Infowars host Alex Jones has been sued for defamation by families of six victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School mass killings in 2012, that took the lives of 26 students and teachers, including the first-grade teacher Victoria Leigh Soto, who was teaching her class when Adam Lanza gunned her down along with three other teachers, the school principal and 21 students.
The lawsuit accuses Infowars host Jones, who has repeatedly claimed that the Dec. 14, 2012 Sandy Hook massacre was a hoax and has waged a “years-long campaign of abusive and outrageous false statements.”
“While the nation recoiled at the terrible reality of the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, Alex Jones saw an opportunity,” the families’ attorney Josh Koskoff said. “He went on a sustained attack that has lasted for years, accusing shattered family members of being actors, stating as fact that the shooting itself was a hoax and inciting others to act on these malicious lies.”
The plaintiffs are the mother and siblings of Soto, Erica Lafferty-Garbatini, the daughter of Sandy Hook Elementary School Principal Dawn Hochsprung, the parents of Daniel Barden, the parents of Dylan Hockley, the parents of Ben Wheeler and Jennifer Hensel and Jeremy Richman, the parents of Avielle Richman.
FBI agent Bill Aldenberg, who was identified by Jones and other conspiracy theorists, as an actor paid to play a sniper in the hoax, is also a plaintiff.
The lawsuit, filed in Superior Court in Bridgeport, cites Jones’ public assertions, including one from Sept. 25, 2014, in which he said video from the day of the shooting showed that the same children were cycled in and out of the school and that no emergency helicopters were sent to the school, and were “clearly staged.”
