Infowars lawyer: 'There were false statements' on Sandy Hook
WATERBURY, Conn. (AP) — A lawyer for conspiracy theorist Alex Jones' Infowars empire acknowledged on the witness stand Wednesday that the show and website spread falsehoods about the Sandy Hook school shooting.
“I don’t think that we disagree that there were false statements made,” Brittany Paz testified at a civil trial involving Jones' claims that the nation’s deadliest school shooting was a hoax concocted as a pretext to tighten gun regulations.
Asked whether an Infowars headline that suggested the massacre was a “false flag” operation was itself untrue, Paz said she didn't disagree it was false.
The jury is tasked only with determining what Jones has to pay to eight victims’ families and an FBI agent — a judge already found the Infowars host liable for damages, by default. She made that determination after he failed to turn over documents as ordered during the lawsuit.
Jones is expected to testify eventually but hasn't attended the trial so far. On his Infowars web show Wednesday, he called the proceeding a “show trial” meant to squelch dissent.
“It’s just X-level insane,” added Jones, who has cast the case as part of a dark campaign against him, his audience and Americans’ free speech rights. The trial comes about a month after a Texas jury ordered him to pay nearly $50 million to the parents of a child killed at Sandy Hook.
Jones' lawyer, Norm Pattis, has urged the Connecticut jury to keep any damages minimal, arguing that the families are making overblown claims of harm.
The families say the emotional and psychological harm was serious, deep and persistent — social media harassment, death threats, strangers videotaping them and their children, and the surreal pain of being told that their loss wasn’t real.
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