In civil litigation, persistent discovery abuse—including failure to respond to discovery orders, producing non-responsive documents, and making false representations—can justify a court granting a default judgment against a party, as demonstrated in the Sandy Hook cases where Alex Jones and Infowars were found to have engaged in years of discovery violations across multiple cases, leading to a default judgment in four cases.
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Alex Jones / Sandy Hook Default Judgment HearingAjouté :
I have your announcement for the record, please. Mr. Bankston.
>> Sure. Mark Bangston appearing for all of the plaintiffs in this matter.
>> All right. And Mr. Reeves.
>> Brad Reeves for the defendants in all these matters.
>> All right. So, Mr. Bankston and Mr. Reeves, we had a brief conversation about what we are going to cover today.
Um, and now that we're on the record, we're going to go ahead and get started.
Mr. Bankston, all of the motions today are yours. Do you have a preference on what order you would like to take them?
Well, actually, your honor, I kind of figured uh for convenience and efficiency sake, um we do a presentation that kind of brings up the histories of the cases, and because these discovery disputes kind of weave in and out of each other, I was planning to kind of deal with them collectively.
>> Do the same material over and over again.
>> Yeah. Uh I noticed a lot of overlap reading the briefs getting ready for today. So, that that I think is an excellent suggestion. And I'm ready when you are.
>> Okay. Uh, your honor, I'm going to share my screen if that's okay.
>> Yes, please.
>> Okay.
And I'm gonna minimize these windows here so I can see. All right. So, your honor, as you know, we're going to be covering all four cases. And I think there's no better place than the start than the beginning. Um, so the first thing that we are going to do if Oh, right. There we go. All right.
Your honor, the first case that we're dealing with today is Hust v. Jones. Um, this was the defamation case involving Infowars's allegations that Mr. Heslin was lying about holding his dead child after Sandy Hook. Uh, Mr. Hessin had appeared on Megan Kelly's show to push back against Mr. Jones allegations that this entire incident was fake. Um, after he did that, he was retaliated against when they said that he was lying about having held his son. uh that case was brought back in 2018 and in fact a discovery order was entered on August 31st, 2018. So it's sort of happy third birthday to our discovery order in this case. That order which to this date has never been responded to in any way, shape or form required written discovery and deposition of all the defendants.
About 30 pages of written discovery and then for each of the four defendants and the defendants refused to respond to that discovery. Um, and actually it's correct to say they did respond, but their responses simply said, "The court does not have the authority to to order us to answer this discovery, so we're not going to do it." Um, so they basically just told the court to pound sand. We immediately filed a motion for contempt, being very alarmed with that.
Uh, they appealed the following day. Um, so for a moment, let's stick a pin in Mr. Hin's case, that second motion for contempt, because that went up on appeal. And that brings us to our next case, which is Lewis versus Jones. Uh Mrs. Lewis uh is the co-parent with Mr. Hustlin of Jesse Lewis, a victim of Sandy Hood. Uh Mrs. Lewis brought her suit a little bit later. Her suit in alleges intentional infliction of emotional distress because Infowars made false statements about the circumstances of the death of her child.
In that case, the court likewise entered discovery orders on January 25th and March 8th, 2019 that also required written discovery and deposition of all the defendants.
The defendants refused to respond to that discovery. Uh they did show up for deposition, but they failed to prepare their corporate representative for the companies. Uh that was Rob Due. And as noted by the court during the hearing, it was a completely useless deposition.
Mr. D did not have any idea what he was supposed to be talking about. Had no idea he was supposed to prepare for the deposition and basically answered I don't know to every single question.
We filed a motion for sanctions. On the eve of that hearing, defendant provided a document dump filled with non-responsive materials. Um, and we'll talk a little bit more about those materials in a bit here, but for the moment, we can just say everybody at that moment was in agreement that this discovery production was a mess.
Defendants council during that hearing begged the court not to enter actual sanctions on the record and instead said that he would agree to privately pay $8,000 in attorney's fees and surrendered his client's TCPA motion except for a single legal issue. They wanted to argue, the only thing they wanted to argue was that Mrs. Lewis could not bring a claim if she had not been personally identified. Um, and we knew this argument was bunk because, for instance, um, when Natalie Holloway disappeared in Aruba, uh, her mother, Elizabeth Holloway, was able to sue the National Inquirer when the National Inquirer made false statements about her daughter's disappearance. Um, so we knew person the identification of the plaintiff wasn't an issue. So, we agreed to forego the component of the motion seeking to strike the TCPA motion because we knew we had it in the bag by then. Those appeals actually turned out to be a little bit differently. So, we aren't going to be accepting those kind of stipulations in the future. Uh, but for the moment, that's what happened there. And discovery was still a very big mess.
What happened next in the chain of events is actually the Connecticut case was part of the same process. Uh, as you know that there is a different group of parents who are suing in Connecticut.
they have undergoing exactly the same kind of anti-slat process except Connecticut's deadlines on that are a little more generous. So they were actually going a little bit after the Lewis case. So once the Lewis case happened and that discovery problem, we then had the discovery problems in Lafer and these become relevant to our cases a little bit later. What had happened there is that by March 2019, the defendants had violated numerous discovery orders. Uh and this is the Connecticut Supreme Court kind of summarizing what happened in that case.
defendants's local council at that time, this is, you know, March and April, started saying that he was in an ethically ambiguous position and he could not discharge his obligations on the pending discovery orders in a way that would permit him to put his signature to a document. He said the discovery situation is a mess right now.
That's exhibit five to our brief.
Judge Bellis gave one final extension and then defendants produced a dozen files of child pornography.
Pliff's council and FB in Connecticut informed the FBI. My counterpart Chris Maddie up there. Um, and after Infowars was informed, Jones appeared on his show and threatened Pliff's council. I mean, none of this was public at this point.
This was Jones making it public. Jones called Pliff's Council gang members, offered a bounty on their heads. And you have to remember that to Jones, all of us are one big group. We're we're a conspiracy of Democratic operative lawyers who have been recruited and and by his words by George Soros and put on payroll and Hillary Clinton is directing us. Um and and he's the we're the people he's coming after. Uh specifically in this video too, he was threatening Chris Maddie directly.
Now what I want to show you now, your honor, u this is our plaintiff's hearing exhibit one. This is a video clip uh from April 2019. This was actually admitted and played in court uh in our last hearing in this case in December 20th uh 2019, the sort of hearing that we're continuing right now. So, this has already been admitted and it's part of the record. Um but I'm going to offer it now because I want to play a video for you of what Jones said right after all of that happened.
>> All right.
>> Um also, I should warn this for folks who are on the live stream, this video I'm about to play is extremely not safe for work. Um, it has a lot of profanity in it. Um, also, even if you're okay with the profanity, if you have children in the room, this this video gets a little frightening at that point. So, I just wanted to warn the live stream people.
>> Thank you.
>> You say when you call up, oh, we'll protect you. We found the child born. I like women with big giant heads and big asses. I don't like kids like goddamn rapists.
In fact, this you [ __ ] are gonna get you [ __ ] [ __ ] We're done right there. I know I know I should delet $1 million.
$1 million gang member $1 million to put your head on a pike.
$1 million, [ __ ] I'm going to get your ass. You understand me? Now you're not Texas, you sit.
So you get ready for that. I don't usually use French right now. Out of hundreds of thousands of emails they got and they know right where to go. What a nice group of Democrats. How surprising.
What nice people. Chris Maddie. Chris Maddie. Let's zoom in on Chris Maddie.
Oh, nice.
What a good American. What a good boy.
You think you'll put on me?
Anyways, I'm done. YOU WANT YOU GOT IT.
I'm not into like your Democratic party, you suckers. So, get ready.
You little white shoe boy jerk off. Son of [ __ ] I can't handle if they want war. They're going to war. I am sick of these people.
They bunch of chicken craps. They're taking this country over. They want to attack real Americans. If you want blood, you got blood on the streets, man. I mean, I am not going to sit here in my life and have these dirt bags say that I've done these things I haven't done and then know where to go and easil and find this perfect thing. It's ridiculous how obvious it is. You think I roll over and spray crap out my ass and show my belly and piss all of you?
You just summoned war. So, get ready.
And I'm just asking the Pentagon and the Patriots that are left and and 4chan and 8 and and anonymous anybody that's a patriot. I am under attack and if they bring me down they'll bring you down. I just have to I'm under attack and I summon the me. I summon all of it against the enemy. I will never sell out to these people. Anyways, >> okay.
>> So that is what Mr. Jones said.
Obviously, that was very very disturbing to us. Um, right after that, Judge Bellis uh assessed sanctions and struck Info War's motion to dismiss.
She cited the production of child pornography, the despicable, potentially criminal threats. Uh there was also a fraudulent affidavit submitted up there in Connecticut that was not actually signed by Mr. Jones. Uh but the court said even if you ignore all of that, which is completely unprecedented, there were still multiple failures to comply with these discovery deadlines, defendants would not fairly comply with their discovery obligations.
Judge Bella said at that time that she wasn't going to grant a default, but if there is continued offuscation and delay and tactics like I've seen up to this point, I will not hesitate after a hearing and an opportunity to be heard to default the Alex Jones defendants if they from this point forward continue with their behavior with respect to discovery. You can see that in exhibit six.
The next thing that happened was Hessin versus Jones comes back to Texas. As you remember, that case had gone up on appeal after they refused to answer discovery and we had brought in a motion for contempt.
That was dismissed on August 30th, 2019.
For the next month, Infowars did absolutely nothing, just like they've done in this case. Actually, Judge Jenkins then held a hearing on October 3rd, 2019. And you can see from that hearing, he is extremely puzzled why after everything that's happened in this case, these defendants are still refusing to respond to discovery and will not obey his orders. Now, I'm sure you know Judge Jenkins him being one of the more senior judges in these, you know, this last generation. Um, and lawyers around here will tell you, you do not get sanctions from Judge Jenkins.
Judge Jenkins, I think, to his credit, is a judge who vigorously pursues consiliatory actions and tries to work things out and really wants to give people a chance. you know, he didn't sanction immediately in in in the Lewis case. Um, the idea of Judge Jenkins granting a contempt sanction and a $25,000 fine is pretty extreme to most people in this courthouse. I haven't found anybody who's ever heard of it happening. But at that point, he was upset and went ahead and granted the motion and granted us our attorney's fees.
They had another chance to comply because right at the same time that that had happened, Mr. Hund's claim for intentional affliction for emotional distress came for a hearing on expedited discovery and once again for the now again in Mr. Hust's case Judge Jenkins ordered discovery for the claim for the IED claim that discovery order was entered on October 18th 2019 that required written discovery and depositions of Jones Free Speech Systems and their chief editor Paul Watson.
So, let's talk about what happened there. First, the defendants gave false and evasive answers to discovery. And what you need to understand, as you see from our exhibits in here, the written discovery that was served in the court's discovery order is very simple stuff. It is very simple. It's it's stuff like identify all the videos about Sandy Hook. Identify all the employees who were involved in those videos. Uh identify for every statement, you know, here's 17 statements you made about Sandy Hook. Identify your source of those statements. identify the methods of communication that you used in the office. All of them were not answered.
They were given answers with things like our sources were newspapers and things we found on the internet. When they asked who was involved in these episodes, uh, Alex Jones and Rob do and maybe some other people. We don't know.
We we can't figure it out. Uh, they would never tell me what videos there are. Any of the most basic information in interrogatories and request for production completely evaded. They failed to prepare Mr. D again. And this is what's really shocking. Judge Jenkins was clearly shocked by this that they the exact same opponent who was vigorously chewed out about not being prepared. They show up again and perform the same mockery of the deposition again. In fact, of both depositions, they failed to remedy the document production. And we're going to talk about this a little bit later. There's some really alarming testimony about what has and hasn't been produced in this case and that there should be a lot more production that has not happened.
And that was confirmed in some of those depositions.
And those depositions also revealed other alarming irregularities. We know that there was no um discover I mean no litigation hold out in this case. It was never until 2019 was there any communication with inside infowars to tell people to preserve documents. And at that point they just sent an email to every employee saying hey if you have any documents collect them and bring them to us. Nobody actually went and searched or monitored any of this. The very employees who may have been giving the most damning testimony were told to go look for documents on their own their own files. And what happened? Not a single employee returned a single document.
The defendants also failed to produce crucial evidence. And this is at the heart of it is mostly the videos that are at the heart of plaintiff's claim which we don't yet have. Uh as you may as you know from the briefing, very soon after we sued, all of their videos started being taken down off of line. So none of them are publicly available like they used to be. Infowars has made at this point our best estimate is over a hundred videos on Sandy Hook. Um we didn't have that. And of course we also don't have their social media.
One thing that the briefing gives you a flavor for is all those things. I don't think the briefing quite gives you a flavor for how evasive Mr. Jones was on these issues on things like his sources and identifying those and interrogatories or the methods of communication or the videos any of it.
And I so I want to show you just about 10 minutes from Mr. Jones uh November 2019 deposition because I do think it gives you a flavor of the bad faith we've seen in this case. And this is pl hearing exhibit number two which I'm going to play now.
Ambulances came an hour and a half later. That's not true. Right.
>> I don't have a timeline on it.
>> Are you going to claim in this lawsuit that those ambulances came an hour and a half later?
>> I'm going to have to check that.
>> Well, I asked you to check it. Did you asked you in discovery to check it? Did you?
>> I won for memory. I believe there's some conflicting reports.
>> I'm not asking what your memory was. I'm asking if you checked it.
I >> think I did check it. I don't uh >> What were the results of you checking it?
>> I don't have that in front of me.
>> And whatever it was, you didn't give it to me either, right?
In discovery.
Oh, >> correct.
>> Oh, I thought that was rhetorical.
>> No, I don't ask rhetorical questions, Mr. Jones. I want testimony.
>> Oh. Um, I I don't have that in front of me. I can't speak accurately, though.
Okay. What was the question?
>> The question is you said right after that the way back machine discussion, you said the word is that school was shut down for those years. That's what the records show. That was your argument. Correct.
I'm I'm specifically talking about the other articles I was talking about. Yes, >> that's what I'm asking you about right now. Those records, what are you talking about?
>> I'd have to go pull them up.
>> And you haven't done that.
>> Um, no, not No, not recently.
>> You've been under lawsuit now for over a year on Sandy Hook related cases, multiple cases. And you haven't done anything to go try to find what your sources for these claims are, have you?
>> I've done a lot of work.
Well, you were asked in interrogatories, weren't you, to identify your sources for all your Sandy Hook claims, including this one? You were asked that, right?
>> I don't remember.
>> Okay. You don't remember saying you couldn't figure out what your sources were? Is that what you're saying?
>> I don't understand.
Let's just ask you right now. Are you able to figure out what your sources are?
Yes, I could specifically I mean now now that I understand what you're asking, I could uh go find out.
>> So if I wanted to know when you say the records show that the school was closed down, you could produce those records.
>> I could show what I was talking about at that point.
>> Yeah. Or you could produce whatever you were relying on as your source, right?
>> Um now that you've specified, >> you haven't done that though, have you?
>> Um I'm not I don't have a law degree.
>> Okay. Um, when you if you were asked the question, produce to me your source or records or information that you relied on to say the school was closed. That's something you could do.
>> Yes. I don't I don't know that would be u what you're looking for. We had >> Let's talk about that Bloomberg email that comes up. This idea that there was an email sent the day before Sandy Hook saying get ready next 24 hours there's going to be a big event. that email.
You've been asked for that email and you say you don't have it, right?
>> We were we we were covering reports of the email that was sent out to the activist groups that had been in the news.
>> Where were you covering it? What do you mean? Were you covering it?
>> Um we were covering the reports of them activating their their their anti-gun rights organization.
>> Okay. Well, see here's the thing, Mr. Jones. First, I thought there must be some email coincidentally sent on the day before Sandy Hook that Bloomberg or his people sent that you must be willfully misinterpreting or something like that. But the problem is nobody who's looked at this has been able to find any evidence that such an email has ever existed. And I want to know if you can explain that.
>> Well, I'm just not taking your cert that's the case. Well, I'm ask that's why I've asked you questions in discovery and you haven't been able to produce that email to me, have you?
>> Well, you guys were asking if we have an email in our emails.
>> I was reporting on other news reports about an alert they put out to their group.
>> Right. Could you find those reports if you needed to? Could you identify your source?
>> Um, well, I mean, a you can hold back a source if you want to, but I I can't remember being online. I can try to go find that again.
>> What do you mean you can hold back a source if you want to? What does that mean? I mean I mean if I have a confidential source on something, I'm allowed to hold back the confidential source for their protection, but that's not what's happened with this case. I remember the news articles about it that we reported on.
>> So you could find those, right?
>> I should be able to.
>> Okay. What do your staff use to send messages to each other in terms of internal applications?
>> Do they use Slack?
>> I don't know. I've heard that name.
>> Wait, hold on. Let's back up here. When you say you don't know if they use Slack, when you had to answer this question about what methods of communication were used by members of your staff among each other and which sources, what exactly did you do to find that out?
>> I mean, the only communications with Sandy Hook are like email and verbal and some guests on the show.
>> That's not what I asked you, Mr. Jones.
What did you do to find out what methods of communication your staff used?
I talked to the staff and I had the lawyer ask the staff to handle it. I you know >> what members of staff did you talk to?
>> Oh, I talked to like Rob Doo and I talked to Zimmerman.
>> All right, let's talk about Rob do first.
>> You asked Rob D. Hey, how do infowars employees communicate with each other?
What did he say?
>> Objection form.
>> It was just like, hey, give them all the Sandy Hook stuff.
That's what you said to Rob do.
>> Yeah. Just like any any type of communications on this just you know give it to the lawyer.
>> How did that help you answer this question?
>> This question is what methods of communication were used? How did you answer that question?
>> I asked I mean I mean I I know the memo's communication like they talked through email in person and uh over the phone stuff like that.
>> You just told me you don't know if they use Slack or not. Right. Well, when you said the word slack, I've heard of that before.
>> Okay. Why is that not in your interrogatory response?
>> Because I never I've never thought of that and I don't I don't even know they use that. I've just uh I've heard of a bunch of other names, too.
>> Let's just make sure we have this really clear. When that question asked you to identify all methods of communication, including any applications, messaging programs, etc. You didn't make any steps to find out if there were messaging programs. You didn't do that.
I've not seen anybody I've not used Slack and I see anybody use it.
>> Again, that's not what I'm asking you.
I'm asking you for the purposes of these answering these questions. You didn't do anything.
>> I I mean, I did say provide anything about Sandy Hook.
>> I mean, the truth is you didn't have any problem with what he was doing at Sandy Hook. He said he did a good job.
>> Well, I had only seen this report like as you see in the report. I didn't even know he was up there doing that. I'm like, "Wow, what's this?" cuz I because I saw thing with his brother, his his uncle that was good. The other stuff I saw, I guess later I didn't like him from putting together watching all this.
>> Well, you didn't fire him for it. You kept him around for another year, didn't you?
>> No, he wasn't. I don't think he was being paid then.
>> Well, the truth of the matter is you didn't have a problem with Sandy Hook.
You had a problem with him embarrassing you at a Trump rally.
>> One thing you're right about is I do need to I guess spend time and burrow into this more. It's just it's it's just because it's like I mean I remember a lot of it. I remember what happened and I think if I go dig even deeper I can I can I get the specifics but I remember telling them try to find out the specifics.
>> You've now this is your second deposition in a Sandy Hook case. You got more going up in up in Connecticut.
You've had discovery in Connecticut.
You've had discovery three times in Texas and you're telling me you think you need to go burrow in and figure out what happened?
>> Well, no. Now that I get these kind of questions, I don't think you were asking me these exact questions last time.
>> I was very much asking you about Mr. Bondian when he was terminated in last deposition. Wasn't I, Mr. Jones?
>> I don't I don't remember this video. Did you show me this line?
>> I did not show you this video. That's not what I asked, is it? I asked you.
>> I went and I guess try to get invoices or something. I guess you're saying >> actually Mr. Jones, your document production in this case shows you did that in May 2018, right after you were sued. The truth of the matter, Mr. Jones, is you knew immediately after being sued that Dan Bodondi was going to be a liability for you, didn't you?
Uh, no.
>> If you had daily show logs that mentioned that Sandy Hook was discussed on the show, you should be able to produce those videos. Correct.
>> Uh, it depends. A lot of the live show was only archived on YouTube and so then that was taken down.
>> Okay. When you talk about the videos that were lost that you don't have because the YouTube channel was taken down and the only place you had them saved was natively on YouTube. You don't have those videos. And so by extension, I don't have those videos. Correct.
>> A lot. No, those videos were duplicated on other people's channels. I've I've I've seen what you guys have. You have basically everything we ever talked about that.
>> Am I asking you if we have basically everything or am I asking you if we have everything? I I don't know if you have everything.
>> Okay. You don't know if I have everything. Correct.
>> Okay.
>> You don't use a teleprompter on your show.
>> No.
>> Okay. And all these videos, you just rattle them off, right? You say portaotties, Bloomberg email, green screen, helicopters in the woods, school was closed, video showing it was falling, rotting apart, SWAT team. You just rattle them off without a telephone.
>> I remember a video of the rotting school. I remember the helicopter video.
I remember remember the chemical attack in Syria being staged. text down public >> and you were you were able to do that without a teleprompter. But today sitting in deposition ever since you got sued all of a sudden you can't remember anything, right?
>> No, I remember seeing the I because I remember like the photos and video of the rotting school and the mold and the stains all the floor and all that stuff.
I just can't but if it's specifically in a deposition then you'll say, "Well, where is that?" And I and then trying to actually pull that very thing up in my head right here. I don't have photographic memory of the exact thing.
>> Yeah, I've been asking for a year, haven't I?
>> Still don't have it, do I?
>> Correct.
I just want to be able to answer all this just exactly right. And that's why I can't answer a lot of it because I don't want I mean I want to be accurate as much as possible.
>> Okay.
you. So for November during his deposition, I dealt with that for about three hours. Um we didn't get anywhere with Mr. Jones. Same thing with his corporate representatives as you saw. Um the entire thing was a mess. They despite everything that happened were still not cooperating in discovery in any meaningful way. We had a hearing on that motion and at that their council at that time said the following after the hearing did not go too well. He said, 'I will represent to this court that, you know, regardless if this goes on appeal.
That doesn't preclude me from it precludes it stays the court as far as filing motions, etc. It certainly doesn't preclude me from providing additional videos, documents, and information they're seeking during that period of time. And I fully intend to do so. I've already started that process.
So again, they're asking now for basically an instruction that you know, and then he's cut off. Judge Jenkins asks, "So what you're saying is you're going to continue to comply with the order that includes written discovery, which is the exhibit to my order, ordering you to produce those things?"
Mr. Jeff said, "Absolutely, judge. I'm representing to the court that I have spent countless hours understanding infrastructure, what exists, etc., etc., and I am certainly going to comply with that 100% stay or no stay moving forward." Absolutely.
The court replies, "So your point is let it come back to the trial judge who's going to try the case and see just how quickly you do that." Exactly. And how compliant you are with the order before we make potentially outcome determinative decisions. Mr. Jeff says, "Exactly right."
On December 20th, Judge Jenkins granted the motion for sanctions and assessed $100,000 in attorney's fees for all the work that we had done in deposition, bringing the motion, etc. The order holds the default judgment under advisement. And I think as you'll see from that order and from the transcript, Judge Jenkins opinion was that he only needed to decide the things that were immediately important then, which was the TCPA motion and whatever fees we needed. But whatever remedies needed to flow from whatever actions happened here in this court, that needed to be saved for the trial judge who was going to have more control over the trial because he knew he was retiring. I think also another cardinal sort of principle of judge Jenkins judicial philosophy is that if it is possible to decide less, it is necessary to decide less. And in that case, he did not want to decide something that he thought you should be deciding, which is here, we're going to give him another chance. The guy made a promise. He made a representation to the court to try to avoid a bigger sanction by saying we're going to get this taken care of. We're going to make sure that this happens and that that we don't, you know, years don't go by and all this information is lost and we can't ever figure it out again.
The court's order says defendants represented at the December 18 hearing that they would continue to supplement discovery to belatedly comply with the October 18 order. The amount of supplemental discovery is a factor that will be considered if the motion for sanctions is reconsidered on remand.
That's exhibit one is that order.
Now, for the next year and a half, we go on the appeals and the defendant did not supplement any discovery. They just completely disregarded their promise to Judge Jenkins. They they got out from under fire by using that promise and then they ignored it. Uh they then continued an appeal where obviously the the court of appeals was very frustrated of them in the Lewis appeal and noted that in that record. Um and then in the second one in the Hesland uh appeal, they went ahead and sanctioned them. So now we have another fine against them from the court of appeals because they're still engaging in frivolous litigation.
I need to mention right now too before we get kind of caught up to date about Infowars sham defense because this becomes very important later after they start producing documents. Um this is in our supplemental brief on page 37.
Essentially infowars defended the IED case and Mr. Hess's case the same way they did Mrs. Lewis's case which is to say they argued that because Mr. H was not identified in any of the videos claiming IED as opposed to his defamation claim that he could not pursue those IED claims. Obviously, we thought this law was bunk, but this is there's something more important going on. Is in Mr. Hland's case, we requested from them transcripts of all these videos and they wouldn't provide them.
They said we don't have them. They didn't give us any transcripts of these videos. In fact, they it came to be that there was never any transcripts of a certain amount of these videos because some of them had come off of YouTube and nobody had any transcripts in the appeal. It's even talked about how there are no transcripts. Infowars argued because we could not prove we had no transcript to prove anything. And they also told the court in multiple representations in these certain videos that they enumerated um we never identified Mr. Hess. Well, it turns out close to the end of the appeal, we discovered buried in the 5,000page record of the Lewis case that attached to an unrelated motion was a partial transcript of one of those videos. And that video, although Mr. Hland's name was misspelled, so we didn't catch it when we searched, they identify Mr. Hland in that video. In other words, the entire appeal that m that Infowars launched against Mr. on his IED case was based on a false representation by Infowars that they didn't identify him when they knew that they did. Now, Infowars claims that it's all my fault that I should have found this errant transcript in the giant Lewis record before this happened. And maybe we should have found it earlier, and that's certainly true. That that doesn't excuse them lying about the fact that they didn't identify him to multiple courts.
So, all of that was a waste of time, but that actually becomes way more important later, and we'll talk about that in a minute.
Let's talk now about coming back on remand after their appeals failed. They were remanded and a mandate was issued on June 4th. And so let's talk about what they're out of compliance of at that moment.
>> June 4th, 2021.
>> Correct, your honor, of this year.
Right. So this is just a few months ago.
And they came back and they are out of compliance first with the Heslin IED discovery order with a default under advisement. That's everything we just talked about where they had responded but their responses were absolutely bunk and their depositions were a complete joke.
The next thing they're out of compliance with is the Heftlin Heslin defamation discovery order, the one from 2018, which they had already been held in contempt for and they had never answered in any way, shape, or form.
They were al also out of compliance with the Lewis IED order for which they had already paid attorneys fees and admitted that the discovery situation there was a mess.
They were also out of compliance with the Pausner defamation discovery request. Here's the next case that we haven't even talked about yet because Pausner went up on appeal without any discovery first. We went ahead and just took that one up on appeal because the case was so strong. We didn't feel like we needed any discovery to to have any they didn't have any of these complaints like they've had in their later cases.
Um but they had discovery served at the outset of those cases and after the the um TCPA motion was denied ever since then they've just completely ignored them. So that's everything that was pending on on remand. And what I thought was going to happen, your honor, because I knew when they made that promise, they weren't going to supplement anything during the appeal, I knew that that was a lie. But what I thought might happen is when we got back on remand, I thought the moment that the Texas Supreme Court dismisses their case, they would realize, okay, now we have to do something. And at Reand, they would get in a panic and they produced a bunch of things and try to show that they were in compliance with discovery. And that I would have to be arguing to you that that wasn't good enough. that that that two years later trying to make sense of any of this all would just be a mess.
That's what I was going to have to do.
That is not what happened. Nothing could be further from what happened.
From June 4th to August 26, 2021, defendants did absolutely nothing in terms of any kind of discovery. They they there's nothing been produced. It wasn't until a couple days before this hearing that I was inundated with some documents. And so let's talk about what's happened during this entire summer that Infowars has thrown in the trash.
First, there was June and for that entire month, there was no efforts made to comply with Discovery in any case.
And this was just like in 2019 when Mr. Hustllin's case came back from remand.
And for an entire month, they had done nothing. And Judge Jenkins held them in contempt for that. Well, at the end of the month of them doing nothing, we went ahead and filed our supplemental brief in support of the default sanctions in Mr. Hust's IED case.
We move to July and in July still nothing is happening. On July 6th we bring the Hustlin and Lewis motions for contempt. We had reached out to them and that's an exhibit you'll see is our our July 2nd letter. It's their only exhibit to their response. Um and that letter fully explains to them everything that's going on. Why aren't you responding? And they at that point basically say we have no idea what you're talking about.
Please send us any discovery you say hasn't been responded to. So at that point it's clear that they haven't even been working on Hessen and Lewis and the motions for contempt. So we file those motions. We also at that point send them the pausner discovery request too and say these haven't been responded to.
On July 9th, three days later an oral hearing. We all met together and at that time I went through kind of a mini version of what I'm presenting to you now and we also reminded them of their discovery problems in all three of those cases. One of the things you'll remember I specifically reminded them of on the record is because the defendants in Fontaine had just filed a motion to un withdraw their their deemed admissions.
I told you that I expected for this hearing when we were scheduling this hearing that I expected one of the things we'd have to accommodate was a motion to withdraw deemed admissions in the Pausner case because those hadn't been answered. So, I was expecting that to happen in a matter of days after the July 19th, 9th hearing because if I heard that, I'd get those denied and served up with a response. Nothing happened. We gave them a deadline until July 16th, I believe, to respond and they didn't. Uh, but we went ahead and gave them some more time just to see if they would. They didn't. So, on July 27th, we filed the Pausner motion for sanctions, which goes ahead and describes all of this. They continue to do nothing.
August opens and there's a couple developments that happened in Laferty in August that I need to talk to you about.
We filed a supplemental brief about this on August 10th. So on August 6, that Friday, there were two orders entered.
First was a sanction order for continuing failure to comply with discovery. They're they're still they're in the same place we are. They've been remanded. Now they're trying to go back and figure out and try to see if any of the discovery is getting answered. They have discovery orders there that they're not being compliant with. The second order was that they disclosed confidential information from a plaintiff's deposition. This, your honor, this was astonishing. They they had started a plaintiff's deposition which at the beginning of the record was designated as attorney's eyes only confidential. Then during the actual deposition, defendants council, uh, the local council, Mr. Randonsza has working up there in Connecticut. Um, wrote down the things that plainif was saying in the deposition, put them in a motion and filed them publicly during the deposition itself. Didn't even wait for a transcript and file that publicly and disclose that information. Now, you'll see from the court's orders on this what's clearly about to happen in LA, which is that now that Laferdy, just like in this case, had already threatened the default sanction if any of this keeps up. Um, that's clearly what's being happening now because the court's orders there takes very extreme language that you can see what's what it's doing is saying that the plaintiff is now prejudiced from further prosecuting their claim and that the plaintiff is also prejudiced from taking additional depositions. And the court also says that witnesses are going to be rightly afraid to appear in this case or give forthright testimony believing that their confidential information will be disclosed. So, all of those things about how the plaintiff can't even prosecute their case anymore. It's pretty obvious what's going to happen in Lafrey. Um, I had thought that that would actually be taken care of by the time of this hearing, but their August 24th hearing was actually just a status conference call. They have a hearing set for September 24th. Um, there was actually another sanctions pending motion uh regarding some analytics information that was produced that is also um extremely troubling. Um, so it's pretty clear where we're heading in Latin.
They're they're heading for the same place.
Now, we get into the second week of August. Defendants still haven't done anything. And at this point, we get this very strange email where you'll see in hearing exhibit five is that Mr. Reeves stated that his client does not possess what production has been provided to date. He asked plaintiffs to send me the production you have indeed received to date. So, I'm not sure how you would even supplement your own discovery if you don't even know what you've produced. But at this point, now this, as you may remember, this is six days before the originally scheduled hearing of this matter. They were asking me to send them the production because they don't even have a week later, we still don't have anything. And their council wrote again asking if I would agree to a protective order for the overdue documents. Council said the documents were ready to produce, but were being withheld because defendants require such an order to be entered. And we told them very straight up, you cannot seek protection over discovery that is already due. Rule 192 requires you to make that motion or seek protection within the time period for the responses. And three-year-old discovery that you are already under contempt for not producing, you cannot have a next week. We still don't have documents. We get two emails that day.
The first one very early in the morning.
council wrote to us asking for consent for a motion for consolidated discovery plan. Um we had no interest in that. We told them we look we just the court asked us to do a discovery plan. We just did it. We're now days before the hearing. Uh we'll talk to you next week after the hearing if you want to talk about this but we have no interest in doing a discovery plan right now. He said he was finalizing document production which will only be produced in the Lewis matter due to the confidentiality of certain documents.
But council stated you will have these documents today.
We did not get those documents.
>> I'm sorry, Mr. Benson. Which of the binders has these exhibits?
>> Oh, I'm sorry, your honor. So, these exhibits that I'm talking about right now, hearing exhibits, uh, were uploaded to the box last night after defendants filed their responses. So, they're in in >> Oh, so they're not in one of the binders you gave?
>> No, unfortunately not. These are these are in response response.
>> Okay, that's fine then. I just thought I would flip through as you were talking.
That's okay.
But yeah, they are in there noted as pliff hearing exhibit. So the >> um so then later that day or that evening, we didn't get the documents.
Council wrote us at that that night and said he will be moving for a protective order in Hesland and Pausner and that defendants intended to withhold controventional documents and no documents were produced that day.
Then on August 26, just a couple days ago at 6 PM, council provided about 6,000 pages of supplemental production and as promised, withheld confidential documents from both and Posner cases despite the fact that he has no ability to object to those cases and he's under contempt in the Helen case.
Let's talk about what was produced in that 6,000 pages because this is where it really starts to get interesting. The first thing that was produced was nearly 2500 pages of transcripts of Infowars videos. And there's a lot of reasons why this is very alarming. First of all, it might be excusable say if there were 2500 pages of transcripts buried somewhere in Mr. Jones's corporate files that were difficult to locate and they're just now finding them now.
Something like that. The problem, your honor, is that these transcripts were prepared by a court reporter. These were made the a great proportion of these transcripts were made in June and July of 2019. They had them commissioned to be made by a court reporter. That was months before they had told me in the Hesland case there were no transcripts and they didn't produce any of these transcripts, but they had them the whole time prepared by a court reporter. And what's shocking about that, of course, is that much later in that case, they then attempted to argue to me that they didn't identify Mr. Peslin and that my case was deficient because I didn't have transcripts and the entire time they had actually prepared them of a court reporter. The other thing that's very disturbing about these transcripts is there are more transcripts than there are videos that I have been produced.
And right here on the screen you'll see a list of of dates. They're all titled differently. Some of them have episode titles, some of them just have dates. Um all of these dates are dates I don't have videos for. And these are videos that mention Sandy Hook and they're videos that they obviously provided to a court reporter to transcribe, but they never provided to me. This isn't tip of the iceberg, too, because I know about a ton of videos that aren't on this list.
Uh, but it is extremely disturbing to me that these transcripts exist and these videos existed. They were never produced to me and in fact hidden and used to try to get Mr. Hust's case dismissed.
The next thing that we they produced, this the bulk of what they produced is 2100 pages of Google Analytics screenshots and Excel spreadsheets. What this is is a bunch of data about entry links, keywords, search terms, and exit pages for the infowars.com website. This is not responsive to anything in our discovery requests that are issued in this motion. Um, none of the discovery that occurred prior to ReMan has anything to do with this. Uh there is one request we issued after remand that's not related to this motion that was uh producer analytics or web traffic for every video identified in planer's petition and some of the videos in planer's petition have promotional pages on the infowars website here. Um but ultimately this is kind of not really responsive to anything. I mean, there's buried in here is some responsive information, I guess, to that, but not fully responsive, but mostly this has nothing to do with what we're talking about today. We may end up having to talk about it later.
The next thing they gave us is there's this uh gentleman Well, not a gentleman.
>> Mr. Bangston, is it you is it your are you trying to say that they just included that to clog your review?
>> Um, I don't I don't want to make that representation, your honor. I certainly hope that's not why. I mean, I'm I'm hoping that they thought it was partially responsive to a a postreand request. That's I'm going to be charitable and say that that's what I Then again, your honor, you are right that there is thousands of pages of things that are not responsive to me there. I don't need to know exit pages for info wars, things like that. I mean, it is very non-responsive. Um, the next thing they produced to me, there's a man named Wolf Gang Halb. He's a he's a conspiracy theorist crank who has pursued these families for years um saying that Sandy Hook is fake. He's been a guest on infor several times.
They produced me, you know, about 600 pages of strange emails and a transcript of a town meeting he was at, which is responsive. That's fine. I'm just saying it doesn't have anything to do with what we were asking for in this motion. Uh they gave us 239 pages of Infowars articles, some high quality scans, some from litigation. All of them were previously produced.
And then there were a few other things they produced. About 150 pages of messages to the news tip email address.
We already have thousands of those. I haven't been able to check yet, but I'm I'm pretty sure most of those are going to be duplicates. There are a few dozen pages from another conspiracy theorist blog named Jim Fetzer who they've cited on occasion. A handful of emails.
There's a few dozen internal emails regarding show scheduling and topics.
There's around a dozen press inquiries to Infowars about this lawsuit.
For some reason, there's affidavit from Jones and due in March 2019 regarding Laferdy requests. And there's David Jones deposition transcript, which we don't understand why that's in there either. Um, that was an exhibit to our sanctions motion. In fact, there were some interesting things in there, your honor. Um, this is an email actually that was produced in 2019 before remand. And this is what you're looking at is a an email notification sent to Rob Dw that he got a message on Twitter, a private message. And this message is three days before they defamed Mr. Hessin. And it's talking about Mr. Hessin's the interview he had of Megan Kelly. And we obviously can't see the full message because we don't have access to that. But in 2021, they produced this email which is another notification. And this is a month later.
And this one is on the day of the second video that defamed Mr. Hland. And as you can see from this message, this person is engaging in a conversation with Rob with Mr. Dub who is obviously responding and giving his thoughts and they're talking more about these relevant events. So here is we know that there are messages from m from Mr. D on Twitter giving their mental state of mind at the exact moment that they defamed Mr. Hen. We don't have them because this is social media evidence.
We only have these notifications to know that they exist.
We got a couple of other surprises.
First, we got an email from chief editor Paul Watson discussing the messaging application base camp. Um, and we've never heard of this messaging application in this case. This is one of the things they were supposed to identify and we don't know that anybody has ever accounted for this or searched this or knows anything about it. We also got an email from Roger Stone to Alex Jones referencing Sandy Hook. And we had been told that Alex Jones doesn't use email to communicate with people. We had been told that there were no Sandy Hook conversations, but now all of a sudden there's this single email from Roger Stone about Sandy Hook. I mean, we think that's because they think that we'll eventually get that email from Roger Stone. Um, we don't know why we're just now getting one solitary email from Alex Jones.
But most importantly, let's talk about what we don't have. Discovery responses.
So, first, the very first one I talked to you about, Mr. Hust's case, we don't have discovery responses on his defamation claim. 32 pages of written discovery. Um, we none of that has ever been answered and defendants apparently seem to think they have answered it, which is strange to me, but they have not answered that. They haven't answered any discovery in Pausner. And then the discovery responses that you have from Mr. Hust's IED claim and Mrs. Lewis's claim have both been admitted that they're patently insufficient, but there's never been any supplemental discovery responses. We still don't have the most basic information about this case. We don't even even like requests for disclosures which I already do. We don't have we don't know who has knowledge of relevant facts, what the videos are, who's involved, any of documents have never been supplemented in any meaningful way. Um, we're going to talk a really important one about this is the amount of emails they should have and we'll talk about that in just a minute. Depositions. We were owed four different depositions in Mr. Hust's case that we have never gotten. Um, and one of those, actually a couple of those are pretty important because, for instance, we were supposed to have a deposition of Owen Shroyer, and we haven't had that in three years. And the problem with that is Mr. Shroyer was just uh arrested on federal indictment for insurrection activities on January 6th. And so, we're not sure if we're ever going to have an opportunity to depose him. And in fact, in Mr. Shroyer's arrest affidavit and all the pictures of him breaking the law where he's not supposed to be, uh, Mr. Jones is standing right next to him. So, we have a strong suspicion that Mr. Jones is about to face federal indictment as well in arrest. We're not sure we're ever going to get those definitions.
The videos have never been supplemented.
And as we see now, they have videos that I don't have and there are videos out there they should have. And if they were to go through their own documents, they would know about tons of more videos and they have not done any reasonable good faith effort to get us those. And we don't have social media evidence. That's all gone now, too. And you've seen that talked about in our brief quite a lot.
And who knows what else. This is really the important part is that when there was a promise made to supplement this discovery, it was because Discovery had been so badly bunked for a year, waiting another two years wasn't going to do it.
I mean, now we're talking about having to go find people three years out from where we would have normally done it to see who was involved in this case, who might still have documents. Do they still even have them? Um, you know, the quality of the evidence of people's memories and the physical evidence all degrades. And we have now been kept from discovering any of the basic facts about our case for three years. We don't know what else is out there. For instance, thank gosh that Robert Jacobson, their video editor at one point, decided to approach us and say he felt bad about what happened and needed to testify. We don't know else is who else is out there. We don't know what other information exists.
Let's talk now, your honor, that about these responses. And I definitely agree with you that filing these responses last night um or actually I believe they filed them while you were in trial at at this a last afternoon and I was in deposition and then when we got out we would have had to have been expected to drop everything we were doing and read these last night and I know you didn't.
Um but I did uh I I had my wife take care of my kid and and spent all night dealing with these. Uh these responses further show defendants utter conscious disregard for these cases. Uh they're really quite amazing. So I want to talk a little bit about what was said in these responses because you haven't gotten a chance to read them yet. So this will be your first look.
First there is the Pausner response I want to talk about and they just flatly admit that they have not responded to discovery. They do not dispute that at all. Uh they say the undersign had the misunderstanding that plaintiff's discovery request had already been responded to. They say that when plaintiff's council emailed regarding the responses to plaintiff's discovery request, the undersign failed to recognize that these outstanding discovery requests had not actually been responded to. This is very strange, your honor, because if you look at their sole exhibit to their motion to their response is their exhibit one is a July 2nd email. And you'll notice at the bottom of the email is my first email on that one. And I lay out to them on every case exactly what's wrong and what they need to do. And in Pausner, it's very simple. I told them regarding that case, "Your clients have not responded to plaintiff's initial discovery requests.
Those responses were due on September 1st, 2018. When the appeal was initiated, the responses were almost two weeks overdue. Upon remand, you have made no efforts to respond. Now the requests are nearly a month and a half overdue, and now they're three and a half months overdue." I'm just going to because I can't help it point out that while I appreciate you taking the time and effort to lay out what they have not responded to yet, that was not your obligation.
You filed the discovery and it is their obligation to keep track of whether they have responded or not.
>> I I I would agree with you, your honor.
I definitely agree. But this is an unusual case and I sometimes have to do the lifting for both sides in order for anything to make sense. Um, and so >> I appreciate it. I just wanted to be clear that that was not in any way your obligation.
>> Thank you, your honor. But again, you know, your honor, it's it's interesting.
I I I'm I'm right with you there. But one thing I wanted to make sure and do was to put this out there as clear as possible so that we could demonstrate their absolute conscious disregard. So, and one place I did that again was the July 9th oral hearing. I reminded them that no responses have been served. I told them they needed to file a motion to undeem the admissions and they didn't do that. A whole month then the rest of that month passed and then July 27th on the motion for sanctions all of the above was summarized that they had never responded to the discovery request that that all of this had happened in oral hearing that I reminded them to file the motion to withdraw the admissions. They didn't do any of it. None. They just completely ignored it. A complete conscious disregard.
August 30th, they filed a defamation response in Mr. Hin's case. Let's talk about that one really quick. This one is also astonishing, your honor. They say the motion fails to provide any pointed explanation as to what alleged discovery abuses by defendants are ongoing, which would warrant a contempt finding beyond making the nebulous conclusory claims that defendants have failed to adhere to their discovery obligations.
Defendants have never responded to the August 30th 31st discovery order. That is 30 pages of written discovery. That is four depositions that they were supposed to give that they first told the court, "You don't have authority to make us do this." Then they launched a a a an appeal with no jurisdiction. Then they came back, refused to respond, and the court held them in contempt and fined them $25,000.
Then they appealed again, launched a frivolous appeal for which they were sanctioned. came back and still have never responded to these discovery requests. And now they have the temerity to tell this court that I'm being vexacious and that there is no way they could possibly know what they would have to do to comply with this order. They've never responded.
I'm hes contempt exhibit 10 on July 2nd.
There's that email that I sent them that we just talked about and they were reminded that they never responded in very clear language. I laid out this exact situation. How in 2018 they chose not to respond. In 2019, they again continued not to respond and how now where are the responses? Why have they not responded? Defendants now claim that they what how would they ever know what to do? It's frankly, your honor, the the disregard to respond to a second contempt motion in this way to not even know that you haven't answered the discovery when I have provided you that dis I sent them the dis. I get they the order has it all set out and these are in orders of the court. It's frankly just baffling to me. Your honor, also this is conscious disregard.
Let's talk about Oh, my screen popped up. There we are. All right. Uh let's talk about Lewis really quick. Um that response they charact they say that the plaintiff characterizes the Lewis production as largely containing non-responsive materials. Plaintiff truly makes no effort to provide evidentiary support for this allegation.
If you'll look at Lewis contempt exhibit 5, it is a copy of our April 2nd, 2019 Lewis reply on motion for sanctions.
You'll remember that motion was filed when they had produced nothing. And then after the motion was filed on the eve of the hearing, they did this document dump. That reply goes into extreme detail, sets out um how the production was deficient and non-responsive, gives example documents. It contains a declaration from our expert who was helping us review it, who describes what an incredible mess it was. So from our our standpoint, yes, we absolutely have provided support for that. But more importantly, this is sort of just relitigating things that were already decided in 2019 because they say, for instance, that the Lewis motion does not show how defendants have failed to comply with such orders and how, when, and by what means defendants have abused the discovery process. But they admitted in that hearing that the Lewis production was inadequate. They agreed to pay attorneys fees. They totally understood what a mess they made of the situation and promised to fix it. And in fact, right after that, their other attorney said that Discovery situation was a mess. And a short time after that, they ended up producing child pornography. Um, we all know that the Lewis production is in no way adequate, but they don't seem to want to supplement their answers in any way.
Let's talk about the Heslin IED response. Now, they say that plaintiff's supplemental brief is nothing more than a failed attempt to have this court reconsider that ruling and implement additional sanctions when that situation has already been addressed. And your honor, I think we both know that that is a flat misreading of the court's order and the transcript where this court definitely was in the mindset that if this discovery was not supplemented as Mr. Jeffrey's promise that additional sanctions would be considered uh and that that that he was expressly holding this off to let you decide how to deal with all of this situation.
They talk about the document situation.
I want to address this really well too because they say that what plainif conveniently omits from his briefing is that the scope of discovery in Laferty is much wider and all-encompassing than the discovery at issue in this case. For example, plaintiff sides to an affidavit of David Jones filed in the Laferty matter that search terms in that case yielded approximately 80,000 emails that were potentially responsive to the Laferty plaintiff's discovery request.
But in no way does that support the idea that those emails were responsive to this plaintiff's limited discovery request. Your honor, if you'll actually look at that affidavit that's in our response, what Mr. Jones said is that searching for the terms Sandy Hook in emails returned already 80,000 emails and that they expected similar volumes for other search terms in the Lafy plaintiff's request. We've obviously requested all emails with Sandy Hook in them. We have about 11,000 total documents in this case and I would just give you a rough estimate of about half of them contain the term Sandy Hook in them. Um, so we're we're not anywhere close to that universe. And most of those emails we have, um, a good portion of it, your honor, is the same 15 people who are writing Infowars unsolicited, and they are are extremely mentally ill and writing 500page emails to Infowars on a weekly basis. Um, and and it's these same 10 people over and over again. Um, so what we're seeing here is not in any way a search of this. We also took the deposition of uh Michael Zimmerman who is like a 23 year old IT employee at Infowars who working on some of this and he confirmed for us in this case David Jones's testimony that there should be 80,000 emails relating to Samuel.
Now they also talk about messaging systems in their response. They say that free speech system utilized Slack as a messaging system, but that system has not been utilized since April 2016 and that data has been preserved and to the undersign's best knowledge has been produced. I don't know what this undersign's best knowledge is because he doesn't have knowledge. I mean, this is just he's copying and pasting something from 2019 or something. I don't know. I I don't think anybody's ever alleged that Slack data has been preserved or produced. Uh we have testimony on our record showing in our motion showing that Slack data has not been preserved and is not available to the company anymore. Um if it is available, we have notifications from emails that show that Sandy Hook was discussed in the Slack system. So there should be those messages. Those haven't been produced.
The same deal with this Rocket Chat makes the exact same statement. And we don't have any Rocket Chat production.
None. Um and we don't have any indication that that's been preserved.
You'll also notice there's a gap between 2016 and 2018. They don't say what messaging system they were using at that point, but we know that that exists, too. And none of this has been accounted for. This stuff about the undersign's best knowledge, you're going to see this a lot in this case. This is because Mr. Reeves is not getting any cooperation from his client. So, the undersign's best knowledge is just a guess on his part at this point.
>> Your honor, I would object to that because he doesn't know what I'm talking about. I mean, he I I can understand that he's frustrated here, but he he doesn't need to be opining on what I'm saying. If I can certainly discuss it with you, but I would object to that statement there.
>> Well, you can object to it, but I can also read and make a conclusion about what that statement means.
>> I understand, your honor. I'm just >> what it means is you don't know. You don't have any idea because if you knew, you would say so. Go ahead, Mr. Bankston.
>> Okay. Uh the other thing that the IED response from them last night addresses is videos. It says while plaintiff's briefing addresses a couple of videos he says have not been produced by defendants, pliff notably does not provide any information to the court as how such videos are in any way relevant or connected to his IED claims in this case. And your honor, this is so ridiculous because if a video is about Sandy Hook, it's obviously relevant. I mean, we are alleging to continue the course of conduct here. The other thing that's ridiculous about this is when you're already under contempt for not producing it, the idea that it's not relevant is not a great argument at this point. Um, this is obviously directly connected to my case. It's also way more than a couple of videos. We identified about six in our in that brief right there. Um, we've given them a list with others uh they haven't produced and we know there's ones they have they haven't given us. Um, no effort has ever been made to answer even the most basic interrogatory about what videos exist.
Then there's social media evidence, their excuse here. You saw in our motion how they had every opportunity in the world to preserve this and they knew that it was about to be deleted. They got every threat over a course of months and they said it's our party, our problem because we haven't given third party subpoenas to any of the social media companies. And the problem here is is during the first period of this case during up until this remand, I was under discovery stays where I could only have the expedited discovery against the defendants that was granted by the court. I couldn't just go out and do discovery. Um, but more importantly, if they have a superior right of access to this, these are their accounts and they can get them much easier from Facebook or Twitter than I can. Uh, this would be like if I was saying, well, you know, uh, you know, I have medical records, but I'm I'm not going to try to get them for you. You got to go get them. Um, and this is in this situation, I have no reason whatsoever that Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube is going to comply with me in any way. But they have to make a reasonable effort to get things that are within their custody or control. and they haven't tried to do that at all.
The other thing that is said in this response is that the undersigned council was not involved in those disputes, but certainly has reviewed the record and understands where the issues were alleged to exist and what has been done to try to remember remedy those discovery disputes. The undersigned has been personally been reviewing over 75,000 documents gathered during this litigation. Your honor, respectfully, from what you've seen today, this is not true. Mr. Reeves does not understand where the issues were alleged to have exist. He believes he's responded to discovery he's never even responded to.
Which tells you something, your honor, which tells you that he has never checked to see and hold in his hands the discovery responses that have been issued in this case. In other words, he is telling you in a contempt motion that there is wild, spurious accusations against them that should never be granted and they're in compliance because they have responded.
And he told you that without ever laying his hands on the discovery responses to see if they were compliant because if he had tried he'd realize there are none.
And so to to then say he understands what issues are alleged to exist. No, he doesn't. And they have not tried to remedy these discovery disputes. They tried to do some 11th hour figly where they produced a 6,000 pages of mostly useless documents. He also says the undersign's been reviewing all those 75,000 pages. They surely didn't even have those till at least August 11th when they told us they didn't have them and they wanted us to give them to them.
I'm not even sure. I fully believe right now that they do have them. I think maybe they kind of got embarrassed and said, "No, no, okay. We're okay. Don't give us the documents." Um, see, the idea that since August 11, with the other briefing defendants have done, with the other briefing I know Mr. Reeves has done in another court with me, there's no way since August 11th you've reviewed 75,000 pages of documents. I I I did that. I remember doing that. I couldn't have done it in that speed of time, even with nothing else going on.
There's also a response made about the pattern of conduct in this case.
Defendants say that none of the cases cited by plaintiff, the vast majority of which are non- Texas cases, supports the position that the court can consider alleged discovery violations in entirely separate matters. I mean, that's just not true. First of all, look at page 42.
There's Karen versus maybe. And that's where you had conduct and this is from my home district where it was in one court of the district in Harris County, but there was also discovery abuse previously in another district court of that county. Um, we'll talk about some other cases like that. In fact, that's a good place to transition right now to talk about the legal principles underneath underlying.
>> Take a little break then.
>> That's great. That's great, your honor.
>> So, um, let's take like a 15 minute break. We'll come back at 10:30. my um assistant will put up a break sign, but if you don't want whatever you're doing on break visible or audible on YouTube, you need to turn your camera and your sound off.
>> Okay.
>> Thank you, your honor.
>> See you at 10:30.
>> Okay.
>> Uh Mr. Benson, you can pick back up.
>> All right. I think I only have about maybe something like 10 15 more minutes with you hopefully.
>> All right. Uh let me >> um so we just wrapped up talking about the responses uh that were filed yesterday. Um I did also want to add on that um to kind of follow back up on your comments about that. Uh you know staff attorney Mr. Denton had sent us out a chart of everything for this hearing to get us ready. um and had had asked us sort of as a convenience, you know, when we were scheduled on August 17th, um you know, can you please get me copies, paper copies of all relevant pleadings by the 6th. Um that following week, defendants had contacted the court and said, "Hey, we didn't know that necessarily applied to us. Um we're going to file our response tomorrow on the 10th." Um and at that time, Mr. Denton said, you know, look, hey, it's just a tried to be a guideline. There's no court order. You're setting a deadline, but the judge would like you to get your pleadings in as soon as you can. she has plenty of time to review them. Um, and that was back on the 10th and they went ahead and just sat on those until the night before the hearing. And I do feel like that was done in a calculated way so that there would be no time to reply to that. There would be no time to look at that.
Luckily, I did have the ability last night to throw everything to the sidelines and and dive into those. But we actually believe that that their failure to address these motions um that have been pending for quite some time and that are quite serious and the gravity of them um their failure to to really respond to those to us speaks to the conscious disregard as well.
>> I agree with you and I want to make it clear that in all cases in front of me, Mr. Reeves, whether they involve Alex Jones or another party, from now on when you are the attorney, I'm going to set deadlines for when everything is due.
And particularly in these cases, and if they're late, I'm not going to consider them.
>> Don't understand. And there was no gamesmanship, your honor. There was simply >> prefiles and stuff, but >> it's hard to believe.
>> I understand that, your honor. But I can tell you for me personally, there was no gamesmanship for me.
But I understand you're what you're going to do and I I can appreciate that and I'll make sure that we meet whatever deadlines the court sets >> which I shouldn't have to do and I don't in almost any case.
All right, let's move on to legal principles underlying this motion. And as you know, these are it's interesting because they're all essentially motions under 215. All right, we're talking about discovery abuse and the powers available to you when a party is engaged in this kind of years of discovery abuse.
The first principle that we talked about, come on. First principle we talked about in our motion on page 40 is that persistent discovery abuse justifies a presumption that a defense lacks merit. And when the court can reach a presumption that the defense lacks merit, default sanctions can be granted.
the court in doing so must only consider and not test lesser sanctions. Obviously in this in these cases the court has tested all sorts of sanctions. Um it's it's interesting though that Infowars's argument is essentially going to be because we have only been sanctioned once in each case or because there's only been discovery violations once each case. You can't consider what happened in the past. You just got to keep on giving us the lower sanction each and every time but we do something in your court. This isn't the law though because as we point out on page 41, the trial court may consider action taken in another court when that action is relevant to the case pending before the trial court. And in here, it's not even really another court really so much because so much of this already happened in your court. Um, defendants want to say in their response that this sort of law only applies when the same lawsuit has been transferred between courts, but you can't consider anything else. And that's just flatly not true. Um, not only have we talked about the case uh Camry earlier, but I actually think Zenergy is the maybe the most important case for you to look at in this dispute.
Um, we put that into the box and highlighted it for you. In Zenergy is so factually similar here, but far less egregious. Zenergy was a a corporate dispute where both parties sued each other. Um, and in that case, the defendants did not provide discovery. uh they they and it wasn't nearly as far-ranging as ours, but there was certain information the defendants did not provide. They had also moved for summary judgement at the same time, which is dispositive in much the same way a TCPA motion is. Um it was discovered that they they advoc that they had hid discovery, didn't fully comply. So, there was a sanctions hearing held and then at that sanctions hearing, the court didn't take action much like in this case. The court said, "Well, there's going to be a a stay of proceedings for a little while in this case. Um, so we're not we're going to hold off on making a ruling. Now, the stay went for a year and then upon a year when they came back from the stay, the judge noted, well, Zergy hasn't done anything to respond to these requests, even though they've known for a year that default sanctions could be imminent and they haven't gotten done anything to get that information in front of the court. There had never been any prior discovery abuse in Synergy. Um, but what happened is that the judge in that case noted that this that two of the three same defendants had committed discovery abuse in a previous case. Um, it's unclear from Zenergy whether that was even a state case. That might have been a federal case. Um, but it was a previous similar lawsuit involving Zenergy in which they had conducted they had been sanctioned for similar discovery abuse. uh the judge in that case said well considering this prior conduct I can assume that my sanctions here are not going to be effective so that's why a default was granted review by the corpus Christie court they said he was entirely proper to do that because he could rely on the fact that they had been sanctioned by the same conduct before then if they had repeated it in front of this next judge that judge should not have any confidence that his sanctions are going to change their behavior so in synergy under much less worse facts a default was granted there's also We need to talk a little bit about the defendant's bad faith. Um, defendants are are correct that simply bad faith or things you do outside of the litigation are not an independent basis for sanctions under 215. But once the court determines that 215 sanctions are appropriate and it starts to consider whether what kind of sanctions would be effective, it is absolutely allowed to consider defendants bad faith approach to the litigation in general.
And one of those first things you can talk about is I know the video that we played earlier um didn't really have volume to it. So I may need to play that at the very end of this presentation again. But you would see from that that video Jones has created a hostile atmosphere and it will discourage people from participating in the litigation. He has shown an abject disrespect for these proceedings and the safety of everybody involved. Um, as you may know from the briefing, right after that video, um, the judge in Connecticut started getting death threats that the FBI warned her about. The plaintiff's council did up there. They actually got police to guard their office. Uh, my wife got a message on her phone after Mr. Jones called me a gremlin and a a a goblin who was terrorizing Infowars's audience and he asked them to stand up. Um, he he does this. He has no problem creating that atmosphere.
He also is obsessed with this idea that there is a conspiracy that has made these trials show trials and that there are powerful forces in the Democratic party headed by Hillary Clinton who apparently control us who are causing him to become railroad. Uh he has called Judge Jenkins a hoodwinkedked mainline liberal um who is being manipulated. He has openly called these lawsuits show trials and there's a really good understanding when you see his conduct of that nature why he's not participating in discovery and why these sanctions are not effective.
The defendant's conduct was here was egregious. And what I want to really emphasize is how the courts frequently default parties for so much less than this. If we look for instance at Alma Investments, um this was a lawsuit uh about some condo developments in in South Padre Island, a multi-million dollar lawsuits where the companies were suing each other. In that case, there were two failures to appear at deposition and a failure to deposit funds in the registry. They said the court twice ordered the packages to appear for depositions, but both orders were not followed. Additionally, the trial court ordered Alma, the company, to deposit $20,000 in the registry of the court to pay an auditor. That's all that happened. and those parties lost their ability to defend their claim. All right? And I think you would have to to look at that situation and think about the packages and think if they were to think that they were denied the ability to put on their case, but Mr. Jones and what he did is going to put on his case and I think you would have to understand that the packages would think that was very unfair.
The same thing would be true in Solomon versus Lay. There there were just three failures to appear at deposition and one of them occurred after a monetary sanction of $1,000 which is far less egregious than what's happened here with numerous depositions missed, numerous monetary sanctions, numerous cases where the they are not responding to discovery and where they're across the board obstructing every other discovery here.
Again, you would look at somebody like Michelle Solomon and what would he think to known that he was kicked out of his case, but Mr. Mr. Jones is going to keep going in hits. I I think that would be the reaction basically across the state is that that if people were to see what has happened here and then see Mr. Jones continue, they the reaction would be Alex Jones got away with what? And that has really been the jaw-dropping reaction of everybody who's seen this case.
The other thing I want to remind the court is that discovery affects all aspects of these cases. And I've put down here the three elements that we're going to have to prove for instance in our defamation cases. And the reason is is because one of the things the court might be inclined to do in a situation like this is to pursue a lesser sanction of saying I'm going to make an evidentiary finding on a certain issue in the case that discovery affected something less than a default. Well here I want to go over these elements right and how every single one of them has been blocked by discovery. First there is published and we know that there's a dispute over who published what as as you remember from our last hearings whether Infowars LLC was involved in the discovery there and we've been dis absolutely obstructed discovery on Infowars LLC. We have to prove it's a false statement and obviously whether the statements are false can be proven with discovery from the defendant because there's a good chance that they're going to give us discovery that they knew it was false. We also need to prove it was a statement of fact and not an opinion. But if defendants are relying on the idea that they were they were simply analyzing certain disclosed facts and giving their opinion based on those disclosed facts. If we discover evidence that they knew that those facts were false, then they are not entitled to express that opinion and they do not get that defense. Furthermore, prior statements of the defendant may in fact change the meaning of the actual statements in the challenge statements.
So for a lot of reasons, discovery is important to opinion defenses. Then we also have whether it's about the plaintiff. Imagine with me that Infowars has a document saying, "Haha, this new broadcast we're going to do is really going to mess over Lenny Pausner's life." It would be very difficult for them to come back and then say, "Nobody could possibly interpret that video as being about Lenny Pausner." That impeachment evidence could be critical.
The idea that the statement caused the pler reputational harm is my next element. And honestly, that one's not really important here because these are per se cases. So there's the presumption that the plaintiffs caused harm, but but even still there's clearly we could get evidence of reputational harm from the defendants's discovery. And finally, that defendants acted with the required fault. And this one here is pretty obvious to me, too, because everything under the sun that they could produce to us could possibly go to their fault. Um, and so if all of those are the issues, if any of those are left intact, we are actually still suffering prejudice from this discovery and the fact that it has been absolutely botched and will never be fixed.
The last thing that defendants council leaves you with is his plea. All right?
He says to you this plea that the undersigned request that the court grant him an opportunity to prove that he has control of this discovery situation.
Well, with respect, he has already had that opportunity and he has thoroughly proven that he does not have control of this discovery situation. Doesn't even understand the discovery situation, much less have control over it. But what's really interesting to me is that this is the exact same plea given to this court to avoid default sanctions in 2019. This is exactly the same thing that Mr. Jeff said to this court and how much time he had put into getting an understanding of what's going on and they were going to get this fixed. The exact same excuse.
And what's even more ironic is that was also the same excuse used by the lawyer before him and the lawyer before him.
and the lawyer before him. It just keeps going, your honor. It's it's it's like a movie Groundhog Day today with Bill Murray. And I remember him saying this line in it of one one day I went to Mexico and had a great great vacation down there, spent all day on the beach, drank pin coladas. Why couldn't I have that day over and over and over again?
And we really have been stuck in the same situation. So to hear this defense council make this exact same plea after having just completely trashed the entire summer. Remember that defendants council came to this court and negotiated and agreed for a discovery plan that has me designating experts in about 14 days. And I don't have any discovery to do that with. Now that's not going to stop me. I'm still going to designate my experts because we've realized we've gotten all the discovery we're ever going to get. There's never ever going to be a fix to this problem.
There is a reason you might wonder and it kind of starts to make sense why every single council comes to you and makes the same plea and why no counsel can ever get control of the discovery situation.
It's because of this man. And we've told you this in our brief. We've said this very clearly. There's a reason why no sanctions have ever been effective at changing this man's behavior. He will continue to introduce chaos, defiance, and danger into this lawsuit because it is built straight into his DNA.
We have had all of these different lawyers and it has been the one thing that has remained consistent is Mr. Jones complete disregard for these proceedings and in fact his open attacks on these proceedings. And it's really for that reason, your honors, that we now have given you proposed orders on all the cases, and the discovery abuse has gotten so bad these last three months. The conscious disregard so shocking that we are asking for a default judgment in all four cases.
Because in every single case, you have a long history of discovery abuse you can rely on to show you that anything you try to do right now to compel compliance is not going to work. Your honor, so that is what we are requesting. We have added proposed orders to the box. There is one other thing I'd like to do. I've been let known that during the playing of this first video that we're looking at a screenshot right now, your honor.
Um that the sound wasn't working, so wasn't able to be heard. Um it's a two-minute video, and I do think it's important for the court to hear what is heard. So, if it's okay with you, I'd like to close by playing that two-minute video.
>> All right. I I heard most of it, but that's okay. You can play it again.
>> Okay. Yeah. Just figure for >> All right. Your honor, um, as closing, let me just say the person you saw there at the end of that video, um, was Norman Pattis. He's a local counsel for Mr. Jones in Connecticut. And the pattern that you see in this case, and and I see it over and over and over, is that they select some local council who comes in and takes these falls on the sword, and it's always a new local council that they throw under the bus every single time.
And really what the elephant in the room is is the elephant that's not in the room right now which is Mr. Randonza and that he has now told you in his briefing that he's really actually been infowar's corporate counsel and coordinating the litigation from all over and that seems to be accurate. Um and you have a party who's non-appearing a person who's non-appering attorney who's acting as corporate counsel just general counsel he is essentially the party he is their corporate lawyer. Um, and you have these attorneys who come in who are put in these awkward positions. Like you can see Mr. Pettis really found himself in an awkward position there. And each of these attorneys will then come in the next local council will blame it on the local council before. And so here we have Mr. Reeves again who's latest series in that. And I'm expecting just like Mr. Jeffers did blame the one before him. But what you see is the consistent behavior of the party itself.
Um, and and that is a reason why we think anything more at this point just becomes ridiculous. Um, so what we're asking is the default judgment and to let a trial proceed forward just on whether Jones's conduct merits punitive damages. Uh, what the compensatory damages are and if there is a punitive damage fine, what the punitive damage issued. That's what we'd ask you for today, your honor.
>> So, um, I I printed out your proposed orders. I haven't read them yet because I didn't know they were there until this morning.
My concern is you need this discovery even for a damages trial.
>> So are you asking me to default liability and order the discovery still be responded to? Again, >> it's it's interesting. I do think you're right that there will be need to be some damages discovery from their end that's directed towards them. I I I don't honestly think it's ever I'm going to get much. Um and I don't let me put it this way. I don't think the discovery that was um um issued under the court's prior discovery orders, which was TCPA directed discovery, all that goes to my burdens. So, I don't think we've served any discovery yet that would be subject to these orders that would be damage related. Um certainly, if we go forward and there's something going on with damages that we need to bring to the court, you know, before we could have that. But I'm I'm just kind of hoping that we can go forward and at least put on a damages trial even if they don't produce us anything, >> right? I mean, you can, but my question is just if you're trying to get punitive damages, you probably do need more discovery.
>> I think that's true. I think Well, I'm gonna tell you, your honor, I think I have enough to prove punitive damages right now. I do.
>> Okay.
>> You might want more. Let's >> I exactly correct, your honor.
>> Okay. But your position is you'll file that later.
>> Right. Right. If we need to if if if for instance after this hearing and I have more of an understanding of what the scope of discovery is like going forward then we'll serve new discovery requests and depositions that we may need. I think that'll be very limited.
>> Okay. All right. Thank you, Mr. Reeves.
>> Okay. Thank you, your honor. Um you know, Mr. Banks and has he kind of merged everything together and I feel like for at least my purposes the best way to approach this is individually with each motion so that we can make sure that we have you know a clear understanding of each particular motion what he's requested here. Uh the first thing I want to say is that you know the the statement at the very end where I pulled out where I asked you to give me a basically a chance to deal with the discovery issue is is a from a brief in Pausner where uh whereas my response states uh frankly when when the he sent me about a page long email and when I was reviewing this I was in the midst of preparing for trial with Judge Meechum and everything and my frank misunderstanding was that the every discovery request issue was in the same posture uh bec as far as dealing with TCPA discovery, frankly, you know, and I'm I'm following Yes, Caesar. I'm falling on my sword because this is my lack of understanding. I'm not blaming any prior counsel.
>> I've been on this case for a few months, and you're now the second uh Infowars lawyer to come in and claim responsibility for discovery problems, and I've only been on the case a few months.
>> And I understand that.
>> And I just before you get too far into this argument, you can make it But know I know you know and I want to make it clear that I know that you're responsible for whatever any lawyer who came before you did. You had a choice about accepting this representation. You accepted it. Your schedule and the attorneys before you are not my problem >> and I understand that you are and I'm not blame I'm drawing a bit of context like regardless of what every anyone has said in the past. I have no desire to lay any blame on prior counsel. I I have appeared here. I'm lead counsel here. Um I know Mr. Bankston spoke about Mr. Randaza uh because of the fact that his Prague vite is pending and has not been approved by this court. Uh Mr. Randaza has frankly not been involved with these cases because of the you know we want to keep I personally want to ensure that we are not having someone practice in these cases where they might not admit to practice. So I recognize Mr. banks that has said that, but I'm letting the court know I am the one dealing with these things. I am the one that's been brought in to try to get everything under control here discovery-wise.
Um the first, you know, the biggest motion, first of all, plaintiff has now said that they want to default in all four cases. Um you know, that that's not something that's been requested in anything except the one Heland IED claim. So I I would say that that's not requested relief that's on the board here. Um but regarding the he you know the Heeslin the Lewis u those two cases um the biggest issues that I that I want to point out to the court context-wise about the discovery that's an issue is that every case that pliff has cited for support of their motion for their default judgment sanctions has to deal with discovery that is issued independency of the regular litigation meritsbased discovery. The discovery that's an issue here in those cases is only the limit specific and limited discovery that was allowed by Judge Jenkins was relevant to the TCPA motion to dismiss. It wasn't merit-based discovery. Uh it you know obviously there is some overlap between what would be merit space versus issues dealing with the TCPA motion but that's not the full you know that discovery doesn't have anything to do with the underlying merits of the claims. And so that's why we believe that it's it would be, you know, extremely excessive to enter a default judgment on discovery that's only supposed to be limited and relevant to the motion to dismiss under the TCPA.
Um secondly, related to the discovery, um I am personally reviewing 75,000 different documents to determine what's responsive. Mr. Bankson has received 6,000 of those. There's still more for me to go. I'm going as fast as I humanly possibly can. And I I recognize he's entitled to this discovery. Um, and frankly, the only other thing I want to point out about the discovery and the status of it was when I sent him an email asking me him to tell me what was had been produced, I had incorrectly done the search on this database to determine what had been produced. And what he didn't tell you is that 10 minutes after I sent that email, I sent him one back saying, "I have it. I'm sorry. Thank you for being accommodating to me, but I have it." Um, so I know I know what's been produced. I know what's been, you know, so I know what's what's been produced, what's out there. Um, but as far as the Headland Hesland motion for default judgment that there's simply no basis legally, there's no case law cited, there's no case law that I can find that talks about granting a meritsbased sanction based solely on limited discovery allowed under the TCPA. That's only supposed to be relevant to the motion itself. Um, and so, you know, that would be the main argument against why there would be sanctions involved here. In addition, as you know, the council recognized, I've already worked to supplement production.
I'm continuing to work with that. I've been working with my client to get the these interrogatories are not simple. He asked he says that they ask for simple information. They are not simple. Um, Infowars is a you know, they have a they have had a lot of employees. They have a lot of different people involved. It requires me to get a lot of different information that I'm gathering to to fully respond to these because as an officer of the court, I recognize that there are objections that have been waved due to not, you know, responding and things like that. So, I need to give him full and complete answers. And so, you know, that's that's what I am trying to do. Uh, and Mr. Bank, you know, Mr. Bankston, he he likes to file his motions for sanctions and I understand he need feels the need to aggressively pursue his case. Um, but you know, there there's just been a lot of things stated today uh that are just incorrect or flatout misrepresentations to the court.
Um, you know, first of all, the video that Mr. Bankson just played, um, you know, I don't know if you noticed, but that video was spliced together uh from different clips. Um, the the stuff about the million dollars related to this child porn thing. Um, that was when Mr. Jones was talking about figuring out trying to find out who had, you know, potentially done this or put this in here. There was no accusation from them that the plaintiff's council had done it. Uh those were just kind of meshed together. Um you know, and there's other things about uh Mr. Bankston mentioned missed depositions. Um I don't have any understanding of what depositions have been missed. I recognize that there have been some corporate rep depositions for the TCPA motion dismissed that Mr. Bankston was unhappy about the answers and he brought those to Judge Jenkins attention and Judge Jenkins uh entered an order of content and a $500 fine on that. Um but there there's been no mis depositions. I haven't received any requests for additional depositions.
There's been no push back from me on him saying he's not entitled to depositions.
Um so I don't know where that comes from. Um you know and the last thing about this uh filing that occurred in the midst of a deposition um Mr. Pattis the who who filed that thing in Connecticut. First of all, he didn't identify the plaintiff. He didn't actually provide quotes or transcription of the statements, but he wasn't even in the deposition. That was kind of a his thing that he did. He wasn't even one doing that. But more importantly, I I have nothing to do with >> He wasn't That was his thing that he did. He didn't even do that. That's literally what just came out of your mouth.
>> I'm sorry. I I didn't mean that. He He did not Mr. Pattis was not taking the deposition. He did not file the motion as he was taking the deposition. Another lawyer for the defendants was taking the deposition and he just in the midst of this filed it. Uh and that was you know but he didn't actually do anything as far as identifying the plainif or anything like that. But really and overall the overarching point here is that uh there there's nothing in Connecticut that has anything to do with these cases as far as the discovery is concerned. I know Mr. Banksson wants to draw corlaries between them, but the discovery stuff that's at issue in Connecticut is far broader and far more encompassing than the discovery at issue here. And so it's not it's not a onetoone correlation of what's there versus what should be here. Um Mr. Brson also fails to uh mention that there is a there's also a Virginia case where there have been no discovery issues because frankly Mr. Rendaza is part of that case now and Discovery has proceeded orderly there. There's no issues there. They've had some slight disagreements, but there's been none of this. You know, Connecticut and here there's a lot of hubbub over the discovery. Lots of motions for sanctions um and lots of issues there. But that's, you know, again, I I can't I I'm here to live in the present and to take what's here and to move forward and to address the problems. I I have already attempted to do that by supplementing the production.
I'm working to do that even more with more production. I'm working as diligently as I can to do that. I just believe that especially related to the request for default sanctions that that would be uh hugely excessive considering where we stand in these cases as far as procedurally speaking um and the fact that discovery issue is this TCPA discovery. It's not meritbased discovery.
Um that's for the that's unless you have would like to ask me questions about the default judgment motion, I can move on to the other ones.
>> Okay.
>> Great. So, regarding the two motions for contempt, they're essentially verbatim.
Um you know, again, I have produced supplemental docu production. Um I have and you know, and again, it these are not these are not questions that I as lawyer can answer. these interrogatories that they ask for a lot of identifying information my and you know Mr. Banks Bson wants to apply that I don't have any disc you know control or contact with my client or anything like that I do and I'm working on but it it's not just client it's not just like I can talk to Mr. Jones and get all this information. He doesn't know a lot of these answers related to the corporate as far as involvement of who's in who's doing what and things like that within free speech systems. That requires me to speak to other individuals which I am also doing and getting information like I said because what I'm trying to do is give him full complete responsive discovery responses so that we are done with these issues and he can move on to finding other issues. I don't want to have be in a situation where I give him half of stuff and then he comes back into court again and stuff like that.
And I also recognize that he's entitled to it. And if he wants to move his expert designation deadline back because of this, I'm agreeable to that. Um I I'm I you know, like I said, I'm here living in the present trying to solve the problems that are that do exist and I recognize they exist. Um I just don't and you know as far as the contempt motions are concerned from a you know purely procedural standpoint it's unclear whether the plaintiff is seeking criminal or civil contempt findings. Um if they are criminal contempt findings that they're seeking uh that would require actual notice and service upon the defendants themselves not just through their attorney. Um so if that's what they're seeking that would be improper at this time due to lack of due process and required notice. Um, and lastly on Pausner, u, I I, you know, in in the response that I filed, uh, which again, your honor, there was no gamesmanship involved. They're very simple responses, but I can understand, you know, the the opinion there, and I'm not really going to >> Well, I mean, you knew I wanted to read everything in advance. I wouldn't ask you to deliver it in paper if I wasn't going to look at it before the hearing.
>> And I can understand that, your honor, and that's my and that's and I can understand that, your honor. And as far as the motion for default sanctions is concerned, this is really a continuation of his December 2019 filing of it, which defendants had already responded to. I simply filed a response to their supplemental briefing. So there's already a response on file. All of those responses are indeed in box. Um, but I I just summed up the default judge for you with Pausner. Um, this is the first time we're here from on any sort of motion compelled motion for sanctions. I've already told in the motion I've already said that I recognize they weren't responded to. I place no blame and responsibility on anyone but myself for that. As far as the deadlines, I I in no way would ever imply that Mr. Bankston would be responsible for keeping track of my deadlines. I took these cases on.
I I understand that. I'm I'm responsible for that and I want the court to understand very clearly that that's not the argument I'm making. I'm not making an argument beyond I'm preparing these responses. I asked the court for uh I asked the court for 14 days in in my response before the court determines whether or not sanctions are warranted.
Um I I do not I I have we do not oppose the motion to compel itself. Uh but what I I have asked is the two weeks to be able to get him these full and complete answers because there are are numerous inter it's more the interrogatories.
I've already produced documents in the Pausner case and I've also told council that the defense has stipulated that discovery and and other matters and prior production is discovery for this matter too. So he has all that discovery too. Um so you know but as far as the requests are concerned it's more the interrogatories that require me to gather a suffic a decent amount of information that I'm I am actively working on. Um, but that's that's really where I stand all these motions, your honor, and I'm happy to answer any questions you have.
>> All right, Mr. Benson, did you want to respond?
>> All right. Yes, your honor, I want a brief rebuttal on that.
>> All right, >> let's just go down each of them. Um, first of all, with the idea that a default was not requested in any of the motions, but one, uh, these motions are all brought under 215 and default is always one of the available options for the court when it's faced with 215 sanction. Um, they say that the discovery wasn't meritsbased and that it doesn't address the underlying merits.
Um, there's nothing really special about TCPA discovery except that what happens is the discovery stay just vanishes and then the plaintiff can have discovery on anything that's to the motion. The motion is to require clear and convincing evidence of every element of plaintiff's claims and defendants's defenses. So, the discovery literally addresses everything in the case on liability. It just doesn't go to damages, right? So the idea you you can look at some of these other default cases in the past and it's things like not appearing for deposition is a big one that does it and it's it's not the entire case has been every bit of discovery has been compromised but often it's these very discreet parts but the court says that's so egregious and it's such a thumb in the nose of the court's face that we default here every everything is is spoiled by this.
there's nothing it doesn't touch in terms of our book. Um, they said that they produced 6,000 pages and that Mr. Rees is going through 75,000 pages more to produce. Um, it was my understanding that when he said he was going through the 75,000 pages, that was the 75,000 pages already produced in this case. But apparently now Mr. Reeves is saying that there is 75,000 pages of documents he is still reviewing, which is astonishing to me. Um, also when Mr. at least produced those 6,000 pages to me a couple of days ago. He wrote to me and said, "Here's your 6,000 pages. We trust this is going to be sufficient to solve all of your issues of discovery." There was no indication that there was this massive trove of information that was still coming. It was that's it. That'll solve it. Here's our 11th hour fig leaf over our completely naked contempt. Now they say there's more. He tells me the rags, the interrogatories are not simple, that they're really hard to answer. So, okay, you couldn't answer them in 30 days, maybe. You know, in normal cases, you probably get an extension on that, but then you couldn't answer them in three and a half months. They're that complicated. They're they're not that complicated.
He then talks a bit about Mr. Jones broadcast there and that that million-doll bounty was not about us, was not about the plaintiff's council, and that actually he was talking about somebody else. And then he just happened to be later in the same clip accusing Mr. Mate and the plaintiffs council of being the ones who did all this. The Connecticut Supreme Court's already rejected all of this. Has said, "No, obviously Mr. Jones was threatening a million-dollar bounty on the lives of plaintiffs council. He has unreasonably caused danger to these proceedings and encouraged people not to participate."
Um, that absolutely. And the idea that right now we're going to be trying to defend what Mr. Jones did in that video is absurd to me, but those sanctions have already been affirmed by a high court. Mr. Reeves also says that he doesn't know of any missed depositions.
He only seems to know that there were some corporate representative depositions that are effectively non-appearances. But Mr. Reeves, even after my presentation, does not seem to understand that in dis that in uh August 31st, 2018, exactly three years ago today, the court issued a discovery order in Hessand that has never been responded to in any way, shape, or form.
There's never been any responses to the written discovery. And there was supposed to be a deposition of Alex Jones, of Free Speech Systems, of Infowars LLC, and of Owen Troyer. That's why I brought up Mr. Shroyer's arrest.
It's because I'm not sure I'll ever depose him. Mr. Reeves currently does not know those depositions hasn't happened or that discovery hasn't been answered to on a discovery order, which he has prior that client has priorly been held in contempt of court. And that again is baffling to me. He briefly addresses Mr. Pattis in the deposition about the Hillary Clinton thing where he was writing a motion about Hillary Clinton and was disclosing plaintiff's information. Mr. Pettis was sitting inside the deposition when that happened that the his co-consel was taking the deposition and he wrote up a motion, typed it on up and sent it off to the court and publicly filed it. And that could very well happen again in this case.
He then goes on to the contempt motions and the first again he says that the interrogatories are hard to answer. Um, but on the contempt motions, they haven't even tried to supplement discovery. And from his perspective, he didn't think he would have to need to is what he was telling us. He thought that that was just about request for production and his 6,000 documents would be enough. But apparently now they're talking about going and answering those interrogatories. And I I don't know if that's ever going to happen. His he does offer you a solution to this contempt motion, and his solution is more delay.
is that now after all of the delay of the trial court in court, all of the frivolous appeals for which they were sanctioned for and after now just throwing away the entire summer doing nothing, Mr. Reed's solution is let's just push all the dates back and give me more time to keep doing this. That is not a solution to this case. That does that definitely prejudices us. His other argument is that it's unclear whether there are civil or criminal contempt being sought in this motion, but the motion is captioned motion for contempt under rule 215 of the Texas civil rules.
Their motion recounts that well that we're going under civil rule 215. We're not seeking criminal sanctions. With Pausner, his only real response there is that there was no gamesmanship. And I, you know what, I think I would probably agree with that because I think in order to play a game, you actually have to care enough to play. And there was no it was a complete conscious disregard. If you consciously disregard to this extent, you're not playing games. You're just not not respecting this court's authority is what's happened. He says that this is the first time the Pausnner one's the first time they've ever gotten any kind of trouble on Pos, right? But the thing is is that you see all these sanctions cases talking about you can default a party in the first instance if that instance is coming off of a long pattern of years of discovery abuse and repeated thumbs in the noses of the court. You have to understand that that's perfectly consistent with everything else they've done in front of this court. His solution on this one is that he wants 14 days. Just give me 14 more days to answer this discovery.
Again, that's not an acceptable solution. He actually says he does not oppose the motion to compel. In other words, it should be granted. And if that's the case, then rule 215 is non-discretionary. You have to grant fees if that's the case. Uh and that's the way you >> have to do what?
>> You have to grant fees if that's the case. Attorneys fees will have to be granted. uh if if that is what their position is. Um and of course your honor, that's true of every motion. Each one of these motions being meritorious is has a entitlement to attorney's fees with it. Um I I hadn't wanted to put more paper in front of you because I knew you were going to have a lot to review and I honestly anticipated you'd have a lot to review from them. Um I wanted to let you decide to rule first before I gave you any evidence on that.
>> I can do that however you want. I could give you testimony now or I can give you an affidavit and send it directly to the court. however you wanted to deal with the attorney's fees issues, but I want >> um I'm fine with an affidavit unless Mr. Reeves is going to want to, you know, cross your testimony, which he can't.
It's hard to do to an affidavit.
>> Your honor, I'm happy to deal with the attorney's fees on written submission issue on written submission to you. If I have any issues with what Mr. Bankson submits, I will point those out in in writing. I I do not need we don't need to do that right now in my opinion. All right, then I'll include it in any orders where it is relevant, but just so it's clear and on the record. Now, your response will be due 7 days after Mr. Bankston files his affidavit on attorney's fees or motion or any other filing on attorney's fees.
>> Okay.
>> And your honor, there was one other note that I had made. Um, just my last point I wanted to make to you on rebuttal as I had to flip the page. Um, and this is just for when you're getting your orders and everything to understand this. Mr. Reeve just represented to you that that they told us, they informed us a couple days ago that discovery for prior matters is now discovery for all matters. Right. And what the court needs to be aware of is that there's a prior agreement between council in this case.
There's a prior agreement that says if any of the documents produced in the Lewis matter you contend, are responsive to any requests in the other cases. Like if there's responses request in Hland, then you don't have to produce those documents again so long as they are identified by their corresponding bates numbers in the responses. And in here we don't have responses. So none of that works. So the idea that that some Lewis production would be somehow partially compliant with any of the other cases or help any of the other cases, that's in violation of the of the party's agreement. Um, so again, another small point on that, but with that, that's all the arguments we have today and we ask you to grant the motions.
>> All right. Thank you. Um, I'm >> If I may, really fast if that's okay.
I'm sorry. I don't mean to interrupt you.
>> Well, if what you're going to say is what you meant was they didn't notice a deposition and that's why it didn't happen. What are you going to say?
>> No, your honor. It's it's on these >> then Mr. Bankston's going to talk again.
>> Sure. It's just on the idea that that you know again he's asked for a default across the board and you know again that's not that's not relief he requested and most definitely in these two contempt motions he asked for finding of contempt and so I would just again point out that that would be far beyond what he's requested here within his motion. Um I realize that he said they're under rule 15 but he specifically requested a contempt finding under rule 15 215 >> 215 right >> 215 yes your honor.
>> All right >> that's it your honor.
>> Okay Mr. Bankson, >> I I don't need to respond. I think you know what you can do under 215.
>> Okay. All right. I'm going to take it under advisement. Um I know the other case is still under advisement, but honestly, I kind of wanted to wait until we were all together again before I issued orders in that case or on the motion for Prohawk Bae, which is not looking good, by the way. Um so that's part of why I've been waiting and I'll get this to you pretty quickly. um quickly as I can.
>> Okay. Uh your honor, just one brief point on the product that you mentioned.
Again, I I I do want to mention to you that Mr. Rendaza is involved in these this Virginia case where ever since he's been involved, this discovery has gone fantastically there. It's been dealt with accordingly. It's been dealt with in an orderly fashion. Um you know, Mr. Bankson has previously told me that he thinks that my client has tons of lawyers working for him in this case, >> but he's allowed to. That's fine. But the question is, does that attorney get to appear in this courtroom? And that's a separate question. He can work on anything somebody properly hires him to work on behind the scenes. That's that's different. Somebody wants to take a chance. Bringing a lawyer in who's not licensed in this state to give advice on what to do in this litigation, they have the right to do that. What they don't have the right to do is have him appear and represent for him in court. I get to decide whether he does that or not.
>> And yes, I understand that, your honor.
>> Okay.
>> Your honor, I had one question about that. I' I've Mr. Randonza likes to email me and do stuff on this case. I don't feel like I have any duty to have to deal with him. Um I don't I don't know if it's fine with you for me not to want to deal with Mr. Randona, but to deal with Mr. Reeves instead.
>> Well, um Mr. Reeves, as he told us today, is lead counsel for these cases.
is the only council of record filed with the court that I'm aware of.
Right, Mr. Reeves?
>> That's correct, your honor.
>> So, I guess Mr. Rendanza could email similarly to how an associate of Mr. Reeves could email and be speaking for Mr. Reeves if Mr. Reeves allows him to do that. I would suggest that that information be written down.
And your honor, as far as I know, there's been no direct communication between Mr. Randaza and Mr. Bankston without me involved. It's it's more the issue of I have included Mr. Randaza on emails as a CC and he has responded sometimes, but it's not like a it's not like just Mr. Banks is dealing with Mr. Randaza. I'm involved because this is like I said, I'm lead counsel. I take that very seriously in these cases, especially given their history. I I'm you know I take it very seriously what's going on here and what I'm dealing with and so and I want the court to understand that and be aware of that. Uh but you know that's that's what Mr. Banks is referring to is that Mr. Rendaz has been included on emails and has responded to some of them but it's not solely Mr. Rendaza doing things without me knowing or being involved in these.
>> So you're telling me that Mr. Rendaza is speaking for you in those communications? The only communications that he has spoken for me about was dealing with sanctions that the court of appeals had rendered on a prior appeal of where they determined the appeal was frivolous that hadn't been paid that we were working out details of how to pay that. That that that's really it.
But everything else you're >> I'm not trying to capitulate.
>> Your response reminds me of a depo transcript I listened to earlier. I'm trying to the question was what you're telling the court is that when Mr. Rendaza sends an email, it's on your behalf and he's speaking for you.
Is that right?
>> If he in in if it involves these Texas cases, I will say yes, your honor.
>> Okay. Does that help, Mr. Banks?
>> Sure. That'll help for now.
>> All right.
>> Um the other one other thing I wanted to bring up with your honor, I don't know if this sounds like a good idea to you.
Um obviously these cases require more judicial babysitting than maybe other cases have required in the past.
>> Definitely learning that.
>> Yeah. Um so in in Lafy they have come up with a system of where they're actually having monthly status conferences to just make sure everything's working. I don't know if you want to pre schedule our next meeting together or how you may want to do that. I certainly know I'd be um willing to do something like that.
>> I mean it's probably not a bad idea.
And you know, there may be cases where you say, "Hey, do we need to have a status conference this month?" And both parties say, "Nope, everything's swimming smoothly. We don't need to." Or whatever. But I just something I thought I'd throw out there.
>> Um I think I mentioned um at the conclusion of the Fontaine hearing that I had some second thoughts about our trial schedule.
Um, mostly I think just for the the the toll it would take on this court to hear those cases in such rapid succession, assuming that after the first one or two the rest don't settle. Um, which I would love to sit here and say looking at it rationally, this is what I think will happen. I just don't know how helpful that kind of um examination of what should happen will be in this case given the personalities and the subject matter and the emotions involved. So I don't think I can I'm not comfortable setting a schedule for this court that assumes what happens in the first case will affect what happens in the remaining cases. Does that make sense?
>> It does.
>> Okay. So, um, it is my plan to take another look at those schedules and make some changes. I think I mentioned already, one of them was a like a backup setting, and we are not going to trial that week. So, I haven't issued an order, but I've let you guys know that one's not there's not going to be a trial that backup setting week. One thing I should probably let you know if you're going to be thinking about trial settings and that sort of thing is that our decision about how to go forward on these cases is probably going to be heavily affected by the outcome of this motion. I would assume.
>> And and so what I would say to that is just to give the court a heads up that this is what we'd be attempting to do it and I'm giving defendants council a heads up too that if the disperate liability issues are sort of taken out of the case by through a default um and there isn't the possibility of jury confusion over the liability issues >> seek to consolidate >> all of them for damages. It's the only thing that makes sense under that situation because then you don't have the potential jury confusion of those ideas and then you're only looking at one trial. Um, so I think to make some of these decisions is gonna have to know what happens in this motion first.
>> Yeah. Okay. Thank you.
>> Um, okay. Well, I think that's it. I'm going to take it under advisement. I've got I've got your suggestion, Mr. Bankston. I'll let you guys know, Mr. Reves and Mr. Banks. I'll let the two of you know um if I'm going to set this for some kind of regular schedule. At a minimum, we will have another schedule to discuss the schedules. So, >> and you just the backup setting you're talking about is do you know if it's the April 25th setting that you're referencing?
>> I don't know. It's when you look at the list, it clearly says >> backup for another case.
>> Two on the same case. There's Pausner and Lewis are set at the same on the same date. And that's kind of what I figured. I just wanted to >> make sure I had the that correct understanding.
I wouldn't worry about it too much um in general because we're going to we're going to address those again. And I also know there are a number of I think anyway that there are several other motions pending that were not set for today. So we're going to have to have another hearing anyway on those. Right.
So when we ended Fontaine with a possible agreement on confidential records, I don't think I've seen that agreement. Don't talk about it because he's not here. I don't want to make that mistake again. But we had also discussed wanting a similar agreement or order in these cases. So I haven't seen that in any version. So I expect that's coming.
Actually, I'm glad you brought that up because we probably need to set a hearing for that, your honor.
>> Right. That's what I'm saying.
>> Yeah, because I'm going to be getting records soon, I'd assume. And and yeah, we were able to reach agreement in the other case, but here um >> Oh, do I have a copy of it? I don't think >> Yeah, that's been that's been filed.
Again, I'm not going to go into that.
>> So, remember, Mr. Banks, when you file something, I don't get it.
>> Right. I did. It actually wasn't us who filed it. I I I'd assumed that he had provided it to you. I guess he has. Um >> he should know even better than you that I don't get it because he works in Travis County, >> right? about in the Fontaine matter, your honor. That's not that hasn't happened in this case.
>> Yeah, I understand. Right. Okay.
>> Um in this case, um Mr. Reeves opposes a protocol for camera review. Is said he wants to subpoena the records himself, not have camera review. So, >> okay. Well, you can set that for a hearing, but you're going to lose that one >> because these are sensitive records and I don't we're not doing that.
>> Okay. And that's I appreciate that. And and what I'll do with that, I I'll retrace and I'll talk to Mr. Banks about It had more been honestly your honor the idea that plainif was going to be the gatekeeper um of what was going to be submitted in camera and >> right that so that he's not the gatekeeper of what's submitted he's the gatekeep keep keeper of what is not submitted in camera and that's standard we do this all the time for medical and medical uh and mental health records in every kind of injury case you can think of so the plaintiff gets the records goes through them says you can have these if you want these We're going to ask the judge to look at them first.
That's super standard.
>> Sure.
>> If you if you oppose that, that's not going to go well. You're you're going to have a very hard uphill road convincing me that there's some reason what works in every other case I get won't work in this one.
>> And I understand and I want you to know I I am in no way I have no desire to waste the court's time with things like that, especially given now what you've said here. I I I've used that process many times. I represent, you know, I have personal injury clients and things.
I understand the process. It was just that the way that Mr. Banks and I discussed it, it was to me did not comport with that process. But again, I will especially given what you said, I'll revisit it with Mr. Banks. I'm sure we can come to an agreement so that the court doesn't have to waste their time dealing with that. I have no desire to deal with have the court deal with things that we as the party should be able to figure out.
>> Great. So, when you reach that agreement and you execute it, send me a copy.
Don't just file it with the clerk.
>> Yes, your honor.
>> Okay. Thank you. Um, that's going to conclude the hearing.
Everyone's excused and I will get with you as soon as possible.
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