InfoWars’ Alex Jones is in the throes of his second defamation trial regarding his infamous comments about the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. While Jones was not in attendance, the trial began today in Connecticut.
Alex Jones is facing another defamation trial after years of peddling misinformation and conspiracy theories regarding the mass shooting that occurred at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012, when 26 teachers and students were murdered. Fresh off the heels of his first defamation trial in Texas last month where Jones was fined $US49.3 ($68) million in punitive damages for his lies, Jones’ second trial began Tuesday in Waterbury, Connecticut.
The trial — Lafferty v. Jones — began with a massive wrench thrown into the Jones legal team’s defence before opening statements were even made. The plaintiff’s lawyers claimed that Jones did not turn over Google Analytics data for his website from 2019 to present, leading to three years of data on website traffic and purchases made unaccounted for. The Judge Barbara Bellis then sanctioned the defendants by preventing them from providing any subsequent evidence or argument that Jones and Free Speech Systems did not profit from Jones’ comments on Sandy Hook.
Plaintiff lawyer Chris Mattei began his opening remarks by dissecting Jones’ business model of appealing to his audience’s fear, anxiety, and paranoia. Mattei argued that Alex Jones and his associates have claimed that they are not journalists, but his audience fails to remember this, resulting in his perceived credibility which Jones then used to sell products like chemical filters and fertility drugs. According to Mattei, InfoWars was receiving 468 million page views the month prior to the Sandy Hook shooting, which occurred on December 14, 2012 — Jones would say that same day that the shooting was a false flag operation. Norman Pattis, representing Jones, argued that the plaintiffs have overstated the damage that Jones has done.
Last month, Jones faced a nine-day trial over a defamation lawsuit in his home state of Texas, during which he admitted that the shooting was 100% real. His legal team also mistakenly sent a digital copy of his phone records to the plaintiffs. While Jones wasn’t in court today, he did claim yesterday on InfoWars that he would be travelling to Connecticut in the coming days.