Alex Jones must pay damages to Sandy Hook families after calling shooting a ‘giant hoax,’ judge rules

By Timothy Bella

[Editor’s note: Alex Jones discredited himself when he said that he now believed Sandy Hook was real and that his false belief to the contrary was the result of “a form of psychosis”. Refusing to turn over videos and documents (such as old Infowar shows) already in the public domain appears to be legally inexcusable and politically preposterous unless the objective was to scuttle the trial altogether. By being on both sides of the question, he was fatally compromised and no longer significant as a player on Sandy Hook.

Nothing done here disproves that it was a “giant hoax”, as he originally proclaimed. For a fascinating review of key players and their reports at the time–including Alex Jones, Wolfgang Halbig, Lt. Paul Vance, Robbie Parker, Gene Rosen, Wayne Carver, Sofia Smallstorm, and many more–watch Sandy Hook, Line and Sinker.This is one of the best reviews I have seen, which this development led me to discover. I had missed it! These developments do not affect my legal actions in this case, but most, alas, will be misled and infer that it does.]

Alex Jones, the right-wing conspiracy theorist and founder of Infowars, is responsible for all damages in two lawsuits stemming from his false claims that the Sandy Hook school shooting was a “giant hoax,” a judge ruled this week.

District Judge Maya Guerra Gamble of Travis County, Tex., issued default judgments Monday against Jones and Infowars after he did not comply with court orders to give information in a pair of 2018 lawsuits brought against him by families of two children killed in the 2012 massacre. Jones repeatedly failed to hand over documents and evidence to the court supporting his damaging and erroneous claims that the school shooting in Newtown, Conn., which killed 26 people, 20 of whom were young children, was a “false flag” operation carried out by “crisis actors.”

Gamble’s ruling, which was unsealed Thursday, lambasted Jones and his website’s parent company, Free Speech Systems, for having “intentionally disobeyed” the court’s requests and showing “flagrant bad faith and callous disregard” in not turning over documents related tothis and otherlawsuits filed against him. Jones has already lost several defamation lawsuits related to his Sandy Hook falsehoods and was previously ordered to pay tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees to families who have sued him. Nine families have sued him over the years.

“An escalating series of judicial admonishments, monetary penalties, and non-dispositive sanctions have all been ineffective at deterring the abuse,” Gamble wrote.

The default judgments were first reported by HuffPost.

Mark Bankston, an attorney for the parents filing the two lawsuits, did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday. Bankston said in a statement to CNN that Gamble’s rulings gave the two families “the closure they deserve.”

“Mr. Jones was given ample opportunity to take these lawsuits seriously and obey the rule of law,” Bankston said. “He chose not to do so, and now he will face the consequences for that decision.”

Brad Reeves, Jones’s attorney, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A statement issued by Jones and Norm Pattis, an attorney for Infowars, described the judge’s rulings as “stunning.”

“It takes no account of the tens of thousands of documents produced by the defendants, the hours spent sitting for depositions and the various sworn statements filed in these cases,” Jones and Pattis said, according to the statement. “We are distressed by what we regard as a blatant abuse of discretion by the trial court. We are determined to see that these cases are heard on the merits.”

The judge’s rulings are the latest legal troubles for Jones, who has been banned from major platforms such as Facebook, YouTube and Spotify for violating their hate speech policies.

Sandy Hook, Line and Sinker: A Nefarious Narrative (28 December 2016)

The Washington Post reported in February that the Justice Department and FBI are investigating whether high-profile right-wing figures — including Jones — may have played a role in the Jan. 6 Capitol breach. The probe is part of a broader look into the mind-set of those who committed violence and their apparent paths to radicalization.

Jones and Roger Stone, a longtime confidant to former president Donald Trump, promoted the extremist groups Proud Boys and Oath Keepers. They also had preexisting business or personal ties with members the government has charged with coordinating and planning certain parts of the breach, or who have been linked to violence at an earlier Trump rally, according to The Post.

Jones, who has lost multiple legal battles over his Sandy Hook comments, eventually retracted his false claims on the school shooting in 2019, blaming his statements on “a form of psychosis.”

“I talk four hours a day, and I can’t remember what I talked about sometimes a week ago,” Jones said in a 2019 deposition.

On March 29, 2019, attorneys released more than three hours of Alex Jones’s deposition for the defamation suits against him. (Kaster, Lynch, Farrar & Ball, LLP)

He was ordered last year to pay almost $150,000 in legal fees after he failed to provide discovery documents for attorneys representing Sandy Hook families.

Gamble’s rulings related to two 2018 lawsuits filed by Sandy Hook parents Leonard Pozner and Veronique De La Rosa, who lost their 6-year-old son, Noah, and Scarlett Lewis, whose 6-year-old son, Jesse, was also killed in the shooting. Pozner and De La Rosa said they’ve faced emotional distress and have been harassed for years by Infowars fans who have followed Jones’s lead and falsely claimed that the shooting was staged. Neil Heslin, the father of Jesse Lewis, also filed two lawsuits in Travis County against Jones and Infowars; those suits were not included in the judge’s rulings this week.

The Texas Supreme Court in January rejected Jones’s efforts to have the lawsuits tossed out.

What happened at Sandy Hook? (5 August 2021) with Scott Bennett

On Aug. 31, Bankston appeared before Gamble and argued that Jones should be sanctioned for withholding information that had been requested about three years earlier, such as video of his on-air discussions about Sandy Hook, relevant transcripts from his shows and content of social media accounts connected to the conspiracy theorist and Infowars.

“We still don’t have the most basic information about this case,” Bankston told the judge. “Now we’re talking about having to find people three years out … to see who was involved in this case, who might still have documents. The quality of the evidence and of people’s memories all degrades.”

Frustrated by the lack of cooperation from Jones, attorneys for the parents sought out default judgments — a legal rarity that’s often described as a “death penalty sanction” for someone unwilling to comply with court orders.

Reeves told the Austin American-Statesman last month that a default judgment against his client would be a “hugely excessive” response by Gamble and asked the judge for two weeks to wade through 75,000 pages of documents.

“I need to give him full and complete answers,” Reeves said. “That’s what I’m trying to do.”

In this week’s rulings, Gamble said Jones showed a “general bad faith approach to litigation” that was supported by “Mr. Jones’ public threats and Mr. Jones’ professed belief that these proceedings are ‘show trials.’ ”

“The Court finds that Defendants’ failure to comply … is greatly aggravated by [their] consistent pattern of discovery abuse throughout similar cases pending before this Court,” Gamble wrote. “The Court finds that Defendants’ discovery conduct in this case is the result of flagrant bad faith and callous disregard for the responsibilities of discovery under the rules.”

A jury is expected to decide the amount Jones owes the families in the two lawsuits.

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30 thoughts on “Alex Jones must pay damages to Sandy Hook families after calling shooting a ‘giant hoax,’ judge rules”

  1. He handed in over 60K documents, everything and more they asked for, but they kept saying he had documents he didn’t have and refused to believe him. His lawyers said he handed over more documentation than in any case they had ever seen or known of. The original judge in the case retired and the new judge is the one who just came in at the last minute and said he “hadn’t handed over anything” and did something that is only taught in law courses as being a “mythical judgement” in the way they did this case. They also disallowed a jury(!!!!!) and will only pick a jury to determine the amount of fine payment, not to determine whether he is innocent or guilty, which completely disregards and breaks the 7th amendment. Everything you are told about this case is misinformation and disinformation, both.

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  2. If the NRA had any integrity they would have joined the fight right beside James Fetzer and Wolfgang Halbig. Just one more American institution we can no longer trust.

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  3. Wolfgang Halbig asked a simple question ‘Who ordered the Sandy Hook port-a-potties and when were they delivered?’ For this simple question detectives showed up at his door and threatened his life.

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  4. Sandy Hook is no more real than the Jussie Smollett attack. Except, Sandy Hoax has the deep state, the courts and the media pushing the lie. With the likes of Obama and Eric Holder two of the Sandy Hoax producers in the background making sure the giant fraud is not exposed.

    Sandy Hook is one of the most well documented and investigated hoax false flags ever including a 404 page full color thoroughly footnoted book by Dr. James Fetzer which has been forced out of publication by the deep state.  Something that should be considered is the $100 million in charity donations the Sandy Hoax gang has raked in. That is $100 million in felony charity fraud since it is based on a FEMA drill to promote gun control pretending to be a massacre. Also of note is the donation websites started going up two days before the event.

    The judicial corruption in the Sandy Hoax cases that have caused Alex Jones, James Fetzer and others endless grief is similar in some respects to the Boston Marathon Bombing case that murdered one brother and put the other on death row all based on endless lies of a false flag and courts that are seeming ordered to not allow exculpatory evidence that would prove these cases are mythological and all the real evidence would lead to prosecutions of the plaintiffs in these cases and the defendants would be and should be 100% exonerated.

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  5. The lower depths of the of rat-hole of SH has yet to be found. As of now, SH is the all time capstone of hoaxes on the planet.

    The monstrosity of SH is so frightening that even the most powerful book seller on earth banned it from their shelves. Fetzer’s [ Editor] book stands as one of the greatest books ever written. He now gives it away free as a pdf.

    Not even one politician or national news media dares to talk about this fraud/hoax….they only report the government LIES.

    That a powerful nation will cower under this lie is an abomination of monstrous proportion.

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      1. Not possessing a TV, I may be quite erroneous in my following statement, but with the leftist control of the MSM, I doubt it’s possible to have a legitimate debate on anything that goes against the accepted narrative. Today’s MSM is just an extension of the CCP.

      2. You are exactly correct WillTwo. The media TV and radio are totally controlled and parrot the government LIES.

    1. Sandy Hoax and 9/11 were two of the most disgusting hoaxes in modern history. Now have a hoax that will likely lead to the largest genocide in world history. The hoax that the Covid-19 “vaccines” are for therapeutic purposes and not global depopulation eugenics bioweapons that will mass murder more people than Hitler, Stalin, Mao and PolPot combined. I also believe if more people stood up against the lies as did James Fetzer instead of burying their heads in the sand the murderous psychopaths wouldn’t have had such and easy time fooling the world.

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  6. This is a bad harbinger regarding the chance of success for the appeal of the judgment against Dr. Fetzer. I think the American courts have been truly corrupted and the truth of Sandy Hook will never be revealed to the public.
    I am trying to understand the strategy of Alex Jones. Now that a default judgment has been rendered against him he faces both corporate and personal bankruptcy. If the plaintiffs can bankrupt Remington they can certainly do the same to Infowars and Alex Jones. Why is Alex still residing in Travis County one of the most leftist areas in the nation? What sort of Judge and Jury did he expect to draw?
    No love was lost between Dr. Fetzer and Alex Jones. On his most recent broadcast, he accuses Dr. Fetzer of suggesting “Space Beams” destroyed the twin towers. I thought Dr. Fetzer was an advocate of the mini-nukes theory.

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    1. It was a deliberate but sloppy hit on me, where I am very open about Alex Jones. Of course, you are right: I am a nuke guy, not a space-beamer, which was extremely careless (though possibly also intentional). And I did not write the book but edited the book (with 13 contributors, including 6 Ph.D. professors). He even invited me to be the keynote speaker at his 9/11 conference in LA in 2006. A odd and ill-founded attack.

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      1. The fact that Dr. Fetzer’s book about Sandy Hook was banned by Amazon proves that its one of the ugliest stories in human history. The truth of SH is so frightening that it will never die. Its a horror story of unimaginable proportions. The day I heard it was banned I almost had a nervous breakdown.

        File. The stadium has never released the names of the Newtown choir kids.

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    2. Thrax writes….”…and the truth of Sandy Hook will never be revealed to the public.”

      Yes it will be revealed imo…..maybe not in our lifetime but it will be revealed. The younger players will be around for many decades and some will eventually crack and reveal the facts. The financial gain is too tempting.

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      1. I even filed an amicus curiae brief on his behalf in the Texas case against him recently. So why say, “Fetzer hates me!”? I actually think he does a lot of good by inviting attention to puzzling events and speculating about them. But he is not good at following through. And in a video deposition in Connecticut, he said he had never read Nobody Died at Sandy Hook. How can you become involved in taking a public stand without having read the only serious book about it?

      2. Jim, he probably does more good than bad…like Stone and Fulford. But there are powers that will never allow the truth of SH to be revealed and he sides with those powers. He knows you will never relent, so the best he can do is toss aspersions. All these 80/20 folks have certain lines they cannot cross. In Stone’s case it’s the moon landing…he still swears it was legit. As for Fulford, I am not sure where his line is…but it’s there. But I do know his MOS is that the hope for humanity is just over the horizon.

    3. The legal strategy of Jones is pretty clear. By scuttling the trial, he will never go to trial. He will pay a considerable amount of money but not what he might have had to pay if he had lost in court. On the one hand, he could have presented a ton of evidence and defended himself admirably,; but, on the other, he could have run into a kangaroo court like Fetzer’s (likely) and never even been allowed to present any evidence. When his lawyer rebuffed the efforts of Truthers to provide evidence, Jones signaled a retreat. Jones is no Jim Fetzer in terms of courage or honor, but he also has a huge empire that could have collapsed by a court edict. This way, he takes some losses to his finances and reputation, but he lives to fight on. And, we need him to fight on–unlike most Truthers and alternative media persona, Jones has a large worldwide audience that is the single-most important voice–no matter if it’s off-key at times–for the Truther cause.

      As to why he continues to reside in Austin, that’s a definite puzzler. All alternative media have to leave “blue” counties with their corrupt judges. But, there is still the vast army of corrupt state and federal judges to deal with, especially in blue states where court elections have been rigged and federal judges have been nominated by Democratic senators. At least Jones resides in a red state.

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  7. Jim & Alexis are innocent of any crimes. Sandy Hook is a hoax and those who did it and the judges are the criminals.
    I got fined $30000 for a court case I won. I brought the engineer into the case. They let him in on the letter I wrote. Then fined me because it was not written properly. If it was not written rpoperly they are the one that let him in. The legal sytem is has many cooks. Not all of them, but enough to make it hard to get justice.

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    1. In the meeting before the case the “lady” memeber (judge) said to me
      “Mr …, you should get a lawyer, not just any lawyer, but one who does these VCAT domestic Building List cases. And, looking around the room you won’t get one, because they are all here!”
      You see I had not yet realised 911 was an inside job, but because of 911 my insurance had gone from $3000 a year to $18000 a year. I arranged that I would not be insured if I did only soil testing, no structural designs (which I did nothing except cookbook stuff myself) as the rules. So because I of 911 I ended up representing myself. And I did, and I won. Except the $30000 hurt a lot, ’til this day.

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  8. For the life of me, I cannot understand why Jones and his attorneys would not produce the evidence requested by the court.. Do they have something up their sleeves? Do they not wish to divulge sources? Or, was it planned this way as controlled opposition to further cement the “reality” of “event” in the public mind.
    It beats me. Anyone else have an answer? Dr. Fetzer would likely give an arm and a leg to get to discovery. Very strange indeed.

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    1. Jones has some sort of mental problem imo. He’s either on some drug or its too much coffee or both. If you watch him he’s all hyped up on something. He does not talk like a normal sober person.

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      1. Don, would you not think his attorney would advise him better regardless of any excess consumption of coffee, drugs he may be using or mental problems he may have? Defendants don’t make these decisions on their own…that’s why they hire attorneys to make decisions that would be in their best interest.

      2. I suspect his attorney is just as corrupt as Jones is. Plus the attorney may be making a lot of money off of Jones and is cautious to make too many suggestions.
        I used to visit my father’s Law office and there were some real jerk attorneys in that suite.

    2. PS, Jim….Maybe I misunderstood your note in regard to Hook Line and Sinker, but how the heck did you miss it since you were in it…..at least your voice. Did they not ask you for permission?

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      1. No. Others made it. My videos were in the public domain. I missed it then, but it retains its excellence now.

      2. I see….yes, so far, it’s an excellent summation….one of the better and most concise I have watched.

      3. Do not miss the Time Travel piece toward the end of the video. Among many distinctions, the Wheeler child’s ears stand out …..one cannot miss those. It’s more “in your face” arrogance on the part of the deep state. Unbelievable!

      4. If only Jim could get the following pic from that video into the courtroom. One would have to wonder what the reaction could possibly be:

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  9. The Sandy Hook debacle is symptomatic of the deep sickness that pervades CT and basically the entire USA.
    The ”product” of CT is the monstrous hoax of Sandy Hook which is symbolic of the downfall of the USA. A once proud nation that stood for honesty, now stands for a box full of hoaxes and frauds.

    People on this blog keep saying there is hope for America!!! At this rate there is NO hope. A nation cannot stand pulling a depraved trainload of assassinations, frauds, corrupt elections, hoaxes, endless wars, idiot politicians and a dead economy.

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