Right-wing personality Alex Jones has been ordered to pay $4 million to the parents of one of the victims of the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting. The Texas jury found Jones liable for damages for repeatedly spreading conspiracy theories that the school shooting was a hoax.
The trial was a debacle for Jones. At one point, the plaintiffs’ lawyer revealed that Jones’ attorneys had mistakenly sent him the InfoWars host’s phone records — which Jones had not provided during the discovery phase of the trial. Jones even criticized the trial judge on his show. Straight Arrow News contributor David Pakman says Jones did all he could to turn the trial into a joke. However, he says it’s important that he be held accountable for spreading lies about the Sandy Hook tragedy for so many years.
Now Jones is trying everything under the sun. One of the increasingly obvious strategies and I don’t know that it’s conscious or unconscious, I don’t know, is it seems as though Jones’ attorney and maybe even Jones himself are sort of trying to force a mistrial. And the problem with a mistrial is if they misbehave and they say things in front of the jury that they’re not supposed to say, which Alex Jones has been doing, if they in any other way mess with the trial such that a mistrial is declared by the judge, it’s really good for Alex Jones in the sense that it forces the plaintiffs who are the ones seeking damages to have to start over.
And some of the things that have taken place for which the judge has admonished Jones and or his lawyer. At one point, Jones’ lawyer started playing what were going to be close to hour-long segments of Alex Jones’ show meant to supposedly, according to his lawyer, meant to show the full context of comments made by Alex Jones, but completely grinding the trial to a halt. Impossibly boring for the jury, impossible to pay attention to, on and on and on. And again, the idea being that he’s trying to create a mistrial. Alex Jones repeatedly making claims under oath while testifying, that the judge said you cannot make. One example is when Alex Jones said, “I complied with discovery.” Alex Jones did not comply with discovery. And so Alex Jones can’t continue to say that under oath. The judge told him this. Alex Jones claiming that he is bankrupt. The judge said you can’t say that. You may have filed for bankruptcy, that doesn’t make you bankrupt, and you can’t keep saying that you are bankrupt in front of the jury.
But the problem is, most likely, the issue in a mistrial would be that it’s just good for Alex Jones and bad for the plaintiff. Now, there’s speculation that if Alex Jones continues this stuff he could face criminal contempt of court, criminal perjury, but that would be separate. If the plaintiffs want money here, they would have to start over. So those are the details of how the trial is going.
At the core, what we are dealing with here is an individual in Alex Jones who irresponsibly targeted victims — parents of victims who themselves are also victims, told horrible lies, horrible lies, not only about them, but about the totality of the Sandy Hook shooting with all sorts of conspiracy theories. Over time, as the legal pressure built, Alex Jones slowly started to back away, away, away from some of the core claims about the supposed conspiracy of Sandy Hook. But even during the trial has continued to go on the air on off days and in-between even sometimes moments in the trial, and even attack the plaintiffs. He actually said he believes that — I’m paraphrasing here — but that the father in the plaintiffs is a really odd guy and probably autistic. This is during the trial. And so the things Jones has said on air during the trial have become subject matter for the trial itself.
He has to be held accountable.
