Isaac Brekken / The New York Times
Attorney Marc Randazza, who was hired to defend conservative conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, is shown in Las Vegas, Aug. 17, 2017. Media law experts say defamation cases brought by families of nine shooting victims put Jones and his online InfoWars empire at “great risk.”
Wednesday, July 4, 2018 | 2 a.m.
Alex Jones, an online conspiracy theorist who claims the Sandy Hook massacre that killed 20 children and six adults was a hoax, has hired lawyers representing a founder of the neo-Nazi Daily Stormer website to defend him against defamation claims brought in Connecticut by families of seven Sandy Hook victims.
Since days after the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, Jones has spread bogus theories that the families were “crisis actors” in a government plot to confiscate Americans’ firearms. The families have endured online abuse, physical confrontations and death threats from Jones’ devotees.
Marc Randazza and Jay Wolman of the Las Vegas-based Randazza Legal Group are defending Jones in Connecticut. The lawyers also represent Andrew Anglin, the co-founder of the Daily Stormer, who is being sued for harassment by a Montana woman after Daily Stormer followers subjected her to a torrent of anti-Semitic slurs and threats. Anglin has cited Jones as an early influence.
Jones is also facing lawsuits filed in Texas by the families of two other Sandy Hook victims, but he has different lawyers there. Together, the nine lawsuits pose a significant legal threat to his InfoWars empire, First Amendment lawyers say.
Jones, who has been using his InfoWars radio show and YouTube channels to broadcast the false claim, is seeking to have all of the lawsuits dismissed.
Randazza has appeared on Jones’ radio show and in InfoWars videos. In a brief telephone interview, he acknowledged opinions by First Amendment lawyers not involved in the cases that the Sandy Hook families have a strong claim against Jones. “I think if you look at the allegations in the complaint, that’s an easy conclusion to make,” Randazza said. “But as these cases progress sometimes things turn in the other direction.”
“We are going to be mounting a strong First Amendment defense and look forward to this being resolved in a civil and collegial manner,” he said, asserting that Jones has “a great deal of compassion for these parents.”
On his website, Jones has suggested that the victims’ parents took part in an elaborate hoax, saying, “I’ve watched a lot of soap operas, and I’ve seen actors before.”
Since founding InfoWars in 1999, Jones has drawn a vast audience with bizarre theories, including that American terrorist attacks and mass shootings are “inside jobs,” and that the government lines juice boxes with hormones that make children gay.
“Alex Jones has built an opportunistic empire on the backs of families trying to pick up the pieces from shattering loss,” Joshua Koskoff, a partner at Koskoff, Koskoff & Bieder of Bridgeport, Connecticut, the firm representing Sandy Hook families in the Connecticut lawsuits, said in a statement.
Jones did not respond to requests for comment.
Last week a District Court judge in Travis County, Texas, set Aug. 1 as a hearing date for the first of the Texas lawsuits. That one was filed in April by the parents of Noah Pozner, who was 6 when he was killed at Sandy Hook.
Mark Bankston of Farrar & Ball, the Houston-based firm representing the Sandy Hook parents in the Texas lawsuits, said in an email that the firm was eager to “finally hold Mr. Jones accountable for his malicious lies,” adding, “There are no more excuses for Mr. Jones to hide behind. Now he must answer to the law.”
