Infowars founder Alex Jones has reportedly hired lawyers who also represent a neo-Nazi to defend him against defamation claims filed by the families of seven children who were killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.
Jones has claimed that the massacre, which resulted in 20 children and six adults being killed, was a hoax, and that the families being interviewed in the media were “crisis actors.”
{mosads}The New York Times reported on Tuesday that Jones has hired Marc Randazza and Jay Wolman of the Las Vegas-based Randazza Legal Group. The Times notes that those lawyers also represent Andrew Anglin, the co-founder of a neo-Nazi website known as the Daily Stormer.
Anglin is currently being sued after followers of his website subjected a Montana women to an onslaught of anti-Semitic slurs and threats.
Jones is seeking to have all the lawsuits brought against him dismissed. In addition to the lawsuits brought on by families in Connecticut, Jones also faces two in Texas. Those lawsuits are seeking more than $1 million in damages from Jones, InfoWars and Free Speech Systems LLC.
A district court judge in Travis County, Texas, scheduled a hearing for the first of the Texas lawsuits to take place on Aug. 1, the Times noted.
The suits pose a formidable legal threat to Jones’s business.
“We are going to be mounting a strong First Amendment defense and look forward to this being resolved in a civil and collegial manner,” Randazza told the newspaper. He added that Jones has “a great deal of compassion for these parents.”
Jones has repeatedly created conspiracies regarding the Sandy Hook shooting, which occurred on Dec. 14, 2012. In 2016, he said, “I’ve watched a lot of soap operas, and I’ve seen actors before. And I know when I’m watching a movie and when I’m watching something real.”