Conspiracy Theorist Alex Jones Views the Lawsuit Against Him From the Sandy Hook Parents as an Assault on the First Amendment of Freedom of Speech

Alex Jones talks to media during a midday break during the trial at the Travis County Courthouse in Austin, Texas, Tuesday, July 26, 2022. An attorney for the parents of one of the children who were killed in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting told jurors that Jones repeatedly “lied and attacked the parents of murdered children” when he told his Infowars audience that the 2012 attack was a hoax. Attorney Mark Bankston said during his opening statement to determine damages against Jones that Jones created a “massive campaign of lies” and recruited “wild extremists from the fringes of the internet … who were as cruel as Mr. Jones wanted them to be” to the victims’ families. Jones later blasted the case, calling it a “show trial” and an assault on the First Amendment. (Briana Sanchez/Austin American-Statesman via AP, Pool)

Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones arrived at a Texas courthouse for his defamation trial for calling the Sandy Hook Elementary School attack a hoax with the words “Save the 1st” scrawled on tape covering his mouth.

Although Jones portrays the lawsuit against him as an assault on the First Amendment, the parents who sued him say his statements were so malicious and obviously false that they fell well outside the bounds of speech protected by the constitutional clause.

The ongoing trial in Austin, which is where Jones’ far-right Infowars website and its parent company are based, stems from a 2018 lawsuit brought by Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis, whose 6-year-old son was killed in the 2012 attack along with 19 other first-graders and six educators.

Jones is expected to testify Tuesday in his own defense.

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Source: Associated Press, MICHAEL TARM

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