Judge orders Alex Jones and InfoWars to pay $100,000 in Sandy Hook legal fees

A Texas judge has ordered InfoWars founder Alex Jones to pay $100,000 in legal fees in a defamation case brought against him by the father of a Sandy Hook school shooting victim, the latest court setback for the conspiracy theorist.

In a Dec. 20 ruling, Judge Scott Jenkins of Travis County District Court said that Jones and his lawyer intentionally disregarded an October court order to produce witnesses and other materials to the plaintiff in the lawsuit, Neil Heslin.

Jenkins said the defense’s failure to cooperate “should be treated as contempt of court.” In two separate orders issued the same day, the judge told Jones to pay $65,825 and $34,323 in lawyer fees incurred by Heslin. He also denied Jones’ motion to dismiss the lawsuit, which argues that Jones and InfoWars defamed Heslin by calling his account of his son’s death a lie.

Heslin lost his son, Jesse Lewis, 6, in the December 2012 shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, in which a heavily-armed gunman killed 20 first graders and six educators before taking his own life.

“Mr. Jones is learning that he cannot treat the courts with the same contempt he showed my clients,” Mark Bankston, Heslin’s lawyer, said in an email Monday night.

“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.”

The Daily Beast first reported the ruling against Jones, who is facing lawsuits on a number of fronts filed by several families of the victims.

A lawyer listed for Jones and his InfoWars website did not immediately respond to requests for comment Monday night.

Jones has used his platform to spread the false narrative that the Sandy Hook school shooting was a hoax or “false flag,” an event staged by the government as part of an effort to confiscate Americans’ firearms, and that the parents of the children killed were “crisis actors.”

Bankston said he expected a trial in the defamation case to be scheduled before the end of next year.