Alex Jones and Elon Musk are using MAGA tactics to intimidate judges.
Lisa Needham at Public Notice:
Earlier this week, The Onion’s bid to buy Alex Jones’s Infowars fell apart in a manner that was as perplexing as it was depressing. At the same time, Elon Musk was attacking a Chancery Court judge who ruled he couldn’t have his absurdly bloated Tesla pay package of $56 billion. These cases aren’t just similar because they involve two of the more repugnant people in the current media landscape. They’re also both symptoms of a judicial system that is in no way able to deal with right-wingers who have access to mountains of cash and rabid followers they can sic on judges. Back in November, The Onion — also known as “America’s Finest News Source” — won a bankruptcy auction for Infowars and announced a plan to turn it into a “very funny, very stupid” website instead of the misinformation and vitriol-filled hellscape it was under Jones. Infowars was on the auction block because Jones owed the families of victims of the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting nearly $1.5 billion in default judgments for his relentless promotion of the conspiracy theory that the shooting was staged by “crisis actors.”
Rather than pay, Jones filed bankruptcy for three of his shell companies, trying to force the Sandy Hook plaintiffs to accept $10 million, or roughly 0.6 percent of what they were awarded. He then dragged the families through bankruptcy court for two years — after having spent three years fighting the initial lawsuits — but was ultimately required to sell Infowars and other assets via bankruptcy auction to satisfy creditors.
Enter The Onion, whose bid was undertaken with the cooperation of the Sandy Hook families. The Onion’s cash bid of $1.75 million was less than the cash offered by the only other bidder, First United American Companies (FUAC), which bid $3.5 million. Normally, a bankruptcy trustee would be required to accept the highest bid because the job of a trustee is to maximize the recovery for creditors. Here, though, things were more complex than simply awarding Infowars to the highest bidder. First, the Sandy Hook families agreed to forgo some of the damages they were entitled to as a way to increase the value of The Onion’s bid. Additionally, the other bidder, FUAC, is the company that runs Jones’s grifty online supplement store. But neither of these things seemed to matter to US Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Lopez, who on Tuesday threw out The Onion’s bid, saying the auction left money on the table for the families and that the bankruptcy trustee was required to “scratch and claw and get everything you can for them.”
With this, Lopez essentially told families who backed The Onion deal that they couldn’t have the deal they wanted. Instead, they may be forced to accept Jones’s weird and complicated sham deal where he gets to sell to a friendly party he’s already affiliated with, one that almost certainly would allow Jones to continue operating Infowars. If this seems the very opposite of fair and a terrible result for families Jones has victimized, that’s because it is. Lopez’s decision leaves the families in the limbo they’ve been in for years, particularly because he declined to actually rule. Instead, he said he didn’t want another auction and told the bankruptcy trustee to return in 30 days with a plan. It’s a triumph of form over function, of procedural niceties over actual fairness. Now, the question is how much more the families can endure. They spent years being attacked by Jones and his listeners, followed by years of litigation. Besides the fight in bankruptcy court, Jones is also appealing the underlying judgments themselves, saying his free speech rights were violated. Earlier this month, a Connecticut appellate court upheld most of the verdict against Jones, but he’s vowed to take that to the state supreme court. Despite declaring bankruptcy and whining that he’s broke, Jones seems to have ample funds available to weaponize the courts against the families. All the while, Jones has complained that the cases were rigged against him and called the Connecticut judge a tyrant. During the Texas case, another Infowars host showed a picture of that judge in flames.
[...] Delaware Chancery Court Chancellor Kathaleen St. J. McCormick has now twice ruled against Musk, leading Musk to go on X and accuse her of “absolute corruption” and to call her “totally crazy” and a “radical far left activist cosplaying as a judge.” Musk’s fans have joined in, calling her insane. Several dozen law professors and lawyers have asked the Delaware State Bar Association to defend McCormick, in part because the Delaware Judges’ Code of Judicial Conduct prohibits her from speaking out about the attacks. In the future, Musk likely won’t have to deal with McCormick anyway. He’s reincorporated both Tesla and SpaceX in Texas. That state has a new business court with judges appointed by GOP Gov. Greg Abbott and will likely be highly favorable to Musk.
Trump helped normalize attacks on judges
Deep pockets have allowed both Jones and Musk to drag out cases and to go scorched earth against any opponents they face. To be fair, that’s always been the case for rich litigants. But the constant attacks on judges that rule against them — attacks that seem to come with no real consequences — are a product of the Donald Trump era. It isn’t just that Trump was able to exploit the weaknesses in the judicial system for long enough to win the 2024 election, a victory that all but ensures he will never suffer any consequences for his actions, no matter how criminal. It’s also that Trump ushered in a new age and created a permission structure where any adverse ruling from a judge is grounds for personal attacks and cries of corruption.
MAGA influencers Alex Jones and Elon Musk, along with right-wing big money, have intimidated courts with threats and caused supporters to join along.
