Let me give you a rundown of the lore on this saga because it's psychotic. He is most known for Info Wars. His various claims have been beyond bizarre, including psychic vampires.
Alex Jones, for those who don't know, is a fringe conservative commentator long before we had terms like "alt-right". He shot to fame (in those circles) with his claims about the Sandy hook massacre saying it was faked and a government false flag operation.
This unleashed his unhinged followers to harass the families who just had their child killed by a mass shooter. Many had to move, go into hiding, get therapy and so on.
He became even more (in)famous because of his ties to Trump. Trump was on his show.
Jones got deplatformed by Youtube in 2018. As has become clear, this didn't impact his earnings at all.
What came out of this and other court proceedings is that Jones had revenue of $50-100 million per year (since at least 2012). At times in 2018 he was making $800,000/day. This was from selling supplements and merch as well as from Info Wars. He claimed to be going bankrupt because of this proceedings, to which someone anonymously donated $8 million in crypto just last month.
The parents who were harassed because of his lies (he admitted they were lies in court) have individually sued him. This case is in Texas. Most are in Connecticut. This is just the first trial of many. What we've seen this week is just the penalty phase of the Texas trial. He's already been found guilty.
During discovery for this trial, Jones had to produce any texts and emails relating to Sandy Hook. He claimed there were none.
LLast week, his lawyers gave the plaintiff's attorney a complete copy of everything on his phone for a 2 year period. In legal proceedings this is called "inadvertent production" and there are mechanisms for rectifying this. Opposing counsel informed Jones's lawyers os this mistake and they did... nothing.
No effort was made to correct the error, assert privilege or assert confidentiality (according to the order for discovery). A 10 day window passed that basically meant that Jones's lawyers didn't assert privilege so the plaintiff's attorneys is free to do with that whatever they want (minus some medical records that need to be destroyed).
The January 6 committee had been trying to get just the metadata from Jones for their investigation and had thus far failed. They have now subpoenaed these records.
This information will likely be available in all the subsequent trials.
So you have Jones who failed to produce relevant documents, lied under oath about that discovery and (maybe) his lawyers making knowingly false statements. This last point is important. As an attorney you can't (technically) tell a lie. If you know your client is guilty you can't lie and say they're not. If they knew of Sandy Hook texts and emails existing, not being produced and made false statements to the court about that, they can face displinary action.
But it doesn't end there. Including in this massive data dump there was found child porn material. Jones has, I believe, claimed this was "malware".
While all this is going on, while proceedings are still active, Jones went on his show and called the judge a pedophile. He even published a photo of the judge's likeness burning, which you could reasonably view as a threat.
Remember this guy has revenues north of $50 million per year. That's relevant because Texas law has various limits on punitive damages. That's why there was testimony about Jones's income and assets in the punitive damage phase (ie punitive damages capped to a certain nebulous percentage under Texas law).
The net result? $4 million in compensatory damages and another $45 million in punitive damages. People are talking about how bankruptcy won't protect him from this but I'm not sure people realize just how much money this guy has made.
This may well be the craziest legal thing I've ever seen.