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Alex Jones, the founder of Infowars, lost two defamation suits filed by family members of the victims of the Sandy Hook shooting after a judge ruled he failed to provide information required by the court.
Judge Maya Guerra Gamble of Travis county Texas’s civil district court criticized Jones for making “persistent discovery abuses” by failing to turn over documents in the case, making a default ruling against him, nothing that “an escalating series of judicial admonishments, monetary penalties, and non-dispositive sanctions have all been ineffective at deterring the abuse.”
A lawyer for the parents of the murdered children, Mark D. Bankston, told the New York Times that the next step would be a jury trial on March 28 to determine damages that Jones must pay.
The latest rulings were handed down on Monday, but only became public on Thursday, and were first reported by the Huffington Post. The cases are just two of many against the Infowars proprietor that have been launched by parents of Sandy Hook victims who were frustrated by Jones’s willingness to push fantastic conspiracies about the shooting being a hoax. Jones has since recanted such claims, but before he did, the conspiracy prompted aggressive harassment campaigns against the parents.
Norm Pattis, a lawyer for Jones and Infowars, wrote in a statement that the ruling was “stunning” and a “blatant abuse of discretion.”
“It takes no account of the tens of thousands of documents produced by the defendants, the hours spent sitting for depositions and the various sworn statements filed in these cases,” Pattis argued.
