“And that’s how I do know you lied to me once you stated you didn’t have textual content messages about Sandy Hook,” Bankston stated.
“That is your ‘Perry Mason’ second,” Jones responded, a reference to the fictional lawyer famed for his gorgeous 11th-hour courtroom reveals. “I gave them my cellphone.”
Bankston famous Jones had testified below oath that he personally searched his cellphone for Sandy Hook textual content messages and was unable to seek out any. Bankston requested, “You recognize what perjury is, proper? I simply need to be sure to know earlier than we go any additional.”
Jones denied mendacity, saying, “I’m not a tech man.”
The dramatic second got here as Bankston cross-examined Jones, shortly earlier than closing arguments within the damages section of the defamation trial that started final week in an Austin courtroom. Heslin and Lewis sued in 2018 over the far-right media character’s relentless false claims that the Sandy Hook faculty taking pictures was a “big hoax.”
After Jones’s years-long refusal to adjust to courtroom orders and hand over paperwork and proof in lawsuits, District Choose Maya Guerra Gamble of Travis County, Tex., in September discovered Jones liable for all damages. She issued a default judgment in opposition to Jones, blasting him and his web site’s mum or dad firm, Free Speech Programs, for having “deliberately disobeyed” the courtroom’s requests by refusing to show over paperwork associated to the varied lawsuits in opposition to him.
Whereas confronting Jones in regards to the newly found textual content messages in courtroom Wednesday, Bankston displayed certainly one of them, during which an editor who labored for Jones despatched him a screenshot of an Infowars article claiming a hospital was utilizing dummies in a coronavirus ward. The editor, Paul Watson, wrote that it “makes us look ridiculous” and added, “Sandy Hook over again.” Jones texted again, “I get it.”
Bankston additionally requested about his emails. He famous that Jones had testified he didn’t have any about Sandy Hook as a result of he doesn’t use electronic mail. Jones stated in courtroom, “Sure. I personally don’t get on the web and sit there and use electronic mail. I’ve by no means despatched emails myself. As a result of I don’t prefer it. I can’t stand it. There’s too a lot of them.”
The legal professional then displayed emails he stated Jones had despatched to legal professionals, workers and others about enterprise operations.
Alex Jones, seconds after being instructed that his lawyer mistakenly ship an enormous cache of texts to Sandy Hook households’ legal professional:
“That is your Perry Mason second” pic.twitter.com/f6byn6N6VA
— Invoice Grueskin (@BGrueskin) August 3, 2022
He zeroed-in on messages about Infowars monetary data, which he stated contradicted Jones’s earlier statements in regards to the amount of cash he made. Bankston identified that Jones had claimed he had misplaced tens of millions due to deplatforming and made as much as $200,000 a day. However, he stated, messages on Jones’s cellphone advised Infowars introduced in as a lot as $800,000 on some days. If he saved up that tempo, he stated, it could add as much as about $300 million a yr.
Jones claimed the numbers had been cherry-picked. At one level, as Bankston went over the contents of the cellphone, he scoffed, “That is ridiculous.”
Gamble instructed jurors that what the legal professionals say will not be proof, including that with out proof, it isn’t but recognized whether or not the contents of the cellphone got to the Sandy Hook mother and father’ legal professional by chance.
“However what we do know,” the decide stated, “is that it wasn’t correctly turned over when it ought to have been.”
Regardless of conceding in testimony Wednesday that the 2012 taking pictures was not a hoax however “100 p.c actual,” Jones all through the trial has continued to defend himself from critics of his broadcast program whereas in search of to guard his monetary property from doubtlessly devastating damages that might be awarded to the plaintiffs.
Jones final week made an emergency chapter submitting for Free Speech Programs, simply months after submitting for chapter safety for Infowars and two different enterprise ventures.
The households have stated admissions and apologies from Jones will not be sufficient; they’re in search of not less than $150 million in damages.
A dear damages payout would add to the string of authorized losses for Jones and Infowars since mother and father of Sandy Hook victims started to file defamation fits in 2018, after Jones made repeated claims on his present that the taking pictures was a hoax and the victims had been “disaster actors.” Judges in Connecticut and Texas have issued default judgments in opposition to Jones in a number of fits.
Jones has been sued by not less than 9 Sandy Hook households.
