Tonight in Your Rights: Alex Jones hits the end of the road
SCOTUS clears path for Sandy Hook families to collect $1.4 billion judgment, and James Comey formally seeks to disqualify Lindsey Halligan.
Understand the day’s most important legal news with clear and concise explanations.
The Supreme Court on Tuesday cleared the final hurdle for Sandy Hook families to collect a $1.4 billion judgment they obtained against Infowars conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.
Sandy Hook families have been fighting to collect defamation judgments that they won against Jones over his outrageously cruel conspiracy theories and lies. Jones repeatedly portrayed the murdered children as actors involved in staging a massacre as part of a government plot to restrict the Second Amendment right to bear arms, even after being informed that his broadcasts led to harassment against their parents. The families prevailed in a pair of lawsuits in Texas, where Infowars is headquartered, and Connecticut, where the 2012 elementary school massacre occurred.
Jones defaulted in both cases after refusing to comply with court-ordered discovery, and civil juries in both cases delivered enormous awards after trials on damages. Lawyers for Jones claimed that the appeal presented “several unresolved constitutional issues of national significance,” but the Supreme Court found that the appeal was too unremarkable even to merit oral arguments.
The justices rejected his petition without explanation.
Attorney Michael Popok and I broke down what happened today on
.To elaborate on a few points mentioned in the video:
Trump’s former lawyer Todd Blanche reportedly pulled the plug on efforts by Justice Department attorney Ed Martin to harass FBI agent William Aldenberg for delivering emotional testimony supporting the Sandy Hook families. In an investigative report, The New York Times delivered the backstory:
“Mr. Martin, given nearly free rein inside the department by President Trump to investigate perceived administration enemies, had sent a threatening letter to an ex-F.B.I. agent who had testified, years before, against the far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones for spouting lies about the 2012 Sandy Hook school massacre.
A ticked-off Mr. Blanche asked Mr. Martin: Why pick a pointless fight that would embarrass the administration on behalf of a fringe activist? He demanded that Mr. Martin rescind the letter, according to three people briefed on a phone call between the two men.
Mr. Martin, who had used his brief tenure as the top federal prosecutor in Washington to purge government lawyers who charged Jan. 6 rioters, complied.”The Sandy Hook family’s lawyer Christopher Mattei, who is a Justice Department alumnus, denounced Martin’s stunt at the time in a press statement: “In his last gasps, Jones is once again harassing them, only now with the corrupt complicity of at least one DOJ official. It’s as disgusting as it is pathetic, and we will not stand for it.”
Following today’s ruling, Mattei told All Rise News: “The Supreme Court properly rejected Jones’s latest desperate attempt to avoid accountability for the harm he has caused. We look forward to enforcing the jury’s historic verdict and making Jones and Infowars pay for what they have done.”
Martin, who failed to get confirmed as a U.S. Attorney in Washington, D.C., is the former advocate for Jan. 6 rioters installed in the Justice Department’s so-called “Weaponization Working Group,” using that perch to pursue Donald Trump’s political enemies. On an 88-degree day this past summer, Martin stood outside the Brooklyn home of New York Attorney General Letitia James in a trench coat, and he reportedly coordinated with Trump’s ex-lawyer Lindsey Halligan on that case.
James Comey case: Will rookie Trump lawyer be DQ-d?
Attorneys for James Comey formally notified a federal judge on Tuesday about their plans to disqualify ex-Trump lawyer turned neophyte prosecutor Lindsey Halligan on the grounds that she was unlawfully appointed.
The two-paragraph notice cites the cases of two other Trump-appointed interim U.S. Attorneys determined to have been installed illegally: Alina Habba of the District of New Jersey and Sigal Chattah of the District of Nevada.
and I discussed the new development, the legal basis for disqualification, and its potential to torpedo the case against Comey entirely.A few more points about this development:
Trump-appointed interim U.S. Attorneys across the country have faced legal challenges after the 120-day temporary tenures expired without Senate confirmation or judicial approval.
The challenge against Halligan’s appointment will likely focus on the fact that her predecessor, Eric Siebert, was also appointed on an interim basis, and it remains unresolved whether a president can appoint two interim U.S. Attorneys consecutively.
One of the most staunchly conservative Supreme Court justices has argued that a president cannot do so: Samuel Alito, who wrote an opinion for the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel making that finding in 1986, long before his nomination to the Supreme Court.
If Halligan’s appointment is ruled unlawful, Comey may be able to dismiss his case entirely because her signature is the only one on his indictment, which was signed days before the statute of limitations expired on the charges against him.
So glad about the verdict. Thanks, Adam!