A week after kicking disgraced UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson out the door, John Oliver is back in Last week tonight desk on Sunday to rule on the defamation case against reckless conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, who was found responsible for falsely claiming that the Sandy Hook massacre was a “hoax” filled with “actors.”
The jury awarded Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis, the parents of slain 6-year-old Jesse Lewis, $45.2 million in punitive damages and $4.1 million in compensatory damages. Jones, 48, faces additional defamation lawsuits in Connecticut and Texas.
After describing Jones as “a man who boldly answers the question: What if Grimace was Proud Boy?”, Oliver exclaimed: “Guess what, Alex? You screwed up with the information and this time the information won the hell out of it.” He added: “And the way he handled this trial is almost a master class in what not to do in court.”
For starters, as Oliver pointed out, the judge became so “annoyed” by Jones’ lies in court that at one point she paused the proceedings to examine him, telling him: “It seems absurd to instruct you again that you must say the truth while you testify, but here I am: You must tell the truth while testifying … this is not your show.’
That didn’t stop Jones, who continued to appear during the trial on his truth-averse show Infowars, where he, according to Oliver, “unreasonably associated [the judge] to pedophilia” and suggested that his political enemies had stacked the jury with “blue-collar” people who were unable to decide what damages he should pay. This is typical of Jones, who once claimed that the government had poisoned the water and made frogs homosexual, that Parkland shooting survivor David Hogg was a crisis actor, that the Charlottesville car attack was a false flag operation, that Michelle Obama is transgender and that 9/11 was a “government-orchestrated controlled bomb.”
“There was a twist that he may not have anticipated,” Oliver said of Jones’ trial.
An attorney representing the parents of the slain Sandy Hook child presented a text message in court that proved Jones lied on the stand when he claimed he had no text messages on his phone discussing Sandy Hook. When Jones expressed surprise at where the lawyer might have gotten it, he explained to Jones, “You know that [that] 12 days ago your lawyers messed up and sent me an entire digital copy of your entire cell phone, with every text message you’ve sent in the last two years? And when informed, [they] took no steps to identify it as privileged or protected in any way? And as of two days ago, it fell free and clear into my possession, and that’s how I know you lied to me when you said you didn’t have any text messages about Sandy Hook.
“This is your Perry Mason moment,” replied a stunned Jones.
“Oh shit!” Oliver exclaimed. “First, credit to this lawyer for having the superhuman patience to sit on these text messages for 12 days … but the contents of Jones’ phone could become a problem for him. Not only has the Jan. 6 panel already requested those phone records, but they also show that Jones, who tried to plead indigent in the case, was earning as much as $800,000 a day in sales in recent years.
Oliver concluded, “Look, it’s clear that none of this is going to stop him. There are two more trials to come and he will probably find ways to turn them into a clown show and raise money from them as well. But at the very least, this phone thing could make his life a lot harder—and for a while. And that’s something we should be allowed to enjoy, because waking up one morning and finding out that Alex Jones’ lawyers have mistakenly shared his cell phone records is a real blessing. We don’t deserve this, but one thing is certain: He does definitely does.”
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