A representative for conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ Infowars brand returned to the witness stand Thursday for questions about how Jones pushed lies that the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting was a hoax as his companies grew more successful. Brittany Paz, a Connecticut lawyer hired by Jones to testify about his companies’ workings, acknowledged that Jones’ show, website and social media platforms spread falsehoods about the 2012 shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, that killed 20 first graders and six educators. On Thursday, she went over company emails and videos from Jones’ Infowars web show that showed the host and guests claiming the massacre was staged. “He said, ‘Folks, they staged Aurora, they staged Sandy Hook, the evidence is overwhelming.’ Do you remember that?” plaintiffs lawyer Christopher Mattei said, quoting Jones. “I do remember that, yes,” Paz replied. Paz also acknowledge that Jones did not check the qualifications of key guests, including a conspiracy theorist who claimed to be a school security expert who had investigating the 1999 massacre at Columbine High School in Colorado. Jones and his company, Free Speech Systems, have been found liable for damages to relatives of eight victims of the massacre, as well as to an FBI agent who responded to the scene. A six-member jury in Waterbury will determine how much Jones should pay the plaintiffs. At a similar trial in Texas last month, a jury determined Jones and Free Speech Systems should pay nearly $50 million to the parents of one of the Sandy Hook children who died. Website traffic data reports run by Infowars employees and presented at the trial showed Jones’ audience ballooned in the years after the shooting. By 2016, his show aired on 150 affiliate radio stations, and the Infowars website got 40 million page views a month. Paz testified that she believes Jones and his companies have made hundreds of millions of dollars in the decade since the massacre and Jones is now worth millions of dollars. But she could not answer several questions about Jones’ businesses by Mattei, saying she had not received some documents from the companies and could not recall other information. Mattei showed Paz internal Infowars emails between employees sharing Google Analytics data. Paz testified Wednesday that she was told by Infowars employees that they didn’t use Google Analytics regularly to track website viewing data. After showing her the emails, Mattei asked if it was still her testimony that Infowars didn’t regularly use Google Analytics. “I don’t know at this point,” she said. The families’ lawsuit claims that Jones trafficked in lies to increase his audience and sales of the nutritional supplements, clothing and other merchandise he sells on the Infowars website and hawks on his web show. He and guests on his show said the shooting was staged with crisis actors as part of gun control efforts. Jones, however, now says he believes the shooting happened, but he insists his comments were protected by free speech rights, which he cannot argue at trial because he has already been found liable for damages. “We knew they were using Sandy Hook to get the Second, but now they’re using it to kill the First,” he said on his Infowars web show Wednesday. Judges in the Connecticut and Texas cases found Jones liable without trials, as penalties for what […]

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