The 48-year-old hosted The Alex Jones Show in which he discussed for years his theories on the Sandy Hook disaster and how it was fake. Source: Shutterstock.
A US jury has ordered that Alex Jones pay $965 million in damages to the families of the Sandy Hook massacre.
It comes after several families of children and teachers killed on that fateful day, plus an FBI agent who worked on the investigations, brought a defamation case against Jones in Connecticut.
Jones has long claimed that the Sandy Hook massacre which saw 26 people killed including 20 children and six adults in 2012, was a government set up to aid in taking away guns from the American people.
He claimed that the parents and families of the victims were hired actors and that no one was actually killed in the massacre.
Throughout the three-week trial, plaintiffs shared stories of the abuse and harassment they suffered as a result of Jones’ lies.
One of the testimonies came from Mark Barden, father of seven-year-old Daniel who had been killed. He said that a conspiracy theorist had urinated on his sons grave and threatened to dig up the coffin.
Lawyer representing the families Chris Mattei said that “Every single one of these families [was] drowning in grief, and Alex Jones put his foot right on top of them”.
Jones’ lawyer Norman Pattis commented after those remarks that “this is not a case about politics, it’s about how much to compensate the plaintiffs”.
It’s the second time in just over two months, the famed conspiracy theorist and founder of the Info Wars website has been hit with a lawsuit that he’s lost.
Earlier in the year, his company Free Speech Systems was ordered to pay a US$49.3 million to the victims’ families in Austin, Texas, where the firm is headquartered.
During the trial, Jones took responsibility for his actions saying, “I’ve already said I’m sorry hundreds of times, and I’m done saying I’m sorry”.
He spoke of the juries decision on his show in which he said “This must be what hell’s like- they just read out the damages. Even though you don’t got the money”.
He faces a third defamation trial in Texas later this year.
