Sandy Hook
really belated 5/18
bankrupted jones in defamation case? --> onion?
crisis actor bs
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Alex Jones lashes out at comedian Tim Heidecker, who is reportedly set to be new creative director of Infowars
Written by Media Matters Staff
Published 04/23/26
The Onion reportedly plans to license Infowars, with comedian Tim Heidecker as creative director. From a report in The New York Times on the future of Infowars:
The Onion plans to turn Infowars into a comedy site with satirical echoes of the fringe conspiracy theories that Mr. Jones is known for. Tim Heidecker, one of the comedians behind “Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!” on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim, has been hired to serve as “creative director of Infowars.” He said he initially planned to parody Mr. Jones’s “whole modus operandi.”
Mr. Heidecker has been working on his impression of Mr. Jones. But eventually, when that joke gets old, Mr. Heidecker hopes to turn Infowars into a destination for independent and experimental comedy, he said.
“I just thought it would be just a beautiful joke if we could take this pretty toxic, negative, destructive force of Infowars and rebrand it as this beautiful place for our creativity,” Mr. Heidecker said in an interview. During a recent trip to Philadelphia, he traveled to the Liberty Bell to film a video in character as the new creative director of Infowars.
Video
From the April 23, 2026, edition of Infowars' The Alex Jones Show
ALEX JONES (HOST): The creative director that is being brought in from Adult Swim, they say to take over Infowars, which they haven't done yet, but they think the fix is in in this court hearing next Thursday, has put out all this pro-pedophilic, pro-murder of children, really hardcore satanism crap on Adult Swim a decade ago, and since then more.
...
I mean, they've been flipping the switches here, kind of like in 2001 where they're just turning off the HAL 9000. They're just going down the line, so I don't know if we'll even make it to next Thursday.
// MMA
04/23/26 2:16 PM EDT
04/22/26 3:43 PM EDT
04/20/26
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ONION SALE WENT THRU? 4 26 MMA
April 22, 2026, edition of Infowars' *The Alex Jones Show
ALEX JONES (HOST): So, they just say Alex is bullying the parents of dead kids, raised $300 million off while saying I'm raising money off them. Didn't talk about them for almost three years before they sued me. Said three years before I thought it happened, barely ever covered it. Realized it was a setup. The professors, the guys involved, they were working for them.
Oh, yeah. All a big setup. Because they killed those kids with professional shooters, and that's what they don't want coming out. It's in the police reports. There was a pile of kids in the in the bathroom in a pyramid with no blood.
//
07/27/22 3:20 PM EDT
07/23/22 12:44 PM EDT
11/17/16
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ed martin wiki talk
Martin's attempted DoJ harassment of Sandy Hook school shooting victims' advocate
Shouldn't we add information about this incident to this Wikipedia article? It seems rather notable.
:{{Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche has ordered a senior U.S. Justice Department official to drop an inquiry into a retired FBI agent's involvement in a defamation lawsuit involving Alex Jones's conspiracy theories about the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, a person familiar with the matter said on Wednesday, Sept. 24, 2025.
Ed Martin Jr., who leads the Justice Department’s “weaponization working group,” sent a letter dated Sept. 15, 2025 to the Sandy Hook families' lawyer asking for information about former FBI agent William Aldenberg, who responded to the 2012 school shooting and was a plaintiff in the lawsuit, along with victims' relatives, that led to a $1.4 billion judgment against Jones for calling the massacre a hoax.*}:}:
Source: https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/us-justice-department-official-ordered-drop-inquiry-sandy-125904544
98.123.38.211 (talk) 23:11, 25 September 2025 (UTC)
Yes, absolutely should be included. 172.58.10.83 (talk) 18:34, 6 October 2025 (UTC)
https://www.alternet.org/2021/07/alex-jones-attorneys-make-wacky-attempt-to-drag-hillary-clinton-into-sandy-hook-lawsuits/
1119
Supreme Court Clears Way for Sandy Hook Families to Sue Gun Manufacturer
Another parent of a child slain at the Sandy Hook Elementary School mass shooting in 2012 has filed a lawsuit against Alex Jones, proprietor of the conspiracy outlet Infowars, and his limited liability company Free Speech Systems. Jones now faces four lawsuits from the parents of Sandy Hook victims.
The lawsuit filed yesterday alleges that “InfoWars has aggressively promoted a dreadful and despicable false narrative about Sandy Hook, mocking the families as liars and accusing them of a sinister conspiracy” including the plaintiff, Scarlett Lewis, the parent of a child killed in the shooting. The lawsuit proceeds to list instances of Infowars publishing content claiming that the Sandy Hook shooting was a “false flag” and a “hoax” and accusing the parents of lying about the tragedy “for a nefarious purpose.” The lawsuit lists dozens of instances in which Jones and his employees at Infowars peddled such claims.
Lewis is suing Jones for intentional infliction of emotional distress by knowingly subjecting her family to “harassment, ridicule, and threats to their safety.” For damages, Lewis is seeking “an amount in relief which exceeds $1,000,000.”
Jones’ previous attempts to have lawsuits filed against him by Sandy Hook parents dismissed have been denied.
Mark Bankston, a lawyer at Kaster Lynch Farrar & Ball law firm representing four Sandy Hook family members suing Jones, told Right Wing Watch that he was confident that Jones would be held accountable for what the lawsuit alleges.
“Our firm is proud to bring this new suit on behalf of Ms. Lewis, and we are confident that Mr. Jones’ day of reckoning is fast approaching,” Bankston said. “After having a Travis County District Judge reject his arguments in three separate cases, it will be interesting to see whether Mr. Jones continues to pursue the same strategy of trying to have these cases dismissed or whether he will finally take accountability for his malicious conduct.”
Right Wing Watch obtained a copy of the plaintiff’s allegations against Jones. The petition, filed by Bankston, can be viewed in its entirety here:
Right Wing Watch: Lewis vs … by on Scribd
919
https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/infowars-loses-appeal-in-sandy-hook-defamation-lawsuit
Alex Jones, the conspiracy theorist proprietor of Infowars, and his attorneys were denied an appeal regarding a lawsuit that alleges Infowars broadcast defamatory comments regarding the father of a child murdered in the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. The Texas Court of Appeals has ordered Infowars to “pay all costs” related to the botched appeal.
Infowars filed its now-dismissed appeal one day after Sandy Hook parent Neil Heslin filed a motion for contempt against Infowars as part of an ongoing legal battle against the outlet, which in 2017 broadcast claims that Heslin argued were meant to insinuate that he lied about holding his murdered son’s body and to subject him to harassment and emotional damage by those who believe Sandy Hook was a “false flag” conspiracy—a conspiracy theory advanced by the host of an Infowars program and amplified by Jones himself.
Heslin had filed a motion for expedited discovery and a motion for sanctions against defendants Jones, Infowars employee Owen Shroyer, Free Speech Systems LLC, and Infowars LLC, after it was revealed that Jones had ordered Infowars employees to remove “social media pages and video content relating to the Sandy Hook shooting” from the internet. Jones and his lawyers had previously filed a motion to have Heslin’s lawsuit dismissed under the Texas Citizens Participation Act, a 2011 Texas law meant to aid individuals facing a frivolous lawsuits, but the judge hearing the case agreed with Heslin’s argument that Infowars’ efforts to delete content relevant to his case had hampered his ability to respond to Infowars’ motion to dismiss.
A judge extended the hearing date on Infowars’ TCPA motion and ordered Infowars to respond to discovery requests. But when the deadline for discovery approached, Infowars made clear it did not intend to cooperate. Heslin filed a motion for contempt of court.
Lawyers for Infowars argued that because defendants had appeared in court regarding their motion to dismiss, they were not required to comply with the discovery process. The Texas Court of Appeals disagreed with Infowars’ interpretation of Texas law and tossed the appeal.
In a ruling rendered August 30, 2019, Jones’ appeal to the Texas Court of Appeals from the District Court of Travis County was dismissed. Jones was ordered to “pay all costs relating to this appeal, both in this Court and in the court below.”
“We agree with Heslin that the district court has not yet ruled on Appellants’ motion to dismiss, nor has the motion been overruled by operation of law. Accordingly, we dismiss the appeal for lack of jurisdiction,” Justice Gisela Triana wrote in the opinion.
Infowars’ failed appeal wasted nearly a year of time in Heslin’s lawsuit against Infowars. Mark Bankston, an attorney representing Heslin, said the next steps in the case won’t be clear until parties meet with the court.
“Mr. Heslin is very pleased with the decision of the Court of Appeals dismissing InfoWars’ appeal and ordering Mr. Jones to pay costs. After InfoWars wasted everyone’s time on a frivolous appeal, we can now return to the trial court where we intend to hold Mr. Jones fully accountable for his disgusting defamation of Mr. Heslin,” Bankston told Right Wing Watch.
The dismissal of Infowars’ appeal last week is yet another blow to the conspiracy theory outlet, which has found itself facing multiple lawsuits related to its coverage of the Sandy Hook shooting.
Tags: Alex JonesSandy HookInfoWars
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no lnx many
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Democracy Dies in Darkness
National
D.C. attorney general issues subpoenas to NRA, its charitable foundation
By Katie Zezima ,
Carol D. Leonnig and
Keith L. Alexander July 12 2019
The District’s attorney general issued subpoenas Friday to the National Rifle Association and its charitable foundation, putting additional pressure on the embattled gun rights organization from nonprofit regulators.
The office of Attorney General Karl A. Racine is seeking financial documents from the NRA and its foundation. The NRA Foundation is chartered in the District, and the NRA is registered as a nonprofit and does business there.
“The Office of the Attorney General for the District of Columbia has issued subpoenas to the National Rifle Association of America (NRA) and the NRA Foundation, Inc., as part of an investigation into whether these entities violated the District’s Nonprofit Act,” Racine said in a statement.
He continued: “We are seeking documents from these two nonprofits detailing, among other things, their financial records, payments to vendors, and payments to officers and directors.”
William A. Brewer III, the NRA’s outside counsel, said in a statement that the organization will cooperate with “any appropriate inquiry” into its finances.
“The NRA has full confidence in its accounting practices and commitment to good governance,” Brewer said, noting the organization’s financial statements are audited and that it is “committed to utilizing best practices” in accounting and governance.
Racine’s office has jurisdiction over nonprofits. It can seek court action to dissolve or place into receivership a nonprofit that misuses funds or does not act in accordance with its stated mission.
Racine’s subpoenas come as the organization is under mounting internal and external pressure. They are the second state legal action taken against the NRA in recent months.
In April, New York Attorney General Letitia James also issued subpoenas to the NRA and its foundation seeking financial records about its tax-exempt status. The NRA was chartered in New York in 1871.
Racine’s inquiry into payments to officers and directors comes after The Washington Post reported last month that 18 of the NRA’s 76 board members collected money from the NRA during the past three years, according to tax filings, state charitable reports and NRA correspondence. They include a former National Football League player who received $400,000 for public outreach and firearms training, and a writer who was paid more than $28,000 for articles in NRA publications.
NRA board members are tasked with overseeing the organization’s finances.
[NRA money flowed to board members amid allegedly lavish spending by top officials and vendors]
The NRA is also enmeshed in a lawsuit with New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo (D), who issued a directive last year urging insurance and financial services companies to review their relationships with the organization. It came after a state investigation found the NRA’s “Carry Guard” insurance [murder insurance] product to be illegal under New York law.
Scrutiny of the organization has also increased on Capitol Hill. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) has been investigating the organization, looking for answers about financial and other ties between the organization and Russia. Two Democratic House members have written to NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre, stating they were concerned about a “complex web of relationships” between the organization and Russia.
The NRA also has been grappling with growing internal strife in recent months. In the past several weeks, it has seen its top lobbyist resign and its television arm shut down, and has severed all business with its longtime public relations firm, which helped brand the NRA as a hard-edged organization that would defend gun rights at all costs.
The NRA’s top lobbyist, Christopher W. Cox, resigned last month after being accused of being part of an extortion scheme to oust LaPierre. Cox had led the organization’s political and lobbying arm since 2002 and was considered one of its most effective and high-profile leaders. The political arm spent more than $30 million to help elect President Trump.
In April, LaPierre accused former NRA president Oliver North of extortion, claiming North threatened to reveal damaging financial information if LaPierre did not step down and withdraw the NRA from a lawsuit against its longtime and now estranged public relations firm, Ackerman McQueen.
[Newtown massacre divided NRA leaders, foreshadowing split to come]
The organization has been rocked by revelations of exorbitant spending by top executives, including that LaPierre racked up hundreds of thousands of dollars in charges at a Beverly Hills clothing boutique and on foreign travel, according to invoices.
North, who stepped down from his post after the allegations, also claimed the NRA spent $24 million in legal bills last year. The allegations come as the organization’s 2018 financial report show that the nonprofit, its four affiliated charities and its political committee ended the year $10.8 million in the red.
The report shows that the NRA increased spending on overhead including legal fees, travel, entertainment and office supplies, while cutting money to its core missions, including gun training and political spending.
Katie Zezima
Katie Zezima is a national correspondent covering drugs, guns, gambling and vice in America. She covered the 2016 election and the Obama White House for The Washington Post. Follow
Carol D. Leonnig
Carol Leonnig is an investigative reporter at The Washington Post, where she has worked since 2000. She won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for her work on security failures and misconduct inside the Secret Service. Follow
Keith L. Alexander
Keith L. Alexander covers crime and courts, specifically D.C. Superior Court cases, for The Washington Post. Alexander was part of the Pulitzer Prize-winning team that investigated fatal police shootings across the nation in 2015. He joined The Post in 2001. He previously worked as a reporter for USA Today, BusinessWeek and The Dayton Daily News
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Politics
Newtown massacre divided NRA leaders, foreshadowing split to come
A demonstrator interrupts a speech by NRA chief executive Wayne LaPierre in Washington on Dec. 21, 2012, a week after the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. (Bonnie Jo Mount/The Washington Post)
By Carol D. Leonnig ,
Beth Reinhard and
Tom HamburgerJuly 4
Twenty young children had just been gunned down by a semiautomatic rifle in their classrooms in Newtown, Conn., in December 2012, and inside the hardened bunker of the National Rifle Association, rattled officials were wrestling with rare feelings of self-doubt.
In the past, the gun rights organization had responded to mass shootings with unapologetic, high-profile attacks on any attempt to restrict firearms. But several senior NRA officials — laid low by images of sobbing parents planning their children’s funerals rather than tucking presents under Christmas trees — thought the organization should take a less confrontational approach this time, according to multiple people familiar with the internal debate.
Archival video: NRA calls for protecting schools with armed guards
National Rifle Association chief executive Wayne LaPierre called for schools to be protected with armed guards on Dec. 21, 2012. (Photo: Bonnie Jo Mount/The Washington Post)
Over the objections of some top officials, however, NRA chief executive Wayne LaPierre struck a defiant posture. In fiery public appearances crafted by Ackerman McQueen, the organization’s longtime advertising firm , LaPierre announced that the group would create a model program to train armed security guards who could protect schools from shooters, saying that was the only measure that would keep children safe.
Then LaPierre and his wife left for the Bahamas, a trip they billed through Ackerman McQueen — and was ultimately paid for by the nonprofit organization. Their post-Christmas flights to and from Eleuthera, known for its pink beaches, cost the NRA nearly $70,000, according to internal documents and people familiar with the trip.
NRA spokesman Andrew Arulanandam said the couple was on official business, doing outreach to donors and supporters, whom he declined to identify.
After the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, “Wayne’s main concern was being respectful of the victims and their families,” he said. LaPierre, as leader of the NRA, sought “to figure out a way to harden our schools” while also defending the Second Amendment, Arulanandam said.
New details about how the NRA handled the tumultuous moment show how Sandy Hook —one of the deadliest mass shootings in U.S. history — divided the leadership of the powerful gun rights organization. The episode also showcased the symbiotic relationship between LaPierre and Ackerman McQueen, an alliance that defined the NRA for more than three decades, several former officials said.
During that period, the bills for LaPierre’s wardrobe and his private jet travel flowed through the Oklahoma-based ad firm, recently revealed internal documents show, a practice that critics say shrouded the nature of the costs from some NRA leaders and members. At the same time, Ackerman McQueen collected tens of millions of dollars in consulting fees and kept a tight grip on the NRA’s aggressive messaging, according to documents and people familiar with the dynamics.
In recent months, a bitter legal dispute over control of the NRA has fractured their longtime alliance, spilling the revelations about the organization’s finances into public view. Ackerman and the NRA are now estranged, locking in warring lawsuits. The tumult led to the resignation last week of longtime NRA lobbyist Christopher W. Cox, whom the NRA has accused of participating in a scheme to oust LaPierre. Cox has denied the allegations.
[‘All those people are completely estranged and at odds.’ Beth Reinhard on rifts within the NRA. Listen on Post Reports.]
The factors that would later fuel this remarkably public civil war were already at play in on Dec. 14, 2012, when the NRA confronted perhaps its worst political crisis in history. On one side was Cox, who was pushing for the group to take a lower-key approach amid a wave of national outrage. On the other was LaPierre, who decided to go on the offensive.
Four months after the massacre, a raft of gun control measures failed in Congress. But outrage about lawmakers’ inaction after the loss of so many young lives in Newtown also spurred a resurgence among groups fighting to restrict firearms.
'Kids are getting shot'
A man and child leave the funeral for 6-year-old Jack Pinto on Dec. 17, 2012, in Newtown, Conn. (Jahi Chikwendiu/The Washington Post)
The mass shooting at Sandy Hook, in which 20 first-graders and six adults were killed, scalded the country.
President Barack Obama wiped away tears as he spoke that day about the children who had died. When he visited Newtown two days after the shooting to talk privately with families who had lost their loved ones, he later said, he saw something he’d never witnessed before: the stalwart Secret Service agents on his detail quietly weeping.
The tragedy immediately led to a clamoring for new limits on firearms. Obama vowed that gun control would be a “central issue” of his second term.
Some NRA leaders girded for what they considered inevitable: congressional action to revive the federal ban on assault weapons that had expired in 2004. Several senior officials and longtime leaders thought the killing of children required the group to alter its normally defiant response to mass shootings and keep a low profile — at least in the immediate aftermath, said people familiar with internal discussions.
“Everyone was saying, ‘Are we doing the right thing here?’ ” one former NRA employee said, describing internal discussions about whether the group should consider a modest gun control compromise or alter its aggressive posture. “Kids are getting shot. Is there something else we should be doing?”
Cox, a seasoned political strategist, wanted to head off efforts to restrict firearms and thought that a combative approach at that time was unwise and could invite a public backlash, said multiple people familiar with the debate.
But LaPierre ultimately agreed with Ackerman McQueen that the NRA had to forcefully counter growing public calls to rein in weapons.
Cox, who did not respond to requests for comment, did not attend a news conference that LaPierre held a week after the Sandy Hook shooting.
As soon as LaPierre stepped before hundreds of reporters at the Willard hotel in Washington on Dec. 21, he made it clear that the NRA would remain fiercely opposed to any gun control measures.
“The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” LaPierre said after the Sandy Hook massacre. (Bonnie Jo Mount/The Washington Post)
The NRA chief announced that a task force would create a program, later called NRA School Shield, to help train armed security guards to protect schools from shooters — and preemptively defended the group from those he predicted would criticize the idea.
[Put armed police in every school, NRA urges]
“Your implication will be that guns are evil and have no place in society, much less in our schools. But since when did the word ‘gun’ automatically become a bad word?” LaPierre said.
He then delivered the line that would become a mantra of NRA hard-liners: “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”
LaPierre ridiculed gun-free school zones as welcome signs to insane murderers and warned of “monsters .?.?. who walk among us every day.”
“The truth is that our society is populated by an unknown number of genuine monsters — people so deranged, so evil, so possessed by voices and driven by demons that no sane person can possibly ever comprehend them,” he said.
Two days later, LaPierre went on NBC’s “Meet the Press” to promote the NRA’s new shield program. “If it’s crazy to call for putting police and armed security [guards] in our schools to protect our children, then call me crazy,” he said.
When Obama later voiced skepticism that putting more guns in schools would keep children safer, Ackerman McQueen produced a video that alluded to his daughters’ Secret Service protection, calling him an “elitist hypocrite.”
“Are the president’s kids more important than yours?” the narrator intoned.
[Ackerman McQueen PR firm has been behind NRA’s provocative ads for decades]
There were signs that some inside the NRA were uncomfortable with the focus on Obama’s daughters. Jim Baker, one of the organization’s top lobbyists, said at the time that he considered the ad “ill-advised,” adding, “I don’t think it was particularly helpful.”
In a statement, Ackerman McQueen officials said that the firm’s job was to help the NRA respond to news and public events, as it did after the Sandy Hook massacre, and that LaPierre was the final decision-maker on the strategy to propose armed defenders in schools.
“Throughout the entire relationship with the NRA, Wayne LaPierre controlled every aspect of NRA public communications,” the firm said.
Po Murray, chairwoman of Newtown Action Alliance, whose four children graduated from Sandy Hook Elementary before the shooting, called the approach taken by the NRA and Ackerman McQueen “corrupt and irresponsible.”
“We felt the NRA’s position after Sandy Hook was completely insensitive and so out of touch when we were going through such a significant amount of trauma,” she said.
Arulanandam said that LaPierre “had great compassion for those impacted by this horrific event” and was seeking to find a way to “protect our most treasured resource — our children.”
“These events, sadly, all too often become politicized by people on all sides of the conversation,” he said, adding: “At the same time, during these events the media demands that we defend our position on the Second Amendment.”
Gun control falters
After his combative public performance, LaPierre left town.
Three days after the mass shooting in Newtown, he charged $39,947 for a private jet to Eleuthera,according to internal travel records detailed in letters this spring from Ackerman McQueen’s chief financial officer to LaPierre, which were first reported by the Wall Street Journal and obtained by The Washington Post.
On Dec. 27, the LaPierres flew to the island, NRA officials confirmed. The organization has previously said that LaPierre, as the public face of the organization, must travel by private plane for security reasons.
Arulanandam, the NRA spokesman, said the couple’s week-plus visit to the Caribbean resort area during the winter holidays was a business trip related to donor outreach. The organization declined to provide details, saying it was against NRA policy to discuss individual donors.
“There was a business trip after Christmas 2012 involving donor outreach and the recruitment of influential NRA supporters and members,” Arulanandam said. “Wayne is responsible for a campaign to raise almost $400 million annually, so he travels extensively on behalf of the Association — even over the holidays.”
Susan LaPierre, co-founder of theNRA Women’s Leadership Forum, a coalition of female philanthropists who support the Second Amendment, traveled with her husband to “assist with NRA business and development efforts as she frequently does,” Arulanandam said.
After ringing in the New Year in the Caribbean, Wayne LaPierre charged another private air charter on his Ackerman McQueen credit card: $29,100 on Jan. 3 to fly from Nassau, Bahamas, to Dallas, according to internal documents and people familiar with his trips.
NRA officials said LaPierre flew to Dallas to attend donor and member events there as part of a hunters’ sporting exposition.
NRA chief lobbyist Christopher W. Cox and LaPierre stand near an empty seat reserved for then-NRA President Oliver North at the group’s annual meeting in Indianapolis on April 26. (Daniel Acker/Bloomberg News)
William A. Brewer III, a lawyer for the NRA, has said that the vast majority of LaPierre’s travel involved “donor outreach, fundraising and stakeholder engagement.” He said that the NRA chief routed some travel expenses through Ackerman McQueen for “confidentiality and security purposes,” but that this method of billing has since been modified.
Ackerman McQueen said the firm footed the initial bill for LaPierre’s travel at the NRA’s instructions.
“Ackerman McQueen did not have any knowledge of the plans or details of the expenditures in question, all of which the NRA client claimed had a sound business or security rationale,” the firm said in a statement.
For several months, the deaths of the Connecticut schoolchildren continued to spur public cries for action. Polls showed that 90 percent of Americans supported new legislation to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and the mentally ill.
In a letter dated Jan. 3, 2013, that was sent to congressional lawmakers, Cox said the NRA wanted to be a “constructive voice” in the debate about how to prevent the next school massacre. He stressed his opposition to a ban on assault weapons, but said the organization supported efforts to keep all weapons out of the hands of the mentally ill.
The tragedy spurred a rare bipartisan effort on gun control in the Senate. Sen. Joe Manchin III (W.Va.), a pro-gun Democrat, and Sen. Patrick J. Toomey (R-Pa.) joined forces to expand background checks to cover a major source of gun sales: unlicensed dealers at gun shows and online vendors.
Parents of the Sandy Hook victims visited Washington to pressure lawmakers to act, carrying pictures of their children: a freckle-faced boy smiling with a missing front tooth, a 6-year-old boy in his favorite Superman shirt.
But by the time of the final vote on April 17, their chance of victory was slim. Some Republicans said the bill was unfair to gun owners because it would require them to pay for a background check to exercise their right to buy a gun. The NRA had vowed to “score” senators based on their vote on the legislation, stressing that they would face consequences for supporting it. The organization asked its members to flood senators with letters, emails and phone calls.
John Feinblatt, president of Everytown for Gun Safety, a gun control group backed by former New York mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, said that Sandy Hook was a turning point for the NRA and that “its leaders chose the course of extremism and refused to even consider common-sense laws supported by most Americans.”
As a cluster of Sandy Hook parents gathered in the gallery to watch the key vote, a Republican-led filibuster blocked the measure, with four Democrats joining to oppose it. The Senate also blocked other measures Obama sought to ban certain military-style rifles and limit the size of ammunition magazines.
The visibly angry president declared that it was a temporary loss.
“All in all, this was a pretty shameful day for Washington,” he said, vowing to try again. “Sooner or later, we’re going to get this right.”
Julie Tate, Alice Crites and Katie Zezima contributed to this report.
Carol D. Leonnig
Carol Leonnig is an investigative reporter at The Washington Post, where she has worked since 2000. She won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for her work on security failures and misconduct inside the Secret Service. Follow
Beth Reinhard
Beth Reinhard is a reporter on the investigative team at The Washington Post. She was a member of the Post team that won the Pulitzer Prize, George Polk Award and Toner Prize in 2018. She previously worked at the Wall Street Journal, National Journal, the Miami Herald and the Palm Beach Post. Follow
Tom Hamburger
Tom Hamburger is an investigative reporter on the national desk of The Washington Post. He has covered the White House, Congress and regulatory agencies, with a focus on money and politics.
https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/twisted-the-far-rights-disgraceful-reaction-to-the-sandy-hook-massacre/
no lnx twt vid
DECEMBER 14, 2015
Twisted: The Far-Right’s Disgraceful Reaction To The Sandy Hook Massacre
…his race for Congress, Georgia Republican Jody Hice said the shooting was a consequence of “kicking God out of the public square.” Mike Huckabee blamed the Sandy Hook massacre on…
twisted: The Far-Right’s Disgraceful Reaction To The Sandy Hook Massacre
By Brian Tashman | December 14, 2015
Last month, Donald Trump appeared on “The Alex Jones Show,” where he told the right-wing pundit that he has an “amazing” reputation, unlike other journalists, whom Trump commonly refers to as “scum.” Among Jones’ many wild conspiracy theories is his belief that the massacre at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, which took place three years ago today, was “staged” by the Obama administration.
Trump has not faced any criticism from his fellow Republicans for going on Jones’ program or for touting his work, despite the fact that Jones has been instrumental in pushing the harmful Sandy Hook conspiracy theory.
A 2013 Fairleigh Dickinson University poll found that “a quarter (25%) of Americans think that facts about the shootings at Sandy Hook elementary last year are being hidden and an additional eleven percent are unsure” and that “Republicans are more likely to think that the truth about Sandy Hook is being suppressed, with 32 percent agreeing.”
Sandy Hook truthers, who largely believe that the attack was faked as part of a government plot to push strict gun laws, are not alone in delivering twisted responses to the mass shooting. Others have used the massacre to attack gay marriage, the separation of church and state and, of course, gun laws.
The Truthers
WorldNetDaily columnist Erik Rush said that Sandy Hook shooter Adam Lanza “positively reeked of what intelligence operatives I know would call the tell-tale signs of recruitment and conditioning,” and wondered if Lanza was the target of a government scheme to recruit “vulnerable individuals for psyops” to advance “their diabolical agenda.”
Renew America’s Austin Miles similarly suggested that the massacre was “purposely orchestrated” to “disarm all Americans to retard resistance,” writing that Lanza and others were “brainwashed into carrying out such deeds that would prove a point about private gun ownership and the threat to all families as a result.” Then, he said, there would be no opposition to Obama using an “Executive Order to declare himself president (dictator) for life.” Fellow Renew America pundit, Laurie Roth, claimed Obama “staged” the attack because he’s on a “mission to take assault weapons from the people.”
Radio host Rick Wiles stated that “Sandy Hook was timed to coincide with the political agenda of the socialist Democrats such as Barry Soetoro [Obama], Chuckie Schumer, and Dianne Feinstein to pass stringent federal gun control laws,” alleging that “the shooting event was timed to coincide with the gun control initiative.” Another conservative radio host, Bradlee Dean, likened the Sandy Hook killings to Adolf Hitler “attacking his own Reichstag to start a world war” and said that it was orchestrated to pass an arms control treaty.
The Tea Party-aligned National Liberty Foundation insisted that the “staged” massacre showed just “how far your president went to get your guns”: “He wants to be a dictator, he doesn’t want to get out of the White House and he loves spending your money.”
Many of their assertions relied heavily on discredited claims that “crisis actors” posed as grieving family members at the school and that one of the young victims later met with President Obama (she didn’t, it was her little sister).
One Republican congressman, Louie Gohmert, however, told a fan of his that he would watch a Sandy Hook conspiracy theory video because he’s “always learning new things.”
religious Right’s Reaction
Several Religious Right activists responded to the Sandy Hook shooting by warning that the massacre was a sign that God is no longer protecting America, removing his hand of protection due to supposed societal ills such as gay marriage, abortion rights and the separation of church and state.
“Millions of people have decided that God doesn’t exist, or he’s irrelevant to me and we have killed 54 million babies and the institution of marriage is right on the verge of a complete redefinition,” Focus on the Family founder James Dobson lamented. “Believe me, that is going to have consequences too. And a lot of these things are happening around us, and somebody is going to get mad at me for saying what I am about to say right now, but I am going to give you my honest opinion: I think we have turned our back on the Scripture and on God Almighty and I think he has allowed judgment to fall upon us.”
“We’ve taken God our of our school, we’ve taken him out of our government and now we seem shocked at all of these things,” Franklin Graham stated following the attack. “Why are we shocked? We shouldn’t be shocked. This is what happens when a society turns its back on God.” Author Joel Rosenberg said the shooting was one of the tragedies America is “reaping as a result of a society that increasingly ignores God,” specifically blaming comedian Jon Stewart for waging a “war on Christmas” and mocking conservatives.
Before winning his race for Congress, Georgia Republican Jody Hice said the shooting was a consequence of “kicking God out of the public square.”
Mike Huckabee blamed the Sandy Hook massacre on those who have tried to “systematically removed God from our schools,” turning schools into “a place of carnage.” He claimed that school shootings would be a thing of the past if only schools started organizing chapel services for students and the government stopped ordering employers to “provide tax-funded abortion pills.”
One pastor said that a “gracious,” “merciful” and “loving” God decided not to intervene to prevent the shooting because it would “bring us back to our senses” and make people realize that God’s judgment “has really come by our turning away from the Lord.” Bryan Fischer of American Family Radio specifically blamed legal abortion and the lack of state-sponsored prayer for the attack, stating that God is a “gentleman” who “is not going to go where he is not wanted.”...?
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Ted Cruz has proudly boasted of his role in successfully blocking a bipartisan Senate measure to expand background checks on gun purchases following the school shooting, bragging that unlike Republican “squishes,” he stood firm in opposing universal background checks. The Sandy Hook-affected families who supported the efforts, he said, were being used as “political props.”
One of the main organizations that worked with Cruz in fighting the effort, Gun Owners of America, pushed fears that the background checks could lead to gun confiscation, tyranny and genocide. The group’s executive director, Larry Pratt, said liberals “rejoice” following events like Sandy Hook, as they “immediately start shedding their crocodile tears, pushing for more gun control,” and, possibly, martial law.
National Rifle Association board member and musician Ted Nugent blamed the shooting on America’s “politically correct culture” and “‘anything goes’ value system” which “vilifies, condemns and mocks traditional societal values and customs at every opportunity,” while NRA executive director Wayne LaPierre delivered an unhinged speech against gun control measures, lashing out at the group’s critics, the entertainment industry, video games, the media and a lack of guns in schools.
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Instead, Republicans claimed that the government should focus on mental health and then tried to block access to mental health services.
Few if any of the GOP presidential candidates are offering any meaningful gun reform proposals, outside of their unwavering dogma: More guns.
Tags: Alex Jones Bradlee Dean Bryan Fischer Erik Rush Franklin Graham James Dobson Larry Pratt Mike Huckabee Rick Wiles Ted Cruz Ted Nugent Wayne LaPierre gun violence gun violence prevention Second Amendment Gun Owners Association NRA
locking background checks
but while nearly nine out of 10 Americans, including nine out of 10 gun owners, support more background checks, Republican lawmakers care more about the support they receive from groups like the NRA, and have done next to nothing to tackle the issue of gun violence in the wake of tragedies like Sandy Hook.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/06/us/nra-board-subpoena-letitia-james.html
https://www.alternet.org/can-lawsuits-slow-tide-right-wing-conspiracy-theory-seth-richs-family-wants-find-out
amanda m
In the era of Donald Trump, conspiracy theories aren't just getting more prominent and more numerous. They're also becoming more personal. One of the hallmarks of the modern era of social media-fueled, right-wing paranoia is the increasing tendency of conspiracy theorists to target not just politicians and celebrities for their lurid myth-making. Now such concoctions may affect the lives of ordinary people who, in the past, would likely have not had a high enough profile to attract this kind of obsessive rumor-mongering.
Now the targets are turning to the courts to fight back.The parents of the Sandy Hook massacre victims are suing Infowars founder Alex Jones for spreading conspiracy theories alleging that they faked their children's deaths. (Perhaps in an effort to shield himself, Jones has backed away from such theories and now says he believes the killings actually happened.)
Brennan Gilmore, a Virginia activist who happened to film the attack that killed Heather Heyer at the Charlottesville protests last summer, is also suing Jones and a blogger behind Gateway Pundit for conspiracy theories meant to discredit him. And the family members of Seth Rich, a Democratic National Committee staffer murdered in July 2016, in what police say was a botched robbery, are suing Fox News and others for stoking conspiracy theories that Rich, rather than Russian agents, may have been behind the hack of Democratic emails given to WikiLeaks -- and was murdered in retaliation.
Now the circle of litigants has opened up further, as Brad Bauman, a public relations expert who has volunteered as the Rich family's spokesperson, is also suing a series of conservative figures for defamation, alleging that they have spread conspiracy theories accusing him of covering up for a nefarious Democratic Party plot.
Bauman's case is of particular interest to me, because it illustrates the way Trump-era conspiracy theories metastasize, growing ever more complicated and strange as conspiracy theorists attempt to integrate conflicting evidence into their overarching theory — and how, in the process, the number of people who become targets for harassment and abuse can grow.
“Having watched what Brad went through," Melissa Ryan, a progressive activist and friend of Bauman's, said to Salon, "it gave me a new understanding for the kind of hell that conspiracy theories can wreak on a person’s life that I wouldn’t have understood otherwise.”
Bauman was unable, for legal reasons, to speak to Salon. But his legal complaint lays out a (relatively) simple story: As the conspiracy theories around Rich's murder started to grow louder, friends and colleagues of Rich asked Bauman to help the family, which he says he did on a volunteer basis for no payment. Soon, the right-wing rumor mill began to focus on Bauman, and accusations began to fly that he was an agent working for the DNC to help cover up Rich's murder. Bauman's suit says he was then doxxed by internet trolls (meaning that his home address and other private information was revealed) and that articles on right wing websites and social media accusing him of engaging in a cover-up have caused him emotional distress and damaged his business.
I reached out to Ed Butowsky,a financial adviser who lives in Texas and is one of the defendants in Bauman's lawsuit. Butowsky has been active on right wing sites like Gateway Pundit and WorldNetDaily in pushing the idea that Bauman was somehow "assigned" by the DNC to the Rich family. (Bauman denies this and says, in his suit, that he has never worked for the DNC.)
“It’s a nuisance lawsuit. There’s absolutely nothing behind it," Butowsky insisted, having called me back at 7:38 a.m. after a day of phone tag. "I still don’t understand this, nor many of these other lawsuits against me.”The conversation was a maddening glimpse into the rhetorical spiderwebs that form around conspiracy theories.
Butowsky is being sued not just by Bauman, but by the Rich family for allegedly ingratiating himself with them under false pretenses, in order to promote his conspiracy theory about their son. Butowsky hired a private detective, claiming he was acting on the family's behalf, but allegedly used that detective instead to push insinuations, on Fox News and other outlets, that Rich was murdered as part of a Democratic conspiracy.
Our brief conversation — under 15 minutes — was whiplash-inducing. At one point, Butowsky told me, “Fly down to Dallas. I’ll give you your Ph.D. in the Seth Rich story."
But when I followed up by asking him why he's so interested in Rich's death, he got miffed: “I don’t have a huge interest in this story.”
I noted that all these lawsuits came after Butowsky -- as he admitted in a 45-minute interview published on Gateway Pundit -- reached out to the Rich family and hired a detective to look into the case. All of which, I suggested, constituted a reasonable definition of someone "interested" in this story. Then how could he claim, I asked, to give someone a Ph.D. on a topic he claimed to have little interest in? "Because I’ve been sued by everybody," Butowsky said.
At that point, Butowsky became agitated, and insisted that instead of asking him any further questions myself, I watch the 45-minute interview at Gateway Pundit. Then he got off the phone.
That interview at Gateway Pundit is a confusing mess of digressions, self-pity and elaborate, complex insinuations that are largely impenetrable to outsiders to the Seth Rich conspiracy-theory crowd. The crux of it, as someone who had to watch it for professional reasons, is that Butowsky would like viewers to believe he was a disinterested party who, for somewhat mysterious but totally innocent reasons, ended up spending huge amounts of time ingratiating himself to this family and thousands of dollars on a private detective to look into an internet conspiracy theory.
This itself provides a major insight into how these conspiracy theories work in the age of the internet. The dense complexity, the crushing amount of content that no human being has the time to thoroughly consume, the use of insinuations to push noxious ideas while retaining plausible deniability: All this serves to disorient people such that they give up even trying to understand the truth of the situation.
“They’re undermining the ability of the average American to discern what is true, what is false, what to believe and what not to believe," Bauman said on a press call in September, regarding what he's learned from being caught up in this.
"Even if you’re not actively sharing conspiracy theories, you’re sort of exposed to it," Ryan argued, saying this leads to "the dehumanization" of the figures involved, even for right-wing audiences who don't necessarily follow or believe all the ins and outs of whatever conspiracy theory is burning up conservative media at the moment.
For instance, Ryan continued, many right-wing figures at first "weren’t comfortable sharing conspiracies about the Parkland students, calling them crisis actors." But after a month of such content swirling around the internet, the students started to seem less human, and ordinary people who consumed right-wing media became "very comfortable sharing doctored images of the students that weren’t true.”
During September's press call, Bauman attested to the power of humanization, noting that after trolls had made his phone number public, he decided to just start taking the calls when conspiracy theorists rang him. He said that most of them, after a person-to-person conversation, had dialed down their outrage and paranoia, which made him feel it's possible to "bring people back to a place where they’re thinking much more clearly about things."
Unfortunately, however, getting every conspiracy theorist on the phone to hammer it out is a task more onerous than watching every conspiracy theorist's lengthy YouTube video. Which is why these theories are now being brought to court, not just to correct false or damaging assertions, but to exact real-life consequences on people who spread them. In their suit against Fox News and Butowsky, the Riches explicitly state that they "seek to help prevent similar malicious and reckless conduct to protect future innocent victims from similarly becoming political fodder."
Whether that will work remains to be seen. In the meantime, the ecosystem supporting all these conspiracy theories, which all too often target ordinary private citizens, continues to expand through social media, blogs and internet forums. Far more must be done to protect people who, often through no fault of their own, become enmeshed in major news stories that make them into leading targets of conspiracy theorists.
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https://www.alternet.org/legal-scholar-explains-how-sandy-hook-parents-can-achieve-justice-against-conspiracy-theorist-alex
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