Conspiracy theorist and Infowars owner Alex Jones will be fined at least $25,000 every weekday if he does not appear for a deposition in Connecticut, a judge said Wednesday.
The penalties, beginning Friday and increasing by $25,000 every weekday afterward, are in response to Jones defying court orders to attend a deposition last week. His testimony is being sought ahead of a trial to determine how much he should pay in damages to relatives of some victims of the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting for pushing a conspiracy theory that it never happened, according to the Associated Press.
“The court finds by clear and convincing evidence that the defendant, Alex Jones, willfully and in bad faith violated without justification several clear court orders requiring his attendance at his depositions,” Judge Barbara Bellis said during a court hearing held via video conference.
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Jones’s attorneys have argued he missed the depositions due to illness and will not participate until a doctor clears him. Bellis has argued that letters submitted by Jones’s doctors did not include enough evidence of him being too ill to attend the deposition and noted he appeared on his web show every day last week.
Bellis also ordered the deposition to be held at the Bridgeport, Connecticut, office of the families’ lawyers, instead of Austin, Texas, where it was scheduled last week.
A request by lawyers for the Sandy Hook families to order Jones arrested and detained until he could appear at a deposition was denied by Bellis. The attorneys made their first request to arrest and detain Jones last week.
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On Tuesday, Jones offered $120,000 to each plaintiff in the Connecticut lawsuit to settle the case. The offer was rejected by the families, who accused Jones of trying to escape a public reckoning under oath.
