Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones destroyed evidence, court motion claims

Michael James | USA TODAY

Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones intentionally destroyed evidence as pressure steadily mounted from pending defamation lawsuits and "growing public indignation," according to a court motion filed Friday by families of Sandy Hook murder victims.

Jones and his Infowars media group face lawsuits for claiming that the 2012 Sandy Hook elementary school mass killings in Connecticut were staged by the government and that the 26 people slain were fictitious creations in an elaborate hoax.

The latest court action against him, filed in Travis County, Texas and first reported by the New York Times, alleges that Infowars "intentionally deleted a variety of social media pages and video content relating to the Sandy Hook shooting." Lawyers for the Sandy Hook families discovered the intentional destruction of evidence earlier this month, according to the court motion.

The pages and the videos were being sought as evidence against Jones in the ongoing defamation cases. Jones had been informed by lawyers for the plaintiffs that he was required by law to preserve the information as part of standard evidence rules in court cases, the motion said.

"Relevant evidence has been lost," lawyers for the families said in the court filing. "As pressure mounted . . . Mr. Jones chose to destroy the evidence of his actual malice and defamatory conduct."

Infowars did not respond to an email sent by USA TODAY, seeking comment on the allegations.

Jones, who also has claimed that survivors of the Parkland, Florida, high school shooting were actors, has been increasingly under fire. Twitter suspended the personal account of Infowars for one week Tuesday for violating the social media company's rules against inciting violence.

The social network said in a statement that Jones' account "currently has limited functionality." Jones was told the account would regain full functionality seven days after the removal of a tweet with "a broadcast in violation of our rules."

The decision was made after Jones tweeted a link to a video calling for supporters to get their “battle rifles” ready against media and others.

In the latest court filing, lawyers representing families of two Sandy Hook victims asked a judge to impose punitive sanctions, possibly a fine, against Infowars.

Leonard Pozner, who lost his 6-year-old son in the shooting and joined a lawsuit against Jones, said his family has suffered threats and harassment after Jones' claims. The threats have come from other conspiracy theorists who told Pozner his son never existed.

Facebook said on Monday that four pages belonging to Jones were removed for violating the social network's policy against hate speech. Also on Monday, the entirety of hundreds of episodes of "The Alex Jones Show" had been removed from music streaming service Spotify.

Those takedowns came just hours after Apple late Sunday removed all episodes of the show hosted by Jones and four other Infowars-related podcasts from Apple's iTunes and Podcast apps.