HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones is facing another defamation lawsuit by families of the victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre for claiming the shooting was a hoax.
Relatives of six of the 26 victims and an FBI agent who responded to the school sued Jones in Bridgeport Superior Court in Connecticut on Wednesday. The families of two other victims filed similar lawsuits last month in Travis County, Texas, where Jones' company, Infowars, is based. The families say Jones' comments have tormented them and subjected them to harassment and death threats.
The suit filed Wednesday also names the financial network that supports him, as well as Wolfgang Halbig. The Florida man has repeatedly promoted the false claim that David Wheeler and FBI agent William Aldenberg are the same person, and that that person is a so-called “crisis actor.”
The plaintiffs are the parents of four children killed at Sandy Hook — Jacqueline and Mark Barden, parents of Daniel; Nicole and Ian Hockley, parents of Dylan; Francine and David Wheeler, parents of Ben; and Jennifer Hensel and Jeremy Richman, parents of Avielle – as well as Donna Soto, Carlee Soto-Parisi, Carlos M. Soto and Jillian Soto, the mother and three siblings (respectively) of first-grade teacher Victoria Leigh Soto and Erica Lafferty-Garbatini, the daughter of Sandy Hook Elementary School Principal Dawn Hochsprung. William Aldenberg, an FBI agent and first responder to the scene, is also a plaintiff.
Jones has frequently promoted the theories of Halbig, who founded a now-defunct defamatory website. Through that site and his social media channels, he regularly questions whether the Sandy Hook massacre actually took place and, more recently, has also begun to question whether the Pulse nightclub and Parkland shootings took place. He frequently solicits donations to help fund his efforts.
