Need a reminder why it's a bad idea to hand over reams of material in discovery without bothering to review it first?

Alex Jones.

Lawyers for the Infowars host unknowingly turned over a dozen images of child pornography to lawyers representing families of Sandy Hook victims—images that were buried in the metadata of unopened emails, and that Jones said he knew nothing about.

That's not even the worst of it.

Jones was sanctioned on Tuesday by a Connecticut state court judge after he allegedly  threatened opposing counsel in a June 14 on-air tirade, repeatedly implying that plaintiffs' lawyer Chris Mattei of Koskoff Koskoff & Bieder somehow planted the images.

I suppose that's par for the course for a conspiracy theorist, but Jones during the broadcast also zoomed in on a photo of Mattei, a former federal prosecutor, and then smashed it with his fist.

“Oh, nice little Chris Mattei. What a good American. What a good boy,” Jones said. “You think you'll put on me, what … I'm gonna kill …  Anyway, I'm done! Total war! You want it, you got it! I'm not into kids like your Democratic party, you cocksuckers! So get ready!”

Jones also offered a million dollar reward for the arrest and conviction of whoever sent the emails—even as he broadly hinted  that he thought that person was Mattei. “You're trying to set me up with child porn, I'll get your ass. … One million dollars to put your head on a pike,” he said.

There's quite a lot more along those lines, and you can watch the whole thing here. The segment heats up around 2:30, but I don't recommend it. It's exhausting.

Even more appalling, this all happened as Jones' lawyer, Norman Pattis of Pattis & Smith, sat uncomfortably by his client's side in the Infowars studio, making tepid attempts to rein him in.

“Alex, I can't respond to the rage,” Pattis said. “It's easy to make an accusation, hard to prove it.”

Bridgeport Superior Court Judge Barbara Bellis on Tuesday said Jones' behavior was “indefensible,” “unconscionable,” and “possibly criminal,” according to CNN. The judge barred Jones' legal team from pursuing special motions to dismiss the suit, and ordered him to pay the plaintiffs' legal fees related to the emails.

Reached by email, Pattis said, “We intend to file an appeal. Alex threatened no one. The suggestion he did is ridiculous. He engaged in impassioned protected speech. He has been sanctioned in violation of his First Amendment right to freedom of speech.”

Jones is being sued for defamation by families whose children were killed in the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School—a massacre that Jones for years said was a hoax. (He now says he believes it occurred.)

The case is currently in discovery. According to the plaintiffs, Jones failed to include email metadata in his initial document production, but turned it over on May 21 after the plaintiffs complained to the court.

The defense lawyers “produced a massive volume of documents, indicating that many were non-responsive, but they said that they did not have time to cull the non-responsive documents,” wrote William Bloss, Alinor Sterling and Matthew Blumenthal of Koskoff Koskoff & Bieder.

“The plaintiffs' Electronically Stored Information (ESI) consultants began loading files into a document review database in an effort to make them reviewable by counsel as quickly as possible,” the plaintiffs lawyers continued.

(Pattis during the InfoWars broadcast estimated that this cost them around $100,000.)

“During that process, the consultants identified an image that appeared to be child pornography,” the plaintiffs team wrote. “They immediately contacted counsel, who immediately contacted the FBI. The FBI directed counsel to give control of the entire document production to the FBI, which was done. The FBI advised counsel that its review located numerous additional illegal images, which had apparently been sent to Infowars email address.”

The plaintiffs lawyers also reminded us who is to blame.

“It is worth noting that if the Jones defendants had engaged in even minimal due diligence and actually reviewed the materials before production, they would have found the images themselves,” they wrote. “Because the Jones defendants did not do that, they transmitted images to the plaintiffs that if they were knowingly possessed is a serious federal crime.

“The Jones defendants put plaintiffs' counsel and ESI consultants in the appalling position of discovering the first image,” they added. “Plaintiffs' ESI consultants then acted exactly as they were compelled to under federal law once they discovered the contraband images; so did plaintiffs' counsel.”

Pattis in an email comment responded, “The plaintiffs couldn't find the child porn without expensive forensic work. My client opted to turn over emails that met search criteria without reading each one.”

Editor's note: This story has been revised to remove the final quote.