HARTFORD, Connecticut. (AP) — Conspiracy theorist attorney Alex Jones has been suspended from practicing law in Connecticut for six months for improperly providing other Jones attorneys in Texas with confidential documents, including medical records of relatives of the Sandy Hook victims. Shooting in elementary school.
Judge Barbara Bellis’ decision on Thursday afternoon was part of the families’ lawsuit against Jones for repeatedly calling the shooting a hoax on his Infowars show, which resulted in Jones being ordered to pay more than $1.4 billion in damages since the latest trial. jury in Connecticut. year.
Bellis said attorney Norm Pattis of New Haven failed to protect the families’ confidential records in violation of her order, which restricted access to documents for attorneys in the Connecticut case. She called his actions a “terrible failure” and “inexcusable”.
“We cannot expect our justice system or our lawyers to be perfect, but we can expect fundamental fairness and decency,” the judge wrote. “There was no fairness or decency in the handling of Plaintiffs’ most sensitive and personal information, nor was there any justification for Defendant’s (Pattis’s) misconduct.”
Pattis said in a text message Friday that he plans to appeal the disciplinary action and seek a stay of punishment while he contests it. Bellis has scheduled a hearing on the motion for a stay on January 13.
“We look forward to the appeal,” he wrote in a subsequent email to the Associated Press.
During a hearing in August over possible punishment for releasing the tapes, Pattis invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination and refused to answer questions. In a court filing, he said there was no evidence that he violated any code of conduct and called the release of the recordings an “innocent mistake”.
Sandy Hook, a spokesman for the families’ lawyers, said they would not comment on the Pattis suspension.
Pattis is currently representing one of several members of the extremist group Proud Boys charged with a felony in connection with the January 6, 2021 U.S. Capitol uprising at the ongoing trial in Washington. It was not immediately clear how the suspension would affect the case. Pattis said he notified a judge in Washington of the punishment.
Twenty first graders and six teachers were killed in a December 14, 2012 shooting in Newtown, Connecticut. Relatives of the eight victims, as well as the FBI agent who responded to the shooting, sued Jones and his Austin, Texas-based company Free Speech Systems on prank charges, alleging defamation and emotional distress.
During the month-long trial, the plaintiffs testified that they had been threatened and harassed for years by people who denied the shooting. Strangers showed up at some of their homes and confronted some of them in public. People showered them with offensive comments on social media and by email. Some were threatened with death and rape.
Attorneys for the Sandy Hook families handed over almost 400,000 pages of documents to the Pattis as part of the case, including about 4,000 pages containing the plaintiffs’ medical records. Bellis restricted access to attorneys’ records in the Connecticut case.
Last May, Pattis’ office sent an external hard drive containing recordings to a bankruptcy lawyer for Jones and Free Speech Systems in Texas, Bellis said in the ruling.
Bankruptcy attorney Kyung Lee later handed over the hard drive to attorney Andino Reynal, a lawyer representing Jones and his company in a similar lawsuit over Jones’s prank allegations filed in Texas by the parents of another child killed in the massacre. Raynal then sent the paperwork to the family’s attorney, Sandy Hook, in Texas.
The Texas case went to court over the summer, and as a result, Jones was ordered to pay his parents about $50 million in damages.
Bellis also decides whether Raynal should be suspended from practicing law in Connecticut, even though he is based in Houston. In a court document, Raynal said he should not be punished because an employee of his firm mistakenly sent the notes to the family’s Texas lawyer, Sandy Hook.
Jones said he plans to appeal both convictions. Jones personally and Free Speech Systems are currently seeking bankruptcy protection.
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