Alex Jones awaits fate vs. 8 more Sandy Hook families
NEWTOWN — Well before last week’s headlines that Alex Jones lost three defamation cases to Sandy Hook parents in Texas, a Connecticut judge threatened the conspiracy extremist with a similar default judgment in two other lawsuits brought by eight Sandy Hook families.
On Thursday, state Superior Court Judge Barbara Bellis announced she will take up the question of sanctions against Jones — including a potential default ruling for the eight families — “based on (Jones’) conduct in this matter to date, including conduct relating to discovery.”
Bellis is referring to the legal process of pretrial evidence exchange known as discovery that got Jones into such trouble in Texas that he lost his cases by default when the judge ruled he had shown “flagrant bad faith and callous disregard for the responsibilities of discovery under the rules.”
On Oct. 20, Bellis will rule on a request by the eight families to default Jones for a series of allegations, including withholding pretrial data, manipulating evidence, and violating an order of protection, which resulted in Jones’ attorneys trying to subpoena Hillary Clinton.
“The Jones defendants have demonstrated they are incorrigible,” reads an argument filed by the families’ attorneys last week. “No sanction other than default will remedy their misconduct, and the danger posed by their disregard for the court’s authority will significantly increase.”
Jones’ Connecticut attorneys counter argue that the families are “attempting to obtain an improper default sanction through an unethical motion.”
Bellis, for her part, has twice threatened to sanction Jones with default, and has promised three other times in the last two months in her orders that she would soon “address the appropriate sanctions.”
In a Sept. 30 ruling over allegations that Jones failed to turn over Google Analytics data to the families, for example, Bellis wrote: “The Jones defendants…seem to take the position that the rules of practice do not apply to them. There is no dispute here that the Jones defendants failed to follow the rules as they relate to discovery.”
And in an Aug. 5 ruling where Jones’ attorneys were accused of using testimony covered under a court-approved protection order as the basis for questioning Hillary Clinton about her alleged role “in a vendetta to silence Alex Jones,” Bellis wrote: “Given the cavalier actions and willful misconduct of Infowars in filing protected deposition information during the actual deposition, this court has grave concerns that their actions, in the future, will have a chilling effect on the testimony of witnesses who would be rightfully concerned that their confidential information, including their psychiatric and medical histories, would be made available to the public.”
Jones’ attorneys meanwhile call the families’ accusations “procedural gamesmanship.”
“If this motion is allowed, it will demonstrate to the world that the fix is in – that there cannot be justice in this Court if your name is Alex Jones,” the attorneys write.
Eight families and an FBI agent in two cases are suing Jones, the host of Infowars, for calling the 2012 massacre of 26 first-graders and educators at Sandy Hook Elementary School “staged,” “synthetic,” “manufactured,” “a giant hoax,” and “completely fake with actors.”
Jones has said in court papers that he no longer believes that the worst crime in Connecticut history was a hoax, and that he has a right to be wrong under the First Amendment.
Jones’ attorneys will not be able to develop that argument in Texas, where the cases of the three Sandy Hook parents will now go to a jury to decide damages.
In Connecticut, Jones’s attorneys are still arguing the merits of the case. On Oct. 20, Bellis will also rule on Jones’ motion to dismiss the Connecticut cases.
Bellis has already sanctioned Jones for his “blood on the streets” rant against an attorney for the families during a 2019 broadcast. That 2019 sanction denied Jones what he considered a key line of defense. After the Connecticut Supreme Court upheld Bellis’ sanction, Jones’ high-profile New Haven attorney Norm Pattis petitioned the United States Supreme Court, which declined to review it, sending the case back to Bellis’ trial court.
In court papers last week arguing against the families’ motion for default, Jones’ attorneys suggested the writing was on the wall.
“If the Court thinks (albeit erroneously) that a dispositive sanction is warranted, it should go ahead and issue it, rather than delaying the inevitable,” Jones’ attorneys wrote to Bellis on Oct. 7. “The Court cannot be part of the prosecution, using the process to punish defendants because Mr. Jones had the audacity to exercise his First Amendment right to question perhaps the most sorrowful official narrative in U.S. history.”