Government

At Sandy Hook Defamation Trial, Alex Jones Seeks Sympathy For The Real Victim Here, Who Is ... Alex Jones. Obviously.

What comes after death penalty sanctions? Alex Jones is fixin' to find out.

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

(Photo by Sergio Flores/Getty Images)

Sentient shitpost Alex Jones showed up at court yesterday with duct tape bearing his company logo and the words “Save the 1st” over his mouth as he faced Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis, whose 6-year-old son Jesse was murdered in 2012 at Sandy Hook Elementary School. This the first of three defamation claims by surviving family members who faced years of harassment and threats after Jones told his millions of followers that the shooting of 20 children and six school staff was a false flag event engineered to gin up support for gun control.

Within hours of the murders, Jones was spinning lies about the victims and their families, quickly moving on to speculate that the slain children were still alive or had never even existed.

“Jones told his audience that Obama staged Sandy Hook ― and not that Obama ordered the murder of those children ― but that there were never even children at all,” the plaintiffs’ lawyer Mark Bankston told the jury, according to HuffPost. “Jones said the school was fake, the parents liars, paid actors. The funerals fake, their tears fake.”

The defendant was considerably less brave when it came to facing his accusers. In fact, he did everything he could to put off this day of reckoning, obstructing discovery so egregiously that courts in Connecticut and Texas both imposed “death penalty” sanctions, obviating the need to prove culpability and allowing the plaintiffs to move directly to the damages phase.

Jones also placed two shell companies in bankruptcy on the eve of trial in an unsuccessful attempt to fob off the plaintiffs with a pittance and protect the bulk of his assets, which he is frantically transferring to shell companies owned by members of his family, according to a lawsuit filed by the Texas plaintiffs.

So it’s no surprise that Jones began the day with the ridiculous duct tape stunt, although he did manage to remove it while seated in the courtroom. He did not, however, manage to keep his mouth shut while in the courthouse, delivering a rant to assembled reporters casting himself as a brave defender of the First Amendment.

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“You’re having your rights to a trial by jury to decide if you’re guilty or innocent stolen from you,” he barked. “This is a kangaroo court. This is a political act. This is a witch hunt.”

This is a really bad idea, earning him a stern rebuke from Judge Maya Guerra Gamble.

“We’re not going to have that again,” she said, ordering him to keep his mouth shut where members of the jury might be able to hear him. Which he was just about able to do, although once outside he did yell at HuffPost’s Sebastian Murdock and the New York Times’s Elizabeth Williamson, who literally wrote the book on conspiracy theories surrounding the Sandy Hook shooting.

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What better way to prove that you’re a principled warrior for free speech than to deride the people with fact checkers for failing to move as much product as you, right? Real reporters hawk trucker speed and survival gear!

Jones’s lawyer Andino Reynal continued the antics in the courtroom, where he accused the plaintiffs of engaging in a “conspiracy of lies,” painted his client as an innocent victim, “taken in” by “experts” who questioned the veracity of news reports, and who has already paid a heavy price by being banished from the internet. He also told the jury that his client had a medical condition which might force him to be absent from court — a convenient cover when Jones disappeared after lunch to go do his broadcast begging his listeners for “support” against evildoers trying to cancel culture his sacred First Amendment right to slander the parents of dead babies.

As the Times reports, Reynal even had the nerve to suggest that the jury award Heslin and Lewis $1, since ten years of harassment by Jones and his deranged listeners is but a drop in the bucket for people already grieving the loss of a murdered child.

Bankston had a different number in mind: $150 million, which would be a dollar per parent for each of the 75 million Americans who said in 2013 that they thought the shooting was or might possibly have been faked.

“This is a case about creating change,” he told jurors. “You have the power to stop this from ever happening again.”

The case resumes today. No doubt Jones and his lawyer will be on their best behavior.

Judge admonishes Alex Jones for speaking outside courtroom on 1st day of Sandy Hook defamation trial [Yahoo News]
Opening Arguments Begin In Alex Jones’ Sandy Hook Defamation Case [HuffPo]
Parents of Sandy Hook Victim at Alex Jones Trial Seek $150 Million in Damages [NYT]

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

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