Alex Jones faces existential courtroom battle over limits of fake news [View all]

[Gothmog]

Juanita Jean's son, Mark Bankston, is representing the plaintiffs suing Alex Jones n two of these lawsuits https://www.mystatesman.com/news/state--regional-govt--politics/alex-jones-faces-existential-courtroom-battle-over-limits-fake-news/uzGiDhpaPz0c1OJ79fd6bJ/

It is one of five defamation lawsuits against Jones now working their way through the courts — three brought by Bankston in Jones’ home turf of Austin— that collectively threaten Jones’ long and enormously lucrative run as the nation’s premier conspiracy theorist, a formerly outsider role that has made Jones, in this topsy-turvy political moment, one of President Donald Trump’s most influential media allies and defenders.

If the Travis County Sandy Hook case makes it to trial, it could become an epic courtroom showdown, heading into Trump’s re-election campaign, over where to draw the line between free speech and libel in an era of competing claims of “fake news.”

Bankston and Dallas attorney Mark Enoch, representing Jones, will be in a Travis County courtroom Wednesday arguing over Enoch’s motion to dismiss the defamation case under the Texas Citizens Participation Act — a law unanimously passed by the Legislature in 2011 and signed into law by Gov. Rick Perry that was intended to protect citizens’ First Amendment rights from meritless claims intended to silence them. Bankston said the law is being invoked in this case as nothing more than a stalling tactic.

Enoch argues that the suit is a “strategic device” to silence Jones “as well as anyone else who refuses to accept what the mainstream media and government tell them, and prevent them from expressing any doubt or raising questions.”