Alex Jones

A Texas judge denied Alex Jones's motion for a mistrial on Thursday as jury deliberations resumed in a defamation case over the U.S. conspiracy theorist's ...

It ended when Lanza killed himself with the approaching sound of police sirens. The parents may now use the records as they wish. Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com The verdict followed a two-week trial in Austin, Texas, where Jones's radio show and webcast Infowars are based. Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com

Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones must pay $4.11 million in defamation damages for falsely claiming the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting was a hoax, ...

On Wednesday right-wing media barker Alex Jones learned that his lawyers had accidentally sent the prosecution in his defamation trial a copy of his cell ...

While Jones tried to settle with the families for $120,000 a piece back in March, and has claimed the lawsuits will destroy his livelihood, financial records introduced in court yesterday showed the InfoWars host was sometimes earning as much as $800,000 a day. In a surprise 11th-hour twist, the parents’ lawyer revealed that Jones’ attorneys had accidently sent him a digital copy of his phone with every text message on it, including ones he had previously said he couldn’t find or didn’t exist. Jones is accused of running false reports for years that the shooting was a hoax and the parents were liars.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.”

Twitch streamer HasanAbi has been dragged for comparing Alex Jones' Sandy Hook trial with the Johnny Depp Amber Heard case.

"not only is this tasteless but the trial he's talking about is of a school shooting where kids died??? Jones had previously stated that "no one died" in Sandy Hook and believes it was "staged." A clip showing Jones reacting to the news that his lawyer accidentally sent a record of his texts and emails to the opposition has gone viral.

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 House January 6 committee has contacted the attorney for a family suing Alex Jones for defamation in an attempt to obtain the far-right conspiracy ...

Jones lost on the merits of the case by default, because he failed to provide any documents in response to the lawsuit. Reynal also asked Guerra Gamble to block the release of materials on Jones’s phone to anyone, including the January 6 committee. The texts could shed light on the extent – if any – of that coordination. The texts are potentially significant because Jones has claimed that on 3 January 2020 he was asked by the Trump White House and the Secret Service to lead a march from the Ellipse to the Capitol three days later. Jones’s attorney, Andino Reynal, requested a mistrial on Thursday, over the purportedly accidental leak. He also said he intended to comply with the requests unless a court order instructed him not to.

An attorney representing two parents who sued conspiracy theorist Alex Jones over his false claims about the Sandy Hook massacre says the U.S. House Jan.

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The attorney said that the House panel probing the Capitol riot asked for the contents of Alex Jones' phone after his lawyer accidentally leaked them.

"That is how I know you lied to me when you said you didn't have text messages about Sandy Hook." The defense attorney added, "This should have never gotten this far," as he explained that he told Bankston in an email last month to "please disregard" after the contents of Jones' phone were mistakenly sent to Bankston. They know they exist. They are not trade secrets. "Things like Mr. Jones and his intimate messages to Roger Stone are not confidential. - The contents of Jones phone were inadvertently sent to an attorney for the Sandy Hook parents who sued Jones.

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 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.

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 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.

Here are seven moments that could shape a jury's deliberations on Thursday in a trial to decide how much U.S. conspiracy theorist Alex Jones must pay ...

Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com Jones disputed Bankston's characterization that the photo depicted Gamble on fire. -There were several tense exchanges between Jones and Gamble. Before jurors entered the courtroom, Gamble told Jones to spit out his gum. "It seems absurd to instruct you again that you must tell the truth while you testify," she said. Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com

Alex Jones will pay for defaming Sandy Hook parents, but we might never get back what his lie cost us all.

Jones has known ties to the ringleaders of several militia groups and others involved in the Capitol invasion, and the committee subpoenaed Jones as early as November 2021 for his role in the action. “You and your company want the world to believe that this judge is rigging this court proceeding to make sure that a script, a literal script, is being followed,” Bankston stated at one point. Throughout the trial, a major theme was trying to pin Jones himself down to a functional version of reality. If it feels as though pundits have hung on every word of the defamation trial, that’s because they have: A host of journalists and law bloggers have been livetweeting the trial minute to minute, from the courtroom and while following the courtroom livestream. This led to a bombshell courtroom reveal from the plaintiffs’ lawyer, Mark Bankston, on Wednesday, the final day of arguments in the case. He also filed for bankruptcy in April, despite making as much as $50 million annually, in a clear attempt to delay financial judgment in one of the other lawsuits. The case’s shocking revelations, which now include a potential link to January 6, 2021, are reminders that the kind of zealous paranoid thinking Jones encourages can have dangerous and unintended consequences. A total of 10 families eventually sued Jones beginning in 2018, bringing two suits in Texas, where Jones runs Infowars, and one in Connecticut, where the shooting occurred. A major courtroom bombshell on the last day of testimony in which Jones’s lawyer accidentally handed over the entire contents of his phone to the prosecution, revealing the extent of Jones’s deception — a snafu that also inadvertently tipped off the House January 6 committee. Jones has spent years fighting his way to the courtroom. As a result of the claims, Infowars fans harassed, stalked, and threatened the families for years, pushing some into hiding. That’s far less than the $150 million they were seeking; a jury decision on whether to award the family punitive damages, which may be based on Jones’s overall net worth, is still pending.

Far-right Infowars owner faced defamation trial for repeatedly saying the school shooting was a hoax.

Those messages included texts that contradicted claims Jones had made under oath in a prior deposition that he had nothing on his phone pertaining to the Sandy Hook massacre. Jones grumbled that Bankston had gotten his “Perry Mason moment” at his expense, alluding to the TV attorney who would win his cases by getting those he was questioning to dramatically confess to wrongdoing on the witness stand. For its part, the plaintiffs’ legal team subjected Jones to a withering cross-examination. Reynal asked jurors to limit his client’s damages to a single dollar, despite evidence during the trial that Infowars earned more than $800,000 daily some days. That set up a trial beginning on 25 July whose sole purpose was to determine how much money Jones owed Jesse Lewis’s parents in compensation and possible punitive damages. That myth, consumed by Jones’ millions of followers, prompted a man to go there with a high-powered rifle and fire shots inside in 2016.

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'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.