A judge in Texas ordered InfoWars founder and host Alex Jones to cough up more than $100,000 in court costs and legal fees associated with the defamation case filed against him by the parents of a child slain in the Sandy Hook mass shooting of 2012.
The lawsuit was filed by Neil Heslin, who accused Jones and InfoWars of defaming him after Jones called Heslin’s account of his 6-year-old son Jesse Lewis’s death a lie.
Judge Scott Jenkins of the Travis County District granted Heslin’s motion for legal sanctions against Jones and InfoWars, ordering them to pay $65,825 for “intentionally disregarding” an October court order to provide the plaintiff with documents and witnesses, per the Daily Beast. The judge reasoned that such a failure to cooperate “should be treated as contempt of court.” On the same day, Jenkins issued a ruling denying InfoWars’s motion to dismiss the defamation case and ordered the defendants to pay an additional $34,323.80 in sanctions.
The defendants have been ordered to pay a total of $126,023.80 ahead of a trial.
One of Heslin’s attorneys, Mark Bankston, said it was “hardly a surprise that someone like Alex Jones would soon find himself in contempt of court, but now he is learning there are severe consequences to his utter disrespect for this process.”
“If Mr. Jones had simply accepted responsibility for his reckless lies and years of illegal harassment, this all could have been avoided. Instead, Mr. Jones seems to prefer exiting into the dustbin of history in the most expensive and embarrassing way possible,” he told the Daily Beast in a statement.
Bankston, in a statement to the New York Times, also called Jones’s behavior “desperate.”
“In disobeying court orders, Mr. Jones has shown how desperate he is to ensure nobody finds out how Infowars really operates, or the lengths the company went to carry out its five-year campaign of malicious harassment against these parents,” he said.
Bankston said he expected a trial in the defamation case to happen before the end of 2020.
[image via Infowars screenshot]
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