A Connecticut judge could impose penalties on InfoWars conspiracy theorist Alex Jones on Tuesday, after Jones aired a show where he punched a picture of an attorney representing Sandy Hook families and called the lawyer a “pimp.”
In a motion filed Monday in Connecticut, attorneys for the Sandy Hook families asked the court to review Friday’s episode of InfoWars. In that show, Jones raged at attorney Chris Mattei, who’s representing Sandy Hook families suing Jones for saying the 2012 elementary school massacre never happened.
While sitting next to his own attorney, Norm Pattis, Jones accused Mattei without evidence of planting child porn on InfoWars’s servers.
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“Total war!” Jones said. “You want it, you got it! I’m not into kids like your Democratic Party, you cocksuckers! So get ready!”
While producing emails during the lawsuit’s discovery process, InfoWars accidentally handed over child pornography that had been emailed to the company by one or more anonymous people. The emails were then sent to a company handling document review for the Sandy Hook attorneys, the latest error in a discovery process that InfoWars and Jones have been frequently accused of hindering.
After receiving the images, the Sandy Hook attorneys contacted the FBI, who took over the document review process. In their motion, the attorneys say InfoWars could have avoided forwarding the emails if they had conducted “even minimal due diligence.”
“They transmitted images to the plaintiffs that if they were knowingly possessed is a serious federal crime,” the attorneys say in the motion.
In a statement, Pattis said InfoWars employees hadn’t opened the emails when they were originally received.
“I spoke to federal prosecutors last week,” Pattis said. “They report that there is no indication anyone at InfoWars knowingly possessed child pornography. The items were embedded in emails sent to folks at InfoWars without ever having been opened.”
On his Friday show, Jones concocted a conspiracy theory that Mattei had planted the child porn himself in an attempt to discredit InfoWars. Jones fumed at Mattei, calling him a “white-shoe boy that thinks he owns America.”
Pattis appeared uncomfortable as Jones raged at the plaintiff’s attorney, at one point urging Jones to calm down and referring to Jones as “young man.”
At one point during the show, Jones punched a picture of Mattei. Pattis told Jones to stop showing Mattei’s face on air, adding that they didn’t know who had sent InfoWars the child pornography.
“I didn’t come on your show to be made out to be a naive fool,” Pattis said.
The Sandy Hook attorneys urged the judge in the case to consider action against Jones over the show at a hearing on Tuesday. They haven’t specified yet what kind of action they want, but say in their motion that the court has an “obligation to protect” the lawyers on the case.
