Alex Jones Ordered To Pay Sandy Hook Families Nearly $1 Billion

US conspiracy theorist Alex Jones has been ordered to pay victims’ families $965 million in damages after branding 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting a hoax Over the past month, all of the plaintiffs (relatives of eight of the victims and an FBI agent who responded to the shooting) testified about receiving death threats and hate mail who believed Jones’s claims that they were “crisis actors.” The families’ attorneys claimed Alex Jones profited from their pain, using conspiracies to spike ratings and sell products like vitamin supplements.

Within hours of the shooting, Jones was telling his audience that it was staged as a pretext for confiscating guns. Within days, he began to suggest that grieving parents were actors. In the years that followed, he repeatedly said the massacre was faked. https://t.co/SI2wCAOadq

— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) October 12, 2022

From the Washington Post:

Wednesday’s verdict marks the largest award to date in a multi-pronged legal battle by the families to hold Jones responsible for circulating falsehoods about the 2012 mass shooting where 20 children and six educators were killed in an elementary school in Newtown, Conn.

Within hours of the shooting, Jones was telling his audience that it was staged as a pretext for confiscating guns. Within days, he began to suggest that grieving parents were actors. In the years that followed, he repeatedly said the massacre was faked.

The size of the punitive award is considered a sign that jurors found a defendant’s conduct particularly reprehensible and harmful – and as a way of deterring future wrongdoing.

Read the full report here. https://twitter.com/ABC/status/1580288731780907008 In August, a Texas jury in a separate case ordered Jones to pay nearly $50 million to the parents of Jesse Lewis, a six-year-old killed in Sandy Hook. In that trial, a forensic economist estimated that Jones and his companies had a net worth of up to $270 million. It was also revealed that Jones had withdrawn $62 million from the company prior to filing bankruptcy. https://twitter.com/connpost/status/1580289882508775425 https://twitter.com/richsignorelli/status/1580288940287807489