Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene came out in defence of InfoWars host Alex Jones once again after a jury ordered him to pay nearly $1bn in compensatory damages to the families of victims of the Sandy Hook massacre.
The far-right politician, who has spoken for the controversial talk show host in the past as well, said “all he did was speak words” and evoked freedom of speech.
“No matter what you think of Alex Jones all he did was speak words. He was not the one who pulled the trigger,” the Georgia representative wrote on Twitter following the verdict on Wednesday over the second of three defamation trials.
“Were his words wrong and did he apologize? Yes. That’s what freedom of speech is. Freedom to speak words.”
She also labelled the trial as “political persecution” and said it must end.
Mr Jones, however, was not on trial for just making a statement but for repeatedly telling his followers for years that the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting, in which 19 children and six adults were murdered in an elementary school, was a hoax.
He said the families and victims were crisis actors, the massacre was a “staged” government plot to take guns from Americans and that “no one died”. His lies led to harassment and threats directed at the grieving families.
Eight Sandy Hook families took the conspiracy theorist to court for defamation where they testified that their children’s graves were desecrated and they had received threats from Mr Jones’s followers.
Ms Greene, who has repeatedly peddled conspiracy theories herself in the past as well and is a staunch supporter of gun ownership despite repeated incidents of mass shootings in America, had earlier accused the families of seeking to “ruin” the InfoWars host.
“He didn’t build his InfoWars on that [claim]. He built it on a lot of other news. And Alex Jones has been right pretty much most of the time,” Ms Greene earlier said, without giving evidence for her claim.
Last month, a jury, during a lawsuit trial brought by an FBI agent, was shown documents that said InfoWars sales had spiked when Mr Jones had talked about Sandy Hook.
The conspiracy theorist built his InfoWars website and talk show over a decade on which he is known to have spread misinformation and often supported White supremacists. Other events he declared as fake were the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, the September 11 attacks, and the 1969 Moon landing.
It remains unclear how Mr Jones will pay the $1bn amount, which is greater than his net worth.
