A toxic brew of money and threats is perverting the courts
Alex Jones and Elon Musk are using MAGA tactics to intimidate judges.
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Earlier this week, The Onion’s bid to buy Alex Jones’s Infowars fell apart in a manner that was as perplexing as it was depressing. At the same time, Elon Musk was attacking a Chancery Court judge who ruled he couldn’t have his absurdly bloated Tesla pay package of $56 billion.
These cases aren’t just similar because they involve two of the more repugnant people in the current media landscape. They’re also both symptoms of a judicial system that is in no way able to deal with right-wingers who have access to mountains of cash and rabid followers they can sic on judges.
Back in November, The Onion — also known as “America’s Finest News Source” — won a bankruptcy auction for Infowars and announced a plan to turn it into a “very funny, very stupid” website instead of the misinformation and vitriol-filled hellscape it was under Jones. Infowars was on the auction block because Jones owed the families of victims of the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting nearly $1.5 billion in default judgments for his relentless promotion of the conspiracy theory that the shooting was staged by “crisis actors.”
Rather than pay, Jones filed bankruptcy for three of his shell companies, trying to force the Sandy Hook plaintiffs to accept $10 million, or roughly 0.6 percent of what they were awarded. He then dragged the families through bankruptcy court for two years — after having spent three years fighting the initial lawsuits — but was ultimately required to sell Infowars and other assets via bankruptcy auction to satisfy creditors.
Enter The Onion, whose bid was undertaken with the cooperation of the Sandy Hook families.
The Onion’s cash bid of $1.75 million was less than the cash offered by the only other bidder, First United American Companies (FUAC), which bid $3.5 million. Normally, a bankruptcy trustee would be required to accept the highest bid because the job of a trustee is to maximize the recovery for creditors. Here, though, things were more complex than simply awarding Infowars to the highest bidder.
First, the Sandy Hook families agreed to forgo some of the damages they were entitled to as a way to increase the value of The Onion’s bid. Additionally, the other bidder, FUAC, is the company that runs Jones’s grifty online supplement store. But neither of these things seemed to matter to US Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Lopez, who on Tuesday threw out The Onion’s bid, saying the auction left money on the table for the families and that the bankruptcy trustee was required to “scratch and claw and get everything you can for them.”
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With this, Lopez essentially told families who backed The Onion deal that they couldn’t have the deal they wanted. Instead, they may be forced to accept Jones’s weird and complicated sham deal where he gets to sell to a friendly party he’s already affiliated with, one that almost certainly would allow Jones to continue operating Infowars.
If this seems the very opposite of fair and a terrible result for families Jones has victimized, that’s because it is. Lopez’s decision leaves the families in the limbo they’ve been in for years, particularly because he declined to actually rule. Instead, he said he didn’t want another auction and told the bankruptcy trustee to return in 30 days with a plan. It’s a triumph of form over function, of procedural niceties over actual fairness.
Now, the question is how much more the families can endure. They spent years being attacked by Jones and his listeners, followed by years of litigation. Besides the fight in bankruptcy court, Jones is also appealing the underlying judgments themselves, saying his free speech rights were violated. Earlier this month, a Connecticut appellate court upheld most of the verdict against Jones, but he’s vowed to take that to the state supreme court. Despite declaring bankruptcy and whining that he’s broke, Jones seems to have ample funds available to weaponize the courts against the families. All the while, Jones has complained that the cases were rigged against him and called the Connecticut judge a tyrant. During the Texas case, another Infowars host showed a picture of that judge in flames.
But when it comes to ample funds, Jones can’t hold a candle to Elon Musk.
Besides Musk’s courtroom efforts to eliminate the National Labor Relations Board and his lawfare on organizations that report on how X has turned into a Nazi cesspool under his ownership, he’s also been relentlessly litigating against some shareholders who argued that the $56 billion Tesla granted him in 2018 was improper, because the board members who gave him that staggering sum were not independent from him. In fact, the group that put together the compensation package included Tesla’s general counsel, who just happened to be Musk’s former divorce attorney and someone who loves Musk so much he cried during a deposition in the case.
Delaware Chancery Court Chancellor Kathaleen St. J. McCormick has now twice ruled against Musk, leading Musk to go on X and accuse her of “absolute corruption” and to call her “totally crazy” and a “radical far left activist cosplaying as a judge.”
Musk’s fans have joined in, calling her insane. Several dozen law professors and lawyers have asked the Delaware State Bar Association to defend McCormick, in part because the Delaware Judges’ Code of Judicial Conduct prohibits her from speaking out about the attacks.
In the future, Musk likely won’t have to deal with McCormick anyway. He’s reincorporated both Tesla and SpaceX in Texas. That state has a new business court with judges appointed by GOP Gov. Greg Abbott and will likely be highly favorable to Musk.
Trump helped normalize attacks on judges
Deep pockets have allowed both Jones and Musk to drag out cases and to go scorched earth against any opponents they face. To be fair, that’s always been the case for rich litigants. But the constant attacks on judges that rule against them — attacks that seem to come with no real consequences — are a product of the Donald Trump era.
It isn’t just that Trump was able to exploit the weaknesses in the judicial system for long enough to win the 2024 election, a victory that all but ensures he will never suffer any consequences for his actions, no matter how criminal. It’s also that Trump ushered in a new age and created a permission structure where any adverse ruling from a judge is grounds for personal attacks and cries of corruption.
Even before being elected president in 2016, Trump attacked the federal judge, Gonzalo Curiel, who was handling the Trump University fraud case. Trump said Curiel was being unfair because he is Mexican and was mad Trump was campaigning on building the wall. Back then, those comments were shocking enough that even other Republicans criticized Trump. As time went on, though, they fell in line and started mimicking Trump’s behavior.
In 2023, Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik filed an ethics complaint against New York state judge Arthur Engoron, who presided over Trump’s business fraud case, saying Engoron was biased. Stefanik also joined in on Trump’s attacks on Engoron’s law clerk.
After Trump was convicted earlier this year of 34 felony counts for falsification of business records, GOP Sen. Ted Budd said Judge Juan Merchan’s jury instructions were unconstitutional and “I would put nothing past him at this point.” Matt Gaetz called the verdict “the corrupt result of a corrupt trial, a corrupt judge, and a corrupt DA.” Ted Cruz whined that Merchan "should have worn a Biden campaign hat while he sat on the bench."
Trump’s anonymous supporters often take another tack and actively threaten judges, a practice that increased dramatically after Trump lost the 2020 election. Reuters found serious threats against federal judges went from 220 in 2020 to 457 in 2023. After Judge Lewis Kaplan oversaw E. Jean Carroll’s defamation suit against Trump, a poster on a pro-Trump site called for him to be hung for treason.
The only way for judges to steer clear of the ire of people like Jones, Musk, and Trump — and their supporters — is to rule in their favor. Any other outcome is deemed rigged and corrupt. This combination of wealth and the ability to deploy conspiracy-minded violent followers is unprecedented and increasingly dangerous, and the courts aren’t equipped to deal with it. But if we don’t figure it out soon, there won’t be much of a judicial system left for the rest of us.
That’s it for this week
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All these right-wingers, with all their “mountains of cash” and lies and threats—all this was foretold, and given permission, by the Chief Justice himself in Citizens United. SCOTUS doesn’t care, having removed itself from ethics and real life; MAGA cherishes the chaos.
I'm not sure why any of us are surprised. This is the inevitable outcome of Citizens United. Effectively ruling that money buys speech ended the founding concept that we all have an equal voice in government. Actual debate has been overwhelmed by campaign donations, elections a cohort of "representatives" comfortable with quid pro quo, who are well aware of how their next campaign will be funded and of how quickly that money will go to a compliant opponent if they don't satisfy their donors.
With elected offices successfully captured by the deep pockets, it was just a matter of time before attention moved on to the unelected branch. Judges with lifetime appointments can't be easily removed, so bullying is today's tactic of choice, but when these judges retire or are forced out the captured politicians will make sure the job is done for their benefactors, who will then fully own the government.
Unless our captured politicians pass new laws that reverse the current status quo of one dollar, one vote - laws that would make it much harder for them to hold on to their purchased seats of power - this process will roll to its obvious conclusion. That is pretty much inevitable.
Good luck with that.