Krull
INDIANAPOLIS — Liars have had a rough time of it lately.
Just a few days ago, Alex Jones of Infowars infamy found himself on the wrong side of a nearly $1 billion judgment in a lawsuit filed by families of victims in the Sandy Hook school shooting. Jones has argued, at various times, that the shooting never happened, that the families were “actors” and that the whole tragedy was a “false flag” operation in which parents knowingly sacrificed their own children to help with some evil conspiracy, such as taking away people’s guns.
The fact that many of Jones’ claims contradicted each other never seemed to bother him or trouble his audience. The reason it didn’t bother him is that he was making massive amounts of money peddling these serial falsehoods.
Until recently, that is.
Before this most recent judgment, he had been hit with a $45 million one in a Texas case. He’s filed for bankruptcy and has engaged in other maneuvers to shelter and hide his assets, but he’s unlikely to succeed with his gameplaying.
When a court hands out a $965 million judgment, it’s not just signaling that it disapproves. It’s saying that it wants to put him out of business.
And if this judgment doesn’t do it, the next one likely will. Now that Jones has been directed to pay the people he’s wronged more than $1 billion, a line of similarly aggrieved people eager to sue him is forming.
Given that he’s made similar false claims about almost every mass shooting or tragedy over the past 15 years, the line is a long one.
Perhaps that’s why he was ranting live on his platform when the judgment was announced. He spewed much of the same noxious nonsense that got him into trouble in the first place, even though he previously had acknowledged under oath that he didn’t believe a lot of it.
That’s the thing about incorrigible liars.
They lie because that’s all they know how to do.
Just a day or so after the court dropped the hammer on Jones, the Jan. 6 Select Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives held its last hearing.
The evidence presented at the hearing demonstrated that former President Donald Trump knew he lost the 2020 election, that he realized his claims of election fraud had no basis in fact and that he planned to try to overturn it even before the vote counting had started.
These all are important points because they make the legal argument that the former president’s frantic attempts to convince people he had been robbed weren’t a delusion of his.
They were lies.
Knowing, deliberate lies.
Then, to illustrate the point, the committee voted unanimously to subpoena Trump to testify.
The chances that Trump will testify—or that any sane, competent lawyer of his would let him—are between none and nonexistent. Given the now genuine legal peril he is in, allowing him to testify under oath would border on malpractice.
Make no mistake: That peril is real.
Witness after witness told the committee Trump knew he had lost and knew his claims of fraud and theft were bogus. That puts him in a difficult, even untenable position.
Years ago, I wrote a column about a feud between two Indiana politicians.
One of them called me to insist that he never had said anything uncomplimentary about the other guy. I listened for a bit until his denials grew both heated and absurd.
At that point, I said several of his associates had talked with me about his animosity toward the other politician. If he continued in his denials, I told him, I’d put them in the uncomfortable position of telling me whether they had been lying to me then or he was lying to me now.
There was a long silence.
Then he said, “That won’t be necessary.”
And he hung up.
That’s the spot Donald Trump now is in.
Only it’s more serious.
Because both he and his aides and allies face perjury charges if they don’t tell the truth.
That’s the thing about the truth. Denying it is like trying to stop the sun from rising.
Clouds may obscure it, but the sun eventually always does shine.
Same with truth.
Yet another reason liars have had a rough time of it lately.
John Krull is director of Franklin College’s Pulliam School of Journalism and publisher of TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students. The views expressed are those of the author only and should not be attributed to Franklin College.
John Krull is director of Franklin College’s Pulliam School of Journalism and publisher of TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students. The views expressed are those of the author only and should not be attributed to Franklin College.
