Alex Jones

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 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 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.

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.

The accountant now in charge of overseeing right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones' company Free Speech Systems through its bankruptcy was questioned ...

Schwartz also testified that Jones used a company-associated American Express card to pay for personal expenses, including housekeeping charges, regularly in the past 18 months. Schwartz said Jones' salary could be considered reasonable because of his value to the company. An attorney for Free Speech Systems said at the hearing Wednesday that the company has about $1.3 million cash on hand. Nobody," Schwartz said. "The company's in a situation right now where there's not a whole lot of breathing room." Marc Schwartz testified he signed a contract to take over as Chief Restructuring Officer for the company in June and now controls all bank accounts, payroll and hiring decisions.

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.

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. Walorski, who was 58, represented Indiana's 2nd Congressional District and had previously served as a member of the Indiana House of Representatives. The congresswoman also served as the top Republican on the House Ethics Committee, a spot that put her in line to become chair of the panel if the GOP retakes the House majority in the upcoming midterm elections. The LIV Golf series has been controversial because it is backed by a fund chaired by Mohammed bin Salman, the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, whom US intelligence reports say was responsible for approving the operation that led to the 2018 murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. They also downplay regular screening testing for Covid-19 in schools as a way to monitor the spread of the virus. as early as this week, which could affect how the virus is handled in schools as a new year begins. for his relentless peddling of conspiracy theories related to the tragedy. In another notable moment during cross-examination, Jones was asked whether he had connected the judge overseeing the trial to pedophilia and human trafficking.

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.

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

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The judge said it was “like the 17th time” Jones' lawyer had made such a request in the defamation damages trial brought by the parents of Sandy Hook ...

“Do you know where I got this?” Bankston asked Jones. “Your attorneys messed up and sent me a digital copy of your entire cellphone, with every text message you’ve sent for the past two years.” Jones is on trial for defamation after the right-wing media host repeatedly pushed claims denying the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting and calling it a “hoax.” He is also facing a similar civil trial in Connecticut, where the court has similarly issued a default judgment against him. Gamble already issued a default judgment against Jones in October 2021, meaning the jury won’t actually be deciding whether Jones is liable or not, but rather just how much he has to pay.

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.

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.

The committee has previously requested records and a deposition from Jones regarding his role in the Capitol riot..

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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.

U.S. conspiracy theorist Alex Jones should pay the parents of a child killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook massacre at least $4.1 million for fals...

Jones is expected to return to the stand. It ended when Lanza killed himself with the approaching sound of police sirens. Jones said during a Monday broadcast that the filing will help the company stay on the air while it appeals. A finance expert is set to testify for the parents. The parents claim that Jones took $62 million from the company while burdening it with $65 million in “fabricated” debt owed to PQPR Holdings, a company owned by Jones and his parents. The parents may now use the records as they wish.

Misinformation brought Alex Jones fame. Now, it is at the center of the Sandy Hook defamation trial.

“Call the White House and tell them we know the government is planning terrorism,” he said, according to Slate. The church incident also made Jones a celebrity among “patriot” militia members. He was able to raise $93,000 from listeners for the project. Jones had moderate success as a public access host, but he got his first real break that pushed him onto the public’s radar. “He said, ‘My son’s got some out-there ideas but I think he’d be perfect,’” Daryl O’Neal said. Jones was inspired by Gary Allen, whose book he found on his father’s bookshelf.

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.