Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones was today found guilty by default in a defamation lawsuit filed by families of Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre victims. Jones claimed that the massacre did not happen and was a fraud contrived to enact gun control legislation. He refused to cooperate with the court, leading to the default judgment.
Superior Court Judge Barbara Bellis said that Jones' refusal to hand over documents and financial records rendered him guilty by default after years of dodging court orders to surrender the papers. The Monday decision in the lawsuits brought by eight families comes weeks after a judge in Texas found Jones liable for damages in three other cases brought by the parents of a pair of students who were killed in the 2012 mass shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, that claimed the lives of 20 first-graders and six educators. The gunman, 20-year-old Adam Lanza, turned the gun on himself after the massacre.
One of the families' lawyers:
"Mr. Jones is very used to saying whatever he wants to say from the comfort of his own studio, but what I think this case has shown is that when he is forced to defend his conduct in a court of law and comply with court orders, that it's a very different ballgame," Mattei said, according to the Hartford Courant.