Conspiracist in court

Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones yesterday gave evidence at his defamation trial in Connecticut as he tries to limit the damages he must pay for promoting the lie that the 2012 Sandy Hook school massacre was a hoax. More than a dozen family members of some of the 20 children and six educators killed in the shooting also showed up to observe his evidence testimony in Waterbury Superior Court, about 32km from where the shooting occurred. Plaintiffs’ attorney Christopher Mattei showed a video from Jones’ Infowars web show in which he called the mass shooting “phony as a threedollar bill” and called the parents of the victims “crisis actors”. Jones was found liable last year by default for damages to plaintiffs without a trial, as punishment for what the judge called his repeated failures to turn over documents to their lawyers. The six-member jury is now deciding how much Jones and Free Speech Systems, Infowars’ parent company, should pay the families for defaming them and intentionally inflicting emotional distress.