Defense rests in Alex Jones defamation case

The defense team for Infowars founder Alex Jones rested its case in the defamation lawsuit against its client. 

A family whose son was fatally shot in the 2012 Sandy Hook massacre is suing Jones for at least $150 million in damages in connection with his claim that the mass shooting never happened. 

Twenty children and six adults were killed in the shooting that Jones called a hoax.

While Jones was on the stand Wednesday, lawyers for the plaintiff said that they had evidence proving Jones perjured himself throughout the trial. 

“Your attorneys messed up and sent me a digital copy of your entire cellphone, with every text message you’ve sent for the past two years,” said plaintiff attorney Mark Bankston.

The messages allegedly show Jones lied when asked whether he had any text messages in which he discussed Sandy Hook. 

Bankston also said that he notified Jones’ lawyers upon receipt of the text messages but they didn’t take any steps to label the information as privileged, which would have made it inadmissible. 

“This is not your show,” Judge Maya Guerra Gamble told Jones. “Your beliefs do not make something true. You are under oath.”

“If I was mistaken, I was mistaken,” Jones said in response to the text messages but denied deliberately lying under oath. 

Jones also said in the Texas courtroom that he now believes the shooting was real. He had prior to the trial apologized for his comments.

“Especially since I’ve met the parents. It’s 100% real,” Jones testified. “I never intentionally tried to hurt you. I never said your name until this came to court,” he told the parents.

Jones’ testimony followed that of plaintiffs, Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis, whose son, Jesse Lewis, was murdered by the shooter in his first-grade classroom. 

“I am a mother first and foremost, and I know you are a father. My son existed,” Lewis said to Jones. “I am not deep state ... I know you know that ... And yet you’re going to leave this courthouse and say it again on your show.”

Both parents testified that they have received death threats and been confronted on the street by supporters of Jones. 

“I can’t even describe the last nine and a half years, the living hell that I and others have had to endure because of the recklessness and negligence of Alex Jones,” Heslin said.

Heslin and Lewis are just one part of a long list of Sandy Hook families that have allegedly been subjected to harassment by Jones’ followers. The jury heard recordings of apparent death threats sent to another family in the courtroom. 

The suit is the first of three filed against Jones, who has said on his show that he plans to file for bankruptcy, tying the families into years of litigation.