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Sandy Hook Families Sue Alex Jones For Denying Massacre

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Anders Hagstrom Justice Reporter
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Parents of victims who died in the 2012 Sandy Hook elementary school massacre filed a defamation lawsuit against Alex Jones and Info Wars Monday over claims that the shooting was a hoax.

The pair of lawsuits come from Neil Heslin, the father of victim Jesse Lewis, and Leonard Pozner and Veronique De La Rosa, the parents of victim Noah Pozner, the Hartford Courant reported Tuesday. Both lawsuits demand $1 million in compensation for Jones’ alleged claim that the shooting was staged and that the parents were paid crisis actors.

“This conspiracy theory, which has been pushed by InfoWars and Mr. Jones since the day of the shooting, alleges that the Sandy Hook massacre did not happen, or that it was staged by the government and concealed using actors, and that the parents of the victims are participants in a horrifying cover-up,” the suits read.

The plaintiff points to one episode of the “The Alex Jones Show” in which Jones claims CNN used several green screens to cover the shooting’s aftermath. The plaintiffs argue the “glitches” he pointed to were the result of video compression.

The suits also cite the case of Lucy Richards, a Florida woman who was convinced by Jones’ conspiracy theory and was sentenced to five months in prison for threatening Pozner. The suit isn’t the first to blame Jones for pushing conspiracy theories that result in his fans sending threats to supposed conspirators.

Brennan Gilmore, a Foreign Services Officer shared a video of a vehicle striking a woman at the Charlottesville white supremacist rally in 2017, triggering Jones to claim that he was actually an undercover CIA operative who had helped stage the event as a strike against President Donald Trump.

Jones responded to the Sandy Hook lawsuit with a 10-minute statement Monday, claiming he did acknowledge that the massacre happened.

“I believe Sandy Hook happened and early on I was being bullied by internet folks and others to say nobody died, and when I wouldn’t say nobody died in the debates and I would actually side with those who said people did die, they would say I was a government agent that I was a crisis actor,” Jones said on his radio show.

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