A district court judge in Texas has ruled that right-wing conspiracy theorist and Infowars host Alex Jones is liable for damages in two lawsuits filed against him by the parents of two children killed in the Sandy Hook school shooting, over his false claims that the mass shooting was a hoax. According to the ruling, which was unsealed Thursday, District Judge Maya Guerra Gamble issued default judgments against Jones in the two lawsuits after he failed to submit documents and evidence supporting his claims about the shooting, which killed 26 people, including 20 children, in Newtown, Connecticut, in 2012.
According to the ruling, Jones and his parent company, Free Speech Systems, “intentionally disobeyed” court orders and that their failure to comply was “the result of flagrant bad faith and callous disregard for the responsibilities of discovery under the rules.” A jury will be convened to decide how much Jones will owe the families. A lawyer for the parents told CNN that the ruling will give the parents “the closure they deserve.”
This week’s rulings regarded lawsuits filed by Leonard Pozner and Veronique De La Rosa, whose 6-year old son, Noah, was killed in the shooting; and Scarlett Lewis, whose 6-year-old son Jesse was killed.
Nine families of Sandy Hook victims have sued Jones over his claims in both Connecticut and Texas (where Infowars is based). He has already lost several defamation lawsuits and been ordered to pay the legal fees incurred by the plaintiffs in those cases, including nearly $150,000 in legal fees last year, also after failing to provide discovery documents. In 2019, Jones claimed in a deposition that his belief that the massacre was staged was “a form of psychosis.”
Jones’s extreme views have also resulted in him and Infowars being banned from numerous platforms, including YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Roku, and Spotify.
