Government

Alex Jones Gets Death Penalty Sanctions. Again.

He'd rather lose than comply with discovery.

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Alex Jones of InfoWars (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

Sentient shitpost Alex Jones got whacked in court this morning as Connecticut Superior Court Judge Barbara Bellis entered a default judgment against him for failing to comply with discovery in defamation suits brought by the surviving families of children shot at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012.

This marks the second time in six weeks that Jones decided that it was less worse to lose by default than to comply with discovery requests. On September 30, Texas Judge Maya Guerra Gamble issued default judgments, AKA death penalty sanctions against him in three separate cases arising from broadcasts in which Jones called the tragic massacre of school children a “hoax” perpetrated by “crisis actors.” The families have been subjected to years of persistent harassment after Jones accused them of faking their own children’s deaths, with one father even forced to go into hiding.

All the cases will now proceed to a jury to assess damages.

Judge Bellis warned Jones back in 2019, “As the discovery in this case progresses, if there is continued obfuscation and delay and tactics like I’ve seen up to this point, I will not hesitate after hearing and an opportunity to be heard to default the Alex Jones defendants if they from this point forward continue with their behavior with respect to discovery.” Jones was similarly cautioned in Texas that the consequences for refusing to comply with discovery requests would be dire.

And yet he continued to stonewall, which strongly suggests that there was something more than incompetence at work here, if losing by default was preferable to disclosing whatever was in the allegedly deleted social media posts and internal Infowars communications.

This is not to discount the impressive display of incompetence in the Connecticut lawsuit. This is the case where Jones apparently tossed his server on the plaintiffs’ desk without reviewing it, only to find that it contained images of child pornography in an email attachment someone had sent to him.

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After which Jones’s lawyer Norm Pattis sat next to him during a broadcast in which he insisted he could not possibly have had images of kiddie porn because “I like women with big giant tits and big asses. I don’t like kids like you goddamn rapists. Fuckheads. In fact, delete this: You fucks are going to get it. You fucking child molesters. I’ll fucking get you in the end. You fucks.”

After which he launched into a lengthy tirade as he pounded an image of the plaintiffs’ attorney’s face, implying that opposing counsel Chris Mattei had sent the email himself.

“We all know who did it,” he shouted. “One million dollars to put your head on a pike.”

He then went on to refer to Mattei as  “a white Jewboy that thinks he owns America” and “a little, white Jewboy jerkoff son of a bitch.”

This language was quoted by the judge in open court and in the official transcript of his show submitted as a public record in the case. In neither instance did Jones raise an objection. Nevertheless, when I reported on it at the time, Jones’s counsel demanded that this website retract the quotes.

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That did not happen.

Nor is Jones’s self-serving characterization of this morning’s default judgment, read into the record by Judge Bellis, remotely accurate.

“These individuals, again, are not allowing me to have a jury trial because they know the things they said I supposedly did didn’t happen,” he whined to the AP. “They know they don’t have a case for damages. And so the judge is saying you are guilty of damages, now a jury decides how guilty you are. It’s not guilty until proven guilty.”

What did happen in Connecticut and Texas is that Jones refused to hand over internal communications pertaining to the offending broadcasts. And now he’s facing the consequences of his own terrible judgment.

“I am grateful that the court system has responded the way it has to Mr. Jones’ misconduct and refusal to recognize that he was bound to the law like anyone else,” Mattei told CT Post. “What inspires us is the courage of our clients and their determination to uncover the truth.”

Sandy Hook families ‘grateful’ to win defamation case against Alex Jones by default [CT Post]

Elizabeth Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.

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