Sandy Hook Parents Are Hitting Alex Jones With Defamation Lawsuits

Three Sandy Hook parents are suing Alex Jones for telling lies about them on his show

Walking garbage dump and conspiracy theory-pushing lunatic Alex Jones has spent years supporting the disgusting lie that the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012 was faked. He’s called the grieving parents of 20 deceased first graders liars and “crisis actors,” and now?

He’s being sued for it.

Citing death threats sent their way, Sandy Hook parents Neil Heslin, who lost his six-year-old son in the massacre, and Leonard Pozner and Veronique De La Rosa, who lost their first grade son as well, filed lawsuits in Austin, Texas where Jones’ show, Infowars, is based. The parents are each seeking over $1 million in damages from Jones, Infowars, and a related company, Free Speech Systems LLC.

Mark Bankston, the lawyer for both families, tells HuffPost, “Even after these folks had to experience this trauma, for the next five years they were tormented by Alex Jones with vicious lies about them. And these lies were meant to convince his audience that the Sandy Hook parents are frauds and have perpetrated a sinister lie on the American people.”

Also named in Heslin’s suit is Infowars reporter Owen Shroyer for a segment he did following an interview between Heslin and NBC’s Megyn Kelly about the father holding his son’s body after he’d died. “I lost my son. I buried my son. I held my son with a bullet hole through his head,” Heslin told Kelly in June 2017.

After the interview aired, Shroyer told Infowars viewers that the grieving dad was lying because Sandy Hook parents had to identify their children through photographs, not in person. He said, “That’s not something you would just misspeak on.”

Heslin’s suit calls Shroyer’s accusations “manifestly false,” as the bodies of Sandy Hook victims were turned over to their families to hold funerals. Can we take a moment to let sink in how positively shameful it is that this man not only lost his son, but has to defend the fact that he held his dead body?

Pozner and De La Rosa’s suit focuses on Jones’ claim that they’re liars. In a segment Jones did based on an interview between De La Rosa and CNN’s Anderson Cooper, he tells absurd and damaging lies about the shooting.

Their lawsuit includes part of a transcript from Jones’ April 2017 broadcast where he made the claims. “So here are these holier than thou people, when we question CNN, who is supposedly at the site of Sandy Hook, and they got in one shot leaves blowing, and the flowers that are around it, and you see the leaves blowing, and they go [gestures]. They glitch. They’re recycling a green-screen behind them.”

In another segment from 2014, Jones told viewers, “Folks, we’ve got video of Anderson Cooper with clear blue-screen out there. He’s not there in the town square. We got people clearly coming up and laughing and then doing the fake crying. We’ve clearly got people where it’s actors playing different parts for different people, the building bulldozed, covering up everything.”

The lawsuit notes that it’s been over five years since the tragedy and, “Mr. Jones continues to push this sick lie about Mrs. De La Rosa and her interview.”

Beyond the twisted nature of Jones’ claims is the fact that some of his viewers buy it. In June 2017, a Florida woman, Lucy Richards, was sentenced to five months in prison for sending death threats to grieving father Pozner. In a voicemail, Richards told him “You gonna die. Death is coming to you real soon.”

Bankston told HuffPost, “I think as a father, it’s a very surreal experience. Anyone, parents or not, who spends 15 minutes talking to one of these parents will understand immediately how vile this lie was, and how genuine their pain is.”

These parents aren’t alone, either. There are other suits against Jones for similar reasons. One from a 24-year-old man, also represented by Bankston, that Jones falsely identified as the Parkland shooter. There’s also a lawsuit from the man who recorded March’s deadly car attack at a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. Jones (of course, inaccurately) labeled him a “deep state shill” and a “CIA asset.”

During a November 2016 segment, Jones even said he’d stop saying such hurtful and false things about Sandy Hook families. But of course, he said it while maintaining that the whole thing could’ve been made up telling viewers, “if children were lost at Sandy Hook, my heart goes out to each and every one of those parents.”

If. He is completely repulsive and needs to be cancelled.

He also said, “The only problem is, I’ve watched a lot of soap operas, and I’ve seen actors before. And I know when I’m watching a movie and when I’m watching something real.”

And we know when we’re watching an evil, lying asshole. Let’s hope these lawsuits are the beginning of the end for Jones and his show.