Melissa Joskow / Media Matters

Alex Jones continued to suggest on-air that attorneys representing some Sandy Hook families in a defamation lawsuit against him had planted child pornography on his servers while Jones’ attorneys were in court at a hearing to determine whether Jones would face sanctions for making similar accusations last week. The hearing concluded with the court sanctioning Jones, and he immediately attacked the judge who issued the ruling and suggested she is part of a conspiracy to ruin him.

Jones is facing several defamation lawsuits brought by family members of some of the children killed at the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting because of his repeated claims that the shooting was a hoax. One of those lawsuits is currently in the discovery phase in Connecticut state court in which the defendant, Jones, is required to turn over material that could be relevant to the plaintiffs’ case. A batch of emails from Jones’ outlet Infowars that was sent to the plaintiffs was found to contain child pornography. The plaintiffs’ attorneys turned the emails over to the FBI.

Jones exploded over the revelation during his June 14 broadcast joined by one of the attorneys representing him in the lawsuit, Norm Pattis. During the broadcast, Jones repeatedly suggested that the plaintiffs’ attorneys had planted the emails in the discovery material to frame him for a crime, and at one point he punched a photograph of one of the plaintiffs' attorneys.

The plaintiffs’ attorneys asked Connecticut Superior Court Judge Barbara Bellis, who is overseeing the lawsuit, to review Jones’ June 14 comments, and a June 18 hearing was scheduled to determine whether Jones would face sanctions for his behavior.

While the hearing was underway on June 18, Jones was on-air, making similar claims to what he was ultimately sanctioned over at the hearing’s conclusion. During the broadcast, Jones said, “I’m not saying [the plaintiffs’ attorneys] planted the email. I’m saying somebody planted it. We’re going to find out who they are.” But seconds later, he described the plaintiffs’ attorneys as the “suspect”:

ALEX JONES (HOST): We get sent needle in the haystack -- invisible needle in a haystack. Imagine if you owned a bookstore and had 20,000 books in it, and you ordered a couple of books and one of them had a postcard of child porn slipped in it. And a week after the book arrives, the police come in and say, “We got told there’s a postcard in this exact book over here,” and they go and open it. You would say to the police, “Who told you that was there? That’s your suspect.” This is 101 deduction, my dear Watson.

Later in the episode, Jones complained about news coverage of the incident, saying, “Oh, does it tell you that we never opened it and that the lawyers specifically asked for it and then had to scan it to find the secret links?” Jones then claimed that prior to the incident he told Pattis, “Norm, [the plaintiffs’ attorneys] already know there’s something in there that we don’t know about. This is parallel construction. I said you watch.” He made a similar claim later in his show, saying, “And then, people magically -- you know, folks that can find invisible needles in haystacks, they sue you and ask for those emails that you’ve never read.”

Jones was still on-air when the hearing to sanction him concluded. He reacted by attacking the judge in the case and claiming that the lawsuit is actually a conspiracy by liberals to take him down.

Jones said that he was receiving texts from Pattis and then quoted a headline about the unfavorable outcome of the hearing, saying, “‘Judge says apology from Alex Jones’ lawyer in Sandy Hook case falls short.’ I’m not apologizing for any of this stuff. I’m done.” Moments later, he added that he would be “pissed” if one of his lawyers did apologize.

According to legal outlet Law & Crime, “Norm Pattis, an attorney for Jones, apologized on Tuesday for a segment last Friday on Jones’s InfoWars show in which Jones transparently lashed out and identified an opposing attorney by name and face.”

Jones was also unhappy with Judge Bellis. He complained, “These judges take whatever [mainstream media] says as if God did it.” He later said, “The Connecticut Post, they’re the ones that put out the big disinformation statements that then the rest of the media picks up and then the judge, whether she’s ignorant or whatever, goes with it as if it came out of the mouth of God.” Jones also added, “This judge believes whatever Koskoff and Koskoff says, this Democratic law firm, like they are God.” (Koskoff Koskoff & Bieder is the firm of the plaintiffs’ attorneys.)

Jones also called the lawsuit against him an overarching conspiracy to take him down. After saying that his explanations about his past comments are irrelevant, Jones said, “It won’t matter because all the blue bloods up in Connecticut, they are going to show that loudmouth, dumb Texan that they’ll put me under the jail because old Hillary didn’t get elected.”

Jones says he is appealing the sanctions issued against him.