Alex Jones ordered to pay upward of $965 million to families of Sandy Hook victims in defamation trial

A jury ordered InfoWars founder and conspiracy peddler Alex Jones Wednesday to pay upward of $965 million in damages in his defamation trial over his false claims regarding the Sandy Hook Elementary School mass shooting.

The six-member jury began deliberations in Connecticut court last week to decide how much Jones should pay to plaintiffs who said they had been harmed by the InfoWars host’s dissemination of false information to his millions of viewers regarding the 2012 massacre that resulted in 26 fatalities. Attorneys for plaintiffs, which include eight families of deceased shooting victims and an FBI agent, told jurors that Jones had lied about the events of the shooting since the day it happened and used the internet to help spread false information about that day.

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Jones, who attended portions of the Connecticut trial but fled from taking the stand on at least two occasions throughout the trial, was hosting his InfoWars show live while the jury delivered its nearly $1 billion decision.

A defiant Jones claimed the high-dollar verdict was used to “scare us away from questioning Uvalde and what really happened or Parkland. … We’re not going to stop.”

He also called on his fans to donate funds to him to help with his appeal process and claimed that none of the donations would be going to the Sandy Hook families because his company declared bankruptcy.

“Do these people actually think they’re getting any of this money?” Jones said during the live broadcast, teasing his plans to appeal the verdicts over the next two years.

Robbie Parker, the father of the deceased 6-year-old Emilie Parker, offered an emotional statement during a press conference immediately following the trial.

“Everybody that took the stand told the truth except for one,” Parker said, referencing Jones without naming him. “But while the truth is being said in the courtroom, he was standing right here lying,” referring to Jones’s numerous press conferences outside the courtroom, where he often downplayed the severity of his trial to his InfoWars audience.

As the trial entered its deliberation process on Oct. 6, plaintiffs’ attorney Christopher Mattei said, “The lies that started on Dec. 14, 2012, are continuing to this very day,” adding, “In two months, it will be 10 years, 10 years since these families lost their loved ones, and even now, even now, he’s still doing it.”

Jurors extended their deliberations into Wednesday after they requested to revisit testimony from William Sherlach, one of the plaintiffs in the defamation lawsuit whose wife, Mary, was a victim in the massacre.

The deliberations were also prolonged due to the jury’s questions on Tuesday about interpreting a sentence in its instructions on determining damages, a small portion of the 29-page set of instructions provided to them on how to apply the law to the case.

From the start of the trial on Sept. 13, Jones sought to dismiss the defamation trial as a “kangaroo court” led by a “tyrant” judge, taking issue with the trial rules that disallowed him from discussing topics ranging from free speech rights and whether he profited from shows that discussed the Sandy Hook shooting.

But because Jones failed to turn in records requested in a separate 2021 trial, Bridgeport Superior Court Judge Barbara Bellis issued a default ruling last November holding that he is liable for his false claims, meaning the jury was only tasked with determining how much Jones and Free Speech Systems, a parent company of the InfoWars media platform, should pay to the families for defaming them and causing emotional distress.

Jones’s attorney, Norm Pattis, argued on Oct. 6 that plaintiffs’ attorneys did not go far enough to show monetary harm to the families, saying that there were “no doctor’s bills reports, very few mentions of treatment.” Jones’s attorney also sought to inform the jury that punitive damages are limited to attorney fees and that they should not conflate those with compensatory damages, which should only apply to losses caused by Jones.

“This is not an action to compensate the folks at Sandy Hook for the loss of their children,” Pattis said. “Alex Jones is not [shooter] Adam Lanza.”

The fine amount for Jones was staggering compared to the $550 million amount Mattei suggested for the plaintiffs in a statement on Oct. 6, who told jurors during closing arguments, “It is your job to make sure he understands the wreckage he has caused.”

Jones has said he expects the case to move forward into appeals over the next two years and has asked his fans to help him raise $500,000 for legal expenses. Meanwhile, the parent company of InfoWars, Free Speech Systems, is seeking bankruptcy protection.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

During a separate defamation trial, a Texas jury decided in August that Jones should pay $45.2 million in punitive damages to two parents of a victim of the Sandy Hook shooting over his promotion of false claims that the massacre was a hoax.

But Jones could owe less than 10% of the amount ordered in the Texas trial because the state’s law caps punitive damages at $750,000 per parent.

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