emptywheel: "IT'S A TREMENDOUS AMOUNT OF INFORMATION:" THE DETAILS ABOUT ALEX JONES' PHONE

[Nevilledog]

https://www.emptywheel.net/2022/08/04/its-a-tremendous-amount-of-information-the-details-about-alex-jones-phone/


Hours before the jury awarded over a $4 million compensatory damages against Alex Jones, his attorney Andino Reynal made a desperate attempt to get a mistrial based on his own fuckup.

As part of the exchange the ensued, plaintiff’s lawyer Mark Bankston laid out the dilemma facing Reynal upon discovering he had sent the crown jewels to the plaintiffs. What Bankston got sent included highly confidential records from the Connecticut plaintiffs, records he shouldn’t have had.

He says I will work on preparing you a new link. In other words, the idea here, your honor, because I don’t think this is true is that what he was wanting to provide to me was maybe I guess some last minute supplemental production, right, before this trial, days before this trial?

I don’t think that’s what was happening. And the reason I don’t think that’s what was happening is because Mr. Reynal never worked on preparing me a new link. He never ended up sending me, here is the correct material. Instead, he went to trial, and waited until after his client got off the stand and now says, Oh I meant to send him more materials. So what we’re basically hearing is that Mr. Reynal, at that point, if that story is true, knew that he was supposed to supplement his discovery, knew he was supposed to provide those materials to me, and when I alerted him that he failed to do that and provide me something else, he just ignored it, decided I’m not going to supplement discovery. So if that’s true, if that story is true, we have a willful violation of discovery by Mr. Reynal, to allow this case to go to trial with documents that he says he needed to provide to me. That in and of itself is sanctionable.

But that’s not the real story of what happened here. It’s just not. We know what happened here. Norm Pattis, up in Connecticut, was passing this file along to Mr. Reynal. And I know that because the directories contain SharePoint OneDrive backups of Norm Pattis’ computer. He’s providing it to Mr. Reynal and that, your honor, is also independently very troubling. Because Mr. Reynal talks about these medical records — that’s what he’s concerned about. These medical records. Well, one thing I can tell you right now, your honor, when I figured out that I had the confidential psychiatric records of all nine Lafferty plaintiffs and their confidential depositions? I immediately destroyed them. And I told Chris Mattie, plaintiff’s lawyer up there that I’ve done that. He is on notice that those materials are not in my possession. But I told him, look, I trust my staff. They’re good people. And I trust that those materials were never leaked. But nonetheless, that is a significant data breach against his clients. And what’s most concerning is that Mr. Reynal has not yet made an appearance in the Lafferty case. Mr. Reynal is not allowed to have those documents.

[snip]

The other problem, your honor, is we have Mr. Reynal now asking you to seal up an entire universe of things which should have been produced at minimum six months ago. One of the things you also, I know you remember, is that for multiple prior discovery hearings, beginning as early as October of last year, we’ve been talking about text messages. Every single hearing. And then you remember we had that hearing in January where we had the disclosure that, wait a second, that Don Salazar or Nico Acosta, the producer up in Connecticut had produced some text messages up there that should have been responsive, should have been on Rob [LNU] phone, Alex Jones’ phone. Why don’t we have them. What’s going on? And you’ll remember in those series of hearings, right, when Mr. Reynal came here in March, and told you, no, those were only on Mr. Acosta’s phone. Mr. Jones — we’ve searched his phone, he doesn’t have text messages that are responsive.

So again, not only is this a fig leaf, to cover up the things he has broken with his client, this is a fig leaf to cover up that he had been misrepresenting to you for months, telling you that these things did not exist.

I’d like to summarize what was said in response, Axios style, to make it more accessible for further reporting.

- Reynal’s legal assistant sent a file transfer link to Bankston, another of the plaintiff’s attorneys, as well as Reynal and another Jones attorney. The link led to a variety of other files, including confidential psychiatric files on the Connecticut plaintiffs.

- The entire file was around 300GB of material

- 2.3GB of it is phone material, including “intimate messages with Roger Stone”

- Reynal claims that based on his review, Jones’ phone “is not in there,” but instead a review copy of text messages of a six month period between August of 2019 and the first quarter of 2020

- This happened once before, but in that case, Jones’ lawyers successfully identified privileged material and clawed it back

- Judge Maya Guerra Gamble agreed that the material should have been turned over a year ago
Bankston has been asked by January 6 Committee to provide the phone and the plaintiff’s counsel in Lafferty (the latter of which can be shared under an information sharing order)

- Gamble suggested Reynal has made 17 requests for a mistrial and that Bankston has spent so much time in trial he has had no time to search on the material

[SoCalDavidS]

1. Still Probably Not Enough For DOJ To Take Action nt

[fierywoman]

2. Juanita Jean must be very, very proud of her son (Bankston.)

[NJCher]

3. Peculiar phrasing

“Intimate messages” with roger stone.

[robbob]

7. I know!

[no_hypocrisy]

4. Talk about Deus Ex Machina

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deus_ex_machina

[2naSalit]

5. A pretty sad attempt at it too.

That's all this guy has, theatrics. And yelling to try and intimidate anyone who might try to challenge his claims. The shit that passes through his lips backed up by bluster.

I hope that these families, by the end of it all, take his very last dime and he sits in prison for many years.

[Chainfire]

6. (a little off subject) The excitement over the news of the phone records illustrates the reasons why

the FBI and the SS "lost" phone records pertaining to calls around the 6th. They got rid of incriminating evidence before someone "accidently" released them. It is a case of the premier law enforcement agencies of our government committing criminal acts in the support of Fascist politics.

And people wonder why I am pessimistic about our future...

[H2O Man]

8. Indeed, there is

a large quantity of information there. But one can only speculate on the quality of it. Roger Stone, for but one example, is very careful not to use sources that are easily found for his important communications.

Jones appears less self-disciplined. I hope it is a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

[crickets]

9. So, Norm Pattis is Alex Jones' CT atty (he of 'Alex is too sick to appear today, Yr Honor' fame)

His office sent a Dropbox link of his computer contents to Jones' TX attys. A paralegal accidentally sent the link to the TX plaintiffs' attys, showing that not only have Jones' TX attys gotten hold of CT plaintiffs' medical records - which they absolutely should not have - they have been hiding gobs of Jones' phone records as well.

Now Jones' CT atty is in trouble with a CT judge for sharing medical records that never should have left his office.

Jones' TX attys are in trouble with the CT judge for sharing the medical records they should not have had, as well with the TX judge for hiding phone records and lying about it.

Is that about right? It got a little confusing there.

All of which goes to show that Alex Jones is a Very Bad Boy with Very Bad Lawyers. He has been doing some serious criming requiring far too many attys and he needs to be sued back to the Stone Age.