John Oliver has taken aim at conspiracy theorist Alex Jones during Last Week Tonight.
The founder of Infowars – a far-right conspiracy theory and fake news website – has been ordered to pay $49.3m (£41m) in damages after falsely claiming the Sandy Hook massacre was a “hoax” filled “with actors”.
On Sunday night’s (7 August) episode of his talk show, Oliver described Jones as “a man who boldly answers the question: What if Grimace were a Proud Boy?”.
He added: “Guess what, Alex? You f***ed with info and this time info f***ing won.”
Oliver then presented clips of Jones appearing in court in Texas, including one that showed the exasperated Judge Maya Guerra Gamble telling Jones to “tell the truth” and asking him to “spit out” whatever was in his mouth.
Oliver said that Jones had made the situation worse for himself by continuing to appear on Infowars during a trial in which he “baselessly linked [the judge] to paedophilia” and said that his political enemies stacked the jury with “blue-collar” people who were not capable of deciding the damages he should pay.
The talk show host then showed a clip of the plaintiff’s attorney telling Jones that his legal team had accidentally sent him two years’ worth of the presenter’s text messages.
Oliver gleefully said of the text revelation: “First, credit to that lawyer for having the superhuman patience to sit on those text messages for 12 whole days… but the content of Jones’ phone could become a problem for him.
“Not only has the Jan 6 committee already requested those phone records, but they also show that Jones, who’s tried to plead poverty in this case, was earning revenue of as much as $800,000 (£661m) per day in recent years from sales.”
Oliver concluded: “Look, clearly, none of this is going to stop him. There are two more trials coming up, and he’s probably going to find ways to turn those into a clown show as well and fundraise off them too. But at the very least, this phone thing could make his life much more difficult – and for a while.
“And that is something that we should all be allowed to enjoy, because to wake up one morning and find out that Alex Jones’ lawyers mistakenly shared his cellphone records is a true blessing. We don’t deserve this, but one thing’s for sure: He definitely does.”
The parents of six-year-old Jesse Lewis who was killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook massacre, Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis, filed a defamation suit against Jones over his claims that the school shooting, which saw 20 children and six adults killed, was a hoax.
This is the first of three trials against Jones being brought by family members of Sandy Hook victims.
