Alex Jones trial updates: Connecticut jury hears testimony about Sandy Hook hoax claims
Witness questioned about Jones criticism of Sandy Hook trial
Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, who is on trial in Connecticut for calling the 2012 Sandy Hook massacre a hoax, continued Friday to describe the proceedings as a “kangaroo court” from his Infowars studio in Texas.
Jones' commentary became a focus of testimony on the fourth day of the trial, with a lawyer for the Sandy Hook families questioning a corporate representative for Jones' Infowars brand about how seriously the company was taking the trial.
The lawyer, Christopher Mattei, showed the jury a photo he said was of an Infowars webpage, depicting the judge in the trial with lasers shooting out of her eyes.
“On a scale of one to 10, how seriously is Infowars taking this trial,” Mattei asked the corporate representative, Brittany Paz.
“10. It's serious to me,” Paz responded.
The exchange occurred as Jones prepares to begin attending the trial in Waterbury next week and the judge, Barbara Bellis, considers a request by the families' lawyers to limit what Jones and his lawyer can say and argue in court. Jones is expected to testify, but it's not clear yet when.
How much did Alex Jones benefit from false statements about the Sandy Hook School shooting?
Attorneys for an FBI agent and families of victims killed in the shooting continue to dig at that question Friday.
For the third day in a row, Brittany Paz, a corporate representative for Infowars’ parent company, Free Speech Systems, is on the stand testifying about Infowars – with questioning focusing on the website’s traffic, content, and revenue.
Paz has been asked about records tracking website performance for pages featuring content produced by Jones’ companies. One example displayed to Paz by plaintiffs’ attorney Chris Mattei showed single-day internet sales numbers for Jones’ site jumped from $48,000 to $232,000 over two days in Sept. 2014.
During this time, a false claim was made on Jones' show that the Federal Bureau of Investigation reported no one was killed in Sandy Hook on Dec. 14, 2012, the day 20 students and six faculty members were fatally shot.
"The FBI never said that," Paz said to Mattei Thursday.
As Sandy Hook families watch, Infowars attorney says victims were not actors
Since the shooting in December of 2012 that took the lives of 20 children and six educators, Alex Jones has referred to the tragedy as a “production,” and “as phony as the $3 bill.” He also accused the families and children who died in the shooting of being “actors.”
As several families of the victims sat in the courtroom, the plaintiffs’ attorney Chris Mattei asked Brittany Paz, a Connecticut lawyer hired by Jones to testify about his companies, whether Free Speech Systems, the parent company of Infowars, still believes the victims were acting.
“Was Ben Wheeler an actor?” Mattei asked.
“No, Free Speech Systems doesn’t contend that,” Paz said.
Mattei then listed more names of children killed in the shooting – Avielle Richman, Dylan Hockley, Daniel Barden, Emilie Parker – asking if they were actors.
Paz’s answer was uniform.
“No,” she said.
Infowars rep returns to stand in Sandy Hook hoax trial
A representative for conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ Infowars brand returned to the witness stand Thursday for questions about how Jones pushed lies that the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting was a hoax as his companies grew more successful.
Brittany Paz, a Connecticut lawyer hired by Jones to testify about his companies’ workings, acknowledged Wednesday that Jones’ show, website and social media platforms spread falsehoods about the 2012 shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, that killed 20 first graders and six educators.
On Thursday, she went over company emails and videos from Jones' Infowars web show that claim the massacre was staged.
“‘Folks, they staged Aurora, they staged Sandy Hook, the evidence is overwhelming, do you remember that?’” the plaintiffs’ lawyer Christopher Mattei said, quoting Jones.
“I do remember that, yes,” Paz replied.
Jones and his company Free Speech Systems have been found liable for damages to relatives of eight victims of the massacre, as well as to an FBI agent who responded to the scene. A six-member jury in Waterbury will determine how much Jones should pay the plaintiffs.
Infowars lawyer says Alex Jones hasn't 'personally done anything' to investigate Sandy Hook shooting
Attorneys for the Sandy Hook plaintiffs said Alex Jones tells his millions of followers that he's giving them “the truth in journalism” and that he's the only one who will tell them the truth.
According to the plaintiffs’ attorney Chris Mattei, Jones once said about the Sandy Hook shooting, “I did deep research, and it just pretty much didn’t happen.”
Mattei asked witness Brittany Paz, a lawyer for Jones' Infowars empire, about Jones and whether he has done any kind of journalistic investigation into the shooting.
“I don’t think he’s personally done anything to investigate it, no,” Paz said.
Plaintiffs' attorneys continue to dig at Jones' profits and motive for Sandy Hook statements
The plaintiffs, in an attempt to establish that Sandy Hook coverage generated revenue for Alex Jones, asked witness Brittany Paz if video titles shared on social media like "Connecticut School Massacre Looks Like False Flag, Witnesses Say" were designed to generate clicks. Paz responded that “it’s clickbait in the sense that it’s attention grabbing.”
She was then asked by the plaintiffs’ attorney Chris Mattei if that title was clickbait because it was false.
“I don’t think we disagree that there were false statements made in connection to Sandy Hook,” Paz said.
Also on Wednesday, Paz was shown Google Analytics data produced by Infowars’ parent company, Free Speech Systems. Mattei wants to know whether the company relies on the data to track website performance.
It goes back to the plaintiffs’ claim that Jones was financially motivated to continue calling the shooting a hoax.
Paz was shown website traffic figures from December 2012 and January 2013. They show an increase in sessions, users and page views month over month. Mattei argued that Jones’ growing audience translated to growing sales and that Jones was aware of the increase in revenue.
“He knows what he’s talking about translates to sales, yes," Paz said.
Witness faces questions about Infowars and its revenue from supplement sales
It’s Day 2 of a trial in the defamation lawsuit brought against Infowars host Alex Jones by families of victims killed in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.
The first witness called by the plaintiffs’ attorney Chris Mattei was Brittany Paz. She»s been selected by Alex Jones to serve as corporate representative for Free Speech Systems, the parent company of Infowars. It’s also being sued by the plaintiffs.
Paz is facing questions about Jones’ authority over Free Speech Systems and revenue derived from supplements sold on Infowars.com.
The plaintiffs are trying to establish that Jones was financially motivated to say on Infowars that the shooting never happened. In his opening statement, Mattei told the jury that he’d heard certain products are marketed by Infowars based on topics covered on the show. He asked Paz if supplements sold on the website represent 80% of company revenue. Paz said she didn’t have an exact figure, but it was “probably” a majority.
“I can’t recall as I sit here today, I’m sorry,” Paz said.
Paz isn’t a Free Speech Systems employee. She said she was not involved with FSS prior to being officially retained by the company when she was selected to represent Jones for this trial. But she does have a connection to the defense. She did work for Jones' Connecticut defense attorney Norm Pattis for five years in the 2010s.
Sandy Hook witnesses testify about Alex Jones' hoax claims
Watch testimony from Day 1 of the Alex Jones trial in Connecticut.
A sister of a teacher killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook massacre and an FBI agent who responded to the shooting have both emotionally described what it has been like to be accused of being crisis actors by conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and others. Carlee Soto Parisi and FBI agent William Aldenberg were the first witnesses to testify Tuesday as a Connecticut jury began hearing statements in a trial to decide how much money Jones owes for spreading the lie that the 2012 mass shooting in Newtown didn’t happen.
The trial began Tuesday in Waterbury, only 18 miles from Newtown, where 26 people were killed in 2012. Jones' attorneys say his comments, which he now admits were wrong, were protected speech.
This story contains information from the Associated Press.
In 2nd Jones trial, FBI agent at Sandy Hook breaks down
An FBI agent struggled to control his emotions as he described on the witness stand seeing bodies inside Sandy Hook elementary school — a scene that the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones later claimed was staged by actors.
FBI agent William Aldenberg was the first witness to testify Tuesday as a Connecticut jury began hearing arguments in a trial to decide how much money Jones owes for spreading the lie that the 2012 mass shooting in Newtown didn’t happen.
The trial began Tuesday in Waterbury, only 18 miles from Newtown, where 26 people were killed in 2012.
Lawyers for the Sandy Hook families say Jones caused the families emotional and psychological harm. Jones' attorneys argue his comments, which he now admits were wrong, were protected speech.
This story contains information from the Associated Press.
Attorneys offer opening statements in 2nd Jones trial
In his opening statement, plaintiffs’ attorney Chris Mattei told the jury that Jones was a bully.
He says that traffic to Jones website increased in the month after the shooting and that the millions of visitors there were convinced that the shooting was staged so the government could take guns away from Americans.
“Ask yourselves what it means, when you're lost in grief,--trying to find your way through it, trying to take care of the kids that you have left, or the siblings you have left, knowing that there's a whole army set loose by Alex Jones,” Mattei said.
Defense attorney Norm Pattis said in his opening statement the families used Jones as a scapegoat. Pattis said the families had become partisan after the shooting and accused the plaintiffs of transforming money into a political weapon.
“And we’re going to ask you to disarm them,” Pattis said.
Jones has already been found liable for defamation. Jurors are tasked with determining how much Jones should pay in damages.
Judge sanctions Alex Jones' lawyers
A jury of three men and three women along with several alternates will decide how much the conspiracy theorist should pay relatives of eight victims and an FBI agent who responded to the school. Judge Barbara Bellis found Jones liable without a trial last year after he failed to turn over documents to the families' lawyers.
On Tuesday, she sanctioned Jones for failing to turn over analytic data related to his website and the popularity of his show. She told his lawyers that because of that failure, they will not be allowed to argue he didn’t profit from his Sandy Hook remarks.
Bellis called the handling of the data by the defense “stunningly cavalier.”
The plaintiffs have said Jones was financially motivated to continue calling the shooting a hoax. (Jones has since conceded that the shooting did occur.)
The trial is expected to last about a month and feature testimony from both Jones and the families.
On Tuesday, jurors began to hear testimony from plaintiff Bill Aldenberg, an FBI agent who was a first responder at the scene of the Sandy Hook school shooting on Dec. 14, 2012.
Mattei said jurors will hear testimony about the shooting so they can understand the truth about what happened that day. Twenty children and six educators died in the attack.
This story contains information from the Associated Press.
Sandy Hook plaintiffs arrived Tuesday morning in solidarity
A Connecticut jury began hearing arguments Tuesday in a trial to decide how much money conspiracy theorist Alex Jones should pay relatives of victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting for spreading a lie that the massacre was a hoax.
The trial is being held in Waterbury, less than 20 miles from Newtown, where 26 children and teachers were shot to death in 2012.
Outside the courthouse, the plaintiffs arrived Tuesday morning together in solidarity.
Jones did not attend the opening of the trial Tuesday. He said on his show Monday that he would be traveling to Connecticut next week.
This story contains information from the Associated Press.