Alex Jones Is Too, Umm, 'Sick' To Be Deposed In Sandy Hook Defamation Suit

Why, yes, this is the same suit where he spent three years refusing to comply with discovery. Why do you ask?

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Sentient shitpost Alex Jones spent three years ducking discovery in the defamation suit filed in Connecticut by families of children killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting. After he told his podcast audience that “Sandy Hook is a synthetic, completely fake, with actors, in my view manufactured,” the families were subject to years of harassment and abuse, with at least one having to go into hiding. But when they turned around and sued him, he suddenly had a lot less to say.

In September, Texas Judge Maya Guerra Gamble ran out of patience and imposed a default judgment, AKA “death penalty sanctions” after Jones essentially refused to cooperate with discovery.

“An escalating series of judicial admonishments, monetary penalties, and non-dispositive sanctions have all been ineffective at deterring the abuse,” she wrote, adding later, “Furthermore, in considering whether lesser remedies would be effective, this Court has also considered Defendants’ general bad faith approach to litigation, Mr. Jones’ public threats, and Mr. Jones’ professed belief that these proceedings are ‘show trials.’”

In November, Connecticut Judge Barbara Bellis awarded a default judgment to another set of Sandy Hook plaintiffs who had faced similar difficulty getting Jones to comply with discovery. And, as Oscar Wilde said, to lose one default judgment may be regarded as misfortune. To lose both looks like an admission that whatever you might have to reveal is so damning that it’s better to sign a blank check to the plaintiffs than to hand it over. Well, more or less.

And it appears that Jones still doesn’t want to reveal it. As Connecticut’s News-Times reports, his lawyer Norman Pattis informed the court in Connecticut yesterday that his client is simply too ill with an unidentified ailment to be deposed this week in Texas on the question of damages.

“At approximately 3:30 p.m. this afternoon, the undersigned received a telephone call alerting him that Mr. Jones was under the care of a physician for medical conditions that require immediate, and possibly, emergency testing,” Pattis wrote. “I spoke with a person representing himself to be a physician: he told me he was a licensed physician, had the qualifications to render an opinion about Mr. Jones’ health, and that his opinion was that Mr. Jones should not sit for depositions this week.”

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That’s weird, because he here he is doing his show yesterday.

It must have been a really sudden illness.

(It’s also weird that Pattis seems to be hedging his bets as to whether the guy he spoke to is actually a doctor at all. Not that his client would tell a wee fib, perish the very thought!)

Jones’s lawyer admitted that it was unfortunate that the plaintiffs’ attorneys had already flown into Austin for a deposition which couldn’t take place, but he hopes to get his hands on a note from that very real doctor ASAP.

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“My client has not authorized me to disclose the nature of the medical conditions or the identity of the physician. It is my hope that upon receipt of the physician’s letter, I can share it with the Court on an ex parte basis,” he wrote.

And if you can’t take Alex Jones at his word, who can ya trust, right?

Alex Jones, citing ‘medical conditions,’ seeks delay in deposition for Sandy Hook defamation case [News-Times]


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