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JHan

(10,173 posts) Fri Feb 8, 2019, 03:51 PM Feb 2019

Sandy Hook Families Gain in Defamation Suits Against Alex Jones

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/07/us/politics/alex-jones-sandy-hook.html

By Elizabeth Williamson
Feb. 7, 2019

Families of the Sandy Hook school shooting victims have won a series of victories in their defamation suits against the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones that would open Mr. Jones’s business records to them and compel him to speak under oath.

Ten families are pursuing lawsuits against Mr. Jones over his role in spreading bogus claims about the shooting, including that the victims’ families were actors in a plot to confiscate firearms from Americans. The families have endured death threats, stalking and online abuse.

Mr. Jones, a far-right provocateur and the owner of Infowars, a radio show and website on which he sells diet supplements, survivalist gear and gun paraphernalia, has come under growing scrutiny over the past year and has lost access to much of his online audience. Facebook, Twitter, Apple and YouTube have all banned him, and a recent deal for his show to stream on Roku was revoked last month after public outrage.

The suits by the Sandy Hook families have advanced on several fronts in recent weeks.A Texas judge on Jan. 25 ordered Mr. Jones and representatives of his company to submit to questioning by lawyers for Scarlett Lewis, the mother of Jesse Lewis, one of the 20 children killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., in 2012. The Texas judge also granted access to Mr. Jones’s relevant business records, and denied his lawyer’s motion to keep the records sealed.

In Connecticut, a judge ordered Infowars representatives and business partners to testify, and a ruling is expected as soon as mid-February on the families’ request to depose Mr. Jones, and several Infowars “reporters” and associates.

They include Wolfgang Halbig, a former school administrator and Infowars contributor who for years has deluged Newtown officials with open records requests, demanding, among other things, records from the cleanup of “bodily fluids, brain matter, skull fragments and around 45-60 gallons of blood.”

Some families of the victims have been subjected to years of harassment from people who have embraced the bogus crisis-actor theory promoted by Mr. Jones.

Robbie and Alissa Parker’s eldest daughter, 6-year-old Emilie, died in the Dec. 14, 2012 shooting that killed six adults as well as the 20 first graders.

In October 2016 in Seattle, Mr. Parker was walking to meet his family at a hotel, he said, when a middle-age man, dressed in khakis and a sport coat, approached him. The man, Mr. Parker said, asked if he had lost a child at Sandy Hook.

“Yes, my daughter,” Mr. Parker responded, offering his hand. The man ignored it, and instead spewed obscenities at him, Mr. Parker said.

The man trailed him, “jabbering in my ear,” Mr. Parker recalled in an interview, as he walked for blocks, trying to put distance between the harasser and his family.

“It was absolute venom,” said Mr. Parker, who is a plaintiff in one of three defamation suits against Mr. Jones. “He was absolutely disgusted with the person that he believed that I was.”

Mr. Jones did not respond to requests for comment. His lawyer, Marc Randazza, acknowledged the series of decisions in favor of the families, but said, “If you’re keeping score here, this is just the coin toss.”