Alex Jones, the right-wing conspiracy theorist and founder of Infowars, is responsible for all damages in two lawsuits stemming from his false claims that the Sandy Hook school shooting was a “giant hoax,” a judge ruled this week.
District Judge Maya Guerra Gamble of Travis County, Tex., issued default judgments Monday against Jones and Infowars after he did not comply with court orders to give information in a pair of 2018 lawsuits brought against him by families of two children killed in the 2012 massacre. Jones repeatedly failed to hand over documents and evidence to the court supporting his damaging and erroneous claims that the school shooting in Newtown, Conn., which killed 26 people, 20 of whom were young children, was a “false flag” operation carried out by “crisis actors.”
Gamble’s ruling, which was unsealed Thursday, lambasted Jones and his website’s parent company, Free Speech Systems, for having “intentionally disobeyed” the court’s requests and showing “flagrant bad faith and callous disregard” in not turning over documents related to this and other lawsuits filed against him. Jones has already lost several defamation lawsuits related to his Sandy Hook falsehoods and was previously ordered to pay tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees to families who have sued him. Nine families have sued him over the years.
“An escalating series of judicial admonishments, monetary penalties, and non-dispositive sanctions have all been ineffective at deterring the abuse,” Gamble wrote.
The default judgments were first reported by
HuffPost.
Mark Bankston, an attorney for the parents filing the two lawsuits, did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday. Bankston said in a statement to
CNN that Gamble’s rulings gave the two families “the closure they deserve.”
“Mr. Jones was given ample opportunity to take these lawsuits seriously and obey the rule of law,” Bankston said. “He chose not to do so, and now he will face the consequences for that decision.”
Brad Reeves, Jones’s attorney, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A
statement issued by Jones and Norm Pattis, an attorney for Infowars, described the judge’s rulings as “stunning.”
“It takes no account of the tens of thousands of documents produced by the defendants, the hours spent sitting for depositions and the various sworn statements filed in these cases,” Jones and Pattis said, according to the statement. “We are distressed by what we regard as a blatant abuse of discretion by the trial court. We are determined to see that these cases are heard on the merits.”
The judge’s rulings are the latest legal troubles for Jones, who has been banned from
major platforms such as Facebook, YouTube and Spotify for violating their
hate speech policies.
The Washington Post
reported in February that the Justice Department and FBI are investigating whether high-profile right-wing figures — including Jones — may have played a role in the Jan. 6 Capitol breach. The probe is part of a broader look into the mind-set of those who committed violence and their apparent paths to radicalization.
Jones and Roger Stone, a longtime confidant to former president Donald Trump, promoted the extremist groups Proud Boys and Oath Keepers. They also had preexisting business or personal ties with members the government has charged with coordinating and planning certain parts of the breach, or who have been linked to violence at an earlier Trump rally, according to The Post.
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