The families of Sandy Hook victims suing Alex Jones scored a legal victory Friday when a judge granted their discovery requests, providing them with access to internal marketing and financial documents from his online radio site InfoWars.
The Connecticut judge will now have to decide by next week whether to allow the attorneys for the six families involved in the lawsuit to depose Jones, according to ABC News.
{mosads}Jones is being sued for defamation by the plaintiffs over his statements questioning whether the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting was a hoax and whether the children were “crisis actors.”
Jones has previously argued that defamation cases against him should be dismissed because he was acting as a journalist during his coverage of the Sandy Hook shooting, comparing himself to the veteran journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, who helped break the Watergate scandal.
The plaintiffs, comprised of the families of four of the children killed and of two of the educator victims, have said that Jones perpetuated a “monstrous, unspeakable lie: that the Sandy Hook shooting was staged and that the families who lost loved ones that day are actors who faked their relatives’ deaths,” according to ABC.
Jones is attempting to dismiss the lawsuit with a similar argument to the one they’ve used previously.
“Plaintiffs suffered a horrible tragedy,” his defense attorney, Jay M. Wolman, wrote in a motion to dismiss the lawsuit, ABC reported.
“Alex Jones and InfoWars are not responsible for this tragedy. To punish them for First Amendment protected speech on this matter of public concern will not bring back the lives lost.”
Updated at 4:11 p.m.