Photo: Courtesy Lenny Pozner
The parents of a 6-year-oldSandy Hook mass shootingvictim had a court date Wednesday in their suit against the conspiracy theorist they saydefamed themand incited harassment against them with his false claims that the 2012 attack was staged.
Veronique De La Rosa and Leonard Pozner — whose son, Noah, was among 20 first-graders and six adults murdered on Dec. 14, 2012, in the shooting at the elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut — did not attend the hearing in Travis County, Texas, due to security concerns, reportsThe New York Times.
“I would love to go see my son’s grave and I don’t get to do that, but we made the right decision,” the grieving mom the newspaper.
The Austin-based Jones hosts an eponymous radio show and podcast and also owns Infowars.com, a website that has trafficked in conspiracy theories on various topics including Sandy Hook.
In total, nine Sandy Hook families have filed lawsuits against Jones. The Pozner family’s suit is the first of three defamation cases to reach a court hearing.
Neil Heslin.Alex Wong/Getty
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Among the alleged actions cited in the Pozner family’s lawsuit, Jones “went on an angry rant against me for nearly an hour” after Pozner caused YouTube to remove an Infowars video from Jones’s channel, Pozner said in an affidavit, according to theTimes.
Jones “also hosted a call with an obsessed fellow conspiracy theorist who issued a threat to me,” Pozner alleges in the affidavit.
He argued that Jones’ statements amount to free speech. “Maybe it’s fringe speech, maybe it’s dangerous speech,” he acknowledged. “That is not defamation.”
As the case has proceeded, YouTube last week removed four more of InfoWars videos and Facebook recently took down Jones’ personal page for 30 days, according to theTimes.
Also Wednesday, according to the outlet, Spotify cited violations of its policy against “hate content” as the reason for removing an unspecified number of episodes of his podcastThe Alex Jones Show: Infowars, from the streaming service.
source: people.com
