Aug 4 (Reuters) – A Texas judge rejected Alex Jones’ request for a mistrial on Thursday after the jury was reinstated in a defamation case over the American conspiracy theorist’s false claims about the Sandy Hook mass shooting.
The request to quash followed the revelation during the two-week trial that Jones’ lawyer had accidentally sent text messages to the US conspiracy theorist for two years to the plaintiffs.
Federico Andino Reynal, a lawyer for Jones, told Judge Maya Guerra Gamble that the plaintiffs’ lawyers should have destroyed the tapes immediately. The parents’ attorney, Mark Bankston, used the texts to undermine Jones’ testimony during cross-examination Wednesday.
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Jones, founder of the Infowars radio show and webcast, is being sued to determine the amount of restitution he owes for spreading lies about the December 14, 2012, killing of 20 children and six staff members at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.
Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis, the parents of slain six-year-old Jesse Lewis, are seeking about $150 million from Jones and his company, Free Speech Systems LLC, for what their lawyer called a “vile smear campaign.”
Heslin told jurors Tuesday that Jones’ lies made his life “hell” and led to a campaign of harassment and death threats against him from people who believed he had lied about his son’s death.
Jones previously claimed that the mainstream media and gun control activists conspired to fabricate the Sandy Hook tragedy and that the shooting was staged using crisis actors.
Jones, who later admitted the shooting took place, told an Austin jury Wednesday it was “100 percent real.”
Gamble issued a rare default judgment against Jones in the case in 2021.
Free Speech Systems filed for bankruptcy last week. Jones said during Monday’s Infowars broadcast that the filing will help the company stay on the air while it appeals.
Jones faces a similar defamation suit in Connecticut state court, where he was also found liable in default.
The Sandy Hook shooter, 20-year-old Adam Lanza, used a Remington Bushmaster rifle to carry out the massacre. It all ended when Lanza killed himself with the approaching sound of police sirens.
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Reporting by Jack Quinn; Editing by Noeline Walder, Amy Stevens and Howard Goller
Our standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
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