Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones' Sandy Hook defamation trial, explained

• Alex Jones was found guilty of defamation in four suits for his Sandy Hook massacre false claims.
• After much delay, Jones is currently facing trial to see how much he must pay families of victims.

InfoWars host and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones is currently facing a defamation trial for his false claims about the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre being a "hoax." The far-right influencer appeared in court on Tuesday for the start of the two-week trial, despite Jones' lawyer previously saying he might not appear due to unexplained "medical issues."

The jury for this case, which was spearheaded against Jones by parents of children who died in the shooting, will decide how much in monetary damages Jones will pay to them for his comments. The trial is taking place in Travis County District Court in Texas.

Jones was already found guilty in the defamation cases — four separate lawsuits across Texas and Connecticut — last year. The judges ruled against him by default after he refused to supply documents and financial records requested by court orders. Jones exhibited "flagrant bad faith and callous disregard for the responsibilities of discovery under the rules," one judge said.

The history of Jones' Sandy Hook legal battle

The lawsuits against Jones were launched in 2018 and claimed the far-right influencer defamed the parents of victims by calling the shooting a hoax and accusing the people involved of being actors. In reality, it was the deadliest elementary school shooting in US history: 26 people died, including 20 children, in Newtown, Connecticut.

Jones repeated the false claims multiple times after the shooting, and it became a popular refrain among conspiracists. Jones was one of the loudest voices—and the one with the biggest bullhorn—among an entire community of conspiracists propagating false claims about the massacre. The conspiracy theory Jones promoted also led to harassment and threats toward parents; a conspiracy theorist was sentenced to prison in 2017 for allegedly sending death threats to the father of the youngest child killed in the shooting.

Over the years, Jones has changed his tune on the shooting, from calling it a "false flag" event after it happened to baselessly alleging the whole thing was "manufactured" with actors in 2015. He admitted it was real in a sworn deposition in 2019 and said "a form of psychosis" led him to spread the false claims.

The legal battle has been tumultuous. Earlier this year, Jones' InfoWars and two others of his companies filed for bankruptcy, in what the Sandy Hook parents' lawyer previously told Insider was a stalling technique to "delay the inevitable." A couple of months later, in June, Jones ended up dropping the bankruptcy claim after making a deal with the plaintiffs where they would only sue him and one of his companies, Free Speech Systems, which owns InfoWars.

What has happened in the trial so far

It's unclear how much money Jones will have to pay the parents of the victims. A lawyer for one set of parents suing Jones—Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis, whose 6-year-old son Jesse Lewis was slain in the massacre—told the jury on Tuesday that the commentator should give them $150 million.

Jones conducted a "massive campaign of lies" and "recruited wild extremists from fringes of the internet who were willing to be as cruel as Mr. Jones needed them to be," the lawyer, Mark Bankston, told the jury, as Insider reported. Heslin and Lewis experienced "severe emotional distress" from Jones' comments and the resulting harassment it brought upon them, the lawyer said.

Bankston also called Jones' Sandy Hook claims "the most despicable and vile campaign of defamation slander in American history."

Jones, who appeared at the trial on Tuesday, went outside the courtroom during a break and told a crowd of media reporters that the whole thing was "a kangaroo court," "political action," and a "witch hunt," which led Judge Maya Guerra Gamble to issue a warning.

"We're not going to have that again," Gamble told Jones, according to a CNN reporter. "Every participant in this trial... is ordered to be silent out of this courtroom, or if there is any member of the jury in sight."

This trial is expected to last two weeks. Jones will face two additional defamation trials this year to decide how much he must pay the Sandy Hook victims' families in damages. One of the trials will also be in Texas while the other will take place in Connecticut in September.