NEWTOWN — Just days after a Texas jury decided Alex Jones should pay $49.2 million in defamation damages to parents of a slain Sandy Hook boy, a new trial for other families Jones defamed will begin in Waterbury on Thursday with jury selection.
News that jury selection will begin in a trial that will determine how much Jones should pay eight Sandy Hook families and an FBI agent he defamed comes one day after a federal judge in Bridgeport stripped Jones of protection he was seeking when he put the parent company of his conspiracy merchandising platform Infowars into bankruptcy.
At stake is the future of Jones as the face of America’s conspiracy community and the fate of 15 people Jones defamed when he called the 2012 shooting of 20 first-graders and six educators at Sandy Hook Elementary School “staged,” “synthetic,” “manufactured,” “a giant hoax,” and “completely fake with actors.”
“I am looking forward to taking this to the jury,” said Norm Pattis, a high-profile New Haven attorney who is running Jones’ defense in Connecticut. “We have heard what the plaintiff’s have had to say about this case ad nauseam, and now we want to hear what the jury says.”