How much will Alex Jones pay? Trial begins after judge ruled he defamed Sandy Hook parents

AUSTIN, Texas – Jury selection begins Monday in a courtroom in Austin, Texas, for a trial that will determine how much money conspiracy theorist Alex Jones must pay to the family of achild killed in the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut.

This will be the first of three trials – two in Austin, one in Connecticut – to assess monetary penalties for defamation and emotional distress caused when Jones and others in his Austin-based InfoWars media system repeatedly portrayed the mass shooting, which claimed the lives of 20 students and six educators, as a hoax meant to justify a government crackdown on gun rights.

The parents of 6-year-old Jesse Lewis will take the stand to describe what they have called a decade of torment after being labeled liars and government conspirators, leading to harassment by "Sandy Hook deniers" who were spurred on by Jones' portrayals.

The presentation to jurors will focus on the parents, Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis, and their son, giving the family a crucial opportunity to regain control of their story, lawyer Mark Bankston said.

"Jesse was a hero that day. Their son confronted the shooter, yelled for the other children to run, and nine children escaped that classroom because of what Jesse had done," Bankston said. "But (Jones) made it ugly, tarnished it and ruined it. Every time they have to think about the last moments of Jesse's life, they have to think about this terrible man."

The trial and a second Sandy Hook family's case, which might be tried in Austin in mid-September, are taking place under unusual circumstances.

Last year, Jones was found – without a trial – to have defamed both sets of parents when state District Judge Maya Guerra Gamble issued a rarely granted default judgment against Jones, saying his pattern of bad faith in withholding essential information from pretrial discovery improperly imperiled the families' cases. That means jurors in both Austin cases will be asked to determine the size of damage awards to be assessed against Jones; his main company, Free Speech Systems; and InfoWars reporter Owen Shroyer.

In April, Guerra Gamble ordered Jones to pay almost $1.05 million in penalties for violating multiple court orders to provide the pretrial information. Jones challenged the sanctions, but the Austin-based 3rd Court of Appeals rejected his claim July 14.

Jones' lawyer did not respond to a request for comment.

'One date ... and now I'm being sued': Woman sues man for $10K for standing her up on a date

Taco Bell hot water suit: Lawsuit: Dallas Taco Bell manager poured scalding water on customers over incorrect order

In a video posted on the InfoWars website after losing the default judgments, Jones said the Sandy Hook lawsuits were part of a campaign by "the left in this country to weaponize the legal system."

"Every basic form of American liberty is being abolished and overthrown as we speak. They're coming after me because I'm standing in their way," he said.

Jones has ridiculed the proceedings as "show trials" and, in a deposition taken in April, decried the lawsuits as an attempt to subvert his First Amendment rights: "If questioning public events and free speech is banned because it might hurt somebody’s feelings, we are not in America anymore. They can change the channel. They can come out and say I’m wrong. They have free speech."

In a 2019 taped deposition in the Texas cases, however, Jones blamed his Sandy Hook statements on "a form of psychosis" – caused by the media – that had left him believing that mass shootings and other tragedies had been staged.

Jones has said the government orchestrated or failed to prevent numerous tragedies, including the 1995 bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma City; the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon; the 2012 mass shooting inside a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado; the 2013 bombings at the Boston Marathon; and the 2016 mass shooting in the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida.

"So, long before these lawsuits I said that in the past I thought everything was a conspiracy and I would kind of get into that mass group think of the communities that were out saying that," he said. "And so now I see that it’s more in the middle … so that’s where I stand."

Even so, Jones declined to admit that his theories had caused the families pain, saying instead: "You know, it's painful that we have to question big public events. I think that's an essential part of the First Amendment in America. And I do not take responsibility for the entire train of things that lawyers and the media have said I've done."

'This has become these parents' lives'

Lewis and Heslin sued Jones separately in 2018, but their cases have been combined for a single trial.

A jury pool of about 100 will be whittled to 12 jurors and two alternates Monday. Opening statements and the first witnesses are expected Tuesday.

By skipping a trial to prove that Jones defamed the parents and moving directly to the damage awards, Bankston said, he will be able to focus on Jesse, his parents and the hardships imposed by Jones and InfoWars.

"Ten years out from losing their child, people should be able to recover, should be able to find peace. But when your child's violent death turns into a controversy about whether it really existed, when you're forced to legitimize his death, this has become these parents' lives," Bankston said, likening the continuing controversy over Sandy Hook to "a scab being ripped off over and over and over again."

"It's nice that this trial will not be about Mr. Jones and his ideas and all his craziness and the circus he wanted this proceeding to be," Bankston said. "These are people who should have been allowed to heal and move on with their lives."

'Desperate and freaked out'

In multiple InfoWars segments beginning shortly after the shooting and continuing after the first lawsuits were filed by Sandy Hook parents, Jones called the school shooting a hoax and a false flag operation staged by the government as part of a wider "gun grabbing" strategy.

"They staged Sandy Hook. The evidence is just overwhelming, and that’s why I’m so desperate and freaked out," Jones said in an April 2013 video.

Jones also accused the victims' parents of complicity in the staged attack, calling them liars or actors taking part in a fraud on the nation.

Heslin addressed Jones' statements during Megyn Kelly's profile of Jones that aired on NBC in 2017. “I lost my son. I buried my son. I held my son with a bullet hole through his head," Heslin told Kelly.

A week later, according to Helsin's lawsuit, a segment by InfoWars reporter Shroyer argued that it was impossible for Heslin to have held his son and seen his injury based on a timeline of events and statements by the medical examiner who said the slain students were identified using photographs, not in person.

Jones replayed Shroyer's report in July 2017, repeating his skepticism about the Sandy Hook attack and demanding that Heslin clarify what happened.

Heslin filed suit in April 2018, arguing that "a minimal amount of research" would have pointed the InfoWars personalities to news accounts of victims' bodies being released into family custody for funerals that also were widely reported by the media.

"Mr. Jones had cast the attention of his dangerous followers specifically towards Jesse's death and (Heslin's) family," the lawsuit said.

In her lawsuit, Lewis said she had been subjected to harassment and threats from "unhinged" followers of Jones. "Mr. Jones knew that a large collection of Sandy Hook deniers were coordinating their harassment," the lawsuit said.

A two-part trial in Austin

Guerra Gamble ordered a bifurcated trial in the Heslin-Lewis case. The jury first will decide how much money should be awarded for emotional and reputational damage. Afterward, a second proceeding will include testimony on Jones' and Free Speech Systems' net worth, after which jurors will be asked to assess punitive damages.

According to information Jones provided in December as part of the case, he had more than $6.2 million in assets, including three properties worth about $2.35 million and about $458,000 in the bank. He also said he owned $206,000 in cryptocurrency, $150,000 worth of vehicles and an exchange trust with $3.1 million from a home sale in November.

Court documents also showed that the InfoWars online store sold more than $165 million in herbal supplements, videos and other products in three years starting in 2016.

"This does not even account for InfoWars’ numerous other revenue streams, which has included advertisers, click-through promotion revenue, Amazon.com sales, Ebay.com sales, YouTube monetization, donation drives, and others," the parents' lawyers said in a court filing.

In a separate though related legal matter, the two families that sued Jones in Texas accused him of illegally diverting millions of dollars to himself and to shell companies in an effort to hide assets from the courts.

That lawsuit alleged the transfers included $18 million paid directly to Jones, on top of an annual salary that exceeded $600,000, from 2018 to 2021, beginning after the first Sandy Hook lawsuits were filed.

Jones also listed a "dubious" $54 million debt owed to PQPR Holdings, a company that is owned "directly or indirectly by Jones, his parents and his children through an alphabet soup of shell entities," according to the lawsuit, filed in April in District Court in Travis County and still in the early stages of litigation.

Jones also faces trial in Connecticut

The Heslin-Lewis trial, originally set for April, was delayed after Jones sought federal bankruptcy protection for InfoWars and two associated businesses, an effort that could have limited his payouts to the Sandy Hook families.

But after the families dropped InfoWars from their lawsuits – the other two companies had not been sued – the cases were returned to Guerra Gamble, setting the stage for the upcoming trial and another in September for the parents of 6-year-old Noah Pozner.

Separately, families of eight Sandy Hook victims and an FBI agent who responded to the shooting sued Jones in Connecticut, where Superior Court Judge Barbara Bellis also issued a default judgment against Jones for repeatedly defying orders to turn over documents and information to the families' lawyers.

A jury trial to determine damage awards is set to begin Sept. 6, and Bellis last month rejected Jones' request to postpone the trial because of a conflict with the trial set to begin a week later in Austin.

Bellis said her trial had been on the docket for almost a year, adding that any scheduling changes would have to come from the Texas court.