“Lawyers for Sandy Hook families say Alex Jones sent them child porn,” blares the headline at the CT Post. When I first saw it, I missed a breath. Why the hell would he mail evidence that he’s into child porn to people who are already suing him?

Did he miss a memo that possessing and transmitting child porn will get you hard time in a federal pen?

But read the story. He didn’t mail it, and it wasn’t sent to the families. It was sent to their lawyers in the course of discovery for the defamation suit he’s facing.

The law firm representing the families of the 2012 mass shooting, stated in court documents filed Monday they have contacted the FBI after discovering child porn in electronic files Jones recently turned over to the Sandy Hook families as a result of their lawsuit against him for calling the tragedy a hoax…

Court documents stated that the Sandy Hook lawyers had begun reviewing the electronic files that Jones had turned over when they found child pornography in the files. They immediately contacted the FBI.

“The FBI advised counsel that its review located numerous additional illegal images, which had apparently been sent to InfoWars email addresses,” they stated.

Wait a sec. The child porn was attached to emails sent to Jones, not from him? As in, it might — emphasis: might — have been sent unsolicited, by someone who dislikes him and wanted to slip grounds for his imprisonment onto his server possibly without him knowing?

And if he did know, why did he produce it? Surely he’d have realized that getting caught with child porn would carry much stiffer consequences for him than the defamation suit. If he loses the suit, he might go broke; if he’s nicked with kiddie porn, he might never see daylight again. The rational, albeit illegal, thing to do if a discovery request required you to produce material which you *knew* contained child porn would be to destroy the material and risk whatever comparatively lesser penalty that carried.

Jones didn’t do that, though. Which suggests to me, and to lawyer Max Kennerly, that he didn’t know what was in those files.

4) The FBI asks for the whole dump of emails, which plaintiffs give them.
5) The FBI reports back it found numerous child pornography images, apparently sent to InfoWars addresses.
6) As far as we can tell, nobody claims Alex Jones solicited or even knew about them.

/2

— Max Kennerly (@MaxKennerly) June 17, 2019

9) The plaintiffs have filed a motion. Thus far, they haven't sought specific relief, but presumably it's some sort of sanctions and or a gag order to preclude Jones from talking about them or the case.

You can read it here: https://t.co/BJjcvrq9PN

/4

— Max Kennerly (@MaxKennerly) June 17, 2019

That is the big "if," and I have to assume he didn't know. If he did know and had any semblance of self-preservation, he would've set his servers on fire or told his lawyer or done *anything* other than turn them over for production to the plaintiffs. https://t.co/L4Rti6FXeO

— Max Kennerly (@MaxKennerly) June 17, 2019

That’s not to say “destruction of evidence is good!” It’s bad!

But I find it unlikely Alex Jones’s respect for non-spoliation of evidence outweighs his love for himself. If he knew there was child pornography, I assume he’d have done anything to avoid producing it.

— Max Kennerly (@MaxKennerly) June 17, 2019

In the history of the United States, has anyone ever knowingly provided evidence that they possessed child porn to someone whom they had reason to believe would turn them in? The only scenario in which Jones seems likely to be guilty of a crime here is if he had received the images, looked at them, and then just … forgot that they were in the Infowars archives somewhere. A bona fide pervert would have better opsec than that, I suspect.

His lawyer, Norm Pattis, told the site Law & Crime today that “I spoke to federal prosecutors last week. They report that there is no indication anyone at InfoWars knowingly possessed child pornography. The items were embedded in emails sent to folks at InfoWars without ever having been opened.” I believe it. Can you imagine the sort of people who email Alex Jones? Here he is with Pattis a few days ago responding to the allegations.