Alex Jones, a right-wing media personality behind the Infowars brand, filed a federal libel lawsuit against The Young Turks media group and a congressional candidate Wednesday.
Robert Barnes, a lawyer representing Mr. Jones, sued The Young Turks and House of Representative hopeful Brianna Wu, a Democrat from Massachusetts, for claiming that his client sent child pornography to attorneys suing him in a separate case.
“These were all lies and libel, and actionable under the law as defamation per se,” Mr. Barnes wrote in a nine-page complaint filed in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas. He has requested a jury trial and judgment to be determined.
The libel suit stems from a case brought against Mr. Jones in Connecticut by lawyers for relatives of victims killed in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in 2012. Mr. Jones previously referred to the massacre as a “hoax,” leading attorneys for the victims’ relatives to sue him for defamation.
Mr. Jones, 45, said in June that lawyers representing plaintiffs in the Sandy Hook case found child porn in emails that his attorneys had shared during the pretrial discovery phase. Federal investigators have since concluded that the emails had been sent to Infowars and were not opened prior to being provided to the plaintiffs, Mr. Barnes wrote in the complaint.
The Young Turks and Ms. Wu each said on social media that Mr. Jones sent the child porn. They were subsequently asked to retract the remarks and were sued when they refused, according to Ms. Barnes.
“Defendants knowingly falsely accused Jones of a federal felony of the most public infamy: possessing & transmitting child pornography directly to the families of the victims of a school shooting. Defendants knew Jones never possessed it, never transmitted it, was not even the party providing the email discovery, and nothing was ever sent to Sandy Hook victim families,” Mr. Barnes wrote in the complaint.
Ms. Wu indicated in a statement posted on Twitter that she plans to fight the lawsuit, tweeting: “If the Sandy Hook parents can stand up to Alex Jones, I can too.”
The Young Turks did not immediately respond to a message requesting comment.
Mr. Jones, a radio host and internet publisher based in Austin, Texas, achieved notoriety in 2018 after being banned from several major internet platforms, including Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, amid complaints about his comments involving Sandy Hook and other subjects. He famously interviewed President Trump on his talk show in 2015 and has frequently collaborated with Roger Stone, Mr. Trump’s indicted former election campaign adviser.
• Andrew Blake can be reached at ablake@washingtontimes.com.
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