Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones is blaming "psychosis" for falsehoods he peddled in the aftermath of the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting.

Jones, 45, who was sued by a parent of a Newtown, Conn., elementary school shooting victim, said in a three-hour-long deposition with the plaintiff's lawyer, Mark Bankston, that mental illness had an impact on his judgment. The radio show host claims psychosis was triggered by demanding job pressures and that he has been finding ways to work around his mental illness. The deposition is the first in a series of multiple lawsuits against Jones filed in various states, including Connecticut, Virginia, and Texas.



The host used his platforms, both "The Alex Jones Show" and his website Infowars to peddle theories about the Sandy Hook shooting. His claims include a conspiracy that the government was behind the shooting, that victims were child actors used for propaganda, and that no one had actually died in the shooting.

About 50 minutes into the deposition, Jones began telling Bankston about the psychosis.

Jones said: “The trauma of the media and the corporations lying so much, then everything begins — you don’t trust anything anymore, kind of like a child whose parents lie to them over and over again, well, pretty soon they don’t know what reality is.”

He denied allegations from the parents of the shooting victims that his conspiracy theories caused any harm or damage.

"And I, myself, have 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. So I think, as a pundit, someone giving an opinion, that, you know, my opinions have been wrong, but they were never wrong consciously to hurt people," Jones said.

Jones, however, has not submitted any documentation that he had ever been medically diagnosed with psychosis or any kind of mental illness.