Alex Jones, currently facing three defamation trials, is also under investigation by the Jan. 6 Committee. Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

By Jordan Greene August 3, 2022

In a Texas courtroom packed with families of the victims of the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, Alex Jones on Wednesday said words that many of those families may never have thought they’d hear. Jones said Sandy Hook was “100% real.”

Jones’ statement came in the middle of a trial over a $150 million defamation suit. That suit is one of several brought against him by victims’ families over conspiracy theories he spread via a far-right conspiracy theory site that he owns, including suggestions that the shooting was a hoax and the grieving parents were actors.

As a consequence, Sandy Hook families already grieving for their murdered children have spent years fighting a secondary battle against the harassment wrought by Jones and his followers.

Forwarding the News

Thoughtful, balanced reporting from the Forward and around the web, bringing you updated news and analysis each day.

Terms(Required)

I agree to the Forward's Terms of Service and Privacy Policy

Email(Required)

That harassment has included death threats and having their Social Security numbers and addresses posted online. Some of the families have been forced to relocate multiple times as a result.

Prominent among the families speaking out against Jones and those who have spread conspiracy theories about Sandy Hook alongside him has been Leonard Pozner, the Jewish father of Noah Pozner, the shooting’s youngest victim. 

Pozner’s role in fighting Jones started a few days after Noah, 6, was murdered on Dec. 14, 2012. 

While scrolling through social media online, Pozner, who goes by Lenny, came across conspiracy posts suggesting that the shooting was a set-up by a production team and actors wanting to increase gun control. He told The New York Times in a 2022 podcast that these posts were rampant on Facebook, Twitter, WordPress and YouTube — and most noticeably came from Jones’s media outlets, owned by his company Free Speech Systems, including a site formerly known as InfoWars.

What struck him most about the posts, he said, was the negative responses people appeared to have to the shooting’s victims.

“He specifically blogged about my son,” said Pozner, who with his former wife Veronique De La Rosa will testify against Jones in a separate September trial. “He targeted me. He spent a few days talking about me on his show. He created these memes that were just amplified and repeated thousands of times all over the world, things that, to this day, I can’t get removed.”

In 2021, Jones lost four defamation lawsuits filed against him by the families of Sandy Hook victims. His current trial is the first of three he’ll face this year. 

For parents like Pozner, Jones’ Wednesday admission that the Sandy Hook shooting was real, and not a hoax, was likely a stunning moment. But after nearly a decade of fending off people convinced by Jones’ conspiracy theories, it may also be too late to be meaningful.

As Pozner told The Guardian in 2017, he’s had to move multiple times — then upwards of half a dozen — to escape threats spurred on by the conspiracy theories. “This is the world I deal with now,” he said.

The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

2X match on all Passover gifts!

$90 → $180 $180 → $360

$360 → $720

Other amount