BRIDGEPORT — A Connecticut Superior Court judge has ruled that families of the victims killed in the Sandy Hook school shooting in 2012 will be able to review the financial documents of the conspiracy theory site Infowars, which has called the shooting a hoax, according to the Associated Press.

Six Newtown families filed a lawsuit last April against Infowars publisher and owner Alex Jones, accusing Jones of subjecting them to harassment and death threats from his followers. On January 9, a judge granted the families’ legal discovery requests, allowing them to have access to the Infowars website’s internal marketing and financial documents.

The plaintiffs are the parents of five children killed at Sandy Hook — Jacqueline and Mark Barden, Nicole and Ian Hockley, Francine and David Wheeler, Jennifer Hensel and Jeremy Richman, and Robert Parker — as well as Donna Soto, Carlee Soto-Parisi, Carlos M. Soto, and Jillian Soto, the mother and three siblings (respectively) of first-grade teacher Victoria Leigh Soto; Erica Lafferty-Garbatini, the daughter of Sandy Hook Elementary School Principal Dawn Hochsprung; and Bill Sherlach, the husband of Mary Sherlach. William “Bill” Aldenberg, an FBI agent and first responder to the scene, is also a plaintiff.

Jones has previously sought to dismiss the lawsuit, without success.

Lawyer’s Comments

Judge Barbara Bellis ruled that the Sandy Hook families suing Jones will be granted access to Infowars’ internal business, financial, and marketing documents.

Attorney Chris Mattei, a Koskoff, Koskoff, & Bieder attorney representing the families, said, in part, “From the beginning, we have alleged that Alex Jones and his financial network trafficked in lies and hate in order to profit from the grief of Sandy Hook families. That is what we intend to prove, and today’s ruling advances our effort. We look forward to gaining access to Infowars’ internal marketing and financial documents to show that Jones has built an empire as nothing more than a conspiracy profiteer.”

Among the documents and information that Jones was ordered to surrender are all communications and/or documents, including letters, memos, e-mails, text messages, instant messenger logs, or other electronic communications concerning, but not limited to, the following topics: Sandy Hook and/or Newtown shooting and investigation, the Sandy Hook shooter, mass shootings, Sandy Hook victims and families, and Wolfgang Halbig, among other topics.

The lawsuit, which is commonly known as Lafferty v. Jones, alleges a years-long campaign of abusive and outrageous false statements in which Jones and the other defendants have developed, amplified, and perpetuated claims that the Sandy Hook massacre was staged and that the 26 families who lost loved ones that day are paid actors who faked their relatives’ deaths, according to a statement from Koskoff, Koskoff, & Bieder.

According to the legal complaint, Jones’s actions subjected the families and survivors of the Sandy Hook shooting to physical confrontations and harassment, death threats, and personal attacks on social media.