The Connecticut judge presiding over Sandy Hook families’ lawsuit against InfoWars conspiracy theorist Alex Jones said on Friday that she had been targeted by death threats posted on the InfoWars website.
Judge Barbara N. Bellis revealed in a court filing that she had been notified by the FBI and the Connecticut State Police that people had posted “threats” about her on InfoWars. Bellis is presiding over the case involving the Sandy Hook families lawsuit against Jones for claiming that the 2012 Sandy Hook elementary school massacre in which their children were killed was an elaborate hoax.
“The court was contacted by the Connecticut State Police who were reportedly contacted by the FBI regarding threats against [Bellis] made by individuals on the defendant Infowars website,” Bellis’s filing reads.
In a statement, InfoWars attorney Norm Pattis suggested the threats weren’t serious.
“The fact that no law enforcement agent has contacted us for further information suggests the threats are not serious,” Pattis said. “Even so, we are now searching Infowars website to see what all the fuss is about.”
Jones attacked Bellis on-air on Tuesday, describing the judge as “ignorant” and suggesting that she was part of an organized effort to destroy him.
The death threat revelation comes just days after Sandy Hook attorneys in the case asked the court to take action to protect them from Jones’s on-air rants. Last week, Jones, without evidence, accused the Sandy Hook attorneys of planting child pornography on the InfoWars servers after his own lawyers accidentally sent the plaintiffs’ attorneys child pornography during the discovery process. The plaintiffs’ attorneys said they received so many death threats after Jones’s broadcast that they had to hire security.
Bellis’s filing doesn’t explain what type of threats were made against her or who posted them, but the wording of the filing suggests that the threats were made in the InfoWars comment section.
Attorney Norman Pattis, who’s representing Jones and InfoWars, called the news of the death threats “stunning.”
“I am confident that no one at Infowars condoned or encouraged such a thing,” Pattis told The Daily Beast.
In her filing, Bellis said she had no more information about the threats and didn’t plan to take action in court over them. The families’ attorneys declined to comment on the threats.