Topline
Four lawsuits accusing Alex Jones of defamation based on wild conspiracy theories he spread after the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School will be allowed to move forward, the Texas Supreme Court ruled Friday, continuing the legal battle against Jones relating to some of the most infamous comments the brazen InfoWars host has made on his show.
InfoWars founder Alex Jones interacts with supporters at the Texas State Capitol building on April ... [+]
Key Facts
The suits come from the parents of two of the 20 students who were among the 28 who died at the elementary school on Dec. 14, 2012.
Jones had claimed in the past that "no one died" at the school and that it was a false flag operation aimed at taking away Americans' guns, leading to some of Jones' followers harassing and stalking the victims' families.
He spread similar false conspiracy theories after the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, claiming that students were crisis actors.
The Texas Supreme Court on Friday also allowed a defamation suit relating to that school shooting to move forward, relating to a man InfoWars mistakenly named a suspect in the massacre.
The suits were filed in Travis County, where Jones is based.
The Texas Supreme Court rejected the challenges from Jones’ legal team, which sought to dismiss the suits, without comment.
Key Background
Alex Jones and his online InfoWars talk show became one of the prominent sources for misinformation and conspiracy theories in the early 2010s, predating the QAnon movement. His shows regularly attracted, and still does attract, millions of visitors who consume conspiracy theories ranging from Hillary Clinton being a "demon from hell" to saying chemicals are being deliberately put in water to "turn the freaking frogs gay." But few comments have offended as much as claiming the Sandy Hook Elementary students were not actually killed and that parents were somehow faking grief. Nor has he made comments that have landed him into as much legal trouble. To defend himself, he claimed in 2019 that his repeated comments around a Sandy Hook conspiracy were caused by a "form of psychosis."
Tangent
Jones was also one of the original mass spreaders of the idea that the Clintons and other high-ranking Democrats were involved in child sex trafficking. The theory widely spread during the 2016 presidential campaign, culminating in a man from North Carolina traveling to a Washington pizza restaurant where he fired a gun, falsely believing the restaurant was the site of Satanic rituals involved in the sex trafficking ring. The man was arrested, and the incident became known as Pizzagate.
Further Reading
Texas Supreme Court: Alex Jones, InfoWars can be sued by Sandy Hook parents (Austin American-Statesman)
‘We All Got Played’: QAnon Followers Implode After Big Moment Never Comes (Forbes)
Alex Jones says ‘form of psychosis’ made him believe events like Sandy Hook massacre were staged (CNN)
