Alex Jones Ordered to Pay $965M to Sandy Hook Victims

Parents, siblings of victims said they were harassed for years because of his lies
By Newser Editors and Wire Services
Posted Oct 12, 2022 3:07 PM CDT
Alex Jones Ordered to Pay $965M for Sandy Hook Lies
Infowars founder Alex Jones is questioned by plaintiff's attorney Chris Mattei during testimony at the Sandy Hook defamation damages trial at Connecticut Superior Court in Waterbury, Conn. Thursday, Sept. 22, 2022.   (Tyler Sizemore/Hearst Connecticut Media via AP, Pool)

The conspiracy theorist Alex Jones should pay $965 million to people who suffered from his false claim that the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting was a hoax, a jury in Connecticut decided Wednesday. The verdict is the second big judgment against the Infowars host over his relentless promotion of the lie that the 2012 massacre never happened, and that the grieving families seen in news coverage were actors hired as part of a plot to take away people’s guns, the AP reports. The Connecticut trial featured tearful testimony from parents and siblings of the victims, who told about how they were threatened and harassed for years by people who believed the lies told on Jones’ show.

Strangers showed up at their homes to record them. People hurled abusive comments on social media. Erica Lafferty, the daughter of slain Sandy Hook principal Dawn Hochsprung, testified that people mailed rape threats to her house. Mark Barden told of how conspiracy theorists had urinated on the grave of his 7-year-old son, Daniel, and threatened to dig up the coffin. Testifying during the trial, Jones acknowledged he had been wrong about Sandy Hook. The shooting was real, he said. But both in the courtroom and on his show, he was defiant. He called the proceedings a "kangaroo court," mocked the judge, called the plaintiffs’ lawyer an ambulance chaser, and labeled the case an affront to free speech rights. He claimed it was a conspiracy by Democrats and the media to silence him and put him out of business.

Jones and his company were found liable for damages last year. The six-person jury was tasked with determining how much the Infowars show host should pay to 15 plaintiffs—including victims’ families and an FBI agent—for calling the massacre a hoax. Twenty children and six adults died in the shooting on Dec. 14, 2012. The defamation trial was held at a courthouse in Waterbury, about 20 miles from Newtown, where the attack took place. The lawsuit accused Jones and Infowars’ parent company, Free Speech Systems, of using the mass killing to build his audience and make millions of dollars. Experts testified that Jones’ audience swelled when he made Sandy Hook a topic on the show, as did his revenue from product sales. (More Alex Jones stories.)

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