Austin Shock Jock Concedes Sandy Hook Killings Weren't Hoax

AUSTIN, TEXAS — Austin-based shock jock/provacateur/conspiracy theorist Alex Jones on Friday blamed "psychosis" for his spreading false claims that the students who died in a 2012 Connecticut mass shooting were professional child actors in a hoax meant to enable the government to take people's guns away.

Jones is a defendant in multiple lawsuits filed by parents of the children who died at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., seven years ago, saying Jones's conspiracy theories advanced through his Infowars broadcast and other platforms have resulted in emotional distress.

Jones has long advanced the conspiracy theory that the 20 children, all between six and seven years old, didn't really die at the hands of a 20-year-old mass shooter who also killed six adult staff members on Dec. 14, 2012. Instead, Jones has often repeated, the entire incident was a hoax orchestrated by the federal government, and all who perished that day were trained thespians.

In a court deposition on Friday, the Austin American-Statesman reported, Jones blamed a sort of mental disorder — "...almost had like a form of psychosis back in the past where I basically thought everything was staged, even though I’m now learning a lot of times things aren’t staged...” Jones explained — for advancing the conspiracy theories centering on the Sandy Hookkillings.

But through the fog of that self-diagnosed psychosis, Jones also blamed the media, according to the report, posturing himself as victim. He attributed his actions to "...the trauma of the media and the corporations lying so much, then everything begins — you don’t trust anything anymore, kind of like a child whose parents lie to them over and over again, well, pretty soon they don’t know what reality is.”

His admissions came toward the end of a three-hour deposition recorded in a downtown Austin law office on March 14, the Statesman reported. The deposition was taken as part of one of several lawsuits against Jones filed in Austin, Connecticut and Virginia. Litigants said Jones's incessant claims of a hoax not only displays a reckless disregard for the truth but results in further distress and harm to the parents of the murdered children. Parents of the murdered children contend the broadcaster's claims have defamed them and led to death threats from some of his most ardent followers.

“So long before these lawsuits I said that in the past I thought everything was a conspiracy, and I would kind of get into that mass group think of the communities that were out there saying that,” Jones said, as heard on the deposition that was uploaded on YouTube. “And so now I see that it’s more in the middle. All right? So that’s where I stand.”

Jones's repeated claims about Sandy Hook have prompted various social media platforms to ban InfoWars. The multiple bans have eroded the shock jock's empire that has been built on conspiratorial theories related to national tragedies, including 9/11 that Jones believes also was a hoax.

Yet despite his claims that he no longer posits Sandy Hook as a massive ruse, Jones on Monday proved that he simply can't help himself. On his Infowars show, he wondered aloud if Jeremy Richman, the parent of one of those kids who died at the Connecticut school, actually succumbed to the pain attendant to a parent having to bury his child by committing suicide this week.

Jones questioned the nature of Richman's death on the same day the man took his own life.

“I mean, how do I get a fair trial with stuff like this?,” Jones said on his InfoWars broadcast. “I’ve never said this guy’s name. Never said his name, until now. And obviously first, it’s we don’t know, he’s got gunshot wounds or whatever. Now it’s, well, apparent suicide. I mean, is there going to be a police investigation? Are they going to look at the surveillance cameras? I mean, what happened to this guy? This whole Sandy Hook thing is, like, really getting even crazier.”

Maybe he was murdered, he mused: “We have no idea whether he was even murdered at this point,” Jones expounded on the Richman death. “Why would some anti-gun guy do this? This is really sad. My prayers go out to him and his family, and we wish for the truth of whatever really happened here to come out. We don’t know yet. And we’ll see the corporate media say outrageous lies, but it’s what they do.”

Watch more of Jones's thought on this and other matters below: