The lawyer for InfoWars host Alex Jones said he intends to file an appeal of a judge’s order to Jones to pay a financial sanction for falsely claiming on a television broadcast that he was being framed by the families of the Sandy Hook tragedy with child pornography.
“I will be filing a public interest appeal with the state Supreme Court on Monday,” Norman Pattis said Wednesday afternoon.
On Tuesday, following a hearing, Superior Court Judge Barbara Bellis ordered Jones, who was not in the courtroom, to pay legal fees of the eight Sandy Hook families who are suing him for claiming the 2012 mass shooting in Newtown was a hoax.
The law firm representing the families of the mass shooting, Koskoff, Koskoff and Bieder, stated in court documents filed Monday they have contacted the FBI after discovering child porn in electronic files Jones recently turned over to the Sandy Hook families as a result of their lawsuit against him.
Koskoff lawyer William Bloss, during a hearing before Bellis on Tuesday, told the judge that after they discovered the child porn they immediately notified the FBI, the U.S. Attorney and Jones’ lawyer, Norman Pattis. He said they did not go public with their discovery.
Bloss said the FBI determined that Jones had been sent the child pornography in emails and inadvertently included it in the material he forwarded to them.
However, on June 14, Jones, in a video broadcast on his website and with Pattis sitting next to him, accused the Koskoff firm and its lawyer, Chris Mattei, of trying to frame him with child porn.
“You think when you call up, oh, we’ll protect you. We found the child porn. I don’t like kids like you goddamn rapists, (expletive). I’ll (expletive) get you in the end ... You’re trying to set me up with child porn ... one million dollars to put your head on a pike,” Jones stated during a 20-minute rant in which he pounded on a photograph of Mattei.
“What is not appropriate, what is indefensible, unconscionable, despicable and possibly criminal behavior is to accuse opposing counsel, through a broadcast, no less, of planting child pornography which is a serious felony,” Bellis stated in her decision to levy sanctions. “I reject the Jones’ defendants claim that Alex Jones was enraged.”
But Pattis on Wednesday maintained the judge was wrong.
“Alex Jones did not threaten Mattei, it’s not even close,” Pattis said. “Alex Jones is being punished for speaking out.”