Thoughts on the Point Bridge v. Johnson Damages Trial

This one should probably be appealed

Eldon Mahan federal courthouse, Fort Worth, screenshot via WFAA / YouTube

Without an actual trial determining liability, Charles Johnson is found liable for around $70 million in damages to the finest side of swineflesh in North Texas, Hal Lambert, his collection of SPVs and Chinese-devised index fund. The damages trial was yesterday in Fort Worth before Judge Mark Pittman.

I haven’t read the transcript yet so there are a few things I still want to verify, but I feel qualified to comment because I was cited without objection both by plaintiffs and defendant.

It was a civil RICO, and the idea that influencers and tech companies could be implicated under this law is an interesting precedent of great relevance to Silicon Valley, regardless of your thoughts about Johnson. We’ve got sauce for the goose, and sauce for the gander may be on the stove as we speak.

Johnson wasn’t arrested—though the things alleged by the plaintiffs are indisputably criminal—and he didn’t give up data or sources.

There is better documentation that he was in fact working for the government than expert witness Dennis Brady suggested, if Tony Ortiz’s reporting is correct. Contrary to Brady, it’s actually hard to argue SA Buma, who was Johnson’s handler, was simply a low-level counterintelligence agent at the FBI.

Another expert witness is the PR expert guy, whose theory of the damages here is Johnson kept him off Fox News or something, which is a highly bizarre theory which, if true, is even more grounds to think the Murdoch machine is deranging the American economy. The theory, as best I can tell is, Lambert is a special investor because he goes on Fox all the time, and like a sea anemone or something, opportunities come his way when he flaps his jowls at Sean Hannity or takes a turn dodging staplers Laura Ingraham throws at his head. Therefore, if Sean Hannity isn’t asking him to flap his jowls, Johnson has harmed him.

There is certainly no reason to assume the presence of jowls on Fox is a sign of investing probity and plenty of reason to assume the opposite, notwithstanding the boobs intended to be sheared in the equation. If this theory is widely taken to be legitimate by the courts, one would at least have hoped the Murdoch machine would have done the right thing and cut him loose after first being involved in the Chinese MAGA Index, but of course they didn’t, maybe due to Roopit’s Chinese ex-wife.

Stewart Baker, former NSA general counsel, said people do sometimes take advantage by claiming to be a fed. That’s true, but in this case not especially relevant. Lambert claimed he was falsely representing himself as a fed, and it would be hard to come up with a standard for demonstrating he actually was a fed that wouldn’t be met here. If this line from Ortiz regarding Baker’s testimony is in the transcript it raises some questions, that he “personally found Johnson's statements to have been bogus.”

I’ve published one of his CHS reports, his handler has been interviewed on a major German television network, and the claim that he was an informant was sufficiently credible as to be published by reporters now at the New York Times. This is a rather odd statement for Baker, who is in ill health, to be putting his credibility on the line for.

According to Ortiz’s reporting the plaintiffs’ side (Ortiz says “prosecution”), that Johnson’s involvement caused a decrease of 90 percent in investments. This doesn’t make a great deal of sense, and it’s the sort of statistic that one can lie with. If his firm is mostly SPVs, these are vehicles for handling rounds of venture investment. The term stands for “special purpose vehicle,” what is being claimed here is a bit like saying I hired the builders to build a house and their presence on the property declined by 90 percent after the house was built. These are also highly speculative instruments.

There are a lot of questions in terms of determining damages here that Johnson probably could have raised.

But these are mostly factual questions, which will only be raised if an appeals court remands to actually try the case. What might be some grounds for an appeal?

Can a judge enter a default because he suspects a defendant actually wants to be jailed? This is what Judge Pittman said, and it seems rather dubious to me. A judge can order someone jailed for contempt, but the purpose of that would be to get them to comply with demands to produce evidence.

There may be a conflict of interest issue for Will Thompson of DLA Piper, the Chinese law firm. DLA Piper, in addition to representing Tesla, was in conversation with members of Johnson’s family about a separate matter. This is a potential conflict which was not disclosed.

There is rather strong circumstantial evidence of a Musk connection here and DLA Piper is part of that. The porcine Lambert has eagerly washed Musk’s balls for the last several years as the SpaceX CEO has developed his business in Texas. Apropos of nothing at all a common European preparation for swine is making sure they get plenty of nuts in their mouth before the final trip to the slaughterhouse, this is the Galician style for instance.

Then there are questions about whether there might be justifiable reasons not to comply with the discovery order. I have the suspicion that what’s going on here is they wanted to obtain Johnson’s messages so material already stolen by way of a hack could be plausibly reconstructed. A judge may not consider that a sufficient reason not to comply, but in a national security case there might be reasons why one would do this.

I wrote here about the proposed discovery order from the plaintiff’s side, which asked that he disclose communications with journalists such as myself. That might be one reason to limit the scope of discovery, another potential objection might be to look at the financing or potential security issues with the e-discovery company itself, which there may not have been too many options for.