Alex Jones’s lawyer appeared to tweet and fall asleep this week during the right-wing conspiracy broadcaster’s ongoing damages trial in Connecticut.
Mr Jones is notably on trial for making false claims about the Sandy Hook school massacre in 2012.
On Thursday, as proceedings continued to determine how much in damages Jones owes to Sandy Hook families, attorney Norm Pattis appeared to be on Twitter. Mr Pattis was apparently commenting on news that Florida governor Ron DeSantis helped coordinate two planes full of undocumented migrants to be sent to Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts.
“This is going to fun to watch,” Mr Pattis wrote as the trial continued, HuffPost reporter Sebastian Murdock noted.
Courtroom broadcasts also showed Mr Pattis apparently dozing off during the damages trial on Tuesday.
The Independent has contacted Mr Pattis for comment.
The damages trial, Jones’s second after being ordered to pay nearly $50m in August in a similar case in Texas, has gotten off to a rocky start.
He and his attorneys were sanctioned within minutes of the trial starting this week, after a judge ruled they did turn over important records of their web traffic and thus could make any arguments in the trial that Infowars didn’t significantly profit off false claims about Sandy Hook.
Jones’s legal effort has at times looked like a circus. In August, his attorneys accidentally turned over two years worth of text messages to the opposing side.
Mr Pattis was not the only one apparently keeping an eye on the migrant flights to Martha’s Vineyard.
Governor DeSantis’s role in sending the planes, which carried about 50 migrants from Venezuela, has been criticised as abuse of the immigration system and waste of taxpayer dollars. Some of those on flights told National Public Radio they thought they were being sent to Boston to receive work papers.
Florida agriculture commissioner Nikki Fried, part of the governor’s administration, criticised Mr DeSantis and called on the Department of Justice in a letter to investigate the “detestable” flight plan.
“To use human beings as political pawns as Governor Desantis has done is morally reprehensible, meriting an immediate investigation and appropriate action,” she wrote in her letter.
The Florida governor has defended the flights.
“If you have folks that are inclined to think Florida’s a good place, our message to them is we are not a sanctuary state, and it’s better to be able to go to a sanctuary jurisdiction,” Mr DeSantis said on Wednesday. “Yes, we will help facilitate that transport for you to be able to go to greener pastures."
"We take what’s happening at the southern border very seriously -- unlike some, and unlike the president of the United States, who has refused to lift a finger to secure that border," he added.
