Infowars host ‘dangerous,’ investigator says at trial
AUSTIN, TEXAS >> The detective who led the investigation into the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School attack testified Tuesday that there are three types of people who deny that it happened and harass the victims’ families: the mentally ill, those who believed bad or incomplete information, and those who knew the truth but twisted it for their own “power or money.”
Investigators put conspiracy theorist Alex Jones in that final group.
“They were the most dangerous. That’s where we put Alex Jones,” Connecticut State Police Detective Daniel Jewiss told the jury on the first day of testimony in a Texas trial to determine how much Jones, who hosts Infowars, owes for defaming the parents of one of the children who died in the deadliest school shooting in American history.
“It’s absolutely horrific the amount of trauma they’ve had to endure in the wake of having lost a loved one,” said Jewiss, who called supporting the Sandy Hook families the “most honorable” thing he’s ever been part of.
Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis, whose 6-yearold son Jesse was killed in the attack on the Newtown, Connecticut, school, are seeking $150 million for emotional distress and reputational damage that Jones caused them,
Infowars host Alex Jones arrives at court in Austin, Texas, on Tuesday.
and more money in punitive damages, their lawyer, Mark Bankston, told the court during his opening statement as Jones looked on, shaking his head at times.
Jones repeatedly “lied and attacked the parents of murdered children” when he told his Infowars audience that the shooting was a hoax, Bankston said. He created a “massive campaign of lies” and recruited “wild extremists from the fringes of the internet ... who were as cruel as Mr. Jones wanted them to be” to the families of the 20 first-graders and six educators who were killed, the lawyer said.
Jones tapped into the explosive popularity of Sandy Hook conspiracy stories that became an “obsession” for the website, even years after the shooting, said Bankston, who played video clips of Jones claiming on his program that the shooting was a hoax and “the whole thing was completely fake. ... It just didn’t happen.”