Infowars host Alex Jones is facing another defamation lawsuit – this time from a man from Boston who was falsely identified as the shooter during the Parkland school shooting.
In the shooting, 17 people were shot when a gunman entered Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. Suspect Nicholas Cruz was arrested for the incident and confessed to the Broward County Sheriff’s Office.
Despite that, the false theory that Marcel Fontaine was the gunman was started when a picture of Fontaine wearing a shirt depicting historical Communist leaders at a party (a.k.a. a “communist party”), the lawsuit alleges.
Though Infowars has since updated the article, at one point the headline read “Reported Florida Shooter Dressed as Communist, Supported ISIS,” the Huffington Post reports.
Lawyers for 24-year-old Fontaine said the negative media has prompted threats and accusations that he was a “crisis actor” involved in the incident as part of the “deep state,” according to the lawsuit, which was seen by the Huffington Post.
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Fontaine’s lawyer Mark Bankston told CBS News that his client has “grown increasingly disturbed by this incident” and “genuinely fears for his safety.”
“The total number of people who saw the false accusation as a result of InfoWars’ mass dissemination and endorsement … would be measured in the hundreds of millions,” the suit reads.
That includes a North Carolina congressman who was forced to apologize after he commented on a picture of Fontaine, and said he was part of a conspiracy to “push for gun control so they can more easily take over the country,” the News Observer reports.
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The lawsuit is preceded by another, similar one from a Virginia man who was accused of helping stage unrest last summer in Charlottesville, Va., as part of an effort to undermine U.S. President Donald Trump.
Brennan Gilmore became the subject of online attacks by conservative groups and individuals after his cellphone video of white nationalist James Fields Jr. crashing his car into a crowd went viral. The car struck and killed 32-year-old Heather Heyer and injured 19 others. Fields was charged with first-degree murder.
Gilmore, 38, said in a lawsuit filed in federal court in Virginia in March that Jones and his Infowars published stories that damaged his reputation and led to threats against him, including a letter that contained suspicious powder.
In an hour-long video that Jones prepared in response to the lawsuit after Reuters asked him for comment, he rejected the accusation that any of the Infowars content about Gilmore was knowingly false, and predicted that any jury would acquit him of defamation charges.
Jones has not commented on the lawsuit from Fontaine as of time of publication.
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