Sandy Hook families who sued right-wing extremist and conspiracy peddler Alex Jones in Connecticut have won their case by default, a state Superior Court judge ruled Monday.
Jones has promoted conspiracy theories alleging that the United States government falsified the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School mass shooting, either concealed information about the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, was responsible for the September 11 attacks, and faked the 1969 Moon landing.
Judge Barbara Bellis took the rare step of defaulting Jones in the defamation lawsuits because he and his companies failed “to produce critical material information that the plaintiffs needed to prove their claims.”
The default means the judge found in favor of the parents and will hold a hearing on how much Jones should pay.
Lawyers for the parents claimed Jones and his companies, including Infowars and Free Speech Systems, violated court rules by refusing to turn over internal company documents showing whether Jones and Infowars profited from talking about the attack in Connecticut and other mass shootings.
A staunch supporter of Donald Trump’s re-election, Jones supported the defeated former president’s lies about fraud in the 2020 election, and on January 6, 2021, the huckster was a speaker at a rally in Lafayette Square Park supporting Trump, preceding an attack on the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters.
Jones previously lost lawsuits that had been filed against him by the families he accused of being crisis actors after their children were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting on December 14, 2012, in Newtown, Connecticut.
The perpetrator of that horrific mass shooting, 20-year-old Adam Lanza, fatally shot his mother before murdering 20 students and six staff members at the elementary school, and ultimately committing suicide.
Jones, denied that the massacre actually occurred, and claimed that the incident was actually orchestrated by the U.S. government as part of an elaborate plot to promote stricter gun control laws.
Those allegations resulted in a defamation lawsuit filed in a Connecticut court against Jones, along with some of his associates, by families of four students and two educators who died, along with one FBI agent who responded to the shooting.
“Jones is the chief amplifier for a group that has worked in concert to create and propagate loathsome, false narratives about the Sandy Hook shooting and its victims, and promote their harassment and abuse,” the lawsuit stated.
The legal complaint says Jones does not believe the shooting was a hoax, but nevertheless he has repeatedly accused Sandy Hook families of faking their family members’ deaths.
“The Jones defendants concoct elaborate and false paranoia-tinged conspiracy theories because it moves product and they make money,” the suit alleged. “Not because they truly believe what they are saying, but rather because it increases profits.”
There are also six companies named in the suit, including various entities related to Jones’ InfoWars website.
“What the judge said was Mr. Jones and the other corporate defendants he controls have engaged in such a long course of willful misconduct of withholding evidence that the court was left with no choice but to default,” said Chris Mattei, an attorney with Koskoff, Koskoff & Bieder, which represents the families. “Whenever a court enters a default it is an indication that the process has become so unfair – as it has to our families – and so impeded the plaintiffs from proving their claim that a default has to be entered.”
The eight families who lost loved ones in the 2012 Sandy Hook massacre and an FBI agent who responded to the scene represent the fourth defamation case that Sandy Hook families have won by default against Jones, the Texas-based host of Infowars, who called the worst crime in Connecticut history “staged,” “synthetic,” “manufactured,” “a giant hoax,” and “completely fake with actors.”
Those new to the story may not realize that Alex Jones no longer believes what he said about the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook School being “staged,” “synthetic,” “manufactured,” “a giant hoax” and “completely fake with actors.”
Instead, Jones asserted in court papers that he has a right to be wrong under the First Amendment.
Jones never got to make that argument in Texas, where parents of slain Sandy Hook children brought three separate defamation lawsuits.
In September three parents won separate defamation cases by default against Jones in a Texas court.
A Texas judge late last month entered default judgments against Jones for “flagrant bad faith and callous disregard for the responsibilities of discovery under the rules.”
The next step in the three Texas cases as well as the case in Connecticut is for a jury to decide damages.