The defamation trial of Alex Jones continues, and a wild scene unfolded on Thursday as he took the stand.
Jones is accused of defaming parents following the deadly mass shooting of children at Sandy Hook Elementary School in December of 2012. The political personality has already been ordered to pay tens of millions of dollars by a Texas judge, and that looks to be just the beginning.
While testifying in his latest trial, Jones let the questioning lawyer bait him into an outburst that did him no favors. Here’s what the chaos looked like.
If you can’t see the video, what transpires is the lawyer accusing Jones of putting targets on the backs of parents in the audience, using their names. He then turns around and begins to point at one specific parent. Jones gets indignant and says something about Iraqi children that “liberals killed and loved.” Jones then says “is this a struggle session, are we in China?” before stating that he’s “done saying I’m sorry” as the shouting between the two continues.
No matter what you think of this trial, Jones may have just signed a massive check over to the families with that performance. A courtroom, even if a defendant thinks things are happening unfairly, is not talk radio. You lose your cool and you can end up giving the other side the rope to hang you with. I do question why the judge let things get that out of hand, even as objections were being made by Jones’ lawyer. The shouting and accusations being made were definitely argumentative and probably over the line.
Regardless, and I’m going to ruffle some feathers here, Jones is likely guilty of defamation. I know some have turned him into a martyr, but he didn’t just say Sandy Hook didn’t happen. He named names, specifically going after the parents for years. With only having a “preponderance of the evidence” standard in civil suits, I wouldn’t want to be in his shoes. He took things way too far, even when it comes to deranged conspiracy theories, and that has consequences.
I get that some on the right will not agree, but the main defense here seems to be that defamation laws shouldn’t exist at all. If that’s an argument someone wants to make, i.e. total free speech about any topic with zero ability to sue by anyone on any side, then that’s at least intellectually consistent. But defamation laws do exist, and Jones is in a precarious spot before them. That could end up costing him a lot of money.