Infowars host Alex Jones was questioned earlier this month for three hours by the lawyer of a Sandy Hook parent who has accused him of perpetuating an abhorrent hoax. It did not go well for Jones.

“Like I told you, most of this stuff I can’t even remember,” Jones says about the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting at one point in a video deposition released to HuffPost.

The deposition, which was released publicly on Friday, shows Jones in the hot seat as he attempts to explain his reasoning for spending years falsely claiming that the school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut ― which left 20 children and six adults dead ― was a hoax. He is being sued by nine family members of loved ones who died in the shooting, including Scarlett Lewis, who is suing Jones for intentional infliction of emotional distress. Lewis is represented by Mark Bankston of the Texas law firm Farrar & Ball. HuffPost has also included the full transcript.

Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones made a series of conspiratorial comments following the death of Jeremy Richman, whose daughter Avielle was killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, CT. Jones questioned whether Richman really died by suicide, as is reported, and suggested that the death was timed to distract from “good news” that had come out about Jones.

Richman was found dead at his office building in Newtown the morning of March 25 in what police say is an apparent suicide. He was part of a group of Sandy Hook families who are suing Jones for defamation, arguing that false claims Jones made about the 2012 shooting spurred harassment and threats against them.

Following the mass shooting, Jones definitively and repeatedly said that the violence at Sandy Hook, which left 20 students and six educators dead, didn’t happen. After his public profile was raised, and particularly after a December 2015 appearance by then-presidential candidate Donald Trump on his show, Jones has sought to backtrack and spin his past comments in some cases while advancing new Sandy Hook conspiracy theories in others.

Jones commented on Richman’s death during his March 25 broadcast, repeatedly suggesting that Richman did not die by suicide. He also claimed that the timing of Richman’s death was suspicious and meant to distract from the release of the summary of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on possible Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Complaining that Richman’s reported suicide means he won’t get a “fair trial” in the defamation lawsuits he is facing, Jones questioned the known facts of Richman’s death saying, “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.”

Wall Street Journal: “Of the seven Republican senators up for re-election in seats rated as Lean Republican or Likely Republican in 2020 by the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, only Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) voted to terminate the national emergency. Sen. Cory Gardner (R-CO), who is running in a state Hillary Clinton won in 2016, voted to uphold the president’s emergency declaration.”

“The other 11 Republicans besides Ms. Collins who voted with the entire Democratic caucus and dared break with the president won’t face re-election fights this cycle, though some have still faced backlash.

An official with the National Rifle Association corresponded with a prominent Sandy Hook conspiracy theorist to call into question the school shooting in Parkland, Florida, emails obtained by HuffPost show.

NRA officer Mark Richardson emailed Wolfgang Halbig, a noted harasser of parents of Sandy Hook Elementary School victims, to float a conspiracy theory about the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, where 17 people were killed last year.

“Just like [Sandy Hook], there is so much more to this story,” Richardson said in an email dated Feb. 15, 2018 ― just one day after the Florida shooting. Twenty children and six adults were killed during the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting in Newtown, Connecticut. “[The Parkland shooter] was not alone.” The email was sent from his official NRA email address. ...

The email exchange between Richardson and Halbig emerged as part of a recent discovery process for an ongoing lawsuit between Infowars host Alex Jones and Sandy Hook parent Scarlett Lewis, who is suing Jones and his show for intentional infliction of emotional distress. For years, he has falsely called the victims of the tragedy “crisis actors,” emboldening dangerous conspiracy theorists to harass people who lost their children in the tragic shooting.

Veteran journalist Soledad O’Brien tweeted:

“Not super bewildering. Her husband, President George HW Bush leveraged the racism of the Willie Horton ad — a coded racist appeal to white voters — to victory. President Trump has taken that ball and run with it.”
https://twitter.com/Russian_Starr/status/1110881534851063809
....As Rice University historian Douglas Brinkley told PBS shortly after Bush’s death:

“Bush wanted to see himself as being a man devoid of racism. But the reality is that Bush often had to do dog whistles and appeal to less enlightened Americans on race.”

It is understandable that Bush, who probably saw her husband as a gentleman, would be disgusted by the behavior of Trump — especially when she considers how he treated her son during the campaign. But it is telling that someone who had a front-row seat to two American presidencies seemed so unaware of the values within her own party that she would view Trump as an interloper instead of the next chapter of a continuing story.