Alex Jones, the disgraced host of the Infowars show, has been ordered by a Connecticut court to pay US$965 million to families of victims of the Sandy Hook massacre, the second defamation ruling against the conspiracy theorist for his claims that the 2012 mass shooting was a hoax..On December 14, 2012, in Newtown, Connecticut, 20-year-old Adam Lanza shot and killed 26 people at the Sandy Hook Elementary School. .Twenty of the victims were children between six and seven years old; six were adult staff members..Jones repeatedly claimed the shooting was a media fabrication, denying that Lanza slaughtered 26 people at the elementary school and the victims were crisis actors. .Parents of the slaughtered children filed defamation lawsuits, forcing Jones to acknowledge the shootings occurred. .Jones said in a 2019 sworn deposition that a ‘form of psychosis’ caused him to make his false comments..The suit was heard in the Waterbury Superior Court, where victims' families gave tearful testimony, twenty miles from the scene of the massacre..Families of the victims said Jones profited off their suffering, amassing tens of millions of dollars by repeating the lies that drove clicks to his website Infowars and helped him to sell merchandise..“Every single one of these families [was] drowning in grief, and Alex Jones put his foot right on top of them,” attorney Chris Mattei told the jury during the trial..Testimony included details such as Jones harassing them, having his show’s audience to further harass them, even to the point of death threats..In August, an Austin, Texas, jury ordered him to pay $49.3 million to Sandy Hook parents in a defamation trial with different plaintiffs..There were 16 plaintiffs in court in Waterbury Supreme Court, testifying about Jones’ actions and the repercussions..Indvidual awards ranged from $120 million to $48 million..Jones was less than cooperative during the trail, at times turning combative, calling the trial a ‘kangaroo court’ and calling the judge a tyrant. ."Is this a struggle session?" Jones said at one point last month. "Are we in China? I’ve already said I’m sorry hundreds of times and I’m done saying I’m sorry.".Norm Pattis, defense attorney for Jones, said he intends to appeal the jury’s decision..“I’ve never seen a case like this,” said Pattis, calling the decision a “dark day for freedom of speech.”.“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,” he said..In August during the trial in Austion, Jones claimed in testimony that a jury award of just $2 million would destroy him financially..However, in that same case, economist Bernard Pettingill, Jr. estimated Jones has a net worth of between $135 million and $270 million..Pettingill, Jr., who examined several years of records for Jones and Infowars’ parent Free Speech Systems, said the talk show host used a series of shell companies to hide his money..The parent company filed for bankruptcy shortly before Jones' trial began.
Alex Jones, the disgraced host of the Infowars show, has been ordered by a Connecticut court to pay US$965 million to families of victims of the Sandy Hook massacre, the second defamation ruling against the conspiracy theorist for his claims that the 2012 mass shooting was a hoax..On December 14, 2012, in Newtown, Connecticut, 20-year-old Adam Lanza shot and killed 26 people at the Sandy Hook Elementary School. .Twenty of the victims were children between six and seven years old; six were adult staff members..Jones repeatedly claimed the shooting was a media fabrication, denying that Lanza slaughtered 26 people at the elementary school and the victims were crisis actors. .Parents of the slaughtered children filed defamation lawsuits, forcing Jones to acknowledge the shootings occurred. .Jones said in a 2019 sworn deposition that a ‘form of psychosis’ caused him to make his false comments..The suit was heard in the Waterbury Superior Court, where victims' families gave tearful testimony, twenty miles from the scene of the massacre..Families of the victims said Jones profited off their suffering, amassing tens of millions of dollars by repeating the lies that drove clicks to his website Infowars and helped him to sell merchandise..“Every single one of these families [was] drowning in grief, and Alex Jones put his foot right on top of them,” attorney Chris Mattei told the jury during the trial..Testimony included details such as Jones harassing them, having his show’s audience to further harass them, even to the point of death threats..In August, an Austin, Texas, jury ordered him to pay $49.3 million to Sandy Hook parents in a defamation trial with different plaintiffs..There were 16 plaintiffs in court in Waterbury Supreme Court, testifying about Jones’ actions and the repercussions..Indvidual awards ranged from $120 million to $48 million..Jones was less than cooperative during the trail, at times turning combative, calling the trial a ‘kangaroo court’ and calling the judge a tyrant. ."Is this a struggle session?" Jones said at one point last month. "Are we in China? I’ve already said I’m sorry hundreds of times and I’m done saying I’m sorry.".Norm Pattis, defense attorney for Jones, said he intends to appeal the jury’s decision..“I’ve never seen a case like this,” said Pattis, calling the decision a “dark day for freedom of speech.”.“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,” he said..In August during the trial in Austion, Jones claimed in testimony that a jury award of just $2 million would destroy him financially..However, in that same case, economist Bernard Pettingill, Jr. estimated Jones has a net worth of between $135 million and $270 million..Pettingill, Jr., who examined several years of records for Jones and Infowars’ parent Free Speech Systems, said the talk show host used a series of shell companies to hide his money..The parent company filed for bankruptcy shortly before Jones' trial began.
