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Alex Jones knew Sandy Hook hoax claims could boost Infowars revenue, lawyer tests

Posted on September 17, 2022September 17, 2022 by Judith E. Ashton

By Jack Queen

WATERBURY, Conn. (Reuters) – A lawyer who works for Alex Jones’ Infowars testified from the witness stand on Wednesday that the conspiracy theorist who claimed the 2012 Sandy Hook mass shooting was a hoax knew that his words could drive followers to his empire.

Jones “knows that what he talks about translates to sales” of his conspiracy-oriented products, Brittany Paz told jurors at the second day of a civil trial to determine how much Jones owes relatives of the shooting’s victims.

Jurors will decide how much Jones and Infowars’ parent Free Speech Systems LLC must pay 13 relatives and an FBI agent who responded to the Dec. 14, 2012 massacre at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.

Twenty students and six staff members were killed after Adam Lanza opened fire, before later killing himself.

Jones later spreads false claims that the government staged the Sandy Hook shooting with crisis actors as a pretext for seizing guns, and that the families faked their children’s deaths.

He has since acknowledged that the shooting occurred, but the families say he should pay for their pain and the harassment they suffered from his followers.

The trial began on Tuesday, and is expected to last five weeks.

With Paz on the witness stand, the plaintiffs’ lawyer Christopher Mattei tried to show jurors that traffic to Infowars’ website skyrocketed after Jones dismissed the shooting as bogus.

Jurors were told that views of Infowars articles soared by nearly half to 427 million in 2013 from 286 million, and that other metrics shot up between 2014 and 2016, when Jones was hosting Sandy Hook deniers on his show.

Paz tested that Infowars shaped its programming around topics that drove the most buyers to its products, which include storable food, fluoride-free toothpaste and supplements.

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Alex Jones’ Texts Turned Over To Jan 6 Committee By Sandy Hook Lawyer

Posted on August 11, 2022August 11, 2022 by Judith E. Ashton

The Jan. 6 committee has possession of two years of text messages from conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, according to a report Monday from CNN. The messages were recently revealed during a defamation case brought against Jones over his comments that the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, was a hoax.

Mark Bankston, the lawyer for Sandy Hook parents Scarlett Lewis and Neil Heslin, reportedly turned over the text messages to the committee after the civil trial against Jones concluded last week.

A jury in Austin, Texas, had ordered Jones to pay $4.1 million in compensatory damages and $45.2 million in punitive damages.

Bankston got the text, he said, because one of Jones’ lawyers “messed up” and accidentally sent them to him. Jones’ lawyers initially said the court should order Bankston to destroy the text messages. However, Judge Maya Guerra Gamble declined, saying that was not her job.

Gamble told Bankston she would not “stand between you and Congress.”

She also denied Jones’ request for a mistrial because of the mistakenly sent text messages. The committee and the Justice Department have not confirmed whether they saw the text messages.

Once Bankston said he had the texts, the committee expressed it was eager to see them. Bankston previously said in court that he intended to send the committee Jones’ texts.

Jones was present for the Jan. 6 insurrection, but he never entered the Capitol. He also formerly tested in January after receiving a subpoena in November from the committee. During the closed-door deposition, he said he frequently asserted his Fifth Amendment rights.

The Jan. 6 committee had reportedly wanted to subpoena the communications of Jones’ text messages to learn more about his role on Jan. 6.

Jones reportedly exchanged intimate messages with Roger Stone, a long-time adviser to

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Alex Jones sent ‘nude photo’ of his wife to Roger Stone, Sandy Hook lawyer claims

Posted on August 9, 2022August 9, 2022 by Judith E. Ashton

Infowars founders and conspiracy theorists Alex Jones apparently sent an “intimate photo” of his wife to Donald Trump ally Roger Stonea lawyer for the Sandy Hook parents has said.

Mark Bankston, the lawyer representing the parents of a Sandy Hook shooting victim in their defamation lawsuit against Mr Jones, had made the startling revelation that he was accidentally sent two years worth of contents of Mr Jones’ phone during the discovery process.

Mr Bankston claimed the trove of messages showed Mr Jones had lied about the extent to which he had communicated with close associates about Sandy Hook.

Last week, Mr Jones and his lawyers sought an emergency protection motion to destroy the leaked messages and declare a mistrial.

On Monday, Mr Bankston claimed Mr Jones had sent an “intimate photo” of his wife to self-proclaimed political “dirty trickster” Roger Stone.

“I’m a little concerned about it because that intimate photo was sent to Roger Stone, and I don’t know if that was consensual,” the lawyer told TYT Network.

“And if it wasn’t consensual, and Mrs [Erika] Wulff Jones should know about that.”

“And there might be something that needs to be done about that. Then again, it could be totally consensual,” he continued.

“But when I see that and I don’t see any indication that it was, I’m concerned something might not be on the up and up with that. There are certainly laws in certain states about that.”

Mr Jones on Saturday admitted that a naked photo of his wife was part of his texts.

“Sorry, I mean, there was a photo I sent my wife of her naked… So, my wife looks pretty good. The point is, there is one naked picture of my wife in there, so that’s what they got! No dick pics,

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Alex Jones’ lawyer could face consequences for phone-records release

Posted on August 7, 2022August 7, 2022 by Judith E. Ashton

Aug 6 (Reuters) – The lawyer defending conspiracy theorist Alex Jones in a Texas trial drew his own national headlines this week for accidentally handing over highly-sensitive data to his adversaries, opening him up to potential legal consequences.

Houston lawyer Federico Andino Reynal acknowledged that Jones’ legal team had provided lawyers for parents of a child killed in the Sandy Hook Elementary School mass shooting with a digital copy of the Infowars founder’s phone contents, which included text messages and medical records.

The disclosure was made public by a lawyer for the parents in a dramatic exchange with Jones as the trial neared its close.

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The revelation may have exposed Reynal to sanctions in a different case, as well as the potential for malpractice claims by Jones, according to court documents and lawyers following the trial.

Jones could pursue a malpractice claim against his attorneys, but would have to prove that he would have had a better result from the Texas trial if the phone information hadn’t been handed over, said Randy Johnston, a legal malpractice lawyer in Dallas.

“Any complaint he would make is, essentially, ‘but for my lawyers, I would have been a successful wild,'” Johnston said.

Reynal told Reuters on Friday that his focus “was always on the jury and on putting the best case forward for Alex.” He said sanctions sought against him may be for a “tactical advantage” by his opponents.

Jones couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.An Austin jury on Friday awarded the parents $45.2 million in punitive damages against Jones for falsely calling the 2012 massacre a hoax, on top of a $4.1 million compensatory damages verdict the day before.

A judge in Austin had rejected a bid by Reynal on Thursday to

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Alex Jones’s attorney apologises for calling Sandy Hook lawyer a ‘liar’ and giving him the middle finger

Posted on July 29, 2022July 29, 2022 by Judith E. Ashton

Alex Jones has already been found liable for defamation by the Texas <a href= — Alex Jones has already been found liable for defamation by the Texas court (Getty Images)

F Andino Reynal, the defense representing attorney Alex Jones in the defamation trial, issued an apology for his misconduct in a heated courtroom altercation where he was seen showing a middle finger to plaintiff lawyer Mark Banston.

“I apologize for yesterday’s outburst. It was not appropriate,” the defense attorney representing far-right conspiracy broadcaster Alex Jones said in a Texas court on Thursday before the jury took their seats in the room.

A video of the altercation shared on social media showed Mr Reynal walking up to Mr Banston and engaged visibly in a heated conversation with at least four other people in the same area.

Within seconds of confrontation, Mr Reynal flashed the middle finger to Mr Banston even as the argument continued for around a minute.

The clash began among the attorneys shortly after they sparred over presenting video evidence in the case to the court.

Mr Reynal slammed his counterpart for showing the jury of a dozen members “little clips from cherry-picked videos” from Jones’ InfoWars broadcasts about the Sandy Hook shooting incident and contested that he was not allowed to show longer videos.

He also told the court that Mr Bankston and his legal team had mutually agreed for him to show the videos for evidence.

The argument was derailed after an attorney for a victim’s family pointed out to the judge that Mr Reynal had been referring to them as “personal injury lawyers” in the open court. Upon hearing this, the Travis County district court judge Maya Guerra Gamble came down heavily on the defense attorney for the remark and asked him to review his “attorney code of conduct”.

Addressing the brawl on Thursday ahead of the

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