A Connecticut jury has ruled that conspiracy theorist, Infowars broadcaster and Olympic-level liar Alex Jones has to pay $1.5 billion to the parents of the victims of the Sandy Hook massacre.
Jones spent years spreading lies about Sandy Hook, profiting from the slander and harassment of people who have already been through some of the worst pain imaginable.
According to one father, people defiled the grave of his murdered child because of what Jones said. “To hear that people were desecrating [my son’s grave] and urinating on it and threatening to dig it up, I don’t know how to articulate to you what that feels like. But that’s where we are.”
Jones was consistently obstructive and “stunningly cavalier” during the trial, according to the judge, refusing to share financial records or website traffic data with lawyers for the families.
Today’s ruling comes a few months after a judge in Austin ordered Jones to pay $78 million to the parents of another Sandy Hook victim.
When assessing just how vile and malicious the Infowars campaign has been, remember how difficult it is to lose a defamation case in the US. Jones has now managed to lose more than one.
Christopher Mattei, who represented the relatives of eight victims, as well as an FBI agent who responded to the shooting, asked the jury whether they would “render a verdict that finally forces Alex Jones to understand just how devastating his conduct has been. Because that is the only way he will stop”.
But in truth there may be nothing that makes Jones stop; nothing a figure like him won’t simply repackage as content for his followers. As the verdict was read, Jones — who, it must be stressed, has publicly admitted that the mass slaughter of children he made a fortune denying was in fact “100% real” — did a livestream.
In the broadcast, Jones laughs and asks whether the weeping parents in the courtroom “actually think they’re getting any of this money?”
Elsewhere he says he can drag this saga on through the appeals process: “They want to scare us away from questioning Uvalde or Parkland. We’re not going away. We’re not going to stop”.
Jones then directs his viewers to the Infowars online store, where they can purchase an array of vitamins and supplements.
