Far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones will reportedly be held civilly liable and will likely pay damages to some family members of children murdered during the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT.
Jones is facing several lawsuits as a result of claims he has made about the shooting, including saying that the tragedy was a “hoax” that never happened. Such claims spurred harassment campaigns in which conspiracy theorists targeted victims’ parents.
Now, as a result of Jones’ repeated refusal to turn over documents related to two lawsuits brought by victims’ families in a Texas court, a judge in that state has issued default judgments against Jones and a jury will now decide the damages he owes to the plaintiffs.
Below is a collection of some of Jones' worst commentary about Sandy Hook, a version of which we originally published in 2017:
In 2013, Jones called the shooting “staged” and said, “It’s got inside job written all over it.”
In March 2014, Jones said, “I’ve looked at it and undoubtedly there’s a cover-up, there’s actors, they’re manipulating, they’ve been caught lying, and they were pre-planning before it and rolled out with it.”
In December 2014, Jones said on his radio program, “The whole thing is a giant hoax.”
Jones continued: “The general public doesn’t know the school was actually closed the year before. They don’t know they’ve sealed it all, demolished the building. They don’t know that they had the kids going in circles in and out of the building as a photo-op. Blue screen, green screens, they got caught using.”
Making it clear he didn’t view the occurrence of the shooting as an open question, Jones explicitly said that the Obama administration was behind the shooting, noting, “It took me about a year with Sandy Hook to come to grips with the fact that the whole thing was fake.”
Jones made similar comments the following January, saying the shooting was “a synthetic, completely fake with actors, in my view, manufactured. I couldn’t believe it at first. I knew they had actors there, clearly, but I thought they killed some real kids. And it just shows how bold they are that they clearly used actors.”
In July 2015, Jones cast doubt on whether children were actually killed during the shooting, before citing prominent Sandy Hook hoaxer Wolfgang Halbig.
Jones began to spin his past Sandy Hook statements in earnest following the victory of Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election as his past statements came under increased scrutiny because of his association with Trump and his claim that the then-president would appear on his show in the near future.
Despite some contradictory claims he has made about the shooting, Jones has continued to make statements that fuel Sandy Hook conspiracy theories.
