AFP

A US jury ordered far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones on Wednesday to pay nearly $1 billion in damages for falsely claiming that the deadly 2012 Sandy Hook elementary school shooting was a “hoax.”

The jury in Connecticut, where the massacre took place, awarded $965 million to the families of eight Sandy Hook victims and an FBI agent who brought the defamation case against Jones.

Several family members who were in the courtroom broke down in sobs as the damage awards were read out by a clerk of the court. Jones was not present.

“It shows that the internet is not the wild, wild west and that your actions have consequences,” said Bill Sherlach, whose wife, Mary, died at Sandy Hook. “People like Alex Jones will have to rethink what they say and how they say it.”

Jones, founder of the website InfoWars and host of a popular radio show, has been found liable in multiple defamation lawsuits brought by relatives of the victims of the shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, which left 20 children and six teachers dead.

The 48-year-old Jones claimed for years on his show that the Sandy Hook shooting was “staged” by gun control activists and that the parents were “crisis actors,” but has since acknowledged it was “100 percent real.”

Sandy Hook families maintained that his lies and denialism, coupled with his ability to influence the beliefs of thousands of followers, caused real emotional trauma.

They explained they were harassed and threatened by Jones’s fans.

Erica Lafferty, daughter of the Sandy Hook principal who was shot by the gunman, said during the trial she had been repeatedly accused on social media of being an actress and had even received rape threats.

“I am incredibly proud and thankful of the message we sent here today: The truth matters. And those who profit off of other people’s trauma will pay for what they’ve done,” she said in a statement after the verdict.

“There will be more Alex Joneses in the world. But today they learned that they will be held accountable.”

Jones was also accused of pulling in massive profits from various products he sold on his website.

A Texas jury ordered Jones last month to pay nearly $50 million in damages to Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis, whose six-year-old son Jesse was killed by the 20-year-old gunman behind the Sandy Hook shooting.

The latest trial was held in Waterbury, Connecticut, less than 20 miles (30 kilometers) from Newtown.

The six-person jury awarded damages for defamation, slander and emotional distress to a total of 15 plaintiffs ranging from a low of $28 million to a high of $120 million to Robbie Parker, whose six-year-old daughter Emilie died at Sandy Hook.

William Aldenberg, an FBI agent who responded to the Sandy Hook shooting and joined the families in filing the lawsuit against Jones, was awarded $90 million in damages.

– ‘Historic’ –

InfoWars declared bankruptcy in April and another company owned by Jones, Free Speech Systems, also recently filed for bankruptcy.

Jones was appearing live on his InfoWars website as the damage awards were read out in court and said he planned to appeal.

“This is what a show trial is like,” he said, while appealing to his listeners to visit his website and buy his products.

Chris Mattei, a lawyer for the families, welcomed the jury’s decision.

“We believe it is historic and we are going to enforce this verdict,” Mattei told reporters.

“And if you’re out there right now and you’re one of Alex Jones’s audience members, and you’re considering giving him money, I just want you to know that based on the jury’s verdict today, it’s not a very good bet,” he said.

“All Alex Jones does is take from you, exploit you, lie to you, feed your fears and your anxieties and your mistrust,” he said. “Well, that stops, that’s stopping today, thanks to the courage of these families.”

Jones, a vocal supporter of former president Donald Trump, is also under scrutiny over the January 6, 2021 assault on the US Capitol.

Trump appeared frequently on Jones’ radio show during his 2016 White House campaign and Jones was in Washington when supporters of the then-president stormed Congress in a bid to prevent certification of Democrat Joe Biden’s election victory.

Confident of emerging victorious from the simmering cauldron of the US midterm elections, Republicans are cooking up a buffet of legislative priorities for the new Congress — and topping the menu is a dish best served cold.

The party of former president Donald Trump has had to watch powerlessly from the opposition benches as its recalcitrant leader has spent years fending off criminal and congressional probes.

But the Republicans are expected to regain the House of Representatives in November, and are plotting revenge on Trump’s foes in Congress, the White House and law enforcement with investigations of their own. 

One major target could be President Joe Biden himself, according to Republican congresswoman Nancy Mace, who has confirmed longstanding speculation that some colleagues are mulling impeachment next year.

“I believe there is pressure on the Republicans to put that forward and have that vote,” she told NBC in September. “I think that’s what some folks are considering.”

The House Oversight Committee’s top stated priority, though, will be intensifying scrutiny of the Democratic leader’s son, Hunter Biden, who is already being investigated by the FBI over his business.

The battle for the 100-seat Senate, currently divided evenly between the two parties, has been described as a “jump ball” by Republican leader Mitch McConnell.

But a gain of just six seats would hand the “Grand Old Party” control of the House, paving the way for two years of intense scrutiny of the Biden administration.

– ‘500 requests’ –

Party leaders have so far declined to endorse the impeachment move publicly.

But they have vowed to “conduct rigorous oversight to rein in government abuse of power and corruption” among a package of broad policy priorities unveiled in the final weeks of the election campaign.

“House Republicans have put the Biden administration on notice — with more than 500 requests for information and documents,” their prospectus says. 

“When backed by subpoena power, the American people will finally get some of the answers they deserve.”

Several House Republicans and Trump administration figures have defied subpoenas to appear before Democratic-led probes, including the investigation into the 2021 insurrection.

But Republicans have pledged nevertheless to compel testimony on multiple aspects of decision-making by the Democrats.

Subjects for the planned investigations include the White House’s handling of the fraught withdrawal from Afghanistan, illegal immigration at the Mexico border and the origins of the Covid-19 virus.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, who is in charge of immigration, is a prime target for impeachment.

Republicans have also vowed to investigate Anthony Fauci after locking horns repeatedly with Biden’s soon-departing chief medical advisor over Covid-19 vaccines, mask mandates and other pandemic-related issues.

“Dr. Fauci was warned by top scientists early on that the virus looked genetically manipulated and likely leaked from the Wuhan lab,” top Republican James Comer, who expects to lead the oversight committee next year, said in a statement. 

“Despite these facts, Dr. Fauci dismissed these ideas in public as conspiracy theories.”

Comer is contradicted by John Hopkins University, which said in August that recent research confirming a Chinese seafood market as the origin of the pandemic was the “death knell for any alternative theories.”

– ‘Hypocrisy’ –

Another target of Republican scrutiny could be the FBI’s handling of the raid at Trump’s Florida beach club to recover illegally stored classified documents.

“Attorney General (Merrick) Garland: preserve your documents and clear your calendar,” House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy tweeted the day of the search, accusing Democrats of the “weaponized politicization” of the Justice Department.

US media has reported that the Republicans are also plotting revenge on the panel investigating the 2021 US Capitol assault, which has uncovered a slew of damning evidence about Trump’s role in the riot. 

Republicans will also look into special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into the Russian attack on the 2016 US election, which revealed extensive contacts between the Trump campaign and Russian government and intelligence operatives.

News of the investigations has prompted a withering response from Democrats, who have dismissed the Hunter Biden probe in particular as a Republican “obsession.”

“Unlike former president Trump and his family, who used their senior White House positions to advance their own financial interests — and whom Republicans have blindly defended — Hunter Biden is a private citizen who is not a member of the administration,” one aide told The Washington Post.

“Republicans’ hypocrisy is not lost on the American people.”

Google on Wednesday said it has allowed Donald Trump’s Truth Social app in its Play Store for Android devices — after receiving assurances the app would meet the platform’s standards for moderating harmful content.

The app — which Trump launched after being barred from Twitter over the 2021 Capitol riot — had been kept out of Google’s store over its lack of moderation tools, including for violent threats.

Google said Truth Social has since been updated to comply with its policies barring objectionable posts, and has built in effective systems for reporting and removing unwanted content as well as blocking abusers.

“Apps may be distributed on Google Play provided they comply with our developer guidelines, including the requirement to effectively moderate user-generated content and remove objectionable posts such as those that incite violence,” a Google spokesperson said in response to an AFP inquiry.

Developers can make Android apps available elsewhere on the internet, but the Play Store is a main source of content for users. 

A Truth Social app for Android devices is available on the social network’s website and other venues that may not have Google’s content moderation rules, according to the Alphabet-owned tech titan.

“It’s been a pleasure to work with Google, and we’re glad they helped us to finally bring Truth Social to all Americans, regardless of what device they use,” Trump Media and Technology Group (TMTG) chief executive said in a released statement.

TMTG early this month announced today that a Truth Social app was freshly available for people in the United States who use Samsung smartphones, which are powered by customized Android software and have their own app shop.

Samsung’s share of the US smartphone market is about 30 percent, according to industry analysis firm Counterpoint.

A version of Truth Social tailored for Apple mobile devices is available at the App Store, which also enforces rules about content moderation.

– Trump take on Twitter –

Google said in August that it had notified Truth Social that its app violated Play policies and required “effective systems for moderating user-generated content” in order to be offered on the platform.

The online giant said at the time that Trump’s app broke rules barring content that incites physical threats and violence, but was working on addressing those issues.

Truth Social was conceived as Trump’s answer to Twitter — from which he was ejected in January 2021, days after a mob of his supporters refusing to accept his election defeat to Joe Biden stormed the US Capitol.

Billionaire Elon Musk, who has made a $44-billion deal to buy Twitter, has said he would likely allow the former US leader back on the platform. After trying to walk away, Musk now says the troubled deal is back on and could close by the end of this month.

Meanwhile, a merger between TMTG and a blank check company named Digital World Acquisition Corp — intended to bring in fresh funding for the Trump platform — has yet to take place. Digital World shares were up more than seven percent to just over $17 in after-market trades in the wake of the Play Store news.

– QAnon –

Excluded from major social networks, Trump has regained only a fraction of his followers on Truth Social.

Trump has 4.18 followers at Truth Social, compared to the 88.8 million he had on Twitter and the 35.4 million he had on Facebook before being booted for encouraging real-world violence such as the deadly attack on the US Capitol.

Truth Social has become an online haven for QAnon fans to share conspiracy theories such as prominent members of the Democratic Party being involved with satanists or pedophiles. Misinformation watchdog NewsGuard has reported finding scores of Truth Social accounts sharing QAnon content, with Trump among those resharing posts.

Auctioneers unveiled the most expensive art collection ever to go under the hammer Wednesday, which belonged to Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen and is valued at $1 billion.

Five centuries of touchstone works featuring some of the most significant creators in history are being sold next month.

The collection of more than 150 pieces includes work by Vincent Van Gogh, Claude Monet, Paul Gauguin and Jasper Johns.

“I think this is a sale that sort of exhausts superlatives,” said Johanna Flaum, vice-chairman of 20th and 21st Century Art at auctioneers Christie’s.

“This is… the most valuable collection ever sold at auction. It’s really a once-in-a-generation type of event.”

Highlights include “La montagne Sainte-Victoire” by Paul Cezanne, which is expected to fetch at least $120 million, and “Verger avec cypres” by Van Gogh, whose hammer price is estimated at over $100 million. 

Allen co-founded Microsoft with Bill Gates in 1975, becoming fabulously rich as the company grew into the computing behemoth it is today.

By the time he died in 2018 at the age of 65, he had bought some of the most important works created in the last half a millennium.

“The collection is quite wide-ranging, it really makes Paul Allen a unique collector in that sense,” said Flaum.

The previous most expensive collection sold at auction was the Macklowe collection whose two tranches netted $922 million.

The auction will take place in New York on November 9 and 10. All proceeds due to Allen’s estate are to be dedicated to philanthropy, in line with his wishes.

Parts of the collection will be available for public viewing in Los Angeles, London, Paris, Shanghai and New York ahead of the sale.

The United Nations General Assembly on Wednesday overwhelmingly voted to condemn Russia’s annexation of parts of Ukraine, a move US President Joe Biden said sent a “clear message” to Moscow.

The General Assembly approved the resolution with 143 in favor and five against, but 35 nations abstained including China, India, South Africa and Pakistan despite a major US diplomatic effort to seek clearer condemnation of Moscow.

The resolution “condemns the organization by the Russian Federation of so-called referendums within the internationally recognized borders of Ukraine” and “the attempted illegal annexation” announced last month of four regions by President Vladimir Putin.

It calls on all UN and international agencies not to recognize any changes announced by Russia to borders and demands that Moscow “immediately and unconditionally reverse” its decisions.

The vote showed Russia that it “cannot erase a sovereign state from the map,” Biden said in a White House statement.

“By attacking the core tenets of the UN Charter, Russia is tearing at the very foundations of international peace and security,” the statement said. “The stakes of this conflict are clear to all — and the world has sent a clear message in response.”

The US ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, had urged all nations to send a message that the world “will not tolerate seizing a neighbor’s land by force.”

“Today it is Russia invading Ukraine. But tomorrow it could be another nation whose territory is violated. It could be you. You could be next. What would you expect from this chamber?” she said.

– International condemnation –

The United States had put special energy into seeking to persuade South Africa and especially India, a growing US partner that has a historically close relationship with Russia and also abstained in the Security Council, where it holds a non-permanent seat.

The vote was largely the same — with a net two more votes against Russia — as when the General Assembly in March condemned the initial invasion of Ukraine.

Bangladesh, Iraq and Senegal — which abstained in March — on Wednesday voted to condemn Russia.

Eritrea, one of the world’s most closed states, moved from a “no” to an abstention, while Nicaragua, under growing international pressure over human rights, switched from abstaining to voting “no” alongside only Russia, Belarus, North Korea and Syria.

“South Africa considers the territorial integrity of states and that of Ukraine to be sacrosanct, and we reject all actions that undermine the purposes and principles of the UN Charter and international law,” said South Africa’s representative, Mathu Joyini. 

“We have abstained on the resolution because we believe that the objective of this assembly in keeping with its mandate must always be to contribute to a constructive outcome conducive to the creation of sustainable peace in Ukraine,” she said. 

Western powers counter that Russia is not genuinely interested in peace, as witnessed by deadly strikes on civilians in Kyiv and western Ukraine. 

India’s envoy, Ruchira Kamboj, said that “the entire Global South has suffered a substantial collateral damage” from the war and that “pressing issues” were not addressed in the resolution. 

Bangladesh, explaining its move to condemn Russia, said that the international community should also stand firm against any attempt by Israel to annex occupied Palestinian territory. 

“We strongly believe that the purposes and principles of the UN Charter regarding respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity and peaceful settlement of all disputes must be complied universally for everyone, everywhere, under all circumstances,” said Bangladesh’s ambassador, Muhammad Abdul Muhith.

President Joe Biden’s administration said Wednesday it would prioritize winning over China, seeing it as the only global rival to the United States, even as it also works to constrain a “dangerous” Russia.

“The post-Cold War era is over, and the competition is underway between the major powers to shape what comes next,” Biden’s national security advisor, Jake Sullivan, said in a speech at Georgetown University to unveil the national security strategy.

The strategy said the 2020s would be a “decisive decade for America and the world” — for reducing conflict, promoting democracy over authoritarianism and confronting the key shared threat of climate change.

“We will prioritize maintaining an enduring competitive edge over the PRC while constraining a still profoundly dangerous Russia,” the strategy said, referring to the People’s Republic of China.

Vladimir Putin’s Russia “poses an immediate threat to the free and open international system, recklessly flouting the basic laws of the international order today, as its brutal war of aggression against Ukraine has shown,” the strategy added.

China, “by contrast, is the only competitor with both the intent to reshape the international order and, increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military and technological power to advance that objective.”

The release of the strategy was delayed by the Ukraine war, with Biden spending most of this year rallying allies against Russia and marshalling billions of dollars in weapons to Kyiv, but it remains largely consistent with interim guidance laid out shortly after he took office in January 2021.

“I don’t believe that the war in Ukraine has fundamentally altered Joe Biden’s approach to foreign policy, which long predates his presidency,” Sullivan earlier told reporters.

“But I do believe that it presents in living color the key elements of our approach — the emphasis on allies, the importance of strengthening the hand of the democratic world and standing up for our fellow democracies and for democratic values,” he said.

– China wants to be ‘world’s leading power’ –

The strategy said the United States was willing to work even with competitors on shared interests, amid the Biden team’s talks with top carbon emitter China on climate change, described as “the existential challenge of our time.”

But the White House emphasized risks from China, warning that its rapid advances in technology aimed to mold the world order in support of “its own authoritarian model.”

Despite Beijing’s repeated denials it is seeking hegemony, the strategy said China “has ambitions to create an enhanced sphere of influence in the Indo-Pacific and to become the world’s leading power,” using the favored US term for the broader Asia region.

The White House also tied a rising China to Biden’s vows to prioritize the US middle class, saying Beijing was seeking to make the world dependent on its economy while limiting access to its own billion-plus market.

The strategy called for major investment at home, two months after Biden signed a $52 billion package to improve US capacity for building semiconductors, but also said the United States sought to “coexist peacefully” with China and manage the competition “responsibly.”

“We are not seeking to have competition tip over into confrontation or a new Cold War and we are not engaging each country as simply a proxy battleground,” Sullivan said.

The strategy release comes as Biden vows a reassessment of relations with one longtime US ally, Saudi Arabia, which moved to slash oil output — benefitting energy exporter Russia and potentially raising gas prices for American consumers weeks before congressional elections.

Amid reconciliation between Israel and Gulf Arab states, the strategy called for a “more integrated Middle East” that would reduce the long-term “resource demands” of the United States, which for decades has provided security for oil-producing nations.

The strategy also acknowledged the need to address democratic shortcomings at home, where former president Donald Trump refused to concede defeat in the 2020 election and whose supporters led a deadly assault on the US Capitol.

“We have not always lived up to our ideals and in recent years our democracy has been challenged from within. But we have never walked away from our ideals,” it said.