Trial begins in Alex Jones’ Sandy Hook damages case

US radio host Alex Jones had mentioned {that a} 2012 faculty taking pictures the place 20 kids and 6 faculty employees have been killed was fabricated.

The jury trial of Alex Jones, a US conspiracy theorist, started in a case that can determine how a lot he should pay the household of a kid killed within the 2012 Sandy Hook bloodbath that he falsely claimed was a hoax.

Mark Bankston, an lawyer for the dad and mom of slain six-year-old Jesse Lewis, instructed jurors on Tuesday that the Sandy Hook hoax lie grew to become a “viral sensation” for Jones, who unfold it to thousands and thousands of individuals.

“Mr Jones was frequently churning out this concept that Sandy Hook was faux,” Bankston mentioned. “He was affected person zero for the Sandy Hook hoax.”

Jones, founding father of the Infowars radio present and webcast, had asserted the mainstream media and gun-control activists conspired to manufacture the tragedy wherein 20 schoolchildren and 6 faculty employees have been shot lifeless at Sandy Hook Elementary College in Newtown, Connecticut, on December 14, 2012.

The Texas trial begins about two months after a gunman killed 19 kids and two lecturers at Robb Elementary College in Uvalde, Texas. It was the deadliest faculty taking pictures since Sandy Hook.

Jones has since acknowledged that the taking pictures passed off. Throughout a deposition in April, he insisted he was not chargeable for the struggling that Sandy Hook dad and mom say they’ve endured due to the hoax conspiracy, together with loss of life threats and harassment by Jones’s followers.

The defamation go well with in Texas, the place Infowars relies, is one in every of a number of introduced by households of victims who say they have been harassed by Jones’s followers and suffered emotional misery after he claimed the taking pictures was staged.

Choose Maya Guerra Gamble in Austin, Texas, who’s overseeing the trial, issued a uncommon default judgment in 2021, discovering Jones liable with no trial after he flouted court docket orders and failed to show over paperwork.

The plaintiffs are Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis, Jesse’s dad and mom. A lawyer for Heslin and Lewis indicated in court docket on Monday that they’re searching for as a lot as $100m in compensatory and punitive damages.

Throughout his opening tackle, Jones’s lawyer Andino Reynal known as Jones one of many “most polariding figures on this nation”, who made statements about Sandy Hook “that we don’t dispute have been mistaken”. However he mentioned Jones has already been punished for these statements when he was kicked off of Fb, YouTube, Spotify and Twitter for violating their hate speech insurance policies.

Jones has “already been cancelled” and misplaced thousands and thousands of {dollars}, mentioned Reynal, who known as on the jury to restrict the damages to $1.

Jones claimed in court docket information final yr that he had a detrimental web value of $20m, however attorneys for Sandy Hook households have painted a unique monetary image.

Court docket information present that Jones’s Infowars retailer, which sells dietary dietary supplements and survival gear, made greater than $165m between 2015 and 2018. Jones has additionally urged listeners on his Infowars programme to donate cash.

The damages trial follows months of delays. Three entities associated to Infowars filed chapter in a since-dismissed case. The households of the Sandy Hook victims had mentioned the chapter was a sinister try by Jones to protect his belongings from legal responsibility stemming from the defamation lawsuits.

Jones, who was current within the courtroom, is about to face trial in September in an identical defamation go well with in Connecticut state court docket, the place he has additionally been discovered answerable for defamation in a default judgment.

The Sandy Hook gunman, Adam Lanza, 20, used a Remington Bushmaster rifle to hold out the bloodbath. It ended when Lanza killed himself with the method of police sirens.