Alex Jones was grilled on the witness stand about a defamation lawsuit he brought against individuals who falsely claimed he sent child porn to the Sandy Hook victims’ families – during his own defamation trial for lying that the 2012 mass shooting was a “hoax”.
In September 2019, the right-wing conspiracy theorist sued progressive online news show The Young Turks and computer programmer Brianna Wu for libel after they reported that he had sent child exploitation material to parents of the Sandy Hook victims.
Earlier that year, lawyers representing the Sandy Hook families had revealed that child pornography was found among the email files sent by Mr Jones’s attorneys to their office.
The materials were part of the discovery process in the defamation lawsuit brought by the families of the victims killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School over lies Mr Jones spread on his Infowars show.
An FBI investigation later found that there was no evidence that the child pornography had anything to do with Mr Jones or anyone at Infowars.
It had been sent to Infowars from outside of the organisation and was still unopened when it was entered as discovery.
In court on Thursday, Mr Jones was questioned about the defamation lawsuit he brought against The Young Turks, with attorney Christopher Mattei grilling him about the damage spreading lies can cause to individuals.
The line of questioning came as Mr Mattei sought to show that the right-wing conspiracy theorist understands defamation and the pain his lies caused to the Sandy Hook victims’ families.
“When people believe something horrible like [him distributing child porn]… that could lead people to hate you?” Mr Mattei asked.
“I think that’s fair to say,” replied Mr Jones.
When Mr Jones was then asked if falsely accusing a group of families of lying about loved ones dying would be “a horrible accusation”, the far-right extremist admitted it could be.
Jurors were also shown comparisons between the reach of The Young Turks’s comments about Mr Jones and the reach of Mr Jones’s comments about Sandy Hook.
The tweet by The Young Turks had just 20 retweets, the court was shown.
Witness testimony previously heard in court said that around 550 million people were exposed to Mr Jones’s lies about Sandy Hook.
This comparison came moments after Mr Jones testified that it was “fair” to say that the further the lie about him was spread, the more damage it could have on his reputation.
During questioning about his lawsuit against The Young Turks, Mr Jones was also asked by Mr Mattei about his accusation that the attorney had “planted” the child pornography and had offered a reward to his viewers “to have my head on a pike”.
On one of his shows, Mr Jones had accused the attorney – without evidence – of planting the material and offered a $1m bounty for information on who sent the emails containing the child porn.
Mr Jones’s attorney insisted that the Infowars host had asked for information about “whoever” sent the files, not specifically Mr Mattei.
However, Mr Jones appeared to indicate he still believes his claim, commenting sarcastically that Mr Mattei did a “really, good job” of finding the “embedded” files.
The comparison between the two defamation lawsuits was made as MrJones took to the witness stand in his second defamation trial, where jurors will decide how much he must pay in damages to victims’ families.
Mr Jones was successfully sued by the families of victims of the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School mass shooting in multiple lawsuits.
Mr Jones had began spouting false claims almost immediately after the 2012 massacre in Newtown, Connecticut, claiming on his conspiracy site that the mass shooting was “a giant hoax” and that the victims were “actors”.
He continued to push the lies to his followers for years claiming it was a “false flag” operation.
While Mr Jones profited financially from spreading his lies, the victims’ families were subjected to years of in-person and online harassment and threats from his followers.
In court on Wednesday, the parents of some of the young children murdered in the 2012 attack gave heartbreaking testimony about the toll Mr Jones’s actions had taken on them.
David Wheeler broke down in tears as he told how the conspiracy theorist’s lies had spurred strangers to show up at his door demanding to see his murdered six-year-old son Ben.
“Someone came to the house and knocked on the door. The person demanded to see Ben, saying ‘I know he’s here, I know he’s alive,’” Mr Wheeler said.
“I felt like I was underwater. I didn’t know which way was up. To have someone publicly telling the world that it didn’t happen, that you’re a fraud and a phoney is incredibly disorienting.”
Erica Lafferty, the daughter of Sandy Hook principal Dawn Hochsprung who was also killed in the massacre, testified that she had been forced to move five times to try to get away from the threats and harassment.
“For 27 years of my life, that woman was my best friend,” Ms Lafferty said of her mother.
“For people to tell me she didn’t exist, how do you just let that happen?”
The Texas suit was the first to go to trial last month.
In that trial, Mr Jones admitted that he knew the 2012 massacre was real – and not a “hoax” as he had previously claimed it was.
In that case, he was ordered to pay $4.11m in compensatory damages and $45.2m in punitive damages to Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis, the parents of six-year-old victim Jesse Lewis.
Now, jurors in Connecticut will decide how much Mr Jones must pay those families in damages.
