Yesterday, CNN Business reported that conspiracy theorist and delusional blowhard Alex Jones and Free Speech Systems, the parent company of his website for fellow right-wing crazies InfoWars, has been ordered to pay around $100,000 in legal expenses related to a defamation lawsuit filed in April 2018 by Neil Heslin, whose 6-year-old son Jesse was killed in the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, on December 14, 2012.
Jones “has repeatedly and unequivocally called the Sandy Hook shooting a hoax,” according to the lawsuit.
Earlier this month, Texas judge Scott Jenkins granted Heslin’s motion for sanctions and legal expenses after the defendants disobeyed a court order to provide a witness list and documentation, and ordered the defendants to pay Heslin’s legal fees, in the amount of $65,825.
In a separate decision, Jenkins ruled against the defendants’ motion to dismiss and ordered the defendants pay Heslin $34,323.80 in legal fees.
So let me just take a moment to explain to y’all how I feel about Alex Jones and all pseudo-intellectual, “false flag” conspiracy theorists like him: OMFG, I HATE THEM, I HATE THEM, I HATE THEM!
It takes a special type of unmitigated assholery to make wild, unsubstantiated claims that tragic events never occurred while actual victims and mourning family members absolutely did and do exist.
Here’s what Jones said while responding to a caller on his show in 2015, according to Politifact:
“And then yeah, it kind of becomes a red herring to say the whole thing was staged—because they have staged events before. But then you learn the school had been closed and reopened, and you’ve got video of the kids going in circles in and out of the building, and they don’t call the rescue choppers for two hours, then they tear the building down and seal it, and they get caught using blue screens and [an] email by Bloomberg comes out in a lawsuit where he’s telling his people to get ready in the next 24 hours to capitalize on a shooting.
“Yeah, so, Sandy Hook is a synthetic completely fake with actors, in my view, manufactured. I couldn’t believe it at first. I knew they had actors there, clearly, but I thought they killed some real kids. And it just shows how bold they are, that they clearly used actors. I mean they even ended up using photos of kids killed in mass shootings here in a fake mass shooting in Turkey—so yeah, or Pakistan. The sky is now the limit. I appreciate your call.”
I mean, is that out-Trumping Trump-type crazy, or what?
Of course, Jones has since denied saying any of this and, in a sworn deposition earlier in 2019, claimed his feelings and comments on Sandy Hook were caused by a “psychosis” brought on by the “trauma” of the media “lying so much.” (Which is like the mayonnaise jar calling the snowflake “white” but, whatever.)
It’s worth mentioning that Jones has also claimed that the Orlando Pulse nightclub shooting, the Boston bombing and the mass shootings in Tuscon, Aurora, San Bernardino and Columbine High School were also false-flag hoaxes either set up by the government or aimed at taking your guns free speech.
It is my hope that the world stops giving him and those like him a platform to spew dangerous nonsense. After all, behind his rhetoric, there have been family members of the victims in these tragic events that have claimed to have gotten death threats and other forms of harassment from his rabid followers. I really hope this $100k he’s been ordered to pay is just the tip of the iceberg in him being held accountable.