While a Supreme Court dragged far to the right by former President Donald Trump far too broadly shields him and future presidents from criminal charges, legal accountability is finally arriving on the doorsteps of two men who helped usher in the endlessly divided, lie-soaked political world we now inhabit. Thank goodness for small victories.
The clearest-cut case is that of Steve Bannon, who ran Trump’s 2016 campaign before serving as chief strategist to him as president. Because he was instrumental in helping orchestrate Trump’s unlawful rebellion against the 2020 election results, the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection subpoenaed him, demanding he turn over communications with the former president that would’ve surely revealed the depths of the planning to overturn the election.
Bannon refused the lawful order — and Monday, began paying the consequences for that defiance, reporting to prison to serve a four-month term.
Styling himself as a political prisoner, Bannon declared himself “proud to go to prison,” adding: “If this is what it takes to stand up to tyranny. If this is what it takes to stand up to the Garland corrupt, criminal DOJ, if this is what it takes to stand up to Nancy Pelosi, if this is what it takes to stand up to Joe Biden…I’m proud to do it.” That’s a pitiful attempt to recast as somehow patriotic a blatant refusal to cooperate with a legitimate investigation by the House of Representatives.
Justice is coming a bit more circuitously in the case of another nasty individual. Alex Jones, the Trump ally whose Infowars network built an industry out of fabricating disgusting conspiracy theories — including the claim that the mass shooting of first graders at Sandy Hook Elementary was staged — long ago lost a defamation case filed by the families of the murdered children, in which Jones was ordered liable for up to $1.5 billion in damages.
Fully aware of his lies, he sicced his minions on grieving mothers and fathers and siblings, causing them to endure torture from maniacs who called them crisis actors. That is not speech protected by the Constitution; it is libel.
One group of Sandy Hook families, who filed suit in Connecticut, want to shut down Infowars; the other, which filed in Texas, wants to take control of the company and garnish the funds he makes from continuing to broadcast.
Last week, a bankruptcy judge presiding over the fate of Infowars’ parent company, Free Speech Systems, seemed inclined to agree with the Connecticut families, which sounds right to us.
It may be beyond the power of any court to prevent Alex Jones from continuing to pollute the air with his poisonous words. But the process of liquidating the assets of the company enriched by his lies must continue. It should be orderly; it should be sane; and its sole objective should be delivering some measure of justice to the families Jones defamed.
Jones, a 9/11 truther praised by Donald Trump — who in 2015 said to him “Your reputation is amazing. I will not let you down.” — has done more incalculable damage to all that is decent. May he spend the rest of his life struggling to pay his victims funds that represent a tiny fraction of what he has taken from them.
