Another question or something, they want to ask me. We all can go home or every day everybody good . All right. Is books outside . Everybody. Elizabeth williamson who has family in the area. I just learned, has written an incredible book and has come to wisconsin to talk to us about sandy hook. I dont think that sandy hook as a topic needs much introduction though. Having been in the news more and more often over the last couple of weeks just means that ive been that and also celebrating the fact that elizabeth is going to be here to talk to us about it. This book is so important, is not just to look at a tragedy, is look at life after a tragedy and how people and communities recover from one experience, one and where we go. Id like to turn it over to elizabeth williamson. Thank you. Thanks so much, connor. And thank you all for coming. Thank you for the invitation to come here for the 20th anniversary of the festival. You. I join you at a pretty fortuitous moment for this topic, because just this past week, a jury in waterbury, connecticut, delivered a nearly 1 billion verdict. Against alex jones in the damages trial, brought by the families of eight sandy hook victims and an fbi agent who was implicated in these conspiracy theories that alex jones has been spreading about sandy hook for years. Beginning about 3 hours after the shooting and continuing on for years. So i was there for the trial. I covered it every day and it was quite something to see the families testify as to what theyve been through since, you know, alex jones started spreading these theories. And you know what theyve been through at the hands of people who believed them. They described death threats, threats of rape people to filing their childrens graves, people demanding that they exhume the bodies of their loved ones and prove that they had died. People telling them that they made money from this, that they collaborated with the government, that this was a gambit for gun control. People looked in their windows, followed them on the street, dug through their trash. One father, Robbie Parker, who is really at the center of this lawsuit that was just resolved this week, spoke about how in 216 he was in seattle attending an event that would have included at a tribute to his daughter, emily, who died at sandy hook. He dropped his family off at a hotel where this event was going to take place. His two surviving daughters were really excited they were going to get to go swimming in hotel and then they would attend a kind of fancy party that night and have a tribute to their sister. And a man as, he parked the car, confronted him on the street and followed him for blocks calling him a liar, mentioning emilys name, sort of slurring her and him and the two of them almost came to blows because hearing his daughters name come out of this mans mouth was kind of more than he could handle. And. Two years later and, you know, he he he told me for the book said, you know, here we are at a distance of four years and 3000 miles from this tragedy. And yet this man recognized from a video that alex jones had been airing just a split second of that video, though. It was a tribute that robbie gave to his daughter the night after the shooting. He ill just quickly you this story for those of you who may not know. So robbie didnt know it at the time, but he was the first relative to speak after the shooting. And so this was on the saturday night, december 15th, 2012, after the shooting. And he he, you know, just stepped to the microphone at a lectern outside of his church. He thought he was meeting one reporter who would then you know, the family is mormon. And they have a lot of relatives in utah. So he thought he would meet a Network Affiliate reporter, give a little bit of emilies life and just have that, too, to share, you know, for family back at home, because reporters were calling all of their relatives and he and mom, Alissa Parker, wanted to be the first ones to speak about her. And they wanted anything that would be said to come from them. Instead, it was a sea of reporters and blinding camera lights. And so as he stepped to a lectern quite like this one, he gave, you know, just a sort of smile and a kind of laugh and then he started what was really a heartbreaking tribute to his daughter. Alex jones seized on that split second of that laugh. He called the entire presentation, discussed ing and for years replayed this video. But just that moment and called robbie an actor a soap opera actor a liar and someone who you know, profited from his daughters faked death. So people instantly recognize eyes him and including this man on the street in seattle four years later. So hes still remained silent for all of those years because he didnt want to poke the bear. He was really afraid that you know and the whole family was afraid that if he spoke up about this or if he confronted people or, you know, went public with what was happening to them, you know, sending them these letters, confronting them. One man was writing to him. He was a person who had Serious Mental Health problems. He had been stalking the survivors of several Mass Shootings. And he was writing to the parkers for years. And these were letters. So he knew where they lived. But they still remain silent about this. They got friends to try and monitor their house. They tried to protect themselves. But then in 2018, robbie and Alissa Parker sat down with parents, a girl who died in the parkland shooting. And they described a phenomenon which was absolutely similar to what robbie had endured after he spoke publicly. The father of this girl who died at parkland said i. I said a few things publicly. And now people are attacking me online and confronting me. And that was when he thought, this isnt going to go away. These people are not going to move on to the next target. In fact, they move on to the next target. But retain all the other targets and they continue. And so he felt like, i really need to step. And he joined the lawsuit that the families of ten sandy hook victims in total filed in the middle of 2018. It took robbie until october of that year to join that lawsuit. But he was at the centerpiece of this case, which resulted in the 1 billion judgment this week. So i first got interested in this in mid 2018 when the familys filed these four separate lawsuits, because i felt like this would be a very test of the First Amendment. Does the First Amendment and our right to free speech really protect people who would share, you know, lies like this online that so swiftly to so people and damage such vulnerable individuals as the sandy hook families. And, you know, i saw as i began working on it and with the help of lenny pozner, who is the father of the youngest, sandy hook victim, noah pozner, lenny said, look, this is not a one off. This is not something that is about gun control or the horrific nature of this sandy hook shooting. This is really a foundational story in how disinformation and false narratives travel in our society. And you have seen in the decade since sandy hook, you know, first its been pizzagate the falsehood that democrat elites were trafficking children from the basement of pizzeria in washington, d. C. Just a couple blocks place. Ive taken my own children in, you know, in northwest d. C. Then you had coronavirus myths. You had the great replacement theory that drove the violence in charlottesville, virginia. And finally, you had the 2020 election conspiracy that brought a mob to the capitol on january six, 2021. Alex jones had a role in spreading all of those pernicious conspiracies, theories and fanning the violence that resulted in some of those cases, like at comet ping pong. The pizzeria where the pizzagate gunman showed up, you know, fired an Assault Rifle in in a pizzeria full of little kids. And then, of course, weve all seen what happened on january 6th at the capitol. So i just you know, it was a story that morphed into something quite different because i did think that this would be a First Amendment case and that alex jones was saying, you know, this is my my right to free speech is being infringed upon. But in actual fact, what happened was over four years that this litigation dragged he refused to submit business records, financial records, you know, any kind of documents and testimony that was ordered by the courts. And so at the end of last year, the courts in two states, you know, these lawsuits, these lawsuits were filed in texas and in connecticut, the the one large one that we just had the results of was filed in connecticut. Then there were three more later combined into two. He lost all of those by default because he refused to cooperate and participate in the justice system. So he lost. He was found liable for defamation and intentional infliction of emotional distress. And then they moved into three damages trials. So the first one was in august in austin, where infowars, alex joness business and his online and radio broadcast is based there. A jury awarded 50 million in compensatory and punitive damages to the two. Neil heslin and Scarlett Lewis. Who are the parents of jesse lewis who died at sandy hook. And in that case, Scarlett Lewis actually had the opportunity through a kind of accident in timing to address alex jones to his face as he sat at the defense table. And she was on the witness stand, and it was 90 minutes of some of the most powerful testimony. I think ive certainly ever seen. And, you know, if any of you caught some of that, it was just amazing because she addressed the answer to every question directly to him and really stated what the sandy hook families have said from the beginning of these lawsuits that this is a battle for truth. This isnt just their effort to reclaim their own story of what happened to their children. You know, their siblings, their their mom. These six educators. And teach children who were killed. But that this is an effort by them to warn of us about the spread, the rampant spread of disinformation and false narratives and what theyre doing not only to vulnerable like them, but actually what theyre doing to to erode our democracy. And on january sixth, you really did see the impact of what happens when people who believe these theories are willing to defend them with confrontation and with violence. So thats kind of what i have to say. And i would really love to hear your questions and and tell you a little bit more if you would like about what i saw, waterbury, connecticut, these last four weeks of the trial or whatever you would like to hear about. So i guess whoever wants to ask a question has to go to that microphone. So dont shout out and. I will be happy to answer. First of all, thanks for writing the, book and covering all of us. As you know, i was at the fetzer trial here in madison. Went mostly out of curiosity. Yeah. About people who believe in conspiracies and all of this stuff. And it wasnt really until i read book and saw these other two trials really understood. It kind of how, you know, the amount of impact this had on on the people so appreciate you telling that story. My question today is about so jill, can i interrupt just quickly for those who dont understand the fetzer trial . So right here in madison. In dade county court, lenny posner, who i mentioned earlier the father of noah posner, the youngest sandy hook victim, sued a man named james fetzer, who is a retired university of. Believe it or not, taught philosophy and logic and wrote a book. Edited a book with the contrabass version of a lot of conspiracy theorists called. Nobody died at sandy hook. Very subtle title. And he, lenny, sued him for defamation. He won. He won a 450,000 judgment, which, with the addition of court costs, is over 1,000,000. And and fetzer doesnt have this money, obviously. And has is determined really determined. He and his lawyers forced the sale even of fetzer pop up camper to try and get this money like they are determined. And and he was really of the most pernicious theorists and not just on sandy hook but he he is a holocaust denier. He is a 911 truther. So hes he is a really pernicious force in conspiracy world. So, lenny did us all a big service in bringing him to heel. So im to interrupt you there. Thats all right. To let folks know what happened here right here in madison. So, so i was curious, as youve sat through now, i think three of these trials maybe for now, the obviously these are different than a criminal trial in that in terms of the representation that somebody is entitled to. But im curious, your kind of your reaction to and i know there have been a lot of them, the lawyers who have represented alex jones, whether you know, some or all have a role in furthering the conspiracies or whether they have really just been there to, you know, provide, you know, in Legal Service that hes entitled to or whether theyve gone beyond that or kind of what impression about his lawyer. Jones his lawyers are through all this. What fantastic question, because i have a lot of thoughts on this. So alex jones has had a revolve and cast of lawyers. There have been, i think at last count, nine or ten different lawyers who have represented him in these cases. And they range from people you might expect would represent someone like alex jones, a guy named, norm paris, who represented him in the connecticut case, just concluded, has reputation for taking on the cases of really difficult and unpopular or unsavory defendants. So his last case before this one was a man named fotis dulos, whose wife jennifer dulos, disappeared. He was arrested, charged with her murder, but they never found her body. Although there was substantial evidence he committed this crime. I have just a weird insight story about that. So, norm paris, hes based in new haven, connecticut. So brought him on because he, you know, had is licensed practice in connecticut. So when he was working with him, he took on other cases so including sidekick of alex jones is named owen shroyer who was arrested for disrupt doing congress by shouting out some Conspiracy Theory during a congressional hearing having to do with january. So when norm came into town to bail out of jail and plead for him. D. C. He called me and said, why dont we meet at Union Station . Ive got to get back on a train and had backups in new haven. But ill bring you up to speed on whats going on with jones. And he was always great about, you know, off the record spinning joness case to the media. So i went sat down with him. He was on the phone about the fotis dulos case and he was saying he gets off the phone, sorry, you know, didnt mean to be on the phone while youre here, but he just tried to post bail and he put up some properties that didnt have clear title. And so were telling him, hey, you know, youre probably going to go to jail because you cant post bail. Theyre not going to accept these properties. So get ready to go prison and then we have our conversation. I leave. I go back to the bureau, the times, you know, where i work in d. C. And i see coming over the screen that fotis dulos tried to kill himself. He went into the garage, turned the car on and and hes been rushed to the hospital and was, you know, did later die. So my cell phone rings. Its norm paris. And he says, jesus, when i told him to get ready to go to prison, i didnt mean that. And i thought, wow, you know, like that is like next level. So hes a you know, a character. But on other side of it, there, there theres a guy named mark balan who is a very wellknown First Amendment lawyer, has defended the times in libel cases. He operated really under the radar, but he was still taking a pay paycheck for baker. Really big, prestigious law firm. And he was trying to figure out how many times trying to help alex jones in the sandy hook cases, trying to figure out how many times hed actually mention sandy hook to try and build a defense and i discovered that with the help of some other lawyers for the families and some documents where his name surfaced. And and, you know, tried to confront him with this. His wife, by the way, is jessica rosenworcel, who is now the head of the fcc. So he was under the radar trying to help alex jones. I asked him about it in the context of her, you know, for that position at the fcc. And he came after my bosses and was saying that i had unfairly asked these questions. This was outrageous. Why is she bringing this into and how could she call, you know, the senator, blumenthal from connecticut, who was pushing for rosenworcel, his nomination to the fcc, who had no idea and wrote and blumenthals son was defending the sandy hook, not defending but working for the sandy hook families, bringing this lawsuit in connecticut. So what a tangled web we weave, right . So here the senator from connecticut who was of immeasurable help, the sandy hook families after the shooting. His son is suing alex jones and he is pushing for the nomination to the fcc of a woman whose husband was actually helping jones in this connecticut. So this man no longer works at baker hostetler. I wont as to why. But we did put in the paper. Not only that, this was the relationship, but also that he tried to work his contacts inside the New York Times department to blunt my story about this fact. So that gives you an idea. Alex is absolutely entitled to. He has no shortage of people who are willing to take a paycheck from him in his bankruptcy records. Norm paris is making 100,000 a month to represent him. So it gives you a you know, this is not an indigent client who cant find counsel because no ones willing to take him on. Whos competent . This is someone who is paying a of money to try and get out from under this. And there are a lot of people who have been willing to help him for a pretty big paycheck. So, you know, yes, hes absolutely entitled to counsel and know that he has no shortage. Of people willing to help him out. I know that ill read something that tends to confirm one of my beliefs, and ill say, oh, that makes sense to me. So my sense is, you know, thats part of human nature. Do you have any any on how hard it is to use facts to change peoples opinions . Thats a great question. Thank you. So people embrace these theories. As part of my book, i talked with a lot of people who have really gone whole hog into the sandy hook, conspiracy, rabbit. Theres two animal analogies that i just mixed up there. But anyway people who are really to this sandy, the idea that hook was a hoax and once people embrace theories its very hard to them away. Lenny posner, who has where hes at the center of my story of the book, he tried initially to to debunk these theories and to to he actually he went into a Facebook Chat group with called sandy hook hoax. And for hours entertained these individuals questions just said im here. He offered documents he offered noahs birth certificate get his death certificate even his postmortem report which is extremely painful reading and offered it to these people to say im here to answer your questions. Im familiar with conspiracy world. Lenny has a tech background. Hes very familiar with the algorithms that propel these theories through the internet. He also had listened to alex joness show from time to time know driving to tech clients in new york from from connecticut. So he felt like he had of an edge on you know how what it might look like to sort of debunk this stuff and to answer these people and maybe satisfy their questions. But he quickly that with the exception of a few people, it was really hard to do that because what these folks were getting was a sense of community, a new identity, a real cohesion and and sort of a new tribe, you know, conspiracy theories. We all kind of have one in our family, and they tend to be pretty isolated. They might be the guy, you know, back in the day who would hand you a sheet on the subway or confront you at the Family Reunion and get you in the corner and tell you about his jfk theory or whatever. But with the internet, these people find each other and they form cohesive and tight knit Community Eyes and theyre really reluctant to leave the comfort of that community. And they will defend these falsehoods in face of a mountain of facts, the contrary, because thats what theyre getting out of it. And i said this once, you know, and lenny actually heard me say it and he corrected me. He said, its not only the sense of community, its a brand new identity that theyre getting. And so to illustrate that, i interviewed a woman named kelly watt, who is a who has a cleaning business in tulsa, oklahoma. She described herself as a janitor before her time, you know, with sandy hook hoax. So she in the nineties became convinced shes, you know, its a sort of mindset and a kind of a sort of aspect of someones personality i. E. That they embrace these theories and she in the nineties convinced that liberals in the department of were indoctrinating tulsas Public School children with negative values and she really pursued so she was showing up at members of the school board in the middle of the night. She was attending all the meetings. She was picketing. She was really trying hard to get people to to listen to her about this threat that she was convinced was lurking in the school system. But she was shut down the local paper. And by, you know, the sort of powers that be in tulsa. And that was kind of the end of it. She had all these files and they sort of molded away in her attic. But when she embraced sandy hook, she had the internet and she had social media. And so she found a community of people. And she reinvented herself, a citizen journalist, as an investigator or as a researcher, someone who contributed a chapter to jim thats her book nobody died at sandy hook. And so she got an entire new life out of this. And she was a person who had a lot of trauma in her background. She had a lot of disappointments in her life. And this allowed her to, you know, well into her sixties to become a completely new persona. So there was no way you were going to convince her that everything she invested in this was for naught because. This was a lie. So its hard. And theres efforts being made right now, to sort of prepare people. So that theyre more skeptical when arent when they, you know surf online and they come across these theories. If they have a conspiratorial mindset that theres a kind of, you know, even a game that people can play where it you like how to invent a conspiracy. So you get an idea of how the sausage is made. And then because these people are skeptical by nature when they come across these theories online, they can be like, oh, i know theyre trying to do here. And so they can turn that skepticism against the conspiracy theorists rather against rather than against those who are distributing the official narrative. So the way to really get to people before they embrace these theories rather than after, because they get so much out of it. I hope that helps even though thats depressing. Sure anybody. No one has a question. Any observations . Oh, someone take some water. Oh, and thank you for being here tonight. So thank you for being here. As the trial ended and alex jones and the all that are the families, are they getting any kind of relief from the harassment and the hoax and the whole nine yards because i cant imagine their poor lot like what theyve been through to lose a child that any child at any way is horrible that way is horrible. But then to be that kind of harassment. So will there be any is it. Are they off the conspiracy theories and letting the families grieve and and try to move on as much as they can . Well put. The the answer to that is that, yes. A lot of the conspiracy theories around sandy hook are laying off because lenny pozner has really made it his lifes work to combat this. So back when i described that he joined the sandy hook group. That was in 2014. And at that time that the internet and social media were alive with this material, i mean, it was thousands of videos and websites and and posts on social media, on facebook. And he started to use different tools to get all of that taken down. He found and founded an Organization Called the honor network, and he has devoted his life to preventing online abuse and to getting this of material taken down. He started out with i mean, he got zero cooperation. Lets be really clear from the social Media Companies. Facebook, twitter, youtube, which operate operated by google, nothing. He described it as, you know, standing in front of iron doors, beating on them. And no one hears you. He would get like an automated message or there was no phone call, you know, there was nobody that you could reach. And so he he started to find ways to to kind of get around these iron doors. And the first thing he came up with was through the copyright laws, because a lot of these hoaxers were taking material people off the familys own websites, like their tribute to their lost children, or these educate. They were taking their family photos of these these individuals were taking their home videos that maybe they had put on to facebook, their friends had posted, and they were using them in their own hoax videos. And thats illegal because they own that material. And that was something that the social Media Companies knew theyd get into a lot of trouble for if that continued. So he started reporting of this and under the copyright laws they had to take it down. And often what the social Media Companies would do is worried about this. They would paint with a broad brush, so theyd take down someones entire youtube or theyd just annihilate their whole facebook page. And that made these hoaxers really angry, including alex jones. He was doing it to alex joness social media channels. So lenny has had to move a dozen times because the hoaxers have posted personal information and his home address and people have showed up at his house so many times. But he just continued. And now, today, these organizations facebook, youtube google, googles, youtube, twitter, hes on. Hes a socalled trusted filmmaker, which means that if he these lists of urls, people are lying and they do it after every shooting, they will nuke those. They paid attention to him now. And he used, you know, not only the copyright laws, but also his sort of power as a grieving of this high profile tragedy to write op ed, including 1 to 1, directed directly to Mark Zuckerberg, you know, calling out for, you know, after Mark Zuckerberg talked about how holocaust was a matter of opinion. Lenny seized on that and said, youre actually affording protection to holocaust deniers than you are to people who deny the shooting that killed my six year old happened and that worked because right after that, alex jones taken down entirely from all social media platforms. So theres a lot less material out there and i put i credit lenny pozner that development. So what the family suffered kind of went like this. It hasnt tapered off completely, actually, during the course of the trial. The live feed of the trial had to take down the comments because there was so much abuse coming into the families because they did poke the bear by suing him and by this you know, weeks long trial that was so publicized. But its its significantly and that is because they have fought back. And especially lenny. Sure. Anybody else. Want are we done . And jon, its like an auction going. I could come up with questions all day, but i you can there as long as you know are there certain types of the i mean weve had an obviously we have frequent Mass Shootings and these there are other things that sparked kind of stuff but Mass Shootings seem to work really well for it basically the school shootings. Yeah is there something those types of events that you think sparks this more and and i think about maybe its just i havent heard as much about it maybe i dont know whether jones or others talk about it doesnt seem like as much has come out from like the las vegas shooting. And i have a couple ideas about maybe why that is, but maybe im just not of of it happening. I mean, that one almost seems to be more ripe for it because we almost have less information about why it happened, who this person like theyre more space to generate conspiracy of it. Right. But it doesnt seem like its it has generated as much. But maybe im and i just curious. Yeah. What you know, what is it about these types of ones that generate a lot of this kind of . I would love to agree with you and that sandy hook was an anomaly, but in actual fact, at the that it happened and that this hoax material started circulating and people started denying this this was a real rarity. I mean, it was really on the fringes. It was exploited and spread and popularize it by alex jones, which is why respond stability is rightly placed with him. But you mentioned las vegas. You know, a lot of people were injured. I mean, 52 people were killed. And many injured. They were in their hospital beds. They were signing on to facebook to, say, i survived. I was at the concert, im here only to find all of this abuse. You liar. You staged this this you know, this is false. What . You know, you you didnt you werent ever there. It this never happened today. Ill share you this really depressing statistic. Nearly 20 of americans believe that all high profile Mass Shootings are staged usually by the government. This was not the case. Sandy hook happened and denying Mass Shootings usually by saying that theyre a gambit for gun control, that theyre plotted by the government as a socalled false flag operation, as a pretext to confiscate americans. Firearms has become the sort of go to after a profile mass shooting. Its happened all day. In fact, it was the same actors, the same sandy hook hoax founder, you know, on facebook who went on facebook and said another fake this time in uvalde. Lenny wrote to me right after that happened and was like, here he is. And that stayed up for more than 10 hours on facebook. So they also didnt act. So its like groundhog day whenever this happens, you know, people get on. They they say it was fake. You know, they take too social media. Social media doesnt take down. And then, you know, people like lenny have to take action and make sure they enforce their own terms of service and take this kind denial down from their platforms. So, yeah, it still happens as to why Mass Shootings, i mean, its not confined to that. I mean, look at all this. The theories that circulated around and you know, masking and vaccines and testing and then election as it spread to elections, which is the really worrying development, because thats the basis of our democracy, so everyone thinks that, you know, the result of an election is malleable or arguable or able to reversed through protest or violence. Where does that leave us . And i think thats the question that the sandy hook families were asking with these lawsuits. You know, where does that leave us . Forget about us. Were Vulnerable People. We are living through this. Were trying to take back our story. And i think theyve been successful. But what theyre really saying is, you what kind of a country are we living in where, you know, objective truth, established science is somehow subject to denial and and revision . I mean, thats what we base our life on. So where does that leave us . And thats what scarlet said directly to alex in court. You know, she was like, truth, truth. You know, looking right at him this this is the basis of our society. This is a more dangerous place. And that is partly your fault. And you know, that was incredibly powerful. And we owe them an enormous debt. And our gratitude that they are among the voices these Vulnerable People have been through much saying, you know, please Pay Attention and help us because this is all of us. Its this not just them. And i answer to anyone elses questions. So let you go early. I my sister, this is my sister. So with all of these lawsuits and judgments against alex jones, where do you think hes going to go from here . Do you think that will actually shut him up . Hasnt so far . He the verdict, as we talked about as the you know as the the court clerk read off 15 plaintiffs and much each of them got for a total. Of 965 million. He was on his show saying, youll never get the money, ill appeal. And worse, raising money to fund his legal fight. Hes done that all along. His sales and an outright contribution to his for profit business have surged in light of these lawsuits. So thats kind of a sobering and depressing fact. But at the same time, these judgments are real. And its a measure how effective he is that even i was thinking, well, i wonder how, its like, no, this is our justice system. These are actual enforceable judgments. He will appeal the appeal will take a really long time. It will be no one, you know, no one among these families is changing their lifestyle because this money is not coming tomorrow, but they dont care. I mean thats the thing. You know, they have been through so much, theyve through like the worst thing that any parent can imagine. And then theyve kind of been through it twice because people have come to them and said, no, it didnt happen, or you did. You killed your own loved or you faked it and you did it for money. And they, you know, if anything comes from Something Like that, that kind of, you know, secondary, you know, twofold trauma, its enormous patience. And they have huge patience. They will, as their lawyer said yesterday they will chase him to the ends of the earth to get as much of this money as they can and not they want to buy a yacht. But because they want to really nailed down this message and shut him up, whether that will happen, i mean, his constitutional we unable this trial showed he was his own worst enemy in this trial. He sat in the courtroom in front of these weeping family members filling the first two rows of the courtroom and said, im done apologizing. I mean, i watched the jurors faces. They were shaking their heads. They were, you know, they were agog at that. He would say this as these families were weeping. They had just played the video in which Robbie Parker was reminiscing about his daughter on the night after her death. So the jurors were, some of them crying at that. So the idea that he would sit there, but he is hes forever on transmit. Hes never on receive. He is absolutely unable to stop talking, even silence would really help him. So he will bring about as he has the end of his own business how that happens and in what way its going to happen. He will fight like crazy. He has a lot of resources. The families are already hes declared bankruptcy. The families are already suing him about that, saying that hes siphoning money out of the business to himself and his family to try and escape these judgments. Hell try every trick in the book, but there are a lot of people i mean, its notable that the lawyers on the family side, a lot of them just volunteered to work for free. I mean, they were just and when they they were representing him, lawyer, other lawyers came out of the woodwork and said, how can we help you . You know, so there are a lot of really talented bankruptcy lawyers working on this. And and theyre ready to chase him down, too. So, i mean, its it is a, you know, rarely do we find, you know, such a clear cut story of good evil. And and, you know people are often accused lawyers of being great humanitarians. But in this case, there are quite a few of them involved, which reminded me there was a moment in that trial, his own lawyer, it was revealed that his own lawyer had divulged texts, text exchanges to the other side and the familys personal and medical history. Yeah. Which i have to admit, that week i wasnt diving too deeply into that news story. But i did take note of it. I dont i dont think that was an accident. Do you . Was that was that an intentional slip . And in my assumption that it was intentional. I thought theres still hope, even though theres people him out there and they wont go away. And it feels like this world is full of injustice right now. Theres still even the person representing this man has a conscience somewhere. But is that accurate . And do you find hope in that moment that there will be more moments like that . Yeah, actually, i think they just screwed up. Yeah yeah. I would like to think that, you know, and you know right now who is his lawyer in the austin case and, you know, accidentally sent a huge body of alex joness Text Messages to the families lawyers and alex jones had been saying for years, you know, that was among the material that he was refusing to submit during discovery. And thats one of the reasons he was defaulted. All of a sudden he was saying, i dont send Text Messages. I have Text Messages from alex jones. So i know he sends Text Messages, but he was like, no, you know, i dont have a phone anymore. I dont have Text Messages and and then all of a sudden, here he is on the stand and its like, you know, are the Text Messages. And they were pretty. They showed how he was really checking how much money he was making as he spread this hoax. So and how many products he was selling because i dont know. Im sure everyone probably knows. But his Business Model is he sells merchandise geared toward the paranoias of his audience. So its survivalist gear and diet supplements for people who are distrustful of established medicine and you know dried food for your for your shelter for the end of times and you know gear like that mostly supplements and quack cures and things like that. And he does this through conspiracy broadcasts and what they proved in court was that every time he spoke about sales, you know, his audience and his sales were surging. And so that was the material. Didnt want to surrender, but i would like to think that, you know, just the radar, these lawyers for him had an attack of conscience and and said that im sorry to say you know there have been many screw ups on legal team partly because there are so many of them and some of them are at daggers. They fight with each other. Theyre short timers or know whatever some of them are. In the case of the case. Then back in and i think this just in the shuffle, it ended up in the hands of the familys lawyers who really knew how to use it. Hello. Following on your sisters question, where did the rest of us go from here . How do we restore a balance where facts mean something and maybe social media is deemphasized . An actual paid media and reporters that work for a living are a thriving again. And newspapers are thriving again. How do we go forward . Its a great question. I think one of the lessons of the sandy hook family saga is that, you know, this idea of dont feed the trolls and theyll go away, doesnt work. We have to as who believe in established and objective truth and and you know science and and medicine we have to really speak out against this the you know the january six proceeding are, you know one great case study in this that you look how precious few members of congress would stand up and say after the politics of it became clear initially condemned it but after the politics became clear and you know they realized that there were a lot of people who were still embracing this 2020 election Conspiracy Theory. They lost their courage and they reversed themselves. And they said, well, you know, if thats what the voters in my district are saying, well, then i should just either go along with them. Some have done. Ron johnson cough or remain silent and and so theres been you know, an unbelievable lack courage. Somebody told me at the beginning of my reporting career in washington, which is a long time ago, they said, really, never underestimate what a member of congress will do to stay in office. And, boy, has this been a case study in that. But speaking up is important. And i think thats the familys message. Thats the short and simple answer. I think we have to engage people in a way, though, that that doesnt polarize us. You know, i think asking of people who express these theories or saying, you know, are you really sure or, you know, not shutting them down or fighting with them . I think that actually, unfortunately to the problem, people do tend double down on these for the reasons that i described. But, you know, thoughtful constructive but firm debate and push back, i think is really important. I do think its very important to. Let our members of Congress Know what we think of the kind of weakness in the face of what we can identify as obvious lies that is inexcusable. I mean, they are our leaders. They should be confronting this. Theyve bipartisan expressed the interest in reining in social Media Companies and the sort of impure city that they operate with when they spread this material on their platform and they dont crack down on people who violate their terms of service by spreading it. But they also need to you know, there needs to be a tightening of the screws them as well. Congress says that they want to do that, but their motive are somewhat suspect in some cases. But, you know, theyre responding to their voters in remaining silent on some of this. So those of us disagree with that need to raise our. Anybody else. We only have we only 4 minutes. So we can knock off a little early. Thank you so very much for coming. I really appreciate it. Thank you so much for reading and and for your obvious support for these