Provocative conspiracy mill Alex Jones is being sued by the families of children killed at the Sandy Hook Elementary school massacre. Jones spent a lot of airtime suggesting the shooting was a hoax, convincing his followers that the families of those killed in the shooting were “actors” or government plants.
These most recent lawsuits were filed by Veronique De La Rosa, Neil Heslin, and Leonard Pozner, parents, respectively, of Noah Pozner and Jesse Lewis, six-year-olds who were killed at school. Both Jones and InfoWars were named in the lawsuit. The individual lawsuits are asking for damages because of “mental stress and anguish” as well as “psychological pain” that came as a result of Jones’ consistent, meritless assertions these people were part of a government conspiracy or worse. Specifically, the lawsuits allege: “Defendants’ defamatory publications were designed to harm the Plaintiffs’ reputation and subject the Plaintiffs to public contempt, disgrace, ridicule, or attack… Defendants’ defamatory statements were knowingly false or made with reckless disregard for the truth or falsity of the statements at the time the statements were made.”
These claims are tough to prove in court, regardless of the nature of Jones’ commentary, because he has long maintained he’s not a news provider but, instead, an entertainer. During his rants, Jones claimed, multiple times, that Sandy Hook was a “giant hoax” perpetrated by “crisis actors” working for groups that oppose the Second Amendment or factions within the government that want to take people’s guns away. One of these rants specifically included an interview with De La Rosa that Jones claimed looked to be staged with a green screen. De La Rosa calls that assertion “manifestly false” and “a sick lie” that Jones profited from. Heslin appeared on media programs to protest Jones and support his version of events, saying, among other things: “I held my son with a bullet hole through his head…” InfoWars employee Owen Shroyer made the claim this was not possible, even though reports clearly state parents were allowed to see their children on site, after the on-scene investigation was completed.
Jones laughed off the lawsuits, saying they would be “thrown out of court because they have no merit” and judged as “frivolous.” Jones used this opportunity to, once again, go after the “corporate media,” a favorite target of his and red meat for his followers.
Jones claimed that he was merely playing “devil’s advocate” and that his claims were stripped of context by the media in an attempt to mislead the public.