https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:fLJcGZFJzE0J:https://twitter.com/halbigW/status/951103139373035520+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=ca&client=firefox-b
Wolfgang W. Halbig @halbigW
6:47 AM - 10 Jan 2018
0 replies
0 retweets
1 like
Sorrento’s Wolfgang Halbig still insists Sandy Hook was faked
But they aren’t just any questions. Halbig has, with the help of InfoWars founder Alex Jones, broadcast conspiracy theories about the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.
Halbig, a Sorrento resident, is named in defamation lawsuits against Jones filed by family members of the shooting victims. The suits say Jones and his associates have been spreading baseless claims about the Sandy Hook massacre that left 20 children and six educators dead.
In a deposition released last week, Jones said Halbig sent him thousands of emails over the years, providing him much of the information that helped propel the notion that Sandy Hook never happened, that it was a hoax cooked up by the government in its effort to take away Americans’ guns.
InfoWars is a is a far-right conspiracy theory website and broadcasts The Alex Jones Show. Halbig even appeared on Jones’ show a few times. In his deposition, Jones said he relied on Halbig’s research because he seemed credible – Halbig worked for the Lake County School District as a risk manager and has a background in law enforcement.
In that same deposition, Jones said he believes that the mass shooting at Sandy Hook did happen.
But Halbig, 72, is pressing on despite his family’s objections. He said his quest for the real story behind Sandy Hook has become personal.
“I don’t want to be doing this. I’m too old,” Halbig said in an interview. “I want to play with my grandkids.”
His quest started when he was asked to speak at a 2013 Florida School Boards Association about how to prevent a tragedy like the Sandy Hook shooting in the future. He started looking into the details surrounding the event and thought things just didn’t add up.
“For six years, my public records requests in Connecticut, they’ve been refusing to answer me,” Halbig said.
Since his theories began receiving public attention, Halbig said he’s been “attacked and brutalized.”
“I saw an Alex Jones story that said ‘The Sandy Hook School shooting has more holes in it than Swiss cheese,’” Halbig said. “I wanted to fill in those holes – that’s what I was doing by asking my questions.”
Those questions, however, were more like accusations. He said the victims themselves were still alive and accused victims’ family members of being crisis actors, including Jeremy Richman, the father of victim Avielle Richman.
Jeremy died last month of suicide at age 49.
For the record, Halbig said he also has doubts about the 2018 shooting at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland.
His drive was ignited around Christmas in 2013, he said. According to an incident report, Halbig told the Lake County Sheriff’s Office that two plainclothes deputies showed up to his home and threatened to arrest him if he didn’t stop looking into the Sandy Hook massacre.
“They lit a fire under me,” he said.
As for pending lawsuits, Halbig said he isn’t concerned. He thinks they’ll dissipate.
Halbig is representing himself. He said he can’t afford legal representation because he doesn’t have any money left after his years of research. Halbig’s websites and social media accounts where he solicited donations are no longer. GoFundMe kicked him off its platform.
But Halbig is hoping to get the attention of Jones’ legal team.
He recently wrote an email to Norm Pattis, an attorney for Jones, with “facts not opinions” to support his theories.
“I hope you and Alex are not cowards?” Halbig wrote.
Halbig said he doesn’t recognize this new Jones, who in the deposition said that a “form of psychosis” made him believe that events like Sandy Hook were staged. Jones also said he knows not all of the information Halbig provided him was accurate.
“That’s not the Alex Jones everybody knows and sees on InfoWars,” Halbig said. “He’s acting like he’s on a stage. He’s not combative. I’m telling you there’s something wrong with him.”
When mass-shooting conspiracy theorists go low, they then go even lower | Opinion
By Carl Hiaasen
March 29, 2019 05:38 PM, Updated March 29, 2019 06:51 PM
Victims remembered during Parkland March of Our Lives
A chorus signs a remix of the songs 'Imagine' and 'We are the World' at Pine Trails Park during the March for Our Lives in Parkland, Florida on March, 24, 2018. By McClatchy
Once again, a cross-country slime trail leads to Florida:
Last year, one day after the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, a training coordinator for the National Rifle Association reached out to a loony-bird conspiracy theorist in Seminole County to help discredit the police version of the crime.
The NRA drooler is named Mark Richardson.
The Florida drooler is a character named Wolfgang Halbig, who briefly worked as a state trooper and has spent years pushing the nauseating theory that the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, was a hoax.
Emails between Richardson and Halbig, published last week by HuffPost, surfaced in one of numerous lawsuits against Alex Jones. He’s the twitchy-eyed “Infowars” gasbag who has been tormenting the Sandy Hook families ever since 26 children and staff members were murdered by a young gunman at the school.
Halbig has appeared as an “expert” on Jones’ radio program, now banished from major social media platforms.
On Feb. 15, 2018, the day after the Parkland killings, Halbig was excited to get an email from the NRA’s Richardson saying: “You have included me with a lot of Information since the Sandy Hook Incident and I do appreciate it very much. Concerning what happened in Florida yesterday, I have been asking the question and no one else seems to be asking it.”
Armed with zero facts, Richardson asserted that the shooter, a former student using a legally purchased assault rifle, could not have acted alone, as the police said.
Halbig’s response was an email with a subject line that included, in all capital letters, the name of Avielle Richman.
She was one of the first-graders murdered in a classroom at Sandy Hook. Halbig has savaged her parents online, claiming they faked her death in order to “steal money” from taxpayers.
Avielle’s father, Jeremy Richman, started a foundation in his daughter’s name. A neuroscientist, he spoke at Florida Atlantic University on March 19 about brain research to identify and treat potentially violent persons.
Six days later, Richman killed himself at the office of the Avielle Foundation in Newtown. His death followed the recent suicides of a 2018 Stoneman Douglas graduate and a 16-year-old sophomore at the school.
While the reasons for such acts are seldom simple or fully understood, there is no doubt that his daughter’s death haunted Richman. Any parent would be in agony.
Halbig’s crusade against Richman is despicable, but the conspiracy community on the internet is crawling with such creatures. Why would the NRA enlist one of them?
Richardson told the HuffPost that he was merely asking a “legitimate question” about how the Parkland shooter had gotten in the school.
Oddly, Richardson chose to ask a person whom he knew had no inside knowledge of the assault, no contacts in Broward law enforcement and no credibility. A person whom he knew was harassing the Sandy Hook families and had once spammed Newtown authorities seeking crime-scene documents relating to “bodily fluids, brain matter, skull fragments and around 45-60 gallons of blood.”
That would be the blood and brain matter of dead children and teachers.
As of this writing, the NRA hasn’t commented on Richardson’s chummy emails to Halbig, which included the signoff: “Thank you for all the information. And for what you do. STAY SAFE.”
The NRA didn’t have much to say about the 17 Parkland victims. It spins the image as a citizen’s defender of the Second Amendment, but its true constituency is firearms manufacturers.
Fear sells guns, and the NRA is in the fear-mongering, gun-selling business. Every mass shooting is an opportunity to warn members to stock up before the government bans all firearms.
Yet since President Obama left office without confiscating everybody’s guns, the NRA has struggled. Membership is falling, and in 2017 it reported a $55 million drop in dues collected.
Firearms sales are down; Remington, which manufactures the assault rifle used at Sandy Hook, last week filed for bankruptcy.
Ironically, Wolfgang the Whacko had been trying with no success to endear himself to the NRA. After the Parkland slaughter, when Richardson emailed him out of the blue, Halbig wrote to friends:
“After 4 years of emailing the NRA I finally got a response in light of the Broward County School Shooting. … Now why?”
Because, Wolfgang, the guys running the NRA are even worse than you. They don’t have the excuse of being unhinged loons.
Read more here: https://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/carl-hiaasen/article228608039.html#storylink=cpy
No comments:
Post a Comment