Kevin Barrett, The Legal Lynching of a Truth-Seeker: Jim Fetzer’s Stalinist-Style Show Trial (Expanded)
Part 1: Tuesday at the Trial: Just the Facts
Lenny Pozner’s
defamation suit against Jim Fetzer concluded Tuesday, October 15, day
two of the penalty phase of the trial. (Disclaimer: I have been friends
with Jim since 2006, and though I don’t always agree with him, I respect
his courage and sincerity. It was an honor to have lunch with him on
this, the most critical day of the trial.)
Pozner won the first phase last June when the court determined that four of Fetzer’s statements alleging a fake death certificate for Noah Pozner were defamatory; then on September 13 Fetzer was found in contempt of court for sharing images of Pozner’s deposition.
Fetzer argues that he shared the images, which the court had deemed
confidential, as part of his legal defense research. Fetzer claims the
images show that the Lenny Pozner in the deposition is not the same
person depicted in at least some previous publicly circulated images of
Lenny Pozner.
Pozner asked for
one million dollars in damages from Fetzer. The jury’s job was to
determine an award amount, which theoretically could range anywhere
between zero and one million dollars. After almost four hours of
deliberation, the jury returned a verdict of $450,000 in damages.
The penalty phase
of the trial began Monday with opening arguments and a lengthy
videotaped deposition of a forensic psychologist, who asserted that
Pozner suffers from PTSD as a result of Fetzer’s four defamatory
statements. The forensic psychologist, who was presumably hired by
Pozner’s legal team, predictably supported Pozner’s narrative: After
suffering the loss of his son Noah at Sandy Hook, Pozner says, he
experienced PTSD for more than a year, only to have his recovery cut
short, and his symptoms exacerbated, by his discovery that online Sandy
Hook skeptics were claiming that the school shooting was a hoax in which
nobody died. Since then, Pozner says, he has been waging an online
battle against Sandy Hook skeptics (he calls them “hoaxers”) which has
kept him mired in PTSD. Much or most of the suffering he has
experienced, Pozner suggests, is the fault of Jim Fetzer, whom Pozner
and his lawyers are casting as the kingpin and prime inspiration of the
Sandy Hook skeptics’ movement.
Fetzer’s legal
team questioned the “Fetzer caused my PTSD” claim. While acknowledging
that Pozner would have suffered PTSD from the loss of his son in
December 2012, they suggested that it was not entirely Fetzer’s fault
that Pozner has been re-traumatizing himself by spending much of his
time since 2014 combing the internet for material that he says
traumatizes him and trying to get it removed. Fetzer’s team’s
cross-examination of the psychologist pointed out that normally PTSD
sufferers avoid stimuli that reawaken the trauma.
The afternoon
session featured back-to-back testimony from Lenny Pozner and Jim
Fetzer, both called to the stand and questioned by the plaintiff’s
(Pozner’s) lawyers. In front of a huge, adorable Noah Pozner picture
projected on the screen, Lenny Pozner recounted dropping off his son
Noah at Sandy Hook Elementary School on December 14, 2012. He described
seeing his son’s body at the funeral a few days later. He said that in
2014 he encountered the online claims of Sandy Hook skeptics and tried
to engage with them in a cordial and transparent way, but soon began to
feel harassed and increasingly upset at their claims that his son Noah
had never existed. He said he has persistently tried to get such claims
removed from the internet as a way of defending his son.
Below are
reconstructions from my notes on Pozner’s testimony. The notes were cut
short by a bailiff ordering me to shut down my laptop, since I was not
one of the two mainstream journalists who had been approved for
electronic devices.
Lenny Pozner:
Noah was a twin to my youngest daughter. The last time I saw Noah would have been on the morning of December 14. I dropped my three kids off at the car line.(At the funeral) his forehead was the only part that was not covered (due to injuries).I became aware of Mr. Fetzer in mid-2014. (Asked if he had read Jim Fetzer’s edited book Nobody Died at Sandy Hook): No, I haven’t read the book, just the parts about me.I felt it said a lot of ugly things. I wanted to defend my son. I needed to be his voice. (Answering question): I’m concerned for my safety, my family’s safety. I’m concerned for my children’s future, how they could be treated.I was concerned someone would do something…something bad.(Asked why he thought Fetzer’s four defamatory statements had damaged his reputation): It causes people to believe I lied about my son’s death, that my son didn’t die….(Asked how he has been affected in terms of fearing contact with people):I’m very cautious about what I reveal…I never know how people might react…people might accuse me of being this villain that Mr. Fetzer portrayed me to be.(Asked whether he held Jim Fetzer responsible for the criminal acts of Lucy Richards, who left obscene, threatening messages on Pozner’s answering machine):Lucy Richards was sentenced to prison for making death threats against me. (But why hold Fetzer responsible?) It was the way she said what she said, and the way she talked about Noah, and about me…she accused me of faking my son’s death, hiding my son, that he’s not really dead. Part of her sentence is she’s not supposed to read (Fetzer’s) website.
Jim Fetzer,
called to the stand by the plaintiff’s lawyers as a hostile witness, was
questioned about his responsibility for the four allegedly defamatory
statements, all of which involved claims that the copy of Noah Pozner’s
death certificate circulated by Lenny Pozner in 2014 was
inauthentic—claims Fetzer still argues were accurate. Fetzer said that
he (and in some cases collaborators including co-authors, editors, and
publishers) were indeed responsible for publishing those statements,
which were not defamatory, but truthful. Dane County Circuit Judge Frank
Remington immediately ordered the jury out of the room and admonished
Fetzer that the court had already ruled that those statements were defamatory
and that no further impugning the findings of the court would be
tolerated. When the jury filed back into the courtroom, Judge Remington
ordered them to ignore Fetzer’s statement.
Toward late
afternoon the defense decided not to call two witnesses, Tony Mead and
Kelley Watt, who had traveled from Florida to testify. Both sides
offered closing arguments.
Though I missed
the closing arguments (I had to pick up my wife after a dental
appointment) a friend and colleague who wishes to remain anonymous
summarized them for me. What follows is based on what my source, who was
present in the courtroom as a spectator, recounted afterward.
Pozner’s
attorneys made broad emotional appeals, saying Pozner has experienced
pain and suffering due to losing his son and then having the wounds
re-opened by his battles with online Sandy Hook skeptics whose ideas,
they claim, are derived from Fetzer’s book and web postings.
Fetzer’s
attorneys argued more narrowly on two key issues. They asked why the
psychologist expert witness who diagnosed Pozner with Fetzer-induced
PTSD did not estimate any monetary damages from that PTSD. Nor, in fact,
did Pozner or his legal team. No claims were made about the dollar
value of any losses in earning ability Pozner may or may not have
suffered. There was no claim whatsoever of any loss of income or medical
bills.
Fetzer’s team
also argued that Pozner’s side had not presented any convincing evidence
supporting the claim that Fetzer’s defamatory statements about the
death certificate had caused Lucy Richards or any other unstable Sandy
Hook skeptic to harass Pozner; no evidence was presented that the
harassers even read Fetzer’s defamatory statements, much less acted on
them.
Fetzer’s lawyers
reminded the jury to set aside their personal feelings and emotions:
They shouldn’t decide on the basis of whether they like or dislike
Fetzer or agree or disagree with him. Damages are not supposed to be
emotional or punitive, Fetzer’s attorneys said, but are only related to
actual dollar-value loss (which had not been demonstrated).
The jury retired
to consider their verdict. A few hours later, well into the evening,
they ordered pizza. A few mainstream journalists, including a New York Times reporter, remained in the courtroom to await the verdict. The jury returned the verdict after about four hours of deliberation:
Part 2: The Opinion Piece (Assuming We Are Still Allowed to Have Opinions)
Tuesday was the final day of Jim Fetzer’ defense against Lenny Pozner’s libel lawsuit. I attended and published a “just the facts” report that evening (republished
with minor changes above). At almost the same moment I published my
initial report, the jury came back with a verdict awarding close to half
a million dollars to Lenny “Jim Fetzer gave me PTSD” Pozner.
Now it’s time
for an opinion piece. And as much as I sympathize with Mr. Pozner,
assuming his account is accurate, my opinion is that Jim Fetzer got a
raw deal…and that the reverberations of this case will be disastrous
unless it is overturned.
The whole
courtroom drama was carefully scripted and controlled to ensure that the
jury, as well as onlookers and reporters, got to hear only one side of
the story. Fetzer was never allowed to present his defense.
Jim Fetzer’s
defense is simple: Truth is an absolute defense against libel, and
Fetzer published statements alleged by Posner to be libelous because he
believed them to be true. What’s more, he still believes them to be
true. Whether he is right I do not know. But I do know he is sincere in
his beliefs.
I watched Jim
Fetzer take the stand, swear to tell “the truth, the whole truth, and
nothing but the truth”—and then watched him silenced and admonished, and
the jury hurriedly chased out of the room, when he tried to speak the
truth as he saw it. Jim merely said he still believed his “libelous”
statements were true. Asserting the contrary would be a lie. Not saying
anything would be a lie by omission. So he was admonished and threatened
by the court for the sin of not lying on the witness stand!
As I understand
it, at no point during the two phases of the trial was Jim Fetzer ever
allowed to present to a jury the evidence that led him to believe that
Sandy Hook was an Operation Gladio style psy-op (which those who have
read Daniel Ganser’s NATO’s Secret Armies know
is entirely plausible) and that there was no actual school shooting
(which does seem farfetched, but stranger things have happened). How
could he present a truth defense without showing the evidence that led
him to believe his allegedly libelous statements were in fact truthful?
According to the 7th Amendment of the Constitution:
IN SUITS
AT COMMON LAW, WHERE THE VALUE IN CONTROVERSY SHALL EXCEED TWENTY
DOLLARS, THE RIGHT OF TRIAL BY JURY SHALL BE PRESERVED…
Yet as I
understand it—and perhaps someone can correct me in the comments if I am
wrong—Jim Fetzer was never given the right of trial by jury to
determine whether he had or had not committed libel. Instead, an
obviously biased judge presided over that crucial first phase of the
case, denying Jim’s Constitutionally-guaranteed right to a trial by
jury. The same judge prevented Jim from presenting his truth defense,
which would have entailed giving Jim full scope to present the evidence
that led him to believe his statements were truthful and therefore not
libelous.
It was only in
the second, penalty phase of the trial that a jury was convened. And
during that phase, not only was Jim prevented from presenting his truth
defense to the jury, he was prohibited from even mentioning it, or from
telling the truth about his beliefs.
Meanwhile the
Pozner team was allowed to engage in shameless emotional manipulation of
the jury. They even projected a huge adorable picture of Noah Pozner on
the screen as the backdrop to the crucial back-to-back testimony of
Lenny Pozner and Jim Fetzer! (Jim Fetzer, of course, was not allowed to
use the big screen to project images that raise questions about the
official story of Sandy Hook—images that can be found in Nobody Died at Sandy Hook, but which were, along with all other evidence supporting Fetzer’s truth defense, in essence banned from the courtroom.)
Chilling Effect?
One of the most
dangerous repercussions of Pozner-vs.-Fetzer is its potential chilling
effect on free speech. The decision awarded more than half a million
dollars in “damages” based on the premise that a book presenting an
alternative interpretation of a historical event hurt someone’s feelings.
There was no tangible connection between the “libelous” statements in
the book and any actual damages—loss of income, medical bills, etc. It
was all about emotions: “This tearjerking Hollywood-style courtroom
spectacle has whipped us into tearful sympathy with Pozner and two
minutes of hate for Fetzer. Let’s express our emotions with a damage
award.”
Following the
court’s logic, if a German-American’s feelings are hurt by a book
portraying Germans as villains in World War II, why not sue the author
for libel and ban the book? Why not drag the author into court—and
refuse to allow him to present the reasons he thinks his anti-German
interpretation of World War II is truthful? Of course that would never
happen, since popular prejudices are in sync with hatred of Germany’s mythic villainy; the court would find ways to rig the process to support the popular prejudice.
So how about
these more plausible examples: African-American plaintiffs sue
publishers for hurting their feelings by publishing 19th-century texts
that include libelous portrayals of blacks; the grandson of Lyndon
Johnson sues authors who have hurt his feelings by arguing that LBJ
participated in the JFK assassination coup; a father who lost a son in
Iraq sues an antiwar author for hurting his feelings by asserting that
the invasion of Iraq was a criminal war based on lies and that his dead
son was a war criminal.
One can imagine
an almost infinite number of possible “libel” cases along these lines.
And while only a few are likely to actually happen, that is a few too
many—because the chilling effect of such lawsuits will terrorize authors
and publishers into avoiding controversial or unpopular historiography.
This is precisely what the Bill of Rights, whose purpose is to protect
controversial and disturbing speech about matters of public import, is
supposed to prevent.
I have had my
differences with Jim Fetzer on many issues, including Sandy Hook.
Specifically, I think we should be very careful about asserting or
insinuating “nobody died” theories about suspected false flag events,
for reasons that should by now be obvious.
But this is
bigger than Jim Fetzer and Sandy Hook. This is about saving the Bill of
Rights, which is under attack today as never before. Regardless of
whether Jim is right or wrong about Sandy Hook, regardless of how
mistaken some of his approaches may have been, the outcome of Pozner v.
Fetzer presents a clear and present danger to freedom of expression in
the United States.
The process of
Pozner v. Fetzer appears to have been rigged precisely for the purpose
of engineering this controlled demolition of our Constitutional rights.
It must be appealed and overturned.
APPENDIX: The $50,000 Challenge
A fellow calling himself “Michael Lewis” has challenged me (several times, now) to prove that I served as a commissioned officer in the Unted States Marine Corps, which I have regarded as a frivolous psyop. I replied by publishing photos including my commissioning as a 2nd Lt. USMC upon graduate from Princeton, a photo of the Regimental Staff at the USMC Recruit Depot in San Diego, where I served as a Series Commander with 15 DIs and 300 recruits under my command going through the training cycle, one series after another, and a photo of my first wife pinning on my bars when I was promoted to Captain, USMC, which this guy has (absurdly) discounted as “photoshopped images”:These images appear on page 440 of Mike Palecek and Chuck Gregory, eds., White Rose Blooms in Wisconsin: Kevin Barrett, Jim Fetzer and The American Resistance (Moon Rock Books edition 2016). He has now reiterated his challenge, which I have accepted with three conditions as follows:
So I am calling his bluff. If he declines my terms, I am no worse off than I was before. If he accepts them and I prevail (which ought to be effortless), then I will be $50,000 ahead of the game in financing the trial I was denied by the indefensible finding of liability concluding the Summary Judgment.
Fetzering
ReplyDeleteNoun: 1. The act of making an unfounded or unsubstantiated claim.
2. In philosophy, a method of debate or discussion based of the premise of: I think, therefore I am. I think you're wrong. therefore you are.
3. The act of disagreeing by employing rancor, name calling, ad hominem attacks or straw man argument.
Etymology: Fetzering began in earnest in the late 1960's, being implemented by a JFK conspiracy theorist and has since expanded it's use in the 9/11 debate arena.
1. Without evidence your claim is simple fetzering.
2. He should rely on his data instead of fetzering.