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Gothmog

(143,999 posts)
Wed Mar 27, 2019, 06:43 PM Mar 2019

Exclusive: NRA Official Sought Sandy Hook Hoaxer To Question Parkland Shooting, Emails Show

Juanita Jean's son, Mark Bankston, is suing Alex Jones here in Texas. It seems that the NRA is in effect encouraging the Jones' idiots to believe the Parkland shooting was a hoax. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/exclusive-nra-sandy-hook-hoaxer-parkland-shooting_n_5c8aa54de4b03e83bdbe59eb

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.

This is one of the assholes who was harassing the parent who just committed suicide
16 replies = new reply since forum marked as read
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Gothmog

(143,999 posts)
2. The NRA and Jones are both involved in the harassment of these parents and survivors
Wed Mar 27, 2019, 06:57 PM
Mar 2019

From the Huff post article cited above

The uncovered email is even more troubling, given the recipient: Halbig, an Infowars contributor, is on the front lines of spreading false statements about the victims of Sandy Hook. He has spammed open records requests to Newtown officials for documents related to the cleanup of “bodily fluids, brain matter, skull fragments and around 45-60 gallons of blood,” The New York Times reported.

His discussions on Infowars have included the sickening theory that 6-year-old Avielle Richman didn’t die in the Sandy Hook shooting. In a 2018 email to Richardson, Halbig mentions the girl’s name in capital letters in the subject line.

Her father, Jeremey Richman, died Monday by suspected suicide. And in the past two weeks, two Parkland shooting survivors also died by suspected suicide.

Halbig is not alone in encouraging the harassment of Sandy Hook families. A legion of trolls inspired by Infowars and other outlets have made tangible death threats against many Sandy Hook parents. Lucy Richards of Florida was sentenced to five months in prison in 2017 after she sent Sandy Hook father Leonard Pozner a voicemail that warned, “You gonna die. Death is coming to you.” Pozner is suing Jones for defamation.

malaise

(267,800 posts)
7. Vermin is right
Thu Mar 28, 2019, 06:23 AM
Mar 2019

And then their remedy is to sell more weapons and arm the teachers.

If it didn't fucking happen, why arm the teachers?

Damn they disgust me

Gothmog

(143,999 posts)
4. Alex Jones is pushing conspiracy theories about the death of a Sandy Hook father who was suing him
Wed Mar 27, 2019, 10:41 PM
Mar 2019

Alex Jones is lower than pond scum https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2019/03/26/alex-jones-pushing-conspiracy-theories-about-death-sandy-hook-father-who-was-suing-him/223246?fbclid=IwAR31Kat4OqD9jIaj2cSRB-PSys0PQIXSST_KkaGY6aqiOI5MFKamuvkFXi8

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.”

Crunchy Frog

(26,548 posts)
9. If he didn't die by suicide then it just means that Jones had a more direct involvement in it.
Thu Mar 28, 2019, 09:12 AM
Mar 2019

Does anyone honestly believe he's above putting out a hit on someone?

EleanorR

(2,374 posts)
6. It is very important to the NRA/Russia/Republicans that their fans stay paranoid, cruel, and armed
Wed Mar 27, 2019, 10:49 PM
Mar 2019

These are the followers they cultivate and need.

GusBob

(7,286 posts)
8. Honest question: why do these people do this? WHY?
Thu Mar 28, 2019, 06:41 AM
Mar 2019

What is the motivation?

I hope the lawsuit finds an answer to this

Gothmog

(143,999 posts)
13. How Alex Jones and Infowars Helped a Florida Man Stalk Sandy Hook Families
Fri Mar 29, 2019, 05:11 PM
Mar 2019



Over several years, Mr. Jones gave Mr. Halbig’s views an audience by inviting him to be a guest on Infowars, his radio and online show. Infowars gave Mr. Halbig a camera crew and a platform for fund-raising, even as Mr. Halbig repeatedly visited Newtown, demanding thousands of pages of public records, including photos of the murder scene, the children’s bodies and receipts for the cleanup of “bodily fluids, brain matter, skull fragments and around 45 to 60 gallons of blood.”

Given practical support and visibility by Mr. Jones, Mr. Halbig hounded families of the victims and other residents of Newtown, and promoted a baseless tale that Avielle Richman, a first grader killed at Sandy Hook, was still alive.

The deposition and its details about Mr. Jones’s operation and his interactions with Mr. Halbig was made public on Friday, days after Avielle Richman’s father, Jeremy Richman, killed himself in Newtown’s Edmond Town Hall, where Avielle Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to brain science that the family established in their daughter’s name, had an office.....

The heightened profile Mr. Halbig gained through Mr. Jones and his skepticism about mass shootings drew him into the orbit of the National Rifle Association, as well. On Feb. 15, 2018, the day after 17 people died in a mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., Mark Richardson, a program officer for the N.R.A., emailed Mr. Halbig to stir doubts about the facts of the shooting, according to a document in the Texas lawsuit that was first reported by HuffPost.

Referring to Sandy Hook, Mr. Richardson wrote to Mr. Halbig that “there is so much more to this story,” wrongly speculating in the message that the Parkland shooter “was not alone.”

Gothmog

(143,999 posts)
11. Washington Post-NRA officer enlisted a Sandy Hook truther to sow doubt about Parkland shooting, emai
Thu Mar 28, 2019, 11:06 AM
Mar 2019



The subject line of his emailed response included, in all caps, the name Avielle Richman, one of the 20 students killed in Newtown. For years, Halbig has accused Richman’s parents of falsifying the first-grade girl’s death, writing on his website that their intention was “to steal money from hard-working Americans.”

Jeremy Richman, her father, a neuroscientist who had founded the Avielle Foundation in his daughter’s name, died in an apparent suicide on Monday, following the apparent suicides of two teenage survivors of the Parkland shooting.

The deaths returned the nation’s focus to the two communities, which have been besieged by online abuse and threats stoked by conspiracy theories that depict the victims as “crisis actors.”

But the correspondence shows how an officer of the NRA saw these theories as potentially useful to his cause. The inquiry, sent from Richardson’s work email, was evidence of the curious handshake in which the gun-rights organization has found itself with the most extreme purveyors of Internet falsehoods.

“The NRA literally drives conspiracies about school shootings to fear monger gun owners to buy more guns,” David Hogg, a survivor of the Parkland shooting who has become a prominent advocate for gun control, wrote on Twitter.

Gothmog

(143,999 posts)
12. We Got Alex Jones' Deposition Video. It Was A Predictable Disaster For Him.
Fri Mar 29, 2019, 03:42 PM
Mar 2019

Poor Mark was nervous the first 30 minutes of the depo but settled down and have fun
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/we-got-alex-jones-deposition-video-it-was-a-predictable-disaster_n_5c9d06fae4b03218ee1ca133

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.
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