BRIDGEPORT, Conn. (AP) — A federal bankruptcy judge on Monday cleared the way for a defamation lawsuit in Connecticut to proceed against Infowars host and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.

The case was filed by relatives of some victims of the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. Jones has falsely claimed that the nation’s deadliest school shooting — which killed 20 students and six educators — was a hoax.

Jones’ lawyer had sought to transfer the case to a federal bankruptcy court, rather than continue the case in Connecticut state court. That move brought the first day of jury selection to a sudden halt earlier this month.

However, Monday's ruling by Judge Julie Manning essentially allows the plaintiffs to continue the defamation lawsuit against just Jones as an individual, without Free Speech Systems, a company owned by Jones and a defendant in the Connecticut case.

“The plaintiffs’ rights to have that process continue in the Connecticut Superior Court should not be disturbed,” Manning wrote in the decision, adding that the plaintiffs’ claims for damages were ready for trial.

A message was left seeking comment with Jones’ attorney, Norm Pattis.

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WATERBURY, Conn. (AP) — A representative for conspiracy theorist Alex Jones' Infowars empire acknowledged on the witness stand Wednesday that the show and website spread falsehoods about the Sandy Hook school shooting.

“I don’t think that we disagree that there were false statements made,” Brittany Paz testified at a civil trial involving Jones' claims that the nation’s deadliest school shooting was staged as a pretext to tighten gun regulations.

Paz, a lawyer hired by Jones' defense to testify on the company’s workings, said she believed Jones didn't personally investigate the massacre. Nonetheless, he and Infowars repeatedly and falsely said it was a hoax, propped up by actors posing as grieving parents. Multiple Infowars videos featured what Paz called the “crisis actor theory.”

“You mean ‘lie’?” plaintiffs' lawyer Christopher Mattei said, to objections from Jones' attorney.

“They're not actors. Correct,” Paz ultimately responded.

Soon after the killings, Jones disseminated the notion that one slain child’s father was reading a script devised by the government or media to shape public opinion, and Jones said the claim “needs to be looked into.”

Later on, another young victim's father told Infowars in an email that the families were distraught at being harassed over the lies about the supposed hoax and crisis actors. An Infowars employee replied that the company was distancing itself from the claims. But another Infowars employee continued to develop the theory, Paz testified.

The jury is tasked only with determining what Jones has to pay to eight victims’ families and an FBI agent — a judge already found the Infowars host liable for damages, by default. She made that determination after he failed to turn over documents as ordered during the lawsuit.

Jones is expected to testify eventually, but he hasn't attended the trial so far. On his Infowars web show Wednesday, he called the proceeding a “show trial” meant to squelch dissent. He has cast the case as part of a dark campaign against him, his audience and Americans’ free speech rights under the First Amendment.

“We knew they were using Sandy Hook to get the Second, but now they’re using it to kill the First,” he said. The trial comes about a month after a Texas jury ordered him to pay nearly $50 million to the parents of a child killed at Sandy Hook.

Jones' lawyer, Norm Pattis, has urged the Connecticut jury to keep any damages minimal, arguing that the families are making overblown claims of harm.

The families say the emotional and psychological harm was profound and persistent. Relatives say they were subjected to social media harassment, death threats, strangers videotaping them and their children, and the surreal pain of being told that they were faking their loss.

“It’s hurtful. It’s devastating. It’s crippling. You can’t grieve properly because you’re constantly defending yourself and your family and your loved ones,” Carlee Soto Parisi testified Tuesday.

Her sister, teacher Vicki Soto, was among the 26 people killed on Dec. 14, 2012, at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. Twenty victims were children.

Soto Parisi described seeing social media comments claiming that she was a crisis actor, that her sister wasn’t shot or didn’t exist, and that the massacre never happened. She testified about getting ominous social media messages with gun emojis and finding a note on her door from a stranger saying she needed to go to church.

And one time, she said, a conspiracy theorist showed up and shouted, “This never happened!” at a fundraising run that the family holds in Vicki Soto’s honor.

The families argue that Jones trafficked in lies to boost his audience and, with it, customers for Infowars merchandise. Data shown in court Wednesday charted spurts in people viewing his websites and social media accounts after he started talking about Sandy Hook.

By 2016, Jones' show aired on 150 affiliate radio stations, and the Infowars website got 40 million page views a month, according to statistics that the company used to pitch advertisers. Paz said she believes Jones has made hundreds of millions of dollars in the decade since the Sandy Hook slayings.

Jones now acknowledges the shooting was real. At the Texas trial, he testified that he realizes what he said was irresponsible, and he apologized.

He insists, however, that his comments were protected free speech.

“I don't apologize for questioning it,” he said on his show Wednesday. “I apologize if, out of context, I hurt somebody's feelings.”

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Peltz reported from New York.

WATERBURY, Conn. (AP) — Alex Jones took the stand Thursday at his Connecticut defamation trial, acknowledging he had promoted the conspiracy theory that the 2012 Sandy Hook massacre was a hoax, but angrily refusing to keep apologizing for that.

More than a dozen relatives of the 26 shooting victims showed up to observe his often contentious testimony in Waterbury Superior Court, about 20 miles (32 kilometers) from Newtown, where the shooting occurred.

Jones was found liable last year by default for damages to plaintiffs without a trial, for what the judge called his repeated failures to turn over documents to their lawyers. The six-member jury is now deciding how much Jones and Free Speech Systems, parent of Jones’ Infowars media platforms, should pay the families for defaming them and intentionally inflicting emotional distress.

On Thursday, Jones admitted calling parents “crisis actors” on his show and saying the shooting was “phony as a three-dollar bill.”

Plaintiff attorney Christopher Mattei accused Jones of putting targets on the parents' backs, pointing to the family members in the courtroom and saying “these are real people.”

“Just like all the Iraqis you liberals killed and love,” Jones responded. “Just, you're unbelievable. You switch on emotions, on-and-off when you want. You're just ambulance chasing.”

“Why don't you show a little respect?” Mattei shot back, as Jones' lawyer, Norm Pattis, shouted objections and several family members shook their heads in apparent disbelief.

The exchange went on with Mattei pointing out that the families in the courtroom had “lost children, sisters, wives, moms.”

“Is this a struggle session?” said Jones, who in recent years has acknowledged the shooting was real. “Are we in China? I've already said I'm sorry hundreds of times and I'm done saying I'm sorry.”

After excusing the jury for the day, Judge Barbara Bellis admonished both sides, saying further outbursts would lead to a contempt hearing.

Bellis had begun the day by going over the topics that Jones could not mention in his testimony: free speech rights; the Sandy Hook families’ $73 million settlement this year with gun-maker Remington (the company made the Bushmaster rifle used to kill the victims at Sandy Hook); the percentage of Jones’ shows that discussed Sandy Hook; and whether he profited from those shows or a similar case in Texas.

Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones took the stand Thursday at his defamation trial in Connecticut (Sep. 22)

“This is not the appropriate forum for you to offer that testimony,” Bellis said. Jones indicated that he understood.

But the jury had to be sent out of the courtroom several times while attorneys argued about the scope of Jones’ answers.

“You’re going to get your exercise today, for those of you who wear Fitbits,” the judge told jurors.

Earlier in the trial, family members of the victims have given often emotional testimony describing how they endured death threats, in-person harassment and abusive comments on social media. Some moved to avoid the abuse.

Jones’ shows had portrayed the Sandy Hook shooting as staged by crisis actors as part of gun control efforts.

Testimony also has focused on website analytics data run by Infowars employees showing how its sales of dietary supplements, food, clothing and other items spiked around the time Jones talked about the Sandy Hook shooting.

Evidence, including internal Infowars emails and depositions, also shows dissention within the company about pushing the hoax lies.

Pattis is arguing that any damages should be limited and accused the victims’ relatives of exaggerating the harm the lies caused them.

Jones has already been found liable by default in two similar lawsuits over the Sandy Hook hoax lies in his hometown of Austin, Texas, where a jury in one of the trials ordered Jones last month to pay nearly $50 million in damages to the parents of one of the children killed. A third trial in Texas is expected to begin near the end of the year.

Jones was asked Thursday about a page on his Infowars site that called the trial a “kangaroo court” and included a graphic showing the judge with lasers shooting from her eyes. He said the page was created by his staff, but called it a “good report.”

He was asked about advertisements on that page and other Sandy Hook content, as well as daily profit reports. Jones said he could not answer thoses questions, but denied he saw the trial as a marketing opportunity.

Later, when asked about his fundraising and items offered in his Internet store, he made sure to give out the URL where people could buy cryptocurrency to support his company.

“That will end up as a clip on your show tonight,” Mattei said. “You’re advertising for your cryptocurrency page?”

“I mean people want to keep us in the fight, so I mean I hope whoever the big whales are that would give us money before keep doing it,” Jones said.

Jones, who is expected back on the stand Friday, made brief comments to reporters while leaving the courthouse.

“The First Amendment will prevail,” he said. “The American people will never be silenced.”

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Associated Press writer Michael Hill contributed to this report from Waterbury.

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