Alex Jones Coughs Up Fines, Calls Judge Biased, And Whines That He Is The Real Victim In Sandy Hook Defamation Trial

Sure, why not.

Demonstrators Protests At Texas State Capitol Against Governor’s Stay At Home Order

(Photo by Sergio Flores/Getty Images)

On Friday, sentient shitpost Alex Jones appealed the sanctions imposed by a Connecticut trial judge for his failure to be deposed in a case brought by surviving family members of Sandy Hook shooting victims.

In the four years since the defamation suit was filed, Jones failed to cooperate with discovery, accused the plaintiffs’ lawyer of planting child pornography on his servers, and earned himself a default judgment — meaning the only issue at trial is how big a check he’s going to cut to make up for years of harassment by Jones’s audience who believed him when he called the plaintiffs “crisis actors.”

In the past month, Jones refused to show up for a scheduled deposition for which the plaintiffs’ lawyers had traveled to Texas, was revealed to be broadcasting from his studio at the very moment when his lawyers were arguing that he was too sick to be deposed, and so exasperated Judge Barbara Bellis that last week she found him in contempt and imposed sanctions escalating by $25,000 for every weekday through April 15 in which Jones fails to sit for a deposition in Connecticut.

Jones says he plans to be deposed on the 11th after he testifies this week in a case brought by other Sandy Hook families in Texas — he’s also defaulted there. If Jones cures the contempt before the 15th, he’ll get the money back. But if he doesn’t, he’ll suffer further evidentiary sanctions at trial, including a possible ban on introducing witnesses.

On Friday, Jones made the first of those payments. But his lawyer Norm Pattis has now docketed an appeal, and, friends, it is both real and spectacular.

“It would take a gift of understatement the undersigned do not possess to characterize as a mere abuse of discretion Superior Court Judge Barbara Bellis’ decision to hold a defendant in a civil action in contempt and requiring him to pay fines totaling potentially $1.65 million for relying on a doctor’s note to not attend a deposition,” it begins.

Sponsored

It goes on to describe Jones as a pitiful victim, unable to get a fair trial in Connecticut, where 26 people were murdered, only to have their families demonized by the podcaster and targeted by his deranged fans.

“For many Connecticut residents, that is reason enough to hate Jones,” the attorneys note wistfully, before going on to accuse the trial judge of being biased against their client. “One suspects Judge Bellis has succumbed to that hatred.”

He even goes so far as to complain that “lead counsel [for the plaintiffs], in derogation of the rule prohibiting prejudicial extrajudicial comments, referred to Jones as a coward, afraid to sit for questions under oath.” Which is truly precious coming from a guy who sat next to his client during a live broadcast in which he referred to plaintiffs’ counsel as “a little, white Jewboy jerkoff son of a bitch” and offered “one million dollars to put your head on a pike.”

And not for nothing, but Jones took to the airwaves last week to call Judge Bellis “this thing that has just cheated us every way, lied about us, said we didn’t give them this, sanctioned us for not giving them the ‘Sandy Hook marketing.’” Pot, kettle.

Jones demands a “public interest appeal,” because “[t]he law is at is [sic] best when tested and applied to the damned and despised.”

Sponsored

And while Pattis concedes that Jones did not abide by his doctor’s orders to stay home and refrain from working, he still insists that his client is entitled to the protection of the medical note — a note the trial judge described as “willfully inadequate” — to get him out of testifying. Pattis fails to mention that Jones told his audience that he’d been suffering from a sinus infection which miraculously lifted the day after he failed to show up for the deposition, after which he felt “like a new person.”

Pattis argues that the trial court abused its discretion by imposing a disproportionate fine, failing to hold an evidentiary hearing before finding Jones in contempt, and “substitut[ing] its judgment for an affidavit and letter signed under oath by physicians on whom Jones relied in electing not to attend a deposition.”

He also insists that Judge Bellis’s order that Jones show up and be deposed unless he “develops escalating symptoms such that he is hospitalized,” might have given the defendant the impression that he could just work from home and not attend if he so chose.

With respect to the court’s orders, Jones reasonably could have concluded that its directive that his attendance at his deposition would be excused if he was hospitalized due to escalating symptoms also encompassed the opportunity for a trained medical professional to assess and determine whether escalating symptoms required hospitalization. In other words, the carve-out supplied by the court’s order left some leeway for Jones to safeguard his health and whether Jones properly used that carve-out is a question of fact that can only be determined after a hearing.

Well … good luck with all that.

Appellate Docket
Trial Docket


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