Thread: Alex Jones - Infowars

Nice one star rating you gave this thread, spit.

Originally Posted by DrWilly

Nice one star rating you gave this thread, spit.

Wasn't me. But good idea.

I've never liked Jones. He was left wing in the early 2000's

Sigh, some mod decided to merge this thread. So we can have 73 premier league football threads but only one Alex Jones thread.

Originally Posted by S Landreth

If the mods would allow posters to search for threads this wouldn’t have happened.

To be fair, its not the mods fault the search is broken...

Handy hint, go to Google type in Teakdoor.com and Alex Jones and you will find it.

Originally Posted by DrWilly

Sigh, some mod decided to merge this thread. So we can have 73 premier league football threads but only one Alex Jones thread.

It was an astute call by the mods. Give 9999 his due for starting a thread way back in 2012 about AJ

• Jury selected for Alex Jones' Sandy Hook defamation trial

A Texas jury was selected Monday in a civil trial that will determine for the first time how much Infowars host Alex Jones must pay Sandy Hook Elementary School parents for falsely telling his audience that the deadliest classroom shooting in U.S. history was a hoax.

Opening statements are set for Tuesday.

The trial in Austin — where the conspiracy theorist lives and broadcasts his show — follows months of delays. Jones has racked up fines for ignoring court orders and he put Infowars into bankruptcy protection just before the trial was originally set to start in April.

At stake for Jones is another potentially major financial blow that could put his constellation of conspiracy peddling businesses into deeper jeopardy. He has already been banned from YouTube, Facebook and Spotify over violating hate-speech policies.

The trial involving the parents of two Sandy Hook families is only the start for Jones; damages have yet to be awarded in separate defamation cases for other families of the 2012 massacre in Newtown, Connecticut.

The lawsuits do not ask jurors to award a specific dollar amount against Jones, but attorneys for the families suggested they could seek $100 million or more in compensatory and punitive damages.

Family members of the shooting victims and Jones were not in the courtroom Monday.

“We’re very glad the day is here,” said Mark Bankston, attorney for the families suing Jones. “We’re looking forward to telling our clients’ story.”

During Monday's jury selection, several in the initial pool of more than 100 jury candidates said they held strong beliefs on free speech and questioned whether any punitive damages would be fair. A few others said they would struggle to assign damages that could reach $100 million or higher. Yet others said that although they also believe in the principles of free speech, they would not have a problem assigning damages — even a large amount of money — for blatant falsehoods that might have caused harm.

It is unclear whether Jones will attend any of the scheduled two-week trial. His attorney, Andino Reynal, said Jones has a “medical issue” that his legal legal team advised him not to be there for jury selection. Reynal didn't elaborate and said it's “up in the air” whether Jones will be in court.

In questioning the jury pool, Reynal acknowledged Jones is a “very polarizing" and “controversial” figure, but also noted he'd ask the jury to cap damages at $1.

Most of jury pool raised their hand when asked if they had heard of Jones, and nearly two dozen agreed when Reynal asked who among them had a “firm negative impression” of him.

A total of 16 people were selected for the Texas jury, which includes four alternates. That total panel includes seven women and nine men.

“We're very happy with the jury we've seated,” Reynal said. “It's a very important First Amendment case. On trial right now is not just people's freedom of speech, but it's also people's freedom to listen. To choose what they watch on television, to make those choices for themselves, instead of having a personal injury lawyer make those choices for them."

Courts in Texas and Connecticut have already found Jones liable for defamation for his portrayal of the Sandy Hook massacre as a hoax involving actors aimed at increasing gun control. In both states, judges have issued default judgements against Jones without trials because he failed to respond to court orders and turn over documents.

The Texas trial begins about two months after a gunman killed 19 children and two teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, which is about 145 miles (235 kilometers) southwest of Austin. It was the deadliest school shooting in the nearly 10 years since Sandy Hook.

The 2012 Connecticut shooting killed 20 first graders and six educators. Families of eight of the victims and an FBI agent who responded to the school are suing Jones and his company, Free Speech Systems.

Jones has since acknowledged that the shooting took place. During a deposition in April, Jones insisted he wasn’t responsible for the suffering that Sandy Hook parents say they have endured because of the hoax conspiracy, including death threats and harassment by Jones’ followers.

“No, I don’t (accept) responsibility because I wasn’t trying to cause pain and suffering,” Jones said, according to the transcripts made public this month. He continued: “They are being used and their children who can’t be brought back (are) being used to destroy the First Amendment.”

Jones claimed in court records last year that he had a negative net worth of $20 million, but attorneys for Sandy Hook families have painted a different financial picture.

Court records show that Jones’ Infowars store, which sells nutritional supplements and survival gear, made more than $165 million between 2015 and 2018. Jones has also urged listeners on his Infowars program to donate money.

Initial testimony Tuesday is expected to include Daniel Jewiss, who was the Connecticut State Police lead investigator of Sandy Hook, and Daria Karpova, a producer at Infowars.

Originally Posted by Backspin

It was an astute call by the mods. Give 9999 his due for starting a thread way back in 2012 about AJ

No it wasn't.

I could have started a Sean Connery thread in 1968, that does not make me astute. He's a public figure.

Originally Posted by DrWilly

No it wasn't.

I could have started a Sean Connery thread in 1968, that does not make me astute. He's a public figure.

It's interesting to see what ppl were saying in 2012 about the bastard.

• Sandy Hook Parents to Testify Against Alex Jones, and a Culture of Lies

The far-right conspiracy broadcaster Alex Jones spread lies for years about the Sandy Hook school shooting, saying it was staged by the government and that the families of the victims were complicit in the hoax. Juries will now decide in three separate trials how much Mr. Jones must pay for the suffering he caused.

The first trial begins on Tuesday in Austin, where Mr. Jones and his Infowars website are based. Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis, the parents of Jesse Lewis, 6, who died at Sandy Hook, will testify to the torment they suffered after Mr. Jones implied on his show in 2017 that Mr. Heslin’s televised recollection of cradling Jesse’s body shortly after the shooting was false. The family has since endured years of accusations and threats.

Lenny Pozner and Veronique De La Rosa, the parents of Noah Pozner, the youngest Sandy Hook victim, are scheduled to testify at a second trial in September in Austin. That same month, the families of eight other Sandy Hook victims will testify at the third trial, in Connecticut.

The trials come after the families of the 10 victims won defamation lawsuits against Mr. Jones last year, when judges ruled him liable by default for repeatedly failing to provide court-ordered documents and testimony. Those rulings set the stage for the upcoming trials, in which juries will award monetary damages to the families as a result of their victories.

Mr. Jones’s lawyers fear the awards could be potentially ruinous to his Austin-based Infowars empire, where he reaps revenues of more than $50 million a year peddling diet supplements, conspiracy videos and books, body armor and doomsday prepper gear on his broadcasts.

The Sandy Hook families have a broader goal beyond damages for Mr. Jones: They want the trials to alert Americans to the mounting damage done to vulnerable people and civic life by viral political lies, whether bogus theories denying mass shootings or false claims of a “stolen” 2020 election that brought violence to the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Mr. Jones is allied with former President Donald J. Trump, who appeared on Infowars during the 2016 campaign. Mr. Jones also has ties to extremist groups involved in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and is under scrutiny for his role in planning events preceding it.

“It’s very hard to fathom or relate to the danger of these online conspiracies and conspiracists, and the trial I think will definitely set a picture in people’s minds of how dangerous it is,” Mr. Heslin said in an interview. “I very much look forward to justice being served. It’s something that Jones started, and I’m going to finish it.”

Mr. Jones and his Texas lawyer, Federico Reynal, did not respond to requests for comment. On his show, Mr. Jones has been pleading with his fans to buy his products and contribute to his legal defense. “I’m not a quitter and I can’t give up,” he said on his show Sunday. “I am working seven days a week to fight these bastards.”

Mr. Jones has spent years falsely claiming on his radio and online Infowars show that the December 2012 mass shooting that killed 20 first graders and six educators at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., was staged by the federal government as a pretext for confiscating Americans’ firearms.

Conspiracy theorists have accosted the families in public, defaced and stolen memorials to their loved ones and threatened their lives. They have tormented the parents on social media, demanding they exhume their children’s bodies and “prove” they were murdered. Mr. Pozner and Ms. De La Rosa have moved a dozen times after conspiracy theorists posted their home addresses and other personal information.

In 2017, Mr. Heslin appeared on an NBC broadcast featuring Mr. Jones, hosted by Megyn Kelly, who had recently joined the network from Fox News. “I lost my son. I buried my son. I held my son with a bullet hole through his head,” Mr. Heslin told Ms. Kelly.

Afterward, Mr. Jones and Owen Shroyer, an Infowars sidekick, disputed Mr. Heslin’s account, implying he was lying in service to a government hoax aimed at gun control.

“It’s my right to say it. I can question big P.R. events like Sandy Hook, where there are major anomalies,” Mr. Jones said on his show. “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.”

Mr. Jones and a revolving cast of lawyers spent four years working to delay a courtroom reckoning for his Sandy Hook falsehoods. He and key staffers have failed to appear for depositions, stonewalled on providing court-ordered financial records and submitted what lawyers for the families say are falsified documents. Repeatedly rebuked by the courts, Mr. Jones responded by attacking the proceedings and the families’ lawyers on his show, calling at one point for one of their heads “on a pike.”

Citing Mr. Jones’s contempt for the judicial process, late last year judges in Texas and Connecticut ruled him liable by default in all the Sandy Hook cases, granting the families a sweeping victory. The trial juries will decide on how much to award the families in compensatory and punitive damages, after lawyers for the families provide them a detailed look at Mr. Jones’s business model, finances and net worth.

Last week a Texas appellate court rejected Mr. Jones’s request to delay payment of $1 million in sanctions resulting from his failure to show up for a deposition in the Connecticut case earlier this year. While Mr. Jones’s lawyers told Connecticut Superior Court Judge Barbara N. Bellis in a hearing that Mr. Jones was sick, he was broadcasting live from his studio, in an industrial park on Alvin Devane Boulevard here. Mr. Reynal, Mr. Jones’s lawyer, argued that the sanctions should wait until juries render their judgments, which Mr. Jones will almost certainly appeal. The court ordered Mr. Jones to pay the $1 million immediately.

It is not clear whether Mr. Jones will be called to testify in Texas, and if he does, whether he will appear in person or via video link. But his efforts to protect his livelihood have continued. Mr. Jones has reached out to the Justice Department, looking to share what he knows about the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot in exchange for immunity from prosecution. An immunity deal has not materialized, and seems unlikely, two people familiar with Mr. Jones’s offer said at the time.

While dodging the families seeking his testimony, Mr. Jones collaborated on a pay-per-view film about himself that will air during the trial in Texas. He has written a book scheduled for release two weeks before the September trials begin.

In an online interview on Saturday with the journalist Glenn Greenwald, Mr. Jones said Infowars is “90 percent accurate and 10 percent wrong.”

“I did this from a pure place,” he said, adding, “I did not lie to people on purpose.”

Originally Posted by S Landreth

“I did not lie to people on purpose.”

LOL, other than to get people to buy my shit and donate money to me.....

Be nice to see him get his comeuppance, but if he’s making 50 million a year, even losing the trial and being awarded a huge penalty will likely not hurt him much at all.

I didn’t think he would show.

• Sandy Hook defamation jury told of Alex Jones’s ‘massive campaign of lies’

Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones repeatedly “lied and attacked the parents of murdered children” when he told his Infowars audience that the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting was a hoax, an attorney for one of the victim’s parents told a Texas jury on Tuesday at the outset of a trial to determine how much Jones must pay for defaming them.

Jones created a “massive campaign of lies” and recruited “wild extremists from the fringes of the internet … who were as cruel as Mr Jones wanted them to be” to the families of the 20 first-graders and six educators who were killed in the 2012 attack on the school in Newtown, Connecticut, attorney Mark Bankston said during his opening statement as Jones looked on and occasionally shook his head.

Infowars founder ‘attacked the parents of murdered children’ by telling audience shooting in which 26 died was a hoax, court hears

Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones repeatedly “lied and attacked the parents of murdered children” when he told his Infowars audience that the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting was a hoax, an attorney for one of the victim’s parents told a Texas jury on Tuesday at the outset of a trial to determine how much Jones must pay for defaming them.

Jones created a “massive campaign of lies” and recruited “wild extremists from the fringes of the internet … who were as cruel as Mr Jones wanted them to be” to the families of the 20 first-graders and six educators who were killed in the 2012 attack on the school in Newtown, Connecticut, attorney Mark Bankston said during his opening statement as Jones looked on and occasionally shook his head.

Jones tapped into the explosive popularity of Sandy Hook conspiracy stories that became an “obsession” for the website, even years after the shooting, said Bankston, who played video clips of Jones claiming on his program that the shooting was a hoax and “the whole thing was completely fake”.

“It just didn’t happen,” Jones said in the clips.

Anticipating what Jones’s defense would be, Bankston told the jury, “This has nothing to do with the constitution. Defamation is not protected by freedom of speech … Speech is free, but lies you have to pay for.”

He said his clients, Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis, whose six-year-old son Jesse was killed in the attack, will ask for $150m for emotional distress and reputational damage, and more money in punitive damages.

During his opening address, Jones’s lawyer Andino Reynal called Jones one of the “most polarizing figures in this nation”, who made statements about Sandy Hook “that we don’t dispute were wrong”.

But he said Jones has already been punished for those statements when he was kicked off of Facebook, YouTube, Spotify and Twitter for violating their hate speech policies.

Jones has “already been cancelled” and lost millions of dollars, said Reynal, who called on the jury to limit the damages to $1.

Reynal painted a picture of a talkshow host who “tries to give an alternative view” but who was duped by some of his guests.

“Alex Jones was wrong to believe these people, but he didn’t do it out of spite,” Reynal argued. “He did it because he believed it … He believed a citizen has a right to get on Infowars and talk about what their questions are.”

He also called the case an important one for free speech.

“I believe in his right to say it, and I believe in every American’s right to choose what they watch, and listen to, and believe,” Reynal said.

Among those expected to testify on Tuesday are Daniel Jewiss, who was the Connecticut police lead investigator of Sandy Hook, and Daria Karpova, a producer at Infowars.

The jury could deal Jones a major financial blow that would put his constellation of conspiracy-peddling businesses into deeper jeopardy. He has already been banned from YouTube, Facebook and Spotify for violating their hate-speech policies and he claims he is millions of dollars in debt – a claim the plaintiffs reject.

Immediately after the plaintiffs’ lawyer’s opening remarks and before his own lawyer addressed the jury, Jones stepped outside the courtroom to rant to reporters, calling it a “kangaroo court” and “show trial” that was an assault on the first amendment of the constitution.

The Texas court and another in Connecticut found Jones liable for defamation for his portrayal of the Sandy Hook massacre as a hoax involving actors aimed at increasing gun control. In both states, the judges issued default judgments against Jones without trials because he failed to respond to court orders and turn over documents.

In total, the families of eight Sandy Hook victims and an FBI agent who responded to the school are suing Jones and his company, Free Speech Systems.

Jones has since acknowledged that the shooting took place. During a deposition in April, Jones insisted he was not responsible for the suffering that Sandy Hook parents say they have endured because of the hoax conspiracy, including death threats and harassment by Jones’s followers.

Jones claimed in court records last year that he had a negative net worth of $20m, but attorneys for Sandy Hook families have painted a different financial picture.

Court records show that Jones’s Infowars store, which sells nutritional supplements and survival gear, made more than $165m between 2015 and 2018. Jones has also urged listeners on his Infowars program to donate money.

The Texas trial begins about two months after a gunman killed 19 children and two teachers at Robb elementary school in Uvalde, about 145 miles south-west of Austin. It was the deadliest school shooting since Sandy Hook.

Another stage

• Judge admonishes Alex Jones for speaking outside courtroom on 1st day of Sandy Hook defamation trial

A Texas judge overseeing the defamation trial that will determine how much money Alex Jones must pay Sandy Hook Elementary School parents for falsely claiming the Dec. 14, 2012, mass shooting in Newtown, Conn., was fake admonished the Infowars founder Tuesday for speaking about the case within earshot of the jury.

"We're not going to have that again," Judge Maya Guerra Gamble told Jones and his attorneys.

During a break in opening arguments, Jones spoke to reporters inside Travis County Courthouse in Austin, where Infowars is based.

"Ladies and gentlemen, if you want to be bamboozled and lose your First Amendment ... go ahead," Jones said. "You're having your rights to a trial by jury to decide if you're guilty or innocent stolen from you. This is a kangaroo court. This is a political act. This is a witch hunt."

The judge reminded Jones that every participant in the trial is "ordered to be silent out of this courtroom, or if there is any member of the jury in sight."

The trial comes after judges in Texas and Connecticut issued default judgments against Jones, finding him liable for defamation for his portrayal of the Sandy Hook massacre as a hoax involving "crisis actors" employed by the government in order to enact stricter gun control. (In both states, judges issued default judgments against Jones without trials because he failed to respond to court orders and turn over documents.)

During jury selection Monday, an attorney for Jones said he “has medical issues” that could keep him from showing up during parts of the 10-day trial.

On Tuesday, Jones arrived at the courthouse wearing a piece of silver tape over his mouth with the message “Save the 1st” printed on it. He removed it before entering the courtroom.

Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis, the parents of 6-year-old Jesse Lewis, who was one of the 20 first graders and six educators who were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary, were already inside. The parents, who are seeking $150 million in damages, are expected to testify.

Jones has claimed in court that he has a negative net worth of $20 million, but according to the Associated Press, court records show that Jones’s Infowars store, which sells nutritional supplements and survival gear, made more than $165 million between 2015 and 2018.

During opening arguments, Mark Bankston, a lawyer for Heslin and Lewis, argued that Jones "used Jesse's death" and the deaths of 19 other Newtown children "to sell supplements."

"Mr. Jones will do or say anything to protect his ability to profit off his lies," Bankston told the jury. "You can put an end to these lies by punishing Alex Jones."

Bankston recalled that in 2017, Heslin sat for an interview with talk show host Megyn Kelly that his client had hoped would put an end to the "crisis actor" conspiracy.

Instead, Bankston said, Jones and Infowars "retaliated against Neil for speaking out."

Jones's attorney opened his defense by arguing that on the day of the massacre in Newtown, he was "1,500 miles away" in Texas, dropping his own children off at school.

"When he heard about the event he was shocked and saddened, just like everyone else in America," Andino Reynal, Jones's lawyer, told jurors. "He was also suspicious.”

“Alex Jones doesn't trust the government," he added.

What a scummy c u n t that bloke is.

I really hope the judge and jury tear him a new one.

Originally Posted by S Landreth

On Tuesday, Jones arrived at the courthouse wearing a piece of silver tape over his mouth with the message “Save the 1st” printed on it. He removed it before entering the courtroom.

What a whiny, revolting fuckwit. So, he believes HE is the wronged one . . .

Originally Posted by panama hat

What a whiny, revolting fuckwit. So, he believes HE is the wronged one . . .

He's learned what his followers like and keeps delivering. That's where Jones has gotten his millions from. It's all about the show.

Originally Posted by Topper

It's all about the show.

Yup.

He's loving it.

Originally Posted by Topper

He's learned what his followers like and keeps delivering. That's where Jones has gotten his millions from. It's all about the show.

And it continues. There’s no hope for some of its followers.

Sebastian Murdock - Doesn't look like Jones is showing up to his trial today. Yesterday he didn't come back from lunch, but instead went on Infowars to complain about the trial. https://twitter.com/SebastianMurdoc/...92298859462661

Sebastian Murdock - On Infowars yesterday, Jones told his followers to come to the courthouse and protest what he called a "kangaroo court." No protesters are here. https://twitter.com/SebastianMurdoc/...93577564323841

__________

• Infowars rep grilled at Day 2 of Alex Jones Sandy Hook trial

The parents’ attorney pointed to Scarlett Lewis and Neil Heslin sitting behind him in court and asked a representative of Alex Jones’ Infowars conspiracy platform if Jones still believed they were crisis actors in a Sandy Hook shooting that was “a total hoax.”

“Is it the current position of Infowars that Neil and Scarlet were involved in fakery and are not real parents?” asked their attorney Mark Bankston to the witness Daria Karpova, an Infowars producer. “Are Neil and Scarlett right here fake parents?”

After a pronounced pause — a pause the jury has become accustomed to during Karpova’s two days of testimony, she answered quietly, “I don’t believe that.”

Karpova, who was scheduled to be questioned by Jones’ attorney later Wednesday, is the second witness in the highest profile defamation trial of its kind in the country. The two-week trial, which will set the pace for two additional upcoming awards trials from Sandy Hook defamation cases Jones lost in Texas and Connecticut, will feature no re-arguing of Jones’ liability.

Yet the trial to determine how much Jones will pay Heslin and Lewis has been anything but routine, making national headlines since it began on Monday with jury selection.

Jones returned to the courthouse after the lunch break on Wednesday, wearing jeans and a dark blue suit jacket.

For those 75 million Americans who doubt or deny the Sandy Hook shooting, the parents are asking for $1 dollar each in compensation and $1 each in punitive damages for a total of $150 million from Jones.

Whether Jones testifies remains unlikely, but he’s made his opposition known in an impromptu press conference Tuesday outside the courtroom for which he was reprimanded, and in an article on his Infowars merchandising site criticizing Judge Maya Guerra Gamble for “presiding over a defamation witch hunt against Infowars legend Alex Jones.”

More drama was expected later Wednesday when a rising star on Infowars is scheduled to take the stand. As the day wore on however, it seemed unlikely that Owen Shroyer, host of an Infowars broadcast called “The War Room” would be called to testify about his role in a 2018 Infowars report that claimed Heslin did not hold his dead son Jesse in his arms.

Outside the courthouse, Shroyer told Hearst Connecticut Media that he hadn't been following the proceedings closely, before echoing his boss's denunciation of the proceedings.

“It’s not a trial,” Shroyer told Hearst. “It’s a guilty verdict released by a judge.”

Shroyer was found liable for defamation and intentional infliction of emotional distress by default along with Jones, Infowars and the parent company Free Speech Systems by the Texas judge in 2021.

The parents’ attorney Bankston spent Wednesday grilling Karpova about videos Jones posted perpetuating the conspiracy theory that the Sandy Hook shooting was a hoax, and about Jones allowing a Sandy Hook denier to share his views with millions of Infowars listeners.

At one point Bankston showed Karpova a picture sent by the Sandy Hook denier to Infowars of Sandy Hook school kids during halftime at the 2013 Super Bowl that mislabeled a living boy as the parents’ slain son Jesse Lewis.

“Looking at this picture do you believe it was created by a sane, rational human being?” Bankston asked Karpova as the parents Heslin and Lewis looked on solemnly just a few feet away in the court room.

“I don’t have an opinion,” Karpova said.

“Do you understand how wrong it was to encourage this man’s delusions?” Bankston said, referring to the Sandy Hook denier that Jones put on the air.

“I would much rather think these children are alive than that they were shot,” Karpova said.

Bankston next shared an enlarged image of an email on the court room screen that the Sandy Hook denier sent to Scarlett Lewis in 2015 which contained the words, “You should do some soul searching because the scam is up.”

Bankston pressed Karpova about it.

“Are you going to tell this jury that an email like that to the mother of a murdered little boy is not harassment?” Bankston said. “Is that what you are going to say?”

“I don’t know anything about the incident,” she said.

____________

• Alex Jones arrives hours late to second day of Sandy Hook trial after decrying case as a ‘witch hunt’

Infowars founder Alex Jones showed up hours late for day two of his defamation trial on Wednesday, a day after a Texas judge told him off for moaning to media about the case within earshot of the jury.

The trial to determine how much in damages Mr Jones must pay the parents of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting victims for falsely claiming the attack began on Tuesday.

During a break in opening arguments, Mr Jones began ranting to reporters inside the Travis County Courthouse in Austin that the case was a “witch hunt”, Yahoo News reported.

Judge Maya Guerra Gamble reprimanded Mr Jones for the outburst.

Huffington Post reporter Sebastian Murdock, who is covering the trial, tweeted that Mr Jones didn’t turn up for Tuesday’s afternoon session, instead going on Infowars to call on protesters to show up to the courthouse.

His lawyer had earlier told the court Jones may miss some of the trial due to “medical issues.”

Jone eventually arrived in time for the post-lunch session - but left after roughly an hour.

The trial proceeded in his absence with cross-examination of an Infowars corporate representative by Mark Bankston, an attorney for Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis, whose six-year-old son Jesse was among the 20 children and six adults who were killed in the 2012 shooting in Newtown, Connecticut.

He accused the conspiracy theorist of a “massive campaign of lies” and recruiting “wild extremists from the fringes of the internet... who were as cruel as Mr Jones wanted them to be”.

Jones also repeatedly failed to turn up to depositions for the defamation proceedings in Connecticut in March.

His attorneys claimed he was too sick to attend due to undisclosed “medical conditions” and that doctors had advised him to remain at home.

After he missed the deposition for a second time, attorneys representing the victims’ families urged the judge to find Jones in contempt of court and have him arrested.

Attorney Christopher Mattei called Mr Jones’ failure to appear a “cowardly attempt” to escape accountability in a statement to The Independent.

_________

Little more

• Second day of Alex Jones trial ends in turmoil as lawyers square off

Jurors were sent home about 15 minutes early Wednesday amid a dispute between lawyers for conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and the parents of a child who was killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2015.

Andino Reynal, Jones' lawyer, moved to admit a nine-minute segment of a Jones InfoWars video, but Mark Bankston, a lawyer for the parents, objected, saying the video contained hearsay and was not appropriate for a trial on the size of the damage award Jones must pay for calling the shooting a hoax.

State District Judge Maya Guerra Gamble dismissed the jurors so the video dispute could be hashed out.

Reynal complained that said he wanted to show a complete segment to counter "little clips of cherry-picked videos" that Bankston had shown jurors. But Guerra Gamble reminded Reynal that he was supposed to have submitted all evidence at a pretrial hearing but didn't have the videos ready, handcuffing his presentation and putting the court in a bind.

Then tempers flared.

Reynal pointed to a written list of videos that had been submitted to the court, saying the believed he and Bankston had reached a pretrial agreement on admitting them.

Bankston disagreed. "That is a list of videos produced," he said. "I did not agree that they be introduced."

The judge also pointed out that the document was merely a list of InfoWars videos and that several had not been introduced into evidence.

"Bankston is being dishonest with the court," Reynal said, repeating that that he and the opposing lawyer had agreed to introduce the videos into evidence, with Bankston repeating his denial.

Exasperated, the judge ordered Reynal and Bankston to get together to work out an agreement on the videos, with Reynal identifying specific information needed to give jurors a complete picture and Bankston raising specific objections based on hearsay, allowing the judge to make decisions Thursday morning before jurors are seated.

Guerra Gamble also said she was going to chalk up Reynal's accusations to a tough day in court with emotions running high, adding: "If you are going to call other attorneys in my courtroom dishonest, you have to back that up."

The judge left the courtroom, but Reynal and Bankston continued sniping until another lawyer stepped in to say that negotiations would begin later in the night, by phone, after heads cooled.

• Sympathetic portrayal of Alex Jones rebuked as ‘hypocrisy’

A producer for conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’s media company tried to paint a sympathetic portrait of him Thursday as a jury decides how much in financial damages he should pay for his past claims that the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary school was a hoax — a move that lawyers for parents of a child slain in the massacre immediately rebuked as hypocritical.

Daria Karpova, a producer at Jones’ Austin, Texas-based Infowars website, testified that that the pressure of multiple lawsuits and trials has taken a toll on Jones. He’s been “stressed out” and can’t relax even while on vacation as he’s been constantly worried about his programs and money over the past four years since being sued for defamation.

Karpova said some people believe Jones murdered the 20 first-graders killed in the massacre in Newtown, Connecticut, that left a total of 26 dead.

A lawyer for the parents suing Jones for at least $150 million for the abuse they say they’ve suffered for years because of Jones’ false statements immediately jumped on the depiction of a wounded man struggling to cope with lies said about him as posturing.

“When people lie about you it affects you negatively, it affects your well-being? Do you understand the irony, the hypocrisy of making that statement in this courtroom right now?” asked Mark Bankston, attorney for Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis, parents of 6-year-old Jesse Lewis, who was killed at the school.

“It’s just the truth,” Karpova said. “What am I supposed to say?”

Heslin and Lewis sued Jones for emotional distress and reputational damage that Jones caused them and are seeking at least $150 million from Jones and his media empire Free Speech Systems.

Courts in Texas and Connecticut have already found Jones liable for defamation for his portrayal of the Sandy Hook massacre as a hoax involving “crisis actors” aimed at increasing gun control. In both states, the judges issued default judgments against Jones without trials because he failed to respond to court orders and turn over documents.

In total, the families of eight Sandy Hook victims and an FBI agent who responded to the school are suing Jones and his company in multiple courts.

Jones has since acknowledged that the shooting took place, but insists he’s not responsible for the suffering that Sandy Hook parents say they have endured because of the hoax conspiracy, including death threats and harassment by Jones’ followers.

The first three days of the trial have been dominated by video clips of Jones and Sandy Hook reports on Infowars and testimony from Karpova, who has worked at the website since 2015.

Karpova was designated by the company to be its representative at trial, but could not answer questions about company revenue and its numbers of viewers and listeners. She also struggled to answer other questions about some of the video evidence she was instructed to prepare testimony about.

In one video clip presented by defense attorney Andino Reynal from 2017, Jones invited the families of Sandy Hook to come on his program for an “open dialogue”

“Alex could have been advocates for these parents, done a lot of good to stop anyone there to harass them,” she said as Heslin and Lewis sat about 20 feet away in the courtroom.

Karpova called the show’s reliance on Wolfgang Halbig, a Sandy Hook denier, as a frequent guest and source of information “the worst decision ever made by the company.” Several of the clips featured in evidence have included Halbig, as well as a taunting email he sent to Scarlett Lewis.

Later Thursday, the jury watched a 2017 Infowars clip at the center of the case: a report where studio host Owen Shroyer strongly suggested Heslin could not have held the body of his dead son like he’d described in a television interview.

“I’m sorry if that hurt anybody,” Shroyer said Thursday after being called as a witness. “I hope their grieving can end someday.”

He then implied the trial itself could keep hurting the families.

Jones has been in and out of the courtroom during testimony. He had four bodyguards with him Thursday. He has tried to portray the damages trial as an assault of the First Amendment right to free speech.

He arrived at the courthouse on Tuesday with a “Save the 1st” message printed on a large piece of silver tape over this mouth. In a break during opening statements, he held an impromptu news conference just steps away from the courtroom to call the trial a “show trial” by a “kangaroo court.”

"In a break during opening statements, he held an impromptu news conference just steps away from the courtroom to call the trial a “show trial” by a “kangaroo court.”

Not much remorse there. Hopefully he learns there are consequences for his actions.

^It’s trying to wiggle out of all responsibility with a new lawsuit…….

• Alex Jones Sues His Own Company Free Speech Systems in CT

He’s ‘Effectively Suing Himself’: Alex Jones Files Lawsuit Against His Own Company in Alleged ‘Sham’ Attempt to Derail Sandy Hook Defamation Trial

In Connecticut court documents dated Friday, Infowars host Alex Jones sued his own media company in what his opponents have characterized as yet another last-ditch attempt to stall an upcoming defamation damages trial.

A collection of plaintiffs have sued Jones and several Jones-associated companies for defamation and other torts in both Texas and Connecticut in connection with statements about the Dec. 14, 2012 Sandy Hook school massacre in Newtown, Connecticut. After years of discovery delays and other violations by the defendants, judges in both the Lone Star State and the Constitution State entered a legally rare default judgment against Jones; however, juries have been seated in Texas and will be empaneled in Connecticut next month to ascertain the extent of damages suffered — if any — by the families of the Sandy Hook victims. Jones is currently on trial in Texas to assess damages there; testimony in Connecticut is scheduled to begin in early September after jury selection in August.

The ticking clock in Connecticut appears to have spurred Jones to sue Free Speech Systems, his own media company, according to a filing dated Friday.

“Alex Emric Jones, a defendant in this action, is employed by the co-defendant Free Speech Systems,” the document says. “Free Speech Systems has promised and guaranteed to indemnify and hold harmless Alex Emric Jones from any damages or other costs which may be assessed or entered against him in this litigation.”

What follows is a laundry list of requests by Jones with regards to Free Speech Systems. That list is reproduced here verbatim:

1. An injunction requiring Free Speech Systems to honor and comply with its aforesaid obligation to indemnify and hold him harmless from any damages or other costs which may be assessed or entered against him in this litigation

2. An injunction requiring Free Speech Systems to attend and participate in the jury selection and trial of this action;

3. Compensatory damages if Free Speech Systems fails to attend and participate in the jury selection and trial of this action and to indemnify and hold him harmless from any damages or other costs which may be assessed or entered against him in this action;

4. Treble damages pursuant to Section 52-564 of the General Statutes if Free Speech Systems fails to comply with its obligations of indemnification delineated above.

According to Texas Monthly, Free Speech Systems, Inc., the “business entity that operates both Infowars” and Jones’ dietary supplement company, has not declared bankruptcy. However, as Law&Crime has previously noted, several of Jones’ other companies have.

Texas Monthly said that the Sandy Hook plaintiffs sidestepped the bankruptcies by simply removing the allegedly cash-strapped entities from their civil lawsuits. That rendered the case back to the district courts in Connecticut and New York for proceedings that were only briefly interrupted.

The Sandy Hook plaintiffs in Connecticut immediately criticized Jones’ move against Free Speech Systems with this stinging “emergency motion to strike” the crossclaim:

Alex Jones will do anything to delay trial in this case, including effectively suing himself. Mr. Jones’s five-days-before-jury-selection-starts cross claim against his alter ego company Free Speech Systems, LLC is yet another bad faith tactic meant to obfuscate, to delay, and to create a false issue in this record in preparation for a new abusive bankruptcy filing. The cross claim alleges the fiction that this wholly controlled subsidiary promised to hold Jones harmless for damages in this case, inviting this proceeding to enter Mr. Jones’s conspiracist world where found facts and sworn testimony mean nothing at all. To ensure that Jones does not benefit from this latest ploy, the cross claim should be stricken immediately as untimely and made in bad faith. It must also be stricken immediately because it is pure fiction. It takes two parties to make a contract, and here there is only one: Jones completely controls FSS. Jones knows this and nonetheless filed it, in bad faith.

The plaintiffs’ motion to strike then recaps the reason for the default judgment in the first place: “the Jones defendants’ egregious misconduct and prolonged abuse of process.”

“These cases were filed in 2018,” the plaintiffs noted. “At no time since their filing until now has Alex Jones or Free Speech Systems asserted that a promise of indemnification was made by FSS to Alex Jones.”

The plaintiffs further argued that since a judge closed the pleadings in the case by entering the default judgment against Jones, Jones cannot seek a crossclaim at this juncture in the proceeding. That’s because a crossclaim is, in essence, an addition to the pleadings.

“Further, no motion or request to make this filing was made pursuant to Practice Book Section 10-60,” the plaintiffs noted. The “Practice Book” is a 697-page compilation of Connecticut’s voluminous court rules.

“The trial date is set, it is firm, and it is imminent,” the plaintiffs asserted. “The cross claim is certain to cause delay if permitted. It is also prejudicial: if this supposed cross claim could be asserted in this case, the plaintiffs were entitled to be on notice of it long ago. In short, the cross claim is untimely and should be stricken as such.”

“And there is a far more important point that goes to timing: this cross claim is filed to create confusion and disruption in this case on the eve of trial,” the plaintiffs continued. “Moreover, it is filed in an attempt to insert a sham indemnity claim into this record, so that claim can be argued to a bankruptcy less familiar with the Jones defendants’ litigation chicanery. For this reason, the Court should strike the claim immediately.”

https://s3.documentcloud.org/documen...ly-29-2022.pdf

Originally Posted by S Landreth

Alex Jones Sues His Own Company Free Speech Systems in CT


He’s ‘Effectively Suing Himself’: Alex Jones Files Lawsuit Against His Own Company in Alleged ‘Sham’ Attempt to Derail Sandy Hook Defamation Trial

Aaahhh, the US . . .

• Alex Jones' media company files for bankruptcy amid defamation trial

Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones' media company Free Speech Systems filed for bankruptcy on Friday — but his attorney said it should not disrupt the defamation damages trial underway in Texas that seeks to force Jones to pay $150 million or more to the family of one of the children killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School attack.

The trial in Austin, where Jones lives and Free Speech Systems is based, wrapped up its first week of testimony Friday and is expected to conclude next week. The bankruptcy filing was announced by Jones' attorney Andino Reynal late in the day.

Reynal and attorneys for the family suing Jones told Judge Maya Guerra Gamble that the bankruptcy filing would not halt the lawsuit.

The company wants "to put this part of the odyssey behind us so that we have some numbers" set for damages, Reynal said.

Details of the bankruptcy filing were not immediately available.

It is not the first time a bankruptcy filing has come amid litigation against Jones by the Sandy Hook families. In April, Jones' company Infowars and two more of his business entities filed for bankruptcy protection, which led to a trial delay. Free Speech Systems is the parent company of Infowars.

Courts in Texas and Connecticut have already found Jones liable for defamation for his portrayal of the Sandy Hook massacre as a hoax involving actors aimed at increasing gun control. In both states, judges issued default judgements against Jones without trials because he failed to respond to court orders and turn over documents.

Christopher Mattei, an attorney for the Sandy Hook families in the Connecticut case, issued a statement Friday evening blasting the bankruptcy filing.

"Just two days before jury selection is due to begin in Connecticut, Mr. Jones has once again fled like a coward to bankruptcy court in a transparent attempt to delay facing the families that he has spent years hurting," Mattei said. "These families have an endless well of patience and remain determined to hold Mr. Jones accountable in a Connecticut court."

The trial in Austin is to determine how much Jones should pay for defaming Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis, whose 6-year-old son, Jesse Lewis, was among the 20 children and six educators who were killed in the country's deadliest school shooting. They and other Sandy Hook families suing Jones say they have suffered years of harassment and threats resulting from Jones' repeated false claims that the shooting was a hoax or didn't happen.

Jones claimed in court records last year that he had a negative net worth of $20 million, but attorneys for Sandy Hook families have painted a different financial picture.

Court records show that Jones' Infowars store, which sells nutritional supplements and survival gear, made more than $165 million between 2015 and 2018. Jones has also urged listeners on his Infowars program to donate money.