Sandy Hook parents sue conspiracy extremist

NEWTOWN — The defamation lawsuits filed this week against conspiracy theory extremist Alex Jones by parents who lost children in the Sandy Hook shootings represent an escalation in the families’ years-long fight against major crime deniers.

For the first time, families are seeking millions of dollars in civil damages from the Texas man, who has called the worst crime in modern Connecticut history “staged,” “synthetic,” “manufactured,” “a giant hoax” and “completely fake with actors,” with “inside job written all over it.”

Although the two defamation cases filed in a Houston district court on Monday deal with specific statements Jones made about two Sandy Hook parents in 2017 on his web-based program InfoWars, the cases cite what the families’ lawyers call “a long history of harassing the Sandy Hook families with defamatory lies.”

“This heartless and vile act of defamation re-ignited the Sandy Hook ‘false flag’ conspiracy and tore open the emotional wounds that plaintiff has tried so desperately to heal,” reads one of the lawsuits. “This conspiracy theory, which has been pushed by InfoWars and Mr. Jones since the day of the shooting, alleges that the Sandy Hook massacre did not happen, or that it was staged by the government and concealed using actors, and that the parents or the victims are participants in a horrifying cover-up.”

The lawsuits come two weeks after a Massachusetts man sued Jones for defamation for falsely identifying him as the shooter in the Valentine’s Day massacre of 17 students and staff at a Florida high school. The Florida shooting was the deadliest school shooting in the United States since the Sandy Hook shooting of 26 first-graders and educators in 2012.

Neil Heslin, the father of slain student Jesse Lewis, and Leonard Pozner and Veronique De La Rosa, the parents of slain student Noah Pozner, are seeking more than $1 million in damages.

Jones is accused of saying on his program that Heslin “was lying about the circumstances of his son’s tragic death for a nefarious and criminal purpose,” when Heslin appeared with NBC’s Megyn Kelly last summer, according to Heslin’s lawsuit.

In the second lawsuit, Jones is accused of saying on his program that De La Rosa “was an actor in a faked interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper used to cover up the ‘truth’ about Sandy Hook,” Pozner and De La Rosa’s lawsuit reads.

Jones did not respond to a request for comment on Tuesday.

Although families that lost loved ones in the Sandy Hook shootings have been harassed by lone extremists in the past, Jones became the focus early last year after the election of Donald Trump, when Jones bragged the new president had called to thank him for his support.

In response, the Newtown Board of Education wrote to Trump for his help to “stop Jones and other hoaxers like him.”

The White House did not respond.

Then in June, Jones made headlines again in Newtown when he was booked to speak with Kelly on a prime time Sunday night show.

The homegrown nonprofit Sandy Hook Promise took the lead in calling for NBC to cancel the show to “keep Jones’ extremist views from gaining prime time exposure.”

Sandy Hook Promise dropped Kelly as the emcee of its Washington, D.C. gala, but Jones went on as scheduled.

An attorney representing some of the families said Jones “has weaponized his radio show to publish false and defamatory statements about our clients; chief among them that they are actors perpetuating a massive fraud on the American public by faking the deaths of their loved ones.”

The defamation lawsuits filed this week noted the case of Lucy Richards, a Sandy Hook conspiracy theorist, who was sentenced to five months in prison in June for sending threats to Pozner and Heslin.

“There are no alternative facts,” Senior U.S. District Judge James Cohn told Richards at her sentencing.

As part of her sentence, Richards was barred from viewing a list of conspiracy websites, including InfoWars, the lawsuits said.

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