Fri, September 16, 2022
Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, who is on trial in Connecticut for calling the 2012 Sandy Hook massacre a hoax, continued Friday to describe the proceedings as a “kangaroo court” from his Infowars studio in Texas.
Jones' commentary became a focus of testimony on the fourth day of the trial, with a lawyer for the Sandy Hook families questioning a corporate representative for Jones' Infowars brand about how seriously the company was taking the trial.
The lawyer, Christopher Mattei, showed the jury a photo he said was of an Infowars webpage, depicting the judge in the trial with lasers shooting out of her eyes.
“On a scale of one to 10, how seriously is Infowars taking this trial,” Mattei asked the corporate representative, Brittany Paz.
“10. It's serious to me,” Paz responded.
The exchange occurred as Jones prepares to begin attending the trial in Waterbury next week and the judge, Barbara Bellis, considers a request by the families' lawyers to limit what Jones and his lawyer can say and argue in court. Jones is expected to testify, but it's not clear yet when.
Alex Jones
Jones and his Free Speech Systems company are on trial in a lawsuit brought by an FBI agent who responded to the shooting and relatives of eight of the 20 first-graders and six educators killed in the December 2012 massacre in Newtown. They say Jones inflicted emotional and psychological harm on them, and they have been threatened and harassed by Jones’ followers.
Jones has already been found liable for spreading the myth that the shooting never happened, and the six-member jury will be deciding how much he and his company should pay the plaintiffs in damages.
In a motion filed Thursday, the families' lawyers asked Bellis for several limitations on what Jones and his lawyer, Norman Pattis, can say and argue at the trial, including barring them alleging that holding Jones and Free Speech Systems accountable for their actions offends the First Amendment.
Pattis outlined Jones' defense in a motion filed Friday in response to the families' motion.
“The defendants have argued, and intend to argue, that the plaintiffs have motives, biases and interest in exaggerating their claims against the defendants, to wit: their interest in gun control regulation and their hostility to Mr. Jones,” Pattis wrote.
Pattis also said Jones is challenging the amount of any damages to be awarded and is focusing on the families' motives for “overstating their damages: to wit: their desire to silence Alex Jones not just because he harmed them, but because they find his politics and political affiliations repugnant.”
Pattis added, “Mr. Jones’ conspiracy theory may by offensive to some, and ridiculous to others, but he has not gained millions of listeners by compelling people to tune in. He speaks a language that many Americans seem prepared to accept.”
On his web show on Thursday, Jones once again called the Connecticut proceedings “a show trial.”
The judge “now has to carry out this fraud,” he said. “But across the legal community, people are just saying, ’My God, this is something worthy of Venezuela. This is unbelievable.’ ”
Mattei has showed the jury evidence that Jones' viewership and sales of products such as nutritional supplements and clothing on his web site soared around the times he talked about the Sandy Hook shooting, suggesting Jones was profiting off the shooting.
Pattis countered in court Thursday that the jury should be allowed to hear that Jones believes there is a conspiracy to take guns away and enslave people.
“They have put before this jury the theory that Jones merchandizes fear for the sake of making a buck," Pattis said. "Our claim is that he recognizes the fear of the people and makes a dollar to support that premise.”
Last month, a jury in Texas awarded the parents of one of the slain Sandy Hook children nearly $50 million in a similar lawsuit against Jones and his company over the hoax claims. Jones also faces a third trial in Texas later this year over how much he should pay the parents of another child killed in the shooting.
Alex Jones’s audience and Infowars’ revenue grew as Jones alleged Sandy Hook school massacre was a hoax
Associated Press - Saturday
WATERBURY, Conn. (AP) — Infowars’ revenues and website viewership spiked as Alex Jones alleged on his show in 2014 that the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting was a hoax, according to documents shown to a jury Thursday.
Jones and his company, Free Speech Systems, are on trial in Connecticut in a lawsuit brought by an FBI agent who responded to the shooting and relatives of eight of the 20 first graders and six educators killed in the December 2012 massacre in Newtown. They say Jones inflicted emotional and psychological harm on them, and they have been threatened and harassed by Jones’s followers.
Jones has already been found liable for spreading the myth that the shooting never happened and the six-member jury in Waterbury will be deciding how much he and his company should pay the plaintiffs in damages. The trial started Tuesday and is expected to last a month.
Christopher Mattei, a lawyer for the families, showed internal Infowars documents detailing the revenue and website-visit spikes around the time of an article on Sept. 24, 2014, on the Infowars website that said no one died at Sandy Hook and Jones discussing the article on his show the next day.
The families’ lawsuit claims that Jones trafficked in lies to increase his audience and sales of the nutritional supplements, clothing and other merchandise he sells on the Infowars website and hawks on his web show. Jones and guests on his show said the shooting was staged with crisis actors as part of gun control efforts.
The discussion of revenue and web viewership came Thursday as Mattei spent a second day questioning Brittany Paz, a Connecticut lawyer hired by Jones to testify about his companies’ operations.
Documents showed daily revenues to the Infowars online store increased from $48,000 on Sept. 24 to more than $230,000 on Sept. 25. Total user sessions on the Infowars website, meanwhile, increased from about 543,000 on Sept. 23 to about 1 million on Sept. 24, the documents showed.
Paz also was asked about Infowars videos that show Jones and guests using lies and misinformation to claiming the massacre was staged. She acknowledged that much of what was said was not true.
In the videos, Jones says the school shooting was a “giant hoax” and “the fakest thing since the $3 bill.” He said there were aerial images of student actors running in circles in and out of the school when the images actually were of a nearby firehouse where people gathered after the shooting. He also claimed CNN was using green screens in fake interviews with people in Sandy Hook.
Mattei later showed an email from a company executive showing internal conflict within Infowars about continuing to discuss conspiracy theories about the school shooting.
“The Sandy Hook stuff is killing us,” Infowars editor Paul Watson wrote, asking why the company was risking its reputation and audience by harassing the parents of dead children.
Last month, a jury in Texas awarded the parents of one of the slain Sandy Hook children nearly $50 million in a similar lawsuit against Jones and his company.
Paz acknowledged that Infowars broadcast misinformation. She also acknowledged that Jones did not check the qualifications of a guest who appeared numerous times on his show — a conspiracy theorist who claimed to be a school-security expert who had investigating the 1999 massacre at Columbine High School in Colorado — even as Jones boasted of his credentials and Infowars received emails questioning the guest’s credibility.
Paz testified that she believes Jones and his companies have made at least $100 million in the decade since the massacre and Jones is now worth millions of dollars.
Website traffic data reports run by Infowars employees and presented at the trial also show that by 2016, his show aired on 150 affiliate radio stations, and the Infowars website got 40 million page views a month.
Mattei showed Paz internal Infowars emails between employees sharing Google Analytics data. Paz earlier testified that she was told by Infowars employees that they didn’t use Google Analytics regularly to track website viewing data. After showing her the emails, Mattei asked if it was still her testimony that Infowars didn’t regularly use Google Analytics.
“I don’t know at this point,” she said.
Jones now says he believes the shooting happened, but he insists his comments were protected by free speech rights, which he cannot argue at trial because he has already been found liable for damages.
See: Infowars host Alex Jones concedes the 2012 school massacre in Newtown, Conn., was not a hoax but ‘100% real’
Also: Alex Jones has created a ‘living hell’ of harassment and death threats, testify Sandy Hook school parents
The families say the emotional and psychological harm to them was profound and persistent. Relatives say they were subjected to social-media harassment, death threats, strangers videotaping them and their children, and the surreal pain of being told that they were faking their loss.
Jones’s lawyer, Norman Pattis, said in his opening statement Tuesday that any damages should be minimal and claimed the families were exaggerating the harm they say they have suffered.
On his Infowars show Thursday, Jones once again called the proceedings in Connecticut “a show trial.”
The judge “now has to carry out this fraud,” he said. “But across the legal community, people are just saying, ‘My God, this is something worthy of Venezuela. This is unbelievable.’ ”
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