Infowars founder Alex Jones showed up hours late for day two of his defamation trial on Wednesday, a day after a Texas judge told him off for moaning to media about the case within earshot of the jury.
The trial to determine how much in damages Mr Jones must pay the parents of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting victims for falsely claiming the attack began on Tuesday.
During a break in opening arguments, Mr Jones began ranting to reporters inside the Travis County Courthouse in Austin that the case was a “witch hunt”, Yahoo News reported.
Judge Maya Guerra Gamble reprimanded Mr Jones for the outburst.
Huffington Post reporter Sebastian Murdock, who is covering the trial, tweeted that Mr Jones didn’t turn up for Tuesday’s afternoon session, instead going on Infowars to call on protesters to show up to the courthouse.
Jones wasn’t present in court when the trial resumed on Wednesday morning, and no protesters showed up either, Mr Murdock said.
His lawyer had earlier told the court Jones may miss some of the trial due to “medical issues.”
Jone eventually arrived in time for the post-lunch session - but left after roughly an hour.
The trial proceeded in his absence with cross-examination of an Infowars corporate representative by Mark Bankston, an attorney for Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis, whose six-year-old son Jesse was among the 20 children and six adults who were killed in the 2012 shooting in Newtown, Connecticut.
Mr Bankston in opening statements on Tuesday called for punitive damages of $150m to be awarded against Jones.
He accused the conspiracy theorist of a “massive campaign of lies” and recruiting “wild extremists from the fringes of the internet... who were as cruel as Mr Jones wanted them to be”.
Jones also repeatedly failed to turn up to depositions for the defamation proceedings in Connecticut in March.
His attorneys claimed he was too sick to attend due to undisclosed “medical conditions” and that doctors had advised him to remain at home.
After he missed the deposition for a second time, attorneys representing the victims’ families urged the judge to find Jones in contempt of court and have him arrested.
Attorney Christopher Mattei called Mr Jones’ failure to appear a “cowardly attempt” to escape accountability in a statement to The Independent.
