Sandy Hook Families Sue InfoWars' Alex Jones for Defamation
Parents of two children killed at Sandy Hook school sued Alex Jones who had derided the shooting as fake.
(Bloomberg) -- The parents of two children killed at Sandy Hook elementary school in 2012 sued Alex Jones, the host of InfoWars, who had derided the shooting as fake and possibly staged by the government.
Leonard Pozner and Veronique De La Rosa, parents of Noah Pozner, filed a defamation lawsuit Tuesday against Jones, InfoWars LLC and Free Speech Systems LLC. Separately, Neil Heslin, sued Jones, InfoWars and Owen Shroyer, a reporter at InfoWars, also for defamation.
Last year, InfoWars accused De La Rosa of being an actor, rather than the parent of a child killed in the Connecticut mass shooting, according to the complaint. Also last year, Jones accused Heslin of lying about holding his son’s body and seeing a bullet hole in his head, according to his complaint.
"This heartless and vile act of defamation re-ignited the Sandy Hook ’false flag’ conspiracy and tore open the emotional wounds that plaintiff has tried so desperately to heal," Heslin said in the complaint.
Jones didn’t reply to a request for comment sent through his website.
Jones has been hit with numerous lawsuits related to his work at InfoWars -- a conspiracy website and radio show whose host has also claimed the Apollo 11 moon-landing was faked and that Doppler radar towers are used to control the weather.
Jones settled with Chobani last year after having accused the company of “importing migrant rapists.” After the yogurt company sued, a tweet and video related to the accusation were removed. “I regret that we mischaracterized Chobani, its employees and the people of Twin Falls, Idaho, the way we did,” Jones said.
An apology won’t be good enough for the Sandy Hook parents, said Bill Ogden, a partner at Kaster Lynch Farar & Ball LLP, who represents the parents in both lawsuits. He said his clients didn’t sue just to get money in a settlement.
The lawsuit “has to do with an organization that counts themselves as journalists identifying specific people and making false claims against them,” Ogden said.
In one instance, Jones posted a video titled “Sandy Hook Vampires Exposed.”
Charlottesville Lawsuit
Last month, Jones was among those sued by Brennan Gilmore, who witnessed a man drive into a crowd of protesters during a demonstration in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017. The attack left one woman dead and Gilmore documented it on video, later sharing it on social media.
He claims he and his family became the target of harassment after Jones and other conspiracy theorists labeled him part of the “deep state.”
Earlier this month, Jones was sued by Marcel Fontaine, whom the InfoWars host accused of being the gunman in February’s Parkland, Florida, high school shooting. Fontaine had no connection to the attack, which left 17 dead, and another man charged.
The Sandy Hook parents’ lawsuits were filed in state court in Travis County, Texas.
The cases are Pozner v. Jones, GN-18-001842, District Court of Travis County, Texas, and Heslin v. Jones, GN-18-001835, District Court of Travis County, Texas.
To contact the reporter on this story: Polly Mosendz in New York at pmosendz@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editors responsible for this story: David Glovin at dglovin@bloomberg.net, Joe Schneider, David S. Joachim
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