll see memes falsely claiming that the people who died were actually actors who were later seen performing in the Super Bowl or that an
actor has been used in multiple mass shootings. At this point, it's really predictable. I saw the same bogus claims floating around the web after the awful, awful shooting in Texas earlier this year. Now it's not clear if the Sandy Hook conspiracy theories started with Alex Jones, but the family say that Alex Jones, with his millions of listeners, lit a match and ignited it and turned their lives into
a nightmare. Neil Hustlind testified that Alex Jones turned his life into a quote living hell, and that because of Jones, he had been harassed and threatened, saying what was said about me and Sandy Hook itself resonates around the world. As time went on, I truly realized how dangerous it was. My life has been threatened. I fear for my life. I fear for my safety. I can't even describe the last night and a half years of the living hell that I even understil had an indoor because of the
negligence of recklessness of how it Jones. Now, Alex Jones was called in multiple lies during the cor proceedings. Honestly, it would take way too much time to list through all of them here, but here's a little sampling. At one point, the plaintiff's lawyers asked Jones if he had tried to connect Maya Guerrera Gamble, the judge overseeing the trial, to things like human trafficking and pedophilia, and he said no, and then the lawyer played a clip of him doing
exactly that. Jones went on his show and noted that the judge once worked for CPS or Child Productive Services. Judge from PSHO has been exposed. That's what you mean when you say you're taking the serious. I take this as serious cancer. And in one of the more bizarre lies that I had ever seen happen in a courtroom, Jones testified that he searched his own cell phone for any mention of Sandy Hook and that he didn't find anything.
So that means he did not give any text messages about Sandy Hook from his phone to the court as evidence, because, as he said, there weren't any. But that turned out to be alive, which was revealed in the most ridiculous
way you could ever imagine. Apparently, Jones's attorneys accidentally sent the contents of two years worth of text messages from his cell phone to the plaintiff's attorney, and then after the plaintiff's attorney did what they were supposed to do and told them this, Alex Jones's attorneys took no action
to remedy it. So that's how it was determined that there actually were tax messages on Jones's phone pertaining to Sandy Hook, and that he failed to turn them over to the court as evidence and lied about it pretty badly, I should add, Mr Jones, did you know that twelve days ago, twelve days ago, your attorney's messed up and sitting an entire digital coin of your entire cell phone with every text message you've sent for the past two years, and when informed, did not take any steps to identify
it as privileged or protected in any way, And as of two days ago, it fell free and clear in the my possession, And that is how I know he lied to me. This led the judge to giving Jones a pretty stunning reminder that he is obligated to tell the truth because he's under oath, which I feel like if the judge in court has to remin mind you that you can't lie like something is going wrong, things are not going your way. You're already under oath to
tell the truth. You've already violated that oath twice today in just those two examples. It seems absurd to instruct you again that you must tell the truth while you testify. Yes, here I am. You must tell the truth while you testify. This is not your show. You need to slow down and not take what you see as opportunities too further
the message you're wanting to. Let's take a quick break center back, So we're breaking down the Alex Jones trial for our defamation lawsuit brought by the parents of the Sandy Hook School shooting victims, and some of the different lies that Alex Jones got caught in during the proceedings, Jones also lied about being bankrupt. Basically, he is being
accused of suing himself. According to Reuters, the Sandy Hook family said that the company could not be trusted to make accurate statements about its finances, and that Jones took sixty two million from the company while burdening it with sixty five million in quote fabricated debt owed to a company that he himself owns to try to make it seem like he has less money than he actually does
to avoid having to pay more in damages. But despite what he might have tried to say in court, Alex Jones actually makes really really good money telling lies about the families of murdered children. After the plaintiffs at Herney's got the contents of his cell phone from that ridiculous mistake that Alex Jones's own lawyer, maid, Jones had to admit in court that he is not as cash strapped
as he tried to say he was. In fact, he admitted that during some peak periods, the Info war Store can break in as much as a whopping eight hundred thousand dollars a day, and that he takes in three
hundred million annually. Now. Jones has also tried to say that he lost lots and lots of money after being d platformed from major social media platforms back but actually, as Box points out, contrary to Jones's repeated assertions, he actually became more financially profitable after his company was permanently
d platformed. He might recall that Apple was the first to pull jones As podcast from their platform, and then other big tech companies like Facebook and Twitter followed suit, and it would not be an episode of this podcast if I didn't get in a little dig at Facebook.
After Jones was d platform from Facebook, Mark zucker A personally intervened to soften rules to allow his content to continue to be posted on the platform by Jones as followers, according to a report from BuzzFeed, So this is something that I think is really key. Harmful lies, disinformation of
conspiracy theories are lucrative info wars. It makes a lot of money from peddling harmful conspiracy theories that ruined people's lives, people who were already grieving for the most painful loss imaginable, and caused real world harm in doing so. People like Alex Jones who traffic and lies do it in part because it makes them money, their grifters and scammers, and there is no limit to how low they will stoop,
even lies about dead children, to make a profit. And even though this four point one million dollar judgment really isn't a lot of money, like it kind of sounds like it might be a drop in the bucket for somebody like Alex Jones, I still do hope that it sends a message that doming this arafficking and harmful lives that hurt people and ruin people's lives for profit comes
at a cost. And I want to end with some of the most powerful testimony that I think we saw, which came from Scarlett Lewis, Jesse's mom, who spoke directly to Alex Jones in the courtroom. Truth is so vital to our rural Truth is what we base our reality on. We have to agree on that to have a civil society. Sandy Hook is a hard truth, hard truth. Nobody would want to ever believe that kids could be murdered. Nobody would ever want to believe that. I understand people not
wanting to believe that. Actually I don't want to believe it. Jesse was real. I am a real mom. There's nothing out there nothing, there's records of Jesse's birth, of me. I mean, I have, I have a history, and there's nothing that you could have found because it doesn't exist. Is that I'm deep state, It's just not true. I know you know that. That's the problem. I know you know that, and you keep saying it. You keep saying it. Why why for money? Because you've made a lot of money.
Why you've said it? And She's right, Alex Jones has made a lot of money lying about her son and harming her family, and that's really the thing here. Listen. I am glad that the jury awarded Scarlett Lewis and Neil Hesland some money for what Alex Jones put them through, because it sounds like hell, and I hope they get even more in punitive damages. Frankly, I hope the families that Alex Jones has hurt take him for everything he's got.
But I know that money cannot bring back their son, Jesse, and it can't turn him back the clock on the last few years that Alex Jones has spent lying about their son, weaponizing his dead and getting its followers to harass and threaten them, And it can't undo the damage done to all of us. When harmful lives are platformed, it makes us all less safe. We saw this on
January six. It can empower and embolden really dangerous people, and we cannot have a healthy digital landscape if these kinds of dangerous lies are also profitable, because it will just incentivize trafficking in them. Let's build a world where scammers like Alex Jones can't get rich off of peddling the kinds of lies that pour Scarlet and Neil's life apart. We all deserve better. If you're looking for ways to support the show, check out our mark store at tangodi
dot com slash Store. Got a story about an interesting thing in tech, or just want to say hi, you can we just ad Hello at tangodi dot com. You can also find transcripts for today's episode at tangodi dot com. There Are No Girls on the Internet was created by me Brigita. It's a production of I Heart Radio and Unbossed Rative edited by Joey pat Jonathan Strickland as our executive producer. Terry Harrison is our producer and sound engineer.
Michael Amatta was our contributing producer. I'm your host, Bridget Todd. If you want to help us grow, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts. For more podcasts from iHeart Radio, check out the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts.