Alex Jones damages trial over his false claims Sandy Hook shooting was a hoax underway

Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones repeatedly "lied and attacked the parents of murdered children" when he told his Infowars audience that the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting was a hoax, an attorney for one of the victims' parents told a Texas jury on Tuesday at the outset of a trial to determine how much Jones must pay for defaming them.

Jones created a "massive campaign of lies" and recruited "wild extremists from the fringes of the internet ... who were as cruel as Mr. Jones wanted them to be" to the families of the 20 first-graders and six educators who were killed in the 2012 attack on the school in Newtown, Connecticut, attorney Mark Bankston said during his opening statement as Jones looked on and occasionally shook his head.

Jones tapped into the explosive popularity of Sandy Hook conspiracy stories that became an "obsession" for the website, even years after the shooting, said Bankston, who played video clips of Jones claiming on his program that the shooting was a hoax and "the whole thing was completely fake. ... It just didn't happen."