On day two day of the second Sandy Hook defamation trial against conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, a corporate representative for his company testified that cryptocurrency donations solicited during his show go directly to Mr Jones personally.
Brittany Paz, an attorney designated as a representative for Free Speech Systems, the parent company of Infowars, took the stand in the Connecticut civil defamation trial against Mr Jones, which will determine how much compensation he should pay to the families of the victims of the Sandy Hook school shooting.
Mr Jones called the 2012 massacre of 20 children and six teachers “a hoax” on his show and repeated the lie over several years. The broadcaster has already lost the three defamation cases against him by default for failing to respond adequately to discovery, but the trials have gone ahead to determine damages.
Ms Paz was selected as a corporate representative for the company in January and is being paid to testify on its behalf. Throughout her testimony, she failed to answer basic questions about its operations and lacked any level of detailed knowledge one might expect.
The plaintiffs’ attorney Chris Mattei spent all of Wednesday questioning Ms Paz and focussed on the connection between online traffic and revenue streams, highlighting the “exponential” growth in the audience after Mr Jones began his Sandy Hook hoax conspiracy on the day of the tragedy.
Mr Mattei was trying to make the link between Mr Jones’ outrageous theories about Sandy Hook, how it drove audience growth through billions of impressions on social media and the subsequent increase in revenue through sales of Infowars’ supplements, food buckets, and other items.
In short, how the focus on Sandy Hook over the years made Mr Jones and his company money.
Mr Mattei also noted that during his show, in addition to product sales pitches, Mr Jones would also solicit donations in cryptocurrency, which the attorney contended go “directly to Alex Jones personally” and that he does not share that information with his audience.
“He doesn’t tell anybody where it goes or what he does with it,” Ms Paz testified.
Mr Mattei responded: “He tells his audience the donations are going to Free Speech Systems, correct?”
Ms Paz, as with much of her testimony, said she did not know if that was the case or not, though Mr Jones has made multiple on-air pleas for donations saying they are needed to keep his show and network going.
As with his sales of merchandise which are purported to help people protect themselves from the alleged globalist cabal looking to enslave and murder humanity that Jones broadcasts about, the pleas for money are to stop them from taking him off the air.
His appeals appear to have worked to some extent, as earlier this year an anonymous donor gave him close to $8m in Bitcoin in April and May, before the defamation trials began, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Mr Jones says he no longer believes the Sandy Hook massacre was a hoax.
