JUSTICE SERVED
Major update in Alex Jones’ Sandy Hook trial as court rules he must pay enormous damages
CONSPIRACY peddler Alex Jones has been ordered to pay nearly $1BILLION for spreading hurtful lies about the 2012 Sandy Hook elementary school shooting.
Infowars loudmouth Jones, 48, inflicted years of pain on the victims' families and raked in millions of dollars by claiming the entire tragedy was staged.
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Parents of dead children and an FBI agent who responded to the massacre received death threats and vicious abuse from Jones' followers after he falsely claimed they were "crisis actors".
He outrageously insisted "no one died" and the massacre was a government "hoax" to impose tougher gun ownership laws.
Twenty children and six teachers were murdered at the school in one of the deadliest ever mass shootings in the US.
Now a jury in Connecticut has ordered Jones to pay a total of $965million to the families of eight of the victims and the agent following a defamation trial.
Jones was not present in the courtroom but scoffed at the ruling as he streamed it live on his Infowars fake news website.
Afterwards the multimillionaire shock jock claimed there "ain't no money" and vowed to appeal.
He said: "Do these people actually think they’re getting any of this money?
"It goes to fight this fraud and it goes to stabilize the company."
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Jones' company is said to be worth up to $270million, but recently filed for bankruptcy protection in a move lawyers claimed was a delaying tactic to frustrate damages claims.
He and his entourage flew to Connecticut from his home state Texas for the trial in a private jet.
They stayed in a rented villa with a pool and tennis court, according to the New York Times.
Grieving parents and first responders testified they were stalked and tormented for years by Jones' followers who believed his lies.
Some had to move home to escape the abuse and threats.
One father, Mark Barden, said people desecrated his son Daniel's grave by "urinating on it and threatening to dig it up".
In closing arguments, the plaintiffs' attorney Chris Mattei said: "When every single one of these families were drowning in grief, Alex Jones put his foot right on top of them."
Jones - who now acknowledges the massacre was "100 per cent real" - insisted he was not responsible for the actions of his followers.
"I've already said I'm sorry hundreds of times, and I'm done saying I'm sorry," he said in dramatic testimony last month that brought some in the courtroom to tears, .
He also slammed the proceedings as a "show trial" run by a "tyrant" judge.
And his defense attorney Norm Pattis earned a severe rebuke in court after outrageously accusing opposing lawyers of "inventing anger".
Huge payout
The plaintiffs' legal team urged the six jurors to award a total of $550million in damages - a dollar for each of the 550million views Jones' cruel slurs received from 2012 to 2018.
Mr Mattei asked them to "think about the scale of the defamation", citing as one example Jones' lie that families "faked their six or seven-year-old's death".
Yesterday jurors made 15 separate awards to the 14 family members and federal agent William Aldenberg who was targeted in the conspiracy theories.
The largest individual award was $120million to Robbie Parker, father of murdered six-year-old Emilie.
Jones' lawyer Mr Pattis called it a “dark day for freedom of speech”.
He said: “We disagree with the basis of the default, we disagree with the court’s evidentiary rulings. In more than 200 trials in the course of my career, I have never seen a trial like this.”
The Connecticut trial comes comes two months after a similar case in Texas.
In August a jury ruled Jones and his company should pay $49.3million to Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis, parents of slain Sandy Hook first-grader Jesse Lewis, six.
Jones is also facing a third Sandy Hook defamation case in Texas later this year.
But he was defiant on his Infowars show yesterday, vowing to continue spreading conspiracies about other school shootings.
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“They want to scare us away from question[ing] Uvalde or Parkland,” he ranted.
“We’re not going away. We’re not going to stop.”
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