Posted on 08/03/2022 7:48:07 PM PDT by Subcutaneous Fishstick Blues
Television host Alex Jones on Aug. 3 said he believes the mass shooting that took place in Sandy Hook, Connecticut, in 2012 was “100 percent real.”
“Especially since I’ve met the parents. It’s 100 percent real,” Jones said while on the stand in a courtroom in Austin, Texas.
Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis, whose 6-year-old son, Jesse, was among the 26 people killed in the massacre in Newtown, Connecticut, filed a defamation suit in 2018 after a host on Jones’ network, InfoWars, said that Heslin was lying about holding his son’s body after the shooting.
Jones, the suit noted, has described the attack as “staged” and “a giant hoax.”
Jones, InfoWars, and another company he runs, Free Speech Systems, were named as defendants, along with the host, Owen Shroyer.
A judge in the area in 2021 entered a default judgment against the defendants because they failed to comply with duties related to discovery.
The trial happening now is to determine how much Jones will have to pay in damages.
Heslin and Lewis said Tuesday that an apology wouldn’t suffice and that Jones needed to be held accountable for repeatedly spreading falsehoods about the attack. They are seeking at least $150 million.
Closing arguments were expected to begin later Wednesday after more testimony from Jones, who has portrayed the lawsuit as an attack on his First Amendment rights.
Jones is the only person testifying in his own defense. His attorney asked him if he now understands it was “absolutely irresponsible” to push the false claims that the massacre didn’t happen and no one died.
Jones said he does, but added, “They won’t let me take it back.”
He also complained that he’s been “typecast as someone that runs around talking about Sandy Hook, makes money off Sandy Hook, is obsessed by Sandy Hook.”
Parents’ Testimony
Heslin testified earlier this week that statements made by Jones were “very disturbing.”
“I just couldn’t fathom or understand why people would question such a horrific tragedy and a loss. I still to this day can’t fathom it,” he said.
Lewis, meanwhile, spoke directly to Jones, telling him: “It doesn’t exist, that I’m ‘deep state.’ It’s just not true. I know you know that.”
She wondered why Jones made such statements, questioning whether it was for financial gain.
Jones has been broadcasting as the trial goes on, saying at one point that Heslin is “being manipulated by some very bad people” and is “slow” while Lewis “is not.”
“Do you think I’m an actor?” Lewis asked.
“No, I don’t think you’re an actor,” Jones responded before the judge admonished him to be quiet until called to testify.
Also on Tuesday, Jones told the parents, “I never intentionally tried to hurt you.”
“I never even said your name until this case came to court. I didn’t even really know who you were until a couple of years ago when all this started up,” he said.
Jones said he questions “every big event” and that “a lot of times it turns out that we’ve not been told the truth.”
The sheer idiocy of freepers when it comes to this lunacy isn’t so hard to believe anymore. Seems the cat’s away. Maybe that’s a good thing cause of less purges though.
They should all have timely death certificates.
The parents lived in houses I believe would be on public streets.
The neighbors of the parents would have noticed grieving parents and absent children.
These neighbors could have been contacted by the media.
The bar is much higher for public figures, especially when it comes to politicians, and malice has taken be proved (which is difficult). When it comes to private citizens, proof of malice is not required.
“It does not say that some other American cannot sue you for defamation of character.”
Did anybody of any significance to the parents lose any respect for the parents as a result of Jones’ statements and conduct?
Parent #1
As a result of Jones’ statements and conduct:
Did you suffer any loss from your or your spouse’s employer?
Did you suffer any loss of any type from your relatives?
Did you suffer any loss of any type from your friends?
Did you suffer otherwise, as say having a fellow supermarket shopper berate you?
Parent #2
....
There may be a case based on inflicting emotional distress, but defamation, I’d like to know of actual harms justifying financial compensation.
I can’t sue Hillary for calling us despicables.
People judge me on my actions and not her words.
Interesting point. 🤔
For about $30 a parent can get a certified copy of a death certificate of their child.
This will have the date and cause of death on it.
“I toured the school that was setup to secretly house the kids for the next school year.”
I believe schools normally have a parade of buses and a longer parade of SUVs, vans and cars twice each day.
“Some kids died.”
Others may have died off-site.
Some kids may have been transported to a hospital even if dead because some responders would not want to possibly waste say 30 critical seconds to check if they were still alive.
I’m not a first responder, so I can only guess at their possible responses.
Did Jones expect us to believe Sandy Hook was a kid with a squirt gun? The next think Jones will say is there is a mothership behind the Hal Bop comet that will pick him up at the end of the Santa Monica Pier. If Jones is too fat to walk the pier, he should save himself the trouble by climbing in the bunk bed.
It used to be that here on Free Republic, links to InfoWars was verboten and people repeatedly violating the ban would get zotted. Just saying.
Suddenly, Norah O'Donnell, who was working there at the time (and actually was a pretty decent journalist back then) cut into the programming with an announcement that Flight 800 had crashed, with no survivors. I moved right in front of the TV to watch.
Within 2 minutes, a video was posted that showed that the crash COULD NOT have been caused by a missile.
Wait, what???!?
No one had even mentioned the word 'missile'.... and the video was watermarked "CIA Video".
CRAZY.
Why would the CIA be producing this video within minutes of the crash? Why would it be distributing it so quickly? Why would it mention a missile, when NOBODY ELSE WAS?
These things set off my Whoa-This-Is-Weird-Radar.
Later, it was demonstrated that 670+ people saw a flame streaking up to meet the plane. You know, like a missile. One of those people was a National Guardsman, aloft in a plane, who just so happened to be a Missile-Plume expert.All of these witnesses were roundly scoffed by the government, and the official lie stood: It was a spontaneous center-fuel-tank explosion, and what everyone saw was the cabin section flying upwards.M
Despite the fact people were describing the plume flying up from the horizon-line, you know, the ground.
Yah right. Gotchya.
The motivation was obvious: If people thought a commercial airliner was struck by either a terrorist missile, or a friendly missile that went astray, airline traffic would collapse...and in 1997, Clinton did not need that distraction, not with his legal problems.
It was the first moment in my life that I realized that the government would lie to us, boldly and without shame, even when a half-a-thousand eyewitnesses contradicted them.
It was the first moment my vision became clear to just how venal and conniving the government could be.
I remember that quite vividly. It was an obvious coverup.
Back in the day used to volunteer for EMS drills. There are held by the civil defense department and later by local emergency response units. Some of them were for large well-funded, well trained counties or cities. As one involved in and briefed on what was going on I still marvel at how they would degrade into a cluster when the event coordinator would throw in a change in the plan.(As if disasters happen according to plan!)
It is currently my belief that Sandy Hook was just a giant cluster with some post event coverups going on for the benefit of those who screwed up.
IMHO As far as Jones goes. He knew what he was doing and his ego was writing checks that he couldn’t cash. It’ll be interesting to see how much the financial damages wind up being.
I am not a Howard Stern fan but he never did anything this stupid.
He is a jerk, but they only went after him, because he supported Trump. They could have gone after him while Obama was still President.
If he’d taken this position to begin with he wouldn’t be out $150 million.
I am not counting on a wave of repentance.
I do not expect to see any meaningful change of viewpoints by lefty partisans, regardless of trauma inflicted. "Cognitive dissonance" as a discrepancy between a professed belief and reality almost always gets resolved by firm denials of reality.
The worse the trauma, the more vigorous the denial. A psychotic breakdown limits the process, but you cannot tell what will come out on the other side of that.
Most people are incapable of fundamental change and just keep doing what they are doing, until they cannot do that anymore.
The exceptions are rare and very educational.
What is the address of that school?
Lets go to the video tape the eyewitnesses time lines and interviews
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