Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones has blamed "psychosis" for various controversial claims he has made, including that the 2012 Sandy Hook massacre was a hoax.

Jones is host of Infowars, which produces conspiracy podcasts and videos, and he is currently being sued by the families of victims of the 2012 school shooting.

He alleged the massacre was part of a hoax constructed to legitimise gun control laws.

The Infowars host blamed psychosis in an out-of-court testimony as part of the lawsuit against him brought by the family of a six-year-old who was killed in the school shooting.

Twenty children and six adults were shot dead in Newtown, Connecticut when Adam Lanza, 20, stole his mother's guns after shooting and killing her at their home on 14 December 2012.


However, Jones is still suspicious about the authenticity of the Sandy Hook massacre, and is annoyed that his name has become synonymous with the event.

"Sandy Hook is not my identity," he says, "I covered it less than one tenth of 1% until Hillary [Clinton] gave her alt-right speech."

Asked if he believes the official story of Sandy Hook, Jones says: "I still think... I think children died. I believe mass shootings happened - they just had one in Brazil, a tragedy - and I believe it's a crisis.

Does de-platforming work?

"And I go back to the point of all gun owners being collectively blamed, then it's traumatic and so people go and they find anomalies and I've kind of retrospectively gone back and seen how I did believe that stuff and then I go back and I have now studied the real anomalies and it's just the school system and government trying to cover its rear end from liability and so there has definitely been a cover-up of the event.

"I think there's a lot of evidence there could have been a second shooter, there is the helicopter footage of the man in the woods."

He added: "I still have questions about Sandy Hook - but I know people that know some of the Sandy Hook families that say, 'No it's real.'"

Later in his testimony he blames growing up in Texas "watching police deal drugs and then conduct anti-drugs programmes at the school" on making him suspicious and contributing to his "wrong" opinions.

Jones claims he "almost had like a form of psychosis back in the past where I basically thought everything was staged, even though I'm now learning a lot of times things aren't staged".

Jones blamed his mental state on "the trauma of the media and the corporations lying so much, then everything begins - you don't trust anything anymore".

He added: "Kind of like a child whose parents lie to them over and over again, well, pretty soon they don't know what reality is."

Jones is facing several lawsuits from families of Sandy Hook victims, including some who claim they have been defamed because Jones implied they were actors paid by the government.