Alex Jones ordered to pay Sandy Hook parents more than $4M
A Texas jury on Thursday ordered conspiracy theorist Alex Jones to pay more than $4 million in compensatory damages to the parents of a 6-year-old boy who was killed in the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre, marking the first time the Infowars host has been held financially liable for repeatedly claiming the deadliest school shooting in U.S. history was a hoax. The Austin jury must still decide how much the Infowars host must pay in punitive damages to Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis, whose son Jesse Lewis was among the 20 children and six educators who were killed in the 2012 attack in Newtown, Connecticut. The parents had sought at least $150 million in compensation for defamation and intentional infliction of emotional distress. Jones’ attorney asked the jury to limit damages to $8 — one dollar for each of the compensation charges they are considering — and Jones himself said any award over $2 million “would sink us.” It likely won’t be the last judgment against Jones over his claims that the attack was staged in the interests of increasing gun controls. A Connecticut judge has ruled against him in a similar lawsuit brought by other victims’ families and an FBI agent who worked on the case. The Texas award could set a marker for other cases against Jones and underlines the financial threat he’s facing. It also raises new questions about the ability of Infowars — which has been banned from YouTube, Spotify, and Twitter for hate speech — to continue operating, although the company’s finances remain unclear. Jones, who has portrayed the lawsuit as an attack on his First Amendment rights, conceded during the trial that the attack was “100% real” and that he was wrong to have lied about it. But Heslin and Lewis told jurors that an apology wouldn’t suffice and called on them to make Jones pay for the years of suffering he has put them and other Sandy Hook families through. The parents testified Tuesday about how they’ve endured a decade of trauma, inflicted first by the murder of their son and what followed: gunshots fired at a home, online and phone threats, and harassment on the street by strangers. They said the threats and harassment were all fueled by Jones and his conspiracy theory spread to his followers via his website Infowars. A forensic psychiatrist testified that the parents suffer from “complex post-traumatic stress disorder” inflicted by ongoing trauma, similar to what might be experienced by a soldier at war or a child abuse victim. At one point in her testimony, Lewis looked directly at Jones, who was sitting barely 10 feet away. “It seems so incredible to me that we have to do this — that we have to implore you, to punish you — to get you to stop lying,” Lewis told Jones. Jones was the only witness to testify in his defense. And he came under withering attack from the plaintiff’s attorneys under cross-examination, as they reviewed Jones’ own video claims about Sandy Hook over the years, and accused him of lying and trying to hide evidence, including text messages and emails about the attack. It also included internal emails sent by an Infowars employee that said, “this Sandy Hook stuff is killing us.” At one point, Jones was told that his attorneys had mistakenly sent Mark Bankston, who is representing Heslin and Lewis, the last two years’ worth of texts from Jones’ cellphone. Bankston said in court Thursday that the U.S. House January 6 committee investigating the 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol has requested the records and that he intends to comply. And shortly after Jones declared, “I don’t use email,” Jones was shown one that came from his address, and another one from an Infowars business officer telling Jones that the company had earned $800,000 gross in selling its products in a single day, which would amount to nearly $300 million in a year. Jones’ media company Free Speech Systems, which is Infowars’ parent company, filed for bankruptcy during the two-week trial. Republished with the permission of The Associated Press.
Why won’t Donald Trump condemn white nationalism?
Why doesn’t President Donald Trump just unequivocally condemn white supremacists? It’s a jarring question to ask about an American president. But it’s also one made unavoidable by Trump’s delayed, blame-both-sides response to the violence that erupted Saturday when neo-Nazis, skinheads and members of the Ku Klux Klan protested in Charlottesville, Virginia. Trump has faced such a moment before — one that would have certainly drawn swift, almost predictable condemnations from his recent predecessors, regardless of party. As a candidate and now as president, when racial tensions flared or fringe groups rallied around his message, Trump has shown uncharacteristic caution and a reluctance to distance himself from the hate. At times, his approach has seemingly inflamed racial tensions in a deeply divided country while emboldening groups long in the shadows. On Saturday, as Trump read slowly through a statement about the clashes that left dozens injured and one woman dead, he condemned hatred, bigotry and violence “on many sides.” The president was silent when journalists asked whether he rejected the support of nationalists’ groups. That silence was cheered by the white supremacist website Daily Stormer: “When asked to condemn, he just walked out of the room. Really, really good. God bless him.” Trump denies that he’s racist or sympathetic to such groups. Son-in-law Jared Kushner, the grandson of Holocaust survivors, and daughter Ivanka, who converted to Judaism, are among those who have defended the president against those charges. Still, he has a history of engaging in high-profile, racially fraught battles. Early in his career as a developer, Trump fought charges of bias against blacks seeking to rent at his family-owned apartment complexes. He long promoted the lie that the nation’s first black president, Barack Obama, was not born in the United States. As a candidate, he proposed temporarily banning Muslims from the United States. He retweeted a post from accounts that appeared to have ties to white nationalist groups. And he was slow to reject the endorsement of former KKK leader David Duke. Some of the president’s friends and advisers have argued that Trump is simply refusing to bend to liberals’ desire for political correctness. A boastful, proudly disruptive politician, Trump often has been rewarded for saying impolite and impolitic things. Some supporters cheered him for being someone who said what they could not. Democrats frequently assert that Trump sees a political advantage in courting the support of the far right. Indeed, he has benefited politically from the backing of media outlets such as Breitbart or InfoWars. They have consistently promoted Trump and torn down his opponents, sometimes with biased or inaccurate reports. Charlottesville’s mayor, Democrat Mike Signer, said Sunday that Trump made a choice during his campaign to “go right to the gutter, to play on our worst prejudices.” “I think you are seeing a direct line from what happened here this weekend to those choices,” Singer said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” White House senior adviser Steve Bannon ran Breitbart before joining Trump’s campaign, and several of the president’s other aides believe Bannon continues to have influence over the website. In “Devil’s Bargain,” a new book about his role in the Trump campaign, Bannon is quoted as saying that attempts by Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton to tie Trump to the alt-right and nationalists did not move voters. “We polled the race stuff and it doesn’t matter,” Bannon said, according to the book. But there here’s no reliable public polling on the scope of Trump’s support among those with white nationalist leanings or the percentage of the electorate they comprise. The reaction from Republicans following Trump’s statement Saturday suggests there may be greater political risks for the president in aligning himself with bigoted groups. “The president needs to step up today and say what it is,” said Sen. Cory Gardner, R-Colo., who was one of several GOP lawmakers urging Trump to be more strident in calling out the nationalists and neo-Nazis that gathered in Charlottesville. Gardner said plainly: “It’s evil. It’s white nationalism.” By Sunday, the White House was scrambling to try to clean up the president’s statement. The White House issued a statement saying the president does condemn “white supremacists, KKK, neo-Nazi and all extremist groups.” The spokeswoman who issued the statement refused to be named. And the president himself remained silent. Republished with permission of The Associated Press.
Newtown schools ask Donald Trump to reject conspiracy theorists
Members of the Newtown Board of Education hoped a newly elected President Donald Trump would speak out against a famous conspiracy theorist and others who question the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre. Two months later, they have yet to receive a response. The school board sent a one-page letter in February, asking Trump to denounce the lies because the comments of those who deny what happened are still hurting the community, said Keith Alexander, board chairman. The letter singled out Alex Jones, a radio host whose “Infowars” programming has alleged the massacre was a hoax. As a candidate, Trump voiced admiration for Jones during a December 2015 interview, telling Jones: “Your reputation is amazing. I will not let you down.” The school board wrote to Trump: “We are asking you to intervene to try to stop Jones and other hoaxers like him,” urging him to “clearly and unequivocally” recognize that 20 children and six adults were killed at the school more than four years ago. In response to questions from The Associated Press about the school board’s letter, the White House said: “President Trump has been quite clear that we, as a nation, are united in condemning hate and evil in all its forms.” Messages were left seeking comment with Jones through the Infowars website and the radio network that produces his show. Alexander said the school board had not heard back from Trump as of this week. “I do hope that we will receive a direct response at some point,” he said. In the days following the mass shooting, Trump used Twitter to express condolences to the Newtown families, saying it was “heartbreaking ” to see the photos of the young Sandy Hook victims and saying “it was a horrible day for Newtown, CT and our country.” Since the shooting on Dec. 14, 2012, several victims’ relatives have been accosted or harassed by conspiracy theorists, including some who say it was staged to erode support for gun rights. The question of how to address conspiracy theorists has been a sensitive one in Newtown. Many don’t want to talk about it publicly, fearing it will stir up more provocations. One parent whose child was killed at Sandy Hook, and who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of the fear of harassment, said many victims’ families opposed the letter being sent to Trump for that reason. Leonard Pozner, whose 6-year-old son Noah was killed in the shooting, once had a caller leave a voicemail message telling him: “You gonna die, death is coming to you real soon.” A Florida woman has been criminally charged in connection with voicemail and email threats to Pozner. A man accused of approaching the sister of slain Sandy Hook teacher Victoria Soto and angrily claiming the massacre hadn’t happened was sentenced a year ago to two years of probation. A Newtown teacher told a court in September that he had brought a weapon to school because he feared for his safety after receiving threats from conspiracy theorists. Pozner said he doubts the school board’s appeal to Trump will do much to sway anybody who believes the shooting that killed his son was some kind of hoax. “I don’t think the president can do anything about this conspiracy theory, even if he wanted to,” Pozner said. “The origin of conspiracy theories is a mistrust of government.” While he believes there is little any government official can do, Pozner has been working since 2015 to keep conspiracy theories from gaining such prominence on the internet. His HONR Network encourages the public to contact advertisers on Google and social networks to raise awareness of how ad revenue is being used to support false news. Alexander said the school board sent the letter in hope that it would help. “The town of Newtown suffered a tragedy that brought with it more than its own direct consequences and the comments of those who deny the events only further harm our community,” he said. “I believe the board of education action was intended to limit further harm from that behavior.” Republished with permission of The Associated Press.
Media the enemy? Donald Trump sure is an insatiable consumer
Before most people are out of bed, Donald Trump is watching cable news. With Twitter app at the ready, the man who condemns the media as “the enemy of the people” may be the most voracious consumer of news in modern presidential history. Trump usually rises before 6 a.m. and first watches TV in the residence before later moving to a small dining room in the West Wing. A short time later, he’s given a stack of newspapers — including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times, The Washington Post and, long his favorite, The New York Post — as well as pile of printed articles from other sources including conservative online outlets like Breitbart News. The TVs stay on all day. The president often checks in at lunch and again in the evening, when he retires to the residence, cellphone in hand. It is a central paradox of the Trump presidency. Despite his fervent media criticism, Trump is a faithful newspaper reader who enjoys jousting with reporters, an avid cable TV news viewer who frequently live-tweets what he’s watching, and a reader of websites that have been illuminated by his presidential spotlight, showcasing the at-times conspiratorial corners of the internet. No recent president has been so public about his interest in his media coverage, nor seemed so willing to mobilize the powers of the federal government based on a media report that he has just read, heard or watched. In fact, the power of Trump’s media diet is so potent that White House staffers have, to varying degrees of success, tried to limit his television watching and control some of what he reads. The president’s cable TV menu fluctuates. Fox News is a constant, and he also frequently watches CNN despite deriding it as “fake news.” Though he used to watch “Morning Joe,” a Trump aide said the president has grown frustrated with his coverage on the MSNBC program and has largely stopped. For Trump, watching cable is often an interactive experience. More than dozen times since his election, he has tweeted about what he saw on TV just minutes before. On Nov. 29, he posted about instituting potentially unconstitutional penalties for burning the American flag 30 minutes after Fox ran a segment on the subject. On Jan. 24, he threatened to “send in the Feds!” to Chicago a short time after watching a CNN segment on violence in the city. On Feb. 6, after CNN reported about a “Saturday Night Live” skit on the increasing power of the president’s advisers, Trump just 11 minutes later tweeted, “I call my own shots, largely based on an accumulation of data, and everyone knows it!” On Tuesday, Trump tweeted five different times about the news of the day being discussed on his preferred morning show, “Fox & Friends.” MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, a frequent Trump critic, told The Associated Press that she finds it “unsettling” that Trump “may be getting most of his understanding of the world based on whatever he stumbles upon on cable.” While pleased that Trump is following the media, Maddow noted that “the White House is designed as an instrument to feed the president of the United States expertly curated and highly selective, well-vetted information from every corner of the world.” Others note the president is there may be some smart politics behind Trump’s media diet. He “advertised getting his news the same way his supporters do, which helps make a connection,” said Tobe Berkovitz, a communications professor at Boston University. The president’s advisers try to curb his cable consumption during the workday. But there are no limits when he returns to the residence. He also avidly watches his own staff’s TV performances, including White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer‘s daily briefing. Aides have been known to shape their public comments to please the president or try to influence him. Trump’s consumption of cable news differs considerably from previous commanders in chief, who have at least claimed to be disconnected from the cable chatter. Jay Carney, White House press secretary under Barack Obama, has claimed that Obama “doesn’t watch cable news,” though that did not keep the former president from criticizing the medium. Where Trump differs most from his presidential predecessors is his reliance on getting news online — even though he rarely uses a computer and prefers aides to print out articles for him to read. What he was seeing on Twitter and conservative websites like the Drudge Report and the conspiracy-laden Infowars helped forge his political persona — and his public misinformation campaign questioning whether Obama was born in the United States. And social media has become a way for some news sources to gain an audience with the president. Last Thursday, as questions swirled around contacts between Attorney General Jeff Sessions and the Russian ambassador, a Reddit user posted a picture of Russian President Vladimir Putin and New York Sen. Charles Schumer from a 2003 photo op. Two hours later, the blog The Gateway Pundit reprinted the photo with the headline “Where’s the Outrage?” The image careened across the internet from an Infowars editor’s post to the Drudge Report to Trump’s own Twitter account as he delivered that outrage, demanding an investigation into Schumer’s alleged ties to Putin. That wasn’t the only time last week when Trump put the White House stamp on a theory that originated on the edges of the conservative movement. Radio host Mark Levin voiced without evidence the idea that Obama had wiretapped Trump Tower. That accusation was picked up the next day by Breitbart News, the site formerly run by Trump’s current chief strategist Steve Bannon. An aide placed that piece in Trump’s daily reading pile, said a White House official, who like other aides would not be named discussing the president’s private routine. Fueled by that report on Saturday, Trump unleashed a series of jaw-dropping tweets that accused his predecessor of spying on him. “It’s not the normal Beltway echo chamber. This is a
