Far-right conspiracy theorist and InfoWars founder Alex Jones has been ordered to pay $965 million in damages to the families of the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting victims.
As reported by Reuters and CNN, a Connecticut jury decided on the amount on Wednesday at the conclusion of the lengthy trial. Jones claimed on multiple occasions that the shooting, which claimed the lives of 27 elementary school students and staff, was a “false flag” operation conceived by gun control advocates. He accused the families of being “crisis actors,” and called the shooting “a giant hoax” that was “completely fake.”
He was initially sued for his comments by the family of a victim in 2018, and the defamation suit later grew to represent 15 plaintiffs. The decision comes after Jones and his company, Free Speech Systems LLC, was ordered to pay over $49 million to Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis, the parents of 6-year-old shooting victim Jesse Lewis, by a Texas jury in August.
Jones later responded after being ordered to pay the $965 million. “They want to scare everybody away from freedom,” he said in a segment on InfoWars. “And scare us from questioning Uvalde and what really happened there, or Parkland or any other event. And Guess what? We’re not scared, and we’re not going away. We’re not going to stop. Literally, for hundreds of thousands of dollars, I can keep them in court for years. I can appeal this stuff.”
He called the entire lawsuit against him “a joke,” and then asked for his followers to purchase dietary supplements from his online store. His media empire filed for bankruptcy earlier this year.
“You may say that is astronomical. It is,” said Christopher Mattei, an attorney for the plaintiffs. “It’s exactly what Alex Jones set himself up to do. That’s what he built. He built a lie machine that could push this stuff out. You reap what you sow.” Throughout the case in Texas, he called the proceedings a “kangaroo court,” and labeled the judge a “tyrant.” He also took a moment to go on a rant about “liberals.”
