After years of downplaying the horrific massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School as a false flag and hoax propagated by a shadowy cabal of gun control stakeholders, longtime Infowars host Alex Jones conceded Wednesday that the December 2012 mass shooting did, in fact, occur.
“Especially since I’ve met the parents,” Jones stressed. “It’s 100% real.”
Jones’s abrupt about-face comes as jurors are set to determine just how much money he will be forced to pay Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis, whose son Jesse was killed in the attack, after Jones was found liable by default in a host of defamation trials this past November stemming from his conspiracy-mongering. But even as he insisted he now believes the mass casualty event was very much real — and not a staged, “synthetic” pantomime as he’d claimed in the past — Jones trial this week was less a showcase for sincere atonement as it was yet another platform for the notoriously unhinged broadcaster to rage and vamp for a decidedly unimpressed audience of attorneys, jurors, and one extremely exacerbated judge.
After several days of interrupting, deflecting, and derailing the ongoing proceedings from the defense table, Jones finally stepped forward as his party’s sole witness, where he half-heartedly attempted to walk the tightrope between showing contrition for his actions and maintaining his Infowars persona (and audience). Claiming he’d been “typecast as someone that runs around talking about Sandy Hook, makes money off Sandy Hook, is obsessed by Sandy Hook,” Jones appeared frantic and scattershot as he attempted to dissuade jurors from awarding the full $150 million in damages sought by Heslin and Lewis for the decade of torment they’ve endured as a result of Jones’ Sandy Hook denials.
“I can’t even describe the last nine-and-a-half years, the living hell that I and others have had to endure because of the recklessness and negligence of Alex Jones,” Heslin testified Tuesday.
But the most dramatic moment of the trial arguably came on Wednesday, when Jones was notified by the plaintiffs’ attorney that his defense team had accidentally sent over the full contents of his cell phone — including evidence that he’d perjured himself during his testimony.
“That is how I know you lied to me,” attorney Mark Bankston told a visibly startled Jones, before systematically running down a list of inconsistencies and potential lies Jones had said that were seemingly contradicted by the contents of his phone. That included estimates of how much income Jones and his Infowars empire had earned even after he was “deplatformed” from various social media sites — a development which had, Jones claimed, left him unable to pay the plaintiffs’ demanded damages.
Faced with documentation claiming that at one point he’d been earning $800,000 in a single day, Jones nevertheless insisted that any damages more than $2 million would ruin him and his company.
During a brief recess during which the livestream feed of the trial remained active, one of the plaintiff parents was distinctly heard asking their attorney, “What happens when that phone goes to law enforcement?”
It’s a good question, and a sign that even after this, and the next three defamation cases are settled, Jones’s troubles may only just be beginning.
