The parents of two children killed in the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut have filed a lawsuit against Infowars’ Alex Jones for asserting over the past six years that the elementary school massacre was fake and that the parents were “crisis actors.”
HuffPost reported on Tuesday that father Neil Heslin and parents Leonard Pozner and Veronique De La Rosa have filed separate defamation suits against Jones in Texas, where he records Infowars, his conspiracy theorist-focused show. Each suit names Jones, Infowars and Free Speech Systems LLC as defendants, and both plaintiffs are seeking more than $1 million in damages, according to HuffPost.
Jones and Infowars reporter Owen Shroyer have attempted to discredit the parents of the victims for years, claiming the attack was faked and the parents were actors. They have even accused CNN of using a green screen to cover the aftermath of the massacre.
This isn’t the first time Jones has been sued for making false claims against witnesses and victims of massacres in the U.S.
Jones and Infowars are currently embroiled in a civil suit for falsely claiming last year that the man who recorded the deadly car attack at the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia was a “deep state shill” and working for the CIA. The attorney representing one of the Sandy Hook families is also suing Jones on behalf of the 24-year-old man who Jones falsely identified as the shooter at a high school in Parkland, Florida in February. In that massacre, a former student allegedly opened fire at the school and killed 17 people.
Far-right media followed Jones’ lead in the aftermath of the Parkland high school shooting. As high school student survivors spoke out after the attack, sparking national uproar over lax gun policy laws in Florida and across the U.S., far-right conspiracists called the students “crisis actors” and claimed they were being paid by the left to advocate for gun control policy.
The criticism even drifted mainstream, when Fox News host Laura Ingraham mocked one of the student survivors for not getting into college. Ingraham later apologized, but only after advertisers started pulling from her show.
I wish I were on the jury. They’d go home with every penny he has.
Jones and his hangers on will portray this as a SLAPP, but it’s not. He’s been doing real damage to real people.
I’m so glad they’re suing and I hope many others do the same. People like Jones will continue to spread this vileness as long as they can get away with it. I used to think there was no reason to respond, but in the wake of the 2016 election and increasing spread of fake news I think it’s important for the health of our democracy to stand up to these bullies.
Before this is all over, we’re going to find out that Alex Jones is as twisted and depraved an individual in his personal life as is Trump.
Legal Fee GoFundMe’s on the way, more crying and then screaming coming up, buy my Super Magic Muscle Builder ads being prepared, psycho tantrums being written…
He better stock up on lube.