Alex Jones has asked a Connecticut judge to overturn a nearly $1 billion decision against him and order a new trial in a lawsuit filed by Sandy Hook families, who claim they were harassed and threatened by Jones’ claims about the 2012 Newtown school shooting.
Jones submitted the motions on Friday, claiming that the pre-trial orders of Judge Barbara Bellis contributed to an unfair trial and a “serious miscarriage of justice.”
The attorneys for Jones, Norm Pattis and Kevin Smith, wrote in the request, “In addition, the award of compensatory damages surpasses any rational nexus to the evidence presented at trial.”
Christopher Mattei, the attorney for the 15 plaintiffs in the action against Jones, declined to comment on the filing on Saturday, but said he and other attorneys representing the Sandy Hook family will file a brief challenging Jones’ motion.
The attack on Sandy Hook Elementary School on December 14, 2012, claimed the lives of twenty first-graders and six educators.
An FBI agent who responded to the shooting and relatives of eight children and adults killed in the massacre filed a lawsuit against Jones for defamation and infliction of emotional distress due to his promotion of the false narrative that the shooting was a hoax perpetrated by “crisis actors” in an effort to increase gun control.
Six jurors in Waterbury, Connecticut, on October 12 ordered Jones and his company, Free Speech Systems, to pay $965 million in compensatory damages and punitive damages to the plaintiffs. Bellis has scheduled hearings to assess the amount of punitive damages for the beginning of next month.
During the trial, relatives of the victims stated in often-emotional testimony that they were hounded and intimidated for years by those who accepted the falsehoods on Jones’ show. Strangers recorded the families in their homes and challenged them in public. On social media, individuals flung insults. Relatives reported receiving threats of homicide and rape.
In August, a jury in Texas ordered Jones and his company to pay nearly $50 million in damages to the parents of another child killed at Sandy Hook. A third trial involving two additional parents from Sandy Hook is anticipated to be held in Texas at the end of the year.
Jones, who has accepted that the shooting did occur in recent years, has criticized the lawsuits and trials on his Austin, Texas-based Infowars show, calling them unfair and a violation of his free speech rights.
However, he forfeited his opportunity to submit these defenses when judges in Connecticut and Texas declared him liable for damages by default without a trial, citing Jones’ repeated refusals to turn over certain evidence, including financial documents and website analytics, to the Sandy Hook attorneys.
With responsibility previously established, the trials in both states focused only on determining the amount of damages Jones should pay.
Jones’ attorney, Pattis, stated in documents filed on Friday that there was a lack of clear evidence linking Jones to the individuals who harassed and threatened the Sandy Hook relatives. Pattis stated that the trial was more like a burial ceremony than a trial.
“Yes, the family in this case suffered brutally because their children were murdered,” Pattis said, adding that Jones did not send individuals to harass and threaten the families.
“No credible evidence was presented at this trial that he ever did,” he wrote. “Instead, there was a stunning exploitation of a disciplinary infraction and its transformation into a series of half-truths that mislead a jury and resulted in significant injustice.”