Alex Jones

The jury's decision Thursday marks the first time the Infowars host has been held financially liable for falsely claiming that the attack that killed 20 ...

They said the threats and harassment were all fueled by Jones and his conspiracy theory spread to his followers via his website Infowars. But Heslin and Lewis told jurors that an apology wouldn’t suffice and called on them to make Jones pay for the years of suffering he has put them and other Sandy Hook families through. At one point, Jones was told that his attorneys had mistakenly sent Bankston the last two years’ worth of texts from Jones’ cellphone. “We knew coming into this case it was necessary to shoot for the moon to get to understand we were serious and passionate. It also raises new questions about the ability of Infowars — which has been banned from YouTube, Spotify and Twitter for hate speech — to continue operating, although the company’s finances remain unclear. A Connecticut judge has ruled against him in a similar lawsuit brought by other victims’ families and an FBI agent who worked on the case.

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) - Far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones bulled through the first of several trials against him that could decimate his personal ...

Jones was the only witness in his defense. He continued to call into question some of the biggest events and significant government institutions in American life. They filed a motion for sanctions against them after Jones claimed he was bankrupt, which attorneys dispute and was off limits in testimony. At the end of that day, Jones and the parents shook hands. Jones insisted he was only massaging the hole with his tongue. She warned Jones' lawyers before it even started that if he tried to turn it into a performance, she would clear the courtroom and shut down the livestream broadcasting the trial to the world. “In my opinion, Jones is a money making juggernaut - crazy like a fox,” Covert said. When he came to the courthouse, it was always with a security detail of three or four guards. That clip was shown to the jury. So was a snapshot from his Infowars website showing Judge Maya Guerra Gamble engulfed in flames. Jones said he wasn't chewing gum. Jones was only slightly less combative in court.

The parents of a 6-year-old boy killed in the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre say conspiracy theorist Alex Jones made their lives a “living hell” by ...

Last September, Guerra admonished Jones in her default judgment over his failure to turn over documents requested by the Sandy Hook families. To restore the honor and legacy of my son,” Heslin said when Jones wasn’t there. A key segment of the case is a 2017 Infowars broadcast that said Heslin didn’t hold his son. At stake in the trial is how much Jones will pay. Jones later took the stand himself, initially being combative with the judge, who had asked him to answer his own attorney's question. “It seems so incredible to me that we have to do this — that we have to implore you, to punish you — to get you to stop lying,” Lewis said. They described how Jesse was known for telling classmates to “run!” which likely saved lives. My son existed,” Lewis said to Jones. “I am not deep state ... I know you know that ... And yet you’re going to leave this courthouse and say it again on your show.” Heslin and Lewis both said they fear for their lives and have been confronted by strangers at home and on the street. Heslin said his home and car have been shot at. And grateful ... that I got to say all this to you.” In a gripping exchange, Lewis spoke directly to Jones, who was sitting about 10 feet away.

Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones testified that he now understands it was irresponsible of him to declare the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre a hoax.

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The Infowars conspiracy theorist was presented with text messages from his own cellphone showing that he had withheld evidence in defamation lawsuits ...

Mr. Bankston, a lawyer for the Sandy Hook parents Scarlett Lewis and Neil Heslin, also revealed new evidence of Mr. Jones’s failure to produce court-ordered documents related to lies he spread about the mass shooting and its victims. In fact, his losses by default resulted from his failure to produce those materials. In another broadcast, Infowars falsely linked the judge to pedophilia; in another, Mr. Jones questioned the intelligence of the jurors in the case, implying that his political enemies had handpicked “blue-collar” people who were ill-equipped to decide what monetary damages he must pay Ms. Lewis and Mr. Heslin. In written questions submitted to Mr. Jones, jurors took immediate issue with that. In testimony on Tuesday and Wednesday morning, Mr. Jones continued to insist that he had complied with court orders to produce documents and testimony in the run-up to the defamation trials. Mr. Bankston also produced clips from Mr. Jones’s Infowars broadcast in which he aired a copy of a photograph of the judge in Ms. Lewis’s and Mr. Heslin’s case, Maya Guerra Gamble, engulfed in flames. The judge admonished Mr. Jones and his lawyer, F. Andino Reynal, after the Infowars fabulist lied about the matter under oath on Tuesday. The judge also chastised Mr. Jones for telling the jury that he was bankrupt when his bankruptcy filing last week had yet to be adjudicated; the families’ lawyers said it was his latest attempt to delay the upcoming damages trials. He also presented financial records that contradicted Mr. Jones’s claim that he was bankrupt and clips from his broadcasts maligning the judge and jury in the case. Mr. Jones lost those cases by default, after nearly four years of litigation in which he failed to produce documents and testimony ordered by courts in Texas and Connecticut. That set in motion three trials for damages; the one in Austin this week is the first. The text messages were significant because Mr. Jones had claimed for years that he had searched his phone for texts about the Sandy Hook cases and found none. AUSTIN, Texas — In a brutal cross-examination on Wednesday in the trial of the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, a lawyer for Sandy Hook parents produced text messages from Mr. Jones’s cellphone showing that he had withheld key evidence in defamation lawsuits brought by the families for lies he had spread about the 2012 school shooting. The messages, which were apparently sent in error to the families’ lawyers by Mr. Jones’s counsel, revealed that he was also warned about posting a false report about the coronavirus by a staff member calling the potential fabrication “another Sandy Hook.” The Infowars conspiracy theorist was presented with text messages from his own cellphone showing that he had withheld evidence in defamation lawsuits brought by Sandy Hook families.

The dishonesty of right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones was spotlighted in a Texas court on Wednesday as a lawyer for a pair of Sandy Hook parents ...

It seems absurd to instruct you again that you must tell the truth while you testify. And Gamble on Tuesday had also admonished Jones for having violated his oath to tell the truth twice. "You are already under oath to tell the truth," Gamble said Tuesday. "You've already violated that oath twice today, in just those two examples. When reminded Jones had testified under oath that he had searched his phone during the discovery phase of the trial and could not locate messages about Sandy Hook, Jones insisted he "did not lie." In a remarkable moment, Bankston disclosed to Jones and the court that he had recently acquired evidence proving Jones had lied when he claimed during the discovery process that he had never texted about the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting. The cell phone records, Bankston said, showed that Jones had in fact texted about the Sandy Hook shooting.

After years of telling his followers the Sandy Hook school shooting was staged, Jones admitted on the stand that the massacre was real.

Jones said that high figure was a result of his show’s programming about the Conservative Political Action Conference. “He’s made [Heslin and Lewis] live their lives in fear, in fear of being harmed or murdered by people who believed the lies and wanted to do something about it.” Earlier in his testimony, Jones said he had personally searched for “Sandy Hook” in his text messages and had found no messages. Bankston said the contents of Jones’ phone showed that his revenue actually rose. “I personally do not get on the internet and sit there and use email,” Jones said. But Mark Bankston, an attorney for Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis, told Jones on Wednesday that Jones’ own attorneys recently accidentally sent them the contents of Jones’ phone from the last two years.

The past two days of the Jones trial have been wrenching and shocking. Today, the plaintiffs' lawyers revealed in dramatic fashion that Jones's lawyers ...

Jones, who relishes flashy stunts, is used to being the one who gets to make the big, gotcha reveal, but today he was on the other end, unable—under threat of contempt of court—to talk his way out of his lies. Near the end of the day, shortly after Jones contended under oath that he was bankrupt, Gamble tore into Jones for “abusing my tolerance and making asides to the jury.” Whenever Jones attempted to speak, Gamble cut him off. But Jones continued to shove his finger in his mouth in front of the judge. “I can interrupt you; you can’t interrupt me.” When Jones suggested that he and Infowars had complied with the lawsuit’s discovery requests, Gamble shut him down. Throughout the trial, Jones has been at his most exposed when the jury has left the room and he’s been forced to confront the authority of Judge Gamble. Gamble has frequently admonished Jones, the way a parent or principal might scold a misbehaving grade-schooler. Jones is used to commanding the microphone for interminable periods, and from the stand, it almost looked like he was back in his studio and about to tear into a signature four-hour broadcast rant. Opposing counsel argued this was a lie as Jones has only declared bankruptcy and not yet proved it.) At one point during a routine line of questioning, Jones told his lawyer, “You can’t be told about the matrix; you have to see it.” Jones’s attorney responded, “Let’s slow down a little bit.” At one point yesterday, Gamble interrupted Jones’s attorney to ask him to “spit his gum out.” Jones immediately stood up to tell the judge he was instead massaging the hole of a recently pulled tooth. But the witness chair is a powerful tool in exposing Jones for what he really is: a reckless individual caught in a web of his own lies. Upon realizing the gravity of the situation, Jones sat stunned and red-faced, looking on the verge of tears. What exactly might come of this discovery is unclear, but it seems likely that we will continue to learn more about the inner workings of Jones’s conspiracist media empire (one message from the trove disclosed that in 2018, Infowars was making as much as $800,000 a day from its online store). The contents of the phone could be turned over to law enforcement, where the material could be relevant in other pending investigations. The only way to shut up Alex Jones, for a moment, at least, is to place him inside a courtroom.

The legal team representing Infowars founder Alex Jones inadvertently sent the contents of his cellphone to a lawyer representing the parents of a child ...

The editor, Paul Watson, wrote that it “makes us look ridiculous” and added, “Sandy Hook all over again.” Jones texted back, “I get it.” Heslin and Lewis sued in 2018 over the far-right media personality’s relentless false claims that the Sandy Hook school shooting was a “giant hoax.” Jones claimed the numbers were cherry-picked. After Jones’s years-long refusal to comply with court orders and hand over documents and evidence in lawsuits, District Judge Maya Guerra Gamble of Travis County, Tex., in September found Jones responsible for all damages. But, he said, messages on Jones’s phone suggested Infowars brought in as much as $800,000 on some days. I just want to make sure you know before we go any further.”

It's 100% real,” Jones admitted Wednesday in court, where he also learned that his lawyers accidentally passed along the contents of his phone to the ...

Which, true or not, would seem to be a fully appropriate punishment. On Tuesday, that judge, Maya Guerra Gamble, took Jones to task for lying under oath, telling him, “This is not your show.” If there’s justice in the world, Alex Jones, the infamous conspiracy theorist on trial for the unconscionable, disgusting lies he spread that the Sandy Hook massacre was a hoax, and that the children and teachers who lost their lives that day weren’t actually killed, will have to pay the full $150 million the families suing him for defamation have asked for.

By JIM VERTUNO. The Associated Press. AUSTIN, Texas For years, bombastic far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones ranted to his millions of followers that ...

Jones was the only witness to testify in his defense. “The day Sandy Hook happened, Alex Jones planted a seed of misinformation that lasted a decade,” parents’ attorney Kyle Farrar told the jury in closing arguments. Jones has already tried to protect Free Speech Systems financially. Jurors began considering damages Wednesday. Once they determine whether Jones should pay the parents compensation for defamation and emotional distress, it must then decide if he must also pay punitive damages. They will also ask the jury to assess additional punitive damages. Eight days of testimony included videos of Jones and Infowars employees talking about the Sandy Hook conspiracy and even mocking Heslin’s description in a 2017 television interview that he’d held his dead son Jesse’s body “with a bullet hole through his head.” Heslin described that moment with his dead son to the jury.

Jones testifies in defamation trial after being sued by parents of victims for $150m for pushing false 'crisis actors' theory.

He is the only person testifying in defense of himself and his media company, Free Speech Systems. You are under oath.” “It was … especially since I’ve met the parents.

Jurors have begun determining how much money Alex Jones must pay to the parents of 6-year-old Sandy Hook shooting victim, Jesse Lewis, for defamation.

Jurors also were told that Jones and his company inflicted intentional emotional distress on Heslin and Lewis by repeatedly portraying the Sandy Hook shooting as a hoax from 2012 to 2018, when they filed suit. Jurors also were asked to determine the amount of money that would fairly compensate Heslin for past and future damage to his reputation and past and future mental anguish caused by the defamatory reports. The jurors next will be asked to award punitive damages that are intended as punishment. Heslin testified that he made the statement in an NBC interview in hopes of stopping Jones' campaign and to protect the legacy of his son, who died a hero by yelling "Run!" when the gunman paused. Before hearing closing arguments Thursday, jurors were informed that Jones and Free Speech Systems defamed Heslin in two 2017 InfoWars reports that questioned Heslin's claim that he held his dead son and saw the bullet wound to his head after the shooting. Ten of the 12 jurors agreed on the verdict — the minimum number required for a decision.

Alex Jones will face three separate jury trials to determine how much money he owes Sandy Hook victims' families in damages, after the Infowars host lost a ...

Jones’s exchanges reportedly suggested that Infowars could make up to $800,000 per day, and while Jones accused Bankston of “cherry-picking” the biggest figures, he couldn’t really answer for the documents themselves. That we have to implore you — not just implore you, punish you — to get you to stop lying … It is surreal what is going on in here.” According to the Times, Jones watched Heslin’s testimony on a courtroom livestream, calling him “slow” and “manipulated by some very bad people.” According to the Times, one of the last pieces of evidence presented to the jury before it began deliberations heavily suggested Jones had lied on the stand. “And then to have someone on top of that perpetuate a lie that it was a hoax, that it didn’t happen, that it was a false flag, and that I was an actress — you think I’m an actress?” Lewis continued, according to CNN. “It seems so incredible to me that we have to do this. “And these lies were meant to convince his audience that the Sandy Hook parents are frauds and have perpetrated a sinister lie on the American people.” According to the Times, Jones gave a radio broadcast during Heslin’s court appearance — an absence Heslin described as “cowardly.” “I did not lie to people on purpose,” he said. On a regular basis, Jones has espoused antisemitic and Islamophobic rhetoric; he was also a key proponent of the Pizzagate conspiracy, which resulted in a gunman firing shots inside a D.C. pizzeria, and of the “Stop the Steal” movement. The Texas Tribune reports that starting on the day of the shooting, he used Infowars to advance the baseless idea that Sandy Hook was a coordinated plot — “synthetic, completely fake, with actors, in my view, manufactured,” he said during a 2015 show. I can question big PR events like Sandy Hook, where there are major anomalies,” he said, according to the Times. “They’re using Sandy Hook, and they’re using the victims and their families as a way to get rid of free speech in America. That’s the plan.” Heslin and Lewis sued Jones in 2018. “They have their own community, and they have the ear of some very powerful people.”

The Infowars host has already been found liable in lawsuits filed by the families of the Sandy Hook school shooting victims. A trial this week will begin to ...

The lawyers also presented financial records that contradicted Mr. Jones’s claim that he was bankrupt. This week’s trial in Austin, Texas, is the first of three that will determine how much Mr. Jones must pay the families. The cases never made it to a jury; Mr. Jones was found liable by default in all of them because he refused to turn over documents, including financial records, ordered by the courts over four years of litigation. And if you look at the world through dirty glasses, everything you see is dirty.” The long-running legal battle has been an unusual spectacle, including the revelation on Wednesday that Mr. Jones’s lawyer accidentally sent two years’ worth of text messages to the families’ lawyers. Just a few hours after the shooting, he began calling it a “false flag,” a secretive plot planned by the government as a pretext for taking away Americans’ guns.

A Texas judge on Thursday denied Alex Jones's motion for a mistrial in a defamation case over the U.S. conspiracy theorist's false claims about the Sandy ...

Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com An attorney for the parents, Mark Bankston, used the texts to undercut Jones’ testimony during cross-examination Wednesday. Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com

The conspiracy theorist will face multiple trials this year to decide what he owes in damages to families who sued him for defamation and won.

One, filed in Texas by Leonard Pozner and Veronique De La Rosa, the parents of another child killed at the Connecticut elementary school, seeks damages from Jones for his repeated suggestions that the massacre did not happen. In his own testimony to the family in court on Tuesday, Jones admitted that he knew the Sandy Hook massacre was "100% real." After determining how much of that sum they will actually be awarded, the Texas jury will vote again to decide whether Heslin and Lewis are awarded additional punitive damages.

Links to Alex Jones' cellphone texts and data were included in information inadvertently provided to lawyers for a Sandy Hook family.

"The whole thing is tainted," he said of the investigation by the U.S. House select committee. "If not, the cat's out of the bag," he said. "I am not going to seal the entire quantity of information without knowing what was in it," Guerra Gamble said. "When I told him to please disregard the link, that should've been enough." Almost two weeks ago, after Bankston informed him that links to numerous files might have been sent in error, Reynal said he quickly responded by saying, "Please disregard the link." I'm not eating the soup." — during an InfoWars broadcast that same day. Reynal never did, he said. Be there, will be wild!" "We should know by the end of the day," he said. "That is a tremendous amount of information," Reynal said, but the judge did not sympathize, noting that Jones and his frequently changing team of lawyers had failed to comply with orders to turn over relevant information to the Sandy Hook families for years. "Mr. Reynal is, right now, using a fig leaf of this motion ... to cover his own malpractice, a fig leaf to cover his own breach of duty to his client," Bankston told the judge.

An attorney representing two parents who sued conspiracy theorist Alex Jones over his false claims about the Sandy Hook massacre said the House committee ...

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The attorney representing two Sandy Hook parents in the Alex Jones defamation case said Thursday that numerous federal and state investigators, ...

Jones was a central player on January 6. The judge overseeing the case advised Reynal to take some time while they await a verdict to research a legal argument to stop Bankston from disclosing information to the January 6 committee and others. "I've been asked by the January 6 committee to turn the documents over," Bankston added later.

At a hearing in the defamation case against the conspiracy theorist, the plaintiffs' lawyer said he would turn over the materials to the committee unless ...

Among those who marched alongside him to the Capitol was Ali Alexander, a promoter of the “Stop the Steal” effort who has also been issued a subpoena. “Trump will tell people, ‘Go, and I’m going to meet you at the Capitol.’” “I just had a very intense experience being interrogated by the Jan. 6 committee lawyers,” he said at the time. In November, the panel filed subpoenas to compel Mr. Jones’s testimony and communications related to Jan. 6, including his phone records. He said the committee had already obtained text messages from him. Mr. Jones eventually appeared before the panel in January and afterward said he invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination nearly 100 times. According to the Jan. 6 committee, Mr. Jones facilitated a donation from Julie Jenkins Fancelli, the heiress to the Publix Super Markets fortune, to provide what he described as “80 percent” of the funding for the Jan. 6 rally and indicated that White House officials told him that he was to lead a march to the Capitol, where Mr. Trump would speak. “The White House told me three days before, ‘We’re going to have you lead the march,’” Mr. Jones said on his internet show the day after the riot. Mr. Bankston said in court that Mr. Jones’s lawyers mistakenly sent him text messages from Mr. Jones, as they attempted to defend him in court for broadcasting conspiracy theories that the Sandy Hook shooting was a hoax and that the families were actors. The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol has been pushing to obtain Mr. Jones’s texts for months, saying they could be relevant to understanding Mr. Jones’s role in helping organize the rally at the Ellipse near the White House before the riot. WASHINGTON — The lawyer for plaintiffs who are suing the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones said Thursday that he plans to turn over two years of text messages from Mr. Jones’s phone to the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. Mr. Bankston said they included texts with the political operative Roger J. Stone Jr. Mr. Bankston said he had heard from “various federal agencies and law enforcement” about the material.

The conspiracy theorist's breathtakingly silly blunder underscores the urgent need to revamp ediscovery in US law.

If a lawyer sends over an email where they are giving a client advice, they can often get it back, but when the email shows the client is committing a crime, like perjury, that’s a different matter. But when plaintiffs don’t find the killer documents, ever-stricter state and federal rules make it harder to get your day in court. But many American attorneys were simultaneously swept by a wave of nausea and the visceral realization that this—maybe not a blunder this big and boneheaded, but something like it—could all-too-easily have happened to their clients. If we continue down this path, focusing more time and money on increasingly protracted legal battles over documents, our legal system will become even more about money and less about justice. But a screwup on the scale of Alex Jones’ lawyers is a whole other matter. Instead, for litigators, the courtroom has been replaced by electronic discovery, the sometimes years-long process of sifting through mountains of records to see what can be proven.

The InfoWars host and creator will have to pay $4.1 million to two parents whose 6-year-old son was killed at Sandy Hook Elementary in 2012.

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The parents sought $150 million in their defamation lawsuit against the conspiracy theorist. The jury could still issue more damages in an upcoming phase of ...

Jesse confronted the shooter and yelled for other children to run. See the growing speaker list and buy tickets. His claims led his listeners to harass the victims’ families and make death threats against them for years. Nine children were able to escape the classroom where they were hiding. Jurors decided the amount of damages Jones owes the parents after listening to evidence and testimonies from a range of witnesses for seven days. The case will now enter a new phase to determine punitive damages, which can be rewarded to punish a defendant for reckless, negligent or outrageous behavior or to deter future bad acts.

Right-wing talk show host Alex Jones will have to pay the parents of a Sandy Hook shooting victim a little more than $4 million in compensatory damages, ...

Fighting back tears at times, Heslin told the jury that Jones, through his conspiratorial media organization Infowars, "tarnished the honor and legacy" of his son. "But that jury understood the truth and resisted the propaganda." He testified in court this week that he now believed it to be "100% real." That's why the company has few assets." At the start of the trial, attorneys for Lewis and Heslin asked the jury to award their clients $150 million in compensatory damages. His failure to do so led to Heslin and Lewis winning default judgments judgements against Jones. "Neil and Scarlett are thrilled with the result and look forward to putting Mr. Jones' money to good use," Bankston added. But I'm sorry.' That's how I see it." Facing multiple lawsuits, Jones later acknowledged the shooting occurred. "There has not been a sincere apology," she said. "Mr Jones on the other hand will not sleep easy tonight. A separate, shorter trial during which punitive damages will be discussed is now expected.

The jury decreed that the Infowars conspiracy theorist should pay compensatory damages to the parents of a 6-year-old killed in the elementary school ...

Among those who marched alongside him to the Capitol was Ali Alexander, a promoter of the “Stop the Steal” effort who has also been issued a subpoena. Its revenue comes primarily from the sale of a grab-bag of health-enhancement and survivalist products that Mr. Jones hawks constantly. My son existed,” Ms. Lewis said to Mr. Jones in court on Tuesday. She added, “I hope to accomplish an era of truth.” Under Texas law, a person can be charged with perjury, a misdemeanor, if he makes a false statement under oath, or if, while under oath, he swears to the truth of a statement previously made, with a clear understanding of the statement and the intent to deceive. He called the motion “frivolous.” (He also clarified that the link to the records had been sent by Mr. Reynal’s legal assistant.) At a hearing on the motion, Mr. Reynal also called for a mistrial, based on Mr. Bankston’s use of the cellphone records. First, lawyers for Mr. Jones did not contest his presentation in court, which allowed the records to be admitted as evidence. When we met for the interview, Mr. Jones was holding a printout of a story I had written. He had already lost the case by default after failing to produce documents and testimony related to his spreading of conspiracy theories about the shooting. The trial was the first of three that will decide how much Mr. Jones must pay relatives of 10 Sandy Hook victims. Mr. Jones said in his bankruptcy filing that he had paid $15 million so far in legal costs for the Sandy Hook litigation. But it was Mr. Jones’s alliance with former President Donald J. Trump, who appeared on Infowars in December 2015, that moved him from the far-right fringes to the center of Republican Party populism.