jury selection

Jury selection begins Thursday in Alex Jones’ CT Sandy Hook trial

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.”

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Alex Jones company files for bankruptcy; Sandy Hook defamation trial expected to continue

AUSTIN, Texas – Free Speech Systems, the main company owned by Austin-based conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, has filed for bankruptcy – but a Jones lawyer said the action is not expected to affect a trial underway in Austin in a lawsuit by the parents of a child killed in the 2012 attack on Sandy Hook Elementary School.

Free Speech Systems, which operates Jones’ InfoWars media system, listed $14.3 million in assets, including almost $1.16 million in cash and almost $1.6 million in property and equipment, as of May 31.

But the Austin corporation’s bankruptcy filing also listed $79 million in liabilities, including a $54 million debt owed to PQPR Holdings.

Video: Sandy Hook conspiracist Alex Jones could owe $150 million in defamation case 

A separate lawsuit filed by two Sandy Hook families earlier this year in state court accused Jones of systematically hiding millions of dollars in assets and called the $54 million debt dubious, saying PQPR is a Nevada-registered company that is owned “directly or indirectly by Jones, his parents and his children through an alphabet soup of shell entities.” That lawsuit is still in the early stages.

Alex Jones walks into the courtroom in front of Scarlett Lewis and Neil Heslin, the parents of 6-year-old Sandy Hook shooting victim Jesse Lewis, at the Travis County Courthouse Wednesday, July 27, 2022.

Alex Jones walks into the courtroom in front of Scarlett

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