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This Day in Legal History: The Alex Jones Verdict
On October 12, 2022, a jury in Waterbury, Connecticut, ordered Alex Jones and his company to pay about $965 million to the families of victims of the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting and to an FBI agent who responded that day. For years, Jones had told his audience the massacre, in which 20 children and six educators were killed, was a hoax staged by “crisis actors.” His followers harassed and threatened grieving parents, some of whom had to move repeatedly to escape them. The judge later added hundreds of millions more in punitive damages and fees.
Jones had already lost the case on liability. The court entered a default judgment against him because he repeatedly failed to turn over evidence, so the jury’s job was to decide damages. The verdict, together with an earlier Texas award, became one of the largest defamation judgments in American history, and Jones’s media company later went through bankruptcy.
The significance of October 12, 2022 is a reminder of where the First Amendment’s protection ends. American law protects an enormous range of speech, including harsh, offensive, and mistaken speech about public matters. It does not protect knowingly false statements of fact that destroy private people’s reputations. That boundary, between what the government and the courts can’t touch and what they can, is at the center of our first story today, about whether the government can use antitrust law to second-guess how news organizations decided to cover the President.
The Justice Department is investigating whether five TV networks, ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC, and Fox News, violated antitrust law when they briefly stopped providing shared “pool” coverage of the President. The New York Times first reported the investigation. Here’s the background. On September 19, the White House barred reporters from CNN, MS NOW, and Politico over their coverage, a ban we’ve followed closely. In response, the networks that rotate responsibility for the White House TV pool, the shared camera crew whose footage all outlets can use, suspended pool coverage for several days. They resumed after a federal judge temporarily blocked the ban. Now the Antitrust Division has demanded the networks’ communications about the pool. A Justice Department spokesperson said the networks “proudly boycotted” covering White House events and that group boycotts by commercial competitors can violate the Sherman Act. Here’s the legal problem with that theory. It’s true that competitors agreeing not to deal with someone can be an antitrust violation. But the Supreme Court has drawn a line between economic boycotts and boycotts that are a form of expression. In NAACP v. Claiborne Hardware in 1982, the Court held that a boycott aimed at political and social goals is protected by the First Amendment. The networks’ decision about whether and how to cover an event is an editorial judgment, which is about as protected as speech gets. And the pool exists because the White House limits access; it’s a cooperative arrangement for gathering news, not a scheme to fix prices or divide markets. One leading First Amendment group called the investigation “nonsensical.” There’s also the context: the Justice Department is defending the press ban in court, and Trump ally Laura Loomer publicly urged an antitrust challenge two weeks ago. Coming alongside subpoenas to Times reporters and the seizure of a Washington Post reporter’s laptop, critics see this as using enforcement power to pressure the press. The investigation is at an early stage, and no charges have been brought.
Justice Department probes TV networks over Trump pool coverage, New York Times reports | Reuters · CBS News · CNN
Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook’s lawyers say a White House hearing on whether she can be removed will show she committed no mortgage fraud, if the hearing is anything close to objective. The President first tried to fire Cook in August 2025, claiming she made misrepresentations on mortgage documents before she joined the Fed. She has denied wrongdoing, arguing the apparent discrepancies were either accurate at the time or inadvertent, and that she disclosed the relevant facts to her lenders. In June, the Supreme Court ruled she could keep serving while her challenge proceeds, without deciding whether the allegations are true. Now the President has created a three-person “committee of inquiry” to hold a hearing at the White House on November 5. Cook can submit a written statement beforehand, the committee can question her or let Justice Department lawyers do so, and it will then report to the President whether there’s legal cause to remove her. Here’s why the process matters. The Federal Reserve Act says governors can be removed only “for cause.” That protection is what keeps monetary policy insulated from day-to-day political pressure, and courts have generally read “for cause” to require some kind of notice and opportunity to respond. The White House hearing looks like an effort to supply that process and build a record that can survive in court. Cook’s lawyers, Abbe Lowell and Norm Eisen, say they have “grave doubts” the hearing is legitimate, because the President has repeatedly said he’s already decided to fire her, and they argue the real reason is her refusal to support lower interest rates. A hearing where the decision-maker has announced the outcome in advance is vulnerable to a due-process challenge. Still, her lawyers say they’re engaging with the process to test whether it can be fair. Whatever the committee reports, this is likely headed back to court, and it will test how much independence the Fed’s “for cause” protection really provides.
Fed’s Cook lawyers say hearing will show no mortgage fraud case | Reuters · CNBC · CBS News
And finally, another chapter in the story of AI in the courtroom, this time from a different angle. A federal judge in Arizona, U.S. District Judge Krissa Lanham, dismissed a lawsuit a worker filed against the Department of Agriculture alleging retaliation and a hostile work environment. The plaintiff, Shelly George, was representing herself. Judge Lanham wrote that the 67-page complaint appeared to be generated by AI, because it resembled other AI-generated complaints the court had seen. She also found it was a “shotgun pleading”: it repeated claims, made unclear arguments, and didn’t connect the facts to the legal claims. She barred the plaintiff from using AI to draft a new complaint and required disclosure of certain AI use in future filings. A few observations. First, most of the AI cases we’ve covered involved lawyers citing cases that don’t exist. This one is different: the problem wasn’t fabricated law, it was a complaint that didn’t do its basic job. A complaint has to give the defendant fair notice of what it’s being sued for and why, and the federal rules require a “short and plain statement” of the claim. Long, repetitive pleadings that don’t connect facts to claims have been dismissed for decades, AI or no AI. Second, it’s worth noting the court’s AI finding rests on the judge’s observation that the document resembled others, not on an admission or a detection tool. Third, this is a hard issue for people without lawyers. Courts are generally more lenient with self-represented litigants, and AI tools can genuinely help people who can’t afford counsel organize their thoughts and find the right forms. But they can also produce long, confident documents that look like legal pleadings without meeting the legal standards. The likely result is more courts adopting AI disclosure rules, which may protect the courts but also add another procedural hurdle for people already navigating the system alone.
Judge dismisses US agency worker’s lawsuit, citing AI hallmarks | Reuters · JD Journal
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