A Texas judge ruled that Alex Jones must pay $100,000 to Neil Heslin, the parent of a 6-year-old who was murdered during the Sandy Hook school shooting in 2012.
Travis County District Court Judge Scott Jenkins ordered Jones, 45, to pay Heslin $65,825 in “contempt of court” fees because Jenkins said the InfoWars founder purposely delayed an October court mandate to present witnesses and documents to Heslin. Jenkins also instructed Jones to pay $34,323 in Heslin’s legal fees.
“In disobeying court orders, Mr. Jones has shown how desperate he is to ensure nobody finds out how Infowars really operates, or the lengths the company went to carry out its five-year campaign of malicious harassment against these parents,” wrote Heslin’s lawyer in an email to the New York Times.
Six families who lost children during the attack sued Jones for defamation in 2018. The complaint accused Jones of “substantially benefiting” from claiming that the parents of children who died in the attack were actors.
Jones, a noted conspiracy theorist who built his Austin-based show into a syndicated program airing on terrestrial radio stations across the country, peddled falsehoods in the wake of the massacre that killed 20 children and six staff members at the school in Newtown, Connecticut.
During a court-ordered deposition in March 2019, Jones claimed he experienced “psychosis” when he made the remarks.
