We're talking tonight about the $965 million judgment against Alex Jones in his Sandy Hook defamation trial. Now, before the break, here's how plenty of Erica Lafferty described it. Money is all that Alex Jones cares about.
And the only way to even begin to start to explain,
I don't know, how he's made us feel is to hit him in the pocket. just, it's just, it's just, it's just, it's just, it's just, it's just, it's just, it's just, it's just, it's just, it's just, it's just, it's just, it's just, it's just, it's just, it's just, it's just, it's just, it's just, it's just, it's just, it's just, it's just, it's just, it's just, it's just, it's just, it's just, it's just, it's just, it's
just, it's just, it's just, it's just, it's just, it's just, it's just, it's just, the only thing that's going to prevent him from doing this to other families. It's the only shot that we ever have of him stopping the hate and the lies and the conspiracy that he's thrown down on us for the last decade.
Money is all that matters to him. And this was the only way to get a message across to him, in my opinion. - Now, Alex Jones has said today he has. gotten the money. He's put his company into bankruptcy,
which the families are challenging. And his lawyer tried to cloak it all today in the First Amendment, calling this quote "a very, very, very dark day for freedom of speech." Joining us now is an illegal analyst, criminal defense attorney,
and former New York prosecutor Paul Callan, also First Amendment expert, a constitutional scholar in the University of Miami law professor, Mary Ann Franks. Paul, obviously a huge victory for the families.
[VIDEO PLAYBACK] This award, I think you said it really may be the largest of its kind in a case like this. It may very well be the largest in American history, certainly in terms of a case that combines defamation with extreme emotional distress in a state case like this.
Is it possible a judge would knock down? I mean, this was a jury verdict. Well, it's not unusual for big, big verdicts like this to get knocked down. But let's face it, he's facing a billion dollars almost a billion dollars.
in liability right now. Even if it was knocked down to 500 million or 300 million, it still will be a colossal enormous amount of money enough to destroy him financially.
Professor Frans, for people who aren't legal experts, can you just explain where free speech ends and defamation begins? Well, it's sometimes a difficult line and we don't really get a lot of clarity from this case because