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An attempt by an attorney for right-wing broadcaster Alex Jones to inject politics into the cross-examination of a former FBI agent who responded to the Sandy Hook massacre led to a contentious exchange with the judge presiding over the case.

Ex-FBI agent Bill Aldenberg had been delivering hours of emotional testimony against Jones on Tuesday, stopping himself repeatedly when his voice started cracking. When Joness attorney Norm Pattis took over questioning, he veered toward a turning point in his clients career: his endorsement and interview of former President Donald Trump.

Since Jones had peddled misinformation for decades about everything from the Oklahoma City bombing to the 9/11 attacks, it immediately sparked backlash, but Pattiss questioning intimated that outrage over his clients broadcasts calling Sandy Hook a hoax was all about election-year rhetoric. Judge Barbara Bellis quickly sustained one objection about the relevance of a question about Hillary Clinton.

Once the subject matter turned to Megyn Kellysinterview of Jones on NBC News, the judge instructed the jury to leave the room and a blistering exchange followed. Pattis defended the line of questioning.

Judge Barbara Bellis gets in tense exchange with Alex Joness attorney Norm Pattis after the jury left the courtroom. (Screenshot via Law&Crime Network)

Its our contention that this issue was largely dead until Hillary Clinton made a campaign issue of it in 2016, he told the judge, who indicated that the matter had been settled and Pattis lost.

I already ruled on the issue, and were moved on from that, Bellis said. So now, you just talked about Megyn Kelly. So lets address Megyn Kelly.

With respect to Megyn Kelly, given the nature of the argument that the plaintiffs made here, its our contention we are entitled to put on exaggeration, as a defense, Pattis said. When Megyn Kelly and NBC did an interview with Jones in 2017, a number of Connecticut residents petitioned local affiliates to not air the 2017 interview with Jones. I want to know what this man [Aldenberg] is one of them.

Attorney Chris Mattei, who represents Aldenberg and eight families of Sandy Hook victims, said that there was no good faith basis to ask that question and that Pattis had no evidence that his client was part of that group.

The larger issue here, which is what attorney Pattis is trying to inject into this case is some sort of echo of what he made the centerpiece of his opening, which is that this lawsuit is an effort to silence Mr. Jones, Mattei said. He was trying to get in through Mr. Aldenberg that some unnamed group of people have been involved in sending a letter to NBC for one specific purpose: And that is to try and inject some sort of political argument to the jury, which is impermissible.

Before trial began, Jones had three default judgments entered against him in Sandy Hook-related cases for failing to turn over discovery to the plaintiffs. That effectively meant that Jones had lost the cases before they began, and the juries sole task was to determine how much he owed in damages. A Texas jury already found Jones owed millions to two Sandy Hook parents. The Connecticut trial to determine what he owes eight other families and Alderman began Tuesday.

The day ended with testimony by Carlee SotoParisi, who wept as she recalled how she learned about the death of her sister Victoria Leigh Soto, a teacher at Sandy Hook elementary school who was one of the 28 people killed during the massacre. Trial continues on Wednesday.

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'I Don't Want to Hear Hillary Clinton Again': Judge and Alex Jones Lawyer Get into It After Jury Sent Out of Courtroom - Law & Crime

Former senator and secretary of state Hillary Clinton has addressed the thorny issue of her husbands infidelity in a trailer for a new TV show called Gutsy, that profiles her conversations with courageous women.

In the clip Clinton is asked about her decision to stay with Bill Clinton in the wake of the exposure of his affair with White House aide Monica Lewinsky. Clinton says that staying with a partner who has had an affair is not right for everybody.

In the trailer Clinton is talking to the Rev Whittney Ijanaten, a chaplain who specializes in LGBTQ marriages. Ijanaten says: You have a marriage that has been on public display since the beginning. You said the gutsiest thing you ever did was stay in your marriage.

Clinton agrees that staying with her spouse was gutsy and adds: That doesnt mean thats right for everybody.

Gutsy will air on Apple TV and is a collaboration between Clinton and her daughter Chelsea, based on a a best-selling book the pair wrote called The Book of Gutsy Women: Favorite Stories of Courage and Resilience.

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Hillary Clinton addresses husbands infidelity in trailer for new TV show - The Guardian US

Aphotograph of two women walking topless, along with the claim that the image showed a young Hillary Clinton and her LGBT roommate of fouryears was recirculatedon the internet in October 2016:

Its not entirely clearwhich of the women is supposed to be Hillary Clinton and which is supposed to be her former roommate, but neither bears more than a passing resemblance to a young Hillary Rodham:

The imagewas taken near San Francisco State College in California, across the country from Wellesley College in Massachusetts (where Clinton attended).

Gene Anthonytook the photograph in 1966:

Its unclear why a toplessphotograph of the Democratic presidential nominee would only surfacefifty years later,in October 2016. During her time at Wellesley, Clinton was head of the Young Republicans Club and an intern in D.C., andit is unlikely that she would have taken the time to flyto San Francisco with her roommate for a stroll around the block with her top off.

Actual photographs of Clinton during her college years do exist; however, the image displayed hereis not one of them.

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Hillary Clinton Went Topless in the 1960s? | Snopes.com

For Donald Trumps critics, his Mar-a-Lago scandal has brought to mind the mess surrounding Hillary Clintons emails, and for good reason. Republicans and much of the political world spent years treating the Democrats email server protocols as one of the defining controversies of the era with many on the right calling for her prosecution for allegedly mishandling classified information.

Six years later, its the Republican who called for Clinton to be locked up who stands accused of mishandling classified national security information he took and wouldnt give back.

But in an unexpected twist, its Trumps allies who are also bringing up the story surrounding Clintons emails though the right doesnt appear to remember it quite as well as it should.

The Hill had this report, for example, on Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis speaking at a far-right gathering earlier this week.

And you look at the raid and Mar-a-Lago, and Im trying to remember, maybe someone here can remind me about when they did a search warrant at Hillarys house in Chappaqua when she had a rogue server and she was laundering classified information, [the governor said].

DeSantis added, I dont remember them doing that. The point, of course, was to suggest that federal law enforcement treated Clinton with kid gloves, while being vastly more aggressive toward Trump.

But there are a few problems with the story the Florida governor was trying to remember. For one thing, the FBI didnt raid Mar-a-Lago. For another, Clinton didnt launder any secrets. While were at it, there was no need to execute a search warrant to obtain emails, since they werent printed out, and unlike Trump, the former secretary of state didnt make any effort to obstruct federal officials efforts.

But most importantly, the detail DeSantis conveniently overlooked was the fact the FBI, as part of its investigation into Clinton, really did take her email server. (A search warrant wasn't necessarily because the former cabinet secretary, unlike the former Republican president, voluntarily turned over what the FBI was looking for.)

As it turns out, DeSantis isnt the only one whos a little forgetful about the story the GOP claimed to care so much about. His fellow Florida Republican, Rep. Michael Waltz, told Fox News this week that Trump, after taking office, made a conscious choice to leave his 2016 opponent alone.

President Trump took that approach. He said, You know what, were not going to prosecute Hillary Clinton, Waltz said, as if reality had no meaning. The congressman added, [Trump] said, You know what, lets move on. Lets move forward. But they are just incapable of doing it when it comes to him.

For those of us who were awake during Trumps presidency, the truth is that the Republican repeatedly lobbied the Justice Department to prosecute Clinton, even as late as October 2020. He also reveled in lock her up chants before, during, and after holding office.

The idea that the former president magnanimously decided to give the Democrat a pass and moved on from the email flap is utterly bonkers and the exact opposite of what actually happened.

Perhaps most amazing of all was Republican Rep. Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma who complained late last week that there was no media frenzy when Clinton kept 33,000 classified emails on her server.

In reality, there were 113 emails, and Mullin was only off by 32,887. As for the lack of media frenzy, Im not sure how much more news organizations couldve obsessed over Clintons controversy. Shortly before Election Day 2016, Gallup asked voters what word they most closely associated with the former secretary of state, and emails dominated to an almost cartoonish degree.

That was, of course, the result of relentless media coverage. The year after the election, Columbia Journalism Review found that between October 29, 2016, and November3, 2016 a six-day span that included early voting in much of the country the New York Times published as many cover stories about Hillary Clintons emails as it did about all policy issues combined in the 69 days leading up to the election.

Taken together, Republicans have spent the last several days arguing that the Justice Department largely gave Clinton a pass; Trump chose to leave Clinton alone; and the media downplayed the significance of the entire Clinton email mess.

None of these claims reflects reality in any way and the most charitable explanation is that the same GOP voices who were obsessed with the email controversy just dont recall the events as well as one might expect given the circumstances.

Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MSNBC political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "The Impostors: How Republicans Quit Governing and Seized American Politics."

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GOP focuses on the Hillary Clinton email mess it doesn't remember - MSNBC

Remember when Donald Trump was running for president the first time and, outside of declaring Mexicans rapists and criminals, devoted his entire campaign to calling for Hillary Clinton to be prosecuted and sent to prison for her emails? And regularly encouraged the lock her up chants from his supporters? And told his opponent, at the second presidential debate, that if he was in charge of the country youd be in jail? His son-in-law, Jared Kushner, would like people to know that after winning the election, he tried to be friends with HRC but she blew it.

The Hill reports that in his new memoir, Breaking History, which was described this week by The New York Times as nausea-inducing and like watching a cat lick a dogs eye goo, Kushner writes that the most divisive president in US history genuinely wanted to help the country unite in the days following the 2016 election. As such, Trump supposedly tasked Ivanka Trump with getting in touch with Chelsea Clinton to arrange a get-together with Bill and Hillary. The Ivanka outreach, Kushner says, was meant to convey that Trump had no intention of looking backward and hoped to have a cordial relationship with Hillary to unite the country. Recalls the former first son-in-law: He even told Ivanka to invite Hillary and Bill for dinner in the coming weeks.

What, pray tell, would Trump have said at this dinner, in order to convey that he was willing to bury the hatchet he spent the entire campaign swinging at Hillarys head? Kushner doesnt get into details but presumably something along the lines of, Hillary, you lost really, really big. And even though people, many people, are saying I should throw you in prison, which would be my right as King of America, Im not going to do that. Youre welcome, Hillary.

Unfortunately, as it turns out, that dinner never came to pass. While Kushner claims that Ivanka did make the call to Chelsea, days later Hillary backed [Green Party presidential nominee] Jill Steins challenge to the election, and Trump ended his outreach. Then he proceeded to spend the next six years insisting that Clinton was a criminal, a theme that got plenty of airtime during his second run for the White House, despite Hillary not actually being his opponent.

Rudy Giuliani: Trump didnt steal classified documents, he was just holding onto them for safekeeping

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Jared Kushner Says Trump Wanted to Bury the Hatchet With Hillary Clinton After Spending All of 2016 Calling for Her Imprisonment - Vanity Fair