Alex Jones and Steve Bannon

 

Suppose someone in the media said that Democrats and their flacks in the traditional media almost gleefully used the murders at Sandy Hook to push a political agenda. Or suppose that someone said that the Democrats and their public relations people in the media exploited grieving parents of some of the victims to make political points by waving the bloody shirt, and that some of the parents were willing to be so exploited. Neither of these things would be defamation of the parents or anyone else (especially since both were true).

Then suppose that someone said without evidence that the murders were the result of a plot by the government, and the deranged murderer was put up to his crimes by federal agents provocateur. While that claim might be annoying to government officials and offensive to their friends in the media, it would not be defamation of the parents of the victims. It would just be another wacky conspiracy theory.

But suppose someone said to a large audience across the nation that the murders never happened, that the government staged fake murders for political reasons, and the parents of the victims were really actors aiding in the deception. That would be libelous, because it falsely accuses private citizens of participating in a fraud and a monstrous one at that. That is what Alex Jones did, and a judgment of libel was justified.

The amounts awarded were not. They were off by orders of magnitude. The amount of tangible harm Jones’s libel did to the parents was fairly small. They were rightly offended, but hurting people’s feelings is not the same as inflicting serious damage. Their careers were not destroyed. Their property was not harmed, and any possible damage to their reputations with the public was quickly repaired. Some parents said they were bothered and even harassed by obnoxious losers who believed the murders were a hoax, but it would be difficult to tie that activity directly to Jones.

It is likely the real reason for the huge judgments against Jones is not what he did but rather what he is. What he is is surely bad enough. He is a lying, disgusting demagogue and scoundrel. The things he said about the murders in Connecticut were the indecent and indefensible work of a vulgar lowlife. But nasty, even vile, people have the same civil rights as decent ones, and his penalty should have been based on his deeds rather than his character. Besides as a practical matter, smaller awards might have been fairly easily collectible, while Jones may try through bankruptcy to avoid paying quickly or even at all on the gigantic ones.

Steve Bannon was sentenced to a few months in jail this week for contempt of congress for refusing to honor a subpoena to testify in front of the January 6^th committee of the house. Conservatives have pointed out that Democrat Eric Holder was not convicted or even prosecuted after he was found in contempt of congress a few years ago. While it is probably true that the DOJ Holder ran was unlikely to prosecute its boss for anything, and the DOJ Garland runs was happy and eager to prosecute Bannon for anything, this is not a clear case of a “two tiered” system of justice, one for Democrats and another for Republicans. Holder was a serving official in the executive branch and eligible to claim executive privilege, whether properly or as part of a cover up. Bannon had no such legal cover. Holder did cooperate in some ways with the committee investigating him. For a long time Bannon did not. Still he eventually did offer to testify, and one might have thought that offer would have made the citation for contempt moot. It seems unlikely that a Democrat behaving the same way would have been tried and very unlikely that he or she would have been sentenced to prison. (This conjecture may be tested next year when Republicans are running the investigations in congress.) I have no use for Bannon, but a person has to wonder if in this case his politics hurt him more than his conduct.