Judge reprimands Alex Jones for speaking to the media after he called the Sandy Hook defamation trial a 'witch hunt' during a break in the court hearings

• A Texas judge admonished Alex Jones for speaking with reporters during a break in his defamation trial.
• "We're not going to have that again," District Judge Maya Guerra Gamble told Jones when he returned to court.

A Texas judge reprimanded far-right conspiracy theorist and InfoWars founder Alex Jones for speaking to reporters during a break in his Sandy Hook defamation trial on Tuesday.

"We're not going to have that again," Travis County District Court Judge Maya Guerra Gamble told Jones.

CNN reporter Oliver Darcy reported that Gamble continued: "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."

Bridget Spencer, a reporter for local station WAPP, tweeted a video showing Jones interacting with the media during a short break in his trial. Jones railed against the court proceedings as a violation of his First Amendment rights.

"This is a kangaroo court, this is a political action, it's a witch hunt — I'll be back later," he continued, before he was ushered away.

Tuesday is the first day of Jones' defamation trial over false comments he made that the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting was a "hoax."

A jury in the defamation trial — brought by parents of a Sandy Hook victim — will decide how much Jones should pay them for making the false claims.

Jones, a Texas native, has already been found guilty of defamation by courts in his home state and in Connecticut.

Jurors in his trial should force Jones to pay $150 million to the parents of a boy murdered in the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre for leading a decade-long "massive campaign of lies" about the mass shooting, an attorney for the plaintiff's said during his opening statements on Tuesday.

Jones' "disgusting series of lies" about the deadliest school shooting in United States history caused the harassment and torment of Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis, the parents of 6-year-old Jesse Lewis, who was one of the 26 killed in the rampage, said their lawyer Mark Bankston.

The attorney called the sum he is seeking "one that will do justice to the level of harm done in this case — harm that was done to the grieving parents of murdered children who have had to endure for 10 years the most despicable and vile campaign of defamation slander in American history."

Jones' defense attorney, F. Andino Reynal, acknowledged in his opening statements that his client and InfoWars covered the Sandy Hook shooting "with a slant that children were really murdered, but that there's a government cover-up."

Reynal told the jury that Jones "has apologized repeatedly for the coverage he gave to Sandy Hook" and "regrets what he did."