Alex Jones trial: Jury awards $4.1 million to Sandy Hook family

A Texas jury ordered Alex Jones, founder of fringe media company Infowars, to pay $4.1 million to the parents of a 6-year-old boy murdered in the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School mass shooting after he denied that the shooting was real and accused the child’s parents of participating in a government swindle. He may face further damages for defamation in the millions.

Jones had claimed the Sandy Hook shooting – which killed 20 children and six adults – was a “huge scam” perpetrated by “crisis actors” and that “no one died”. He was sued by the child’s parents, Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis, for defamation after he accused them of being part of a government false flag operation to fake the Newtown, Connecticut shooting, allegedly to lure public opinion in favor of weapons to arouse control.

In addition to the $4.1 million in damages awarded to the parents, the Texas jury will decide punitive damages on Friday. Jones also faces judgments in two other cases in which he was sued by parents of Sandy Hook victims after losing the lawsuits by default last year for failing to comply with court orders for documents and testimony.

In a statement, Mark Bankston, the parents’ attorney, said his clients are “thrilled with the outcome and look forward to putting Mr Jones’ money to good use. Mr. Jones, on the other hand, will not sleep well tonight. With punitive damages pending and several additional defamation lawsuits pending, it is clear that Mr. Jones’ time on the American stage is finally coming to an end.”

Meanwhile, Jones called the decision “a great victory for truth” in a video posted to Infowars on Thursday. Because according to the far-right number, the amount of damages awarded by the jury was far less than the $ 150 million that the couple had demanded. “They thought they were going to shut us down. But this jury understood the truth and defied the propaganda,” Jones said. He also urged his followers to buy products — like t-shirts, books and supplements — from his website, and claimed his company needs financial backing to keep going because “we’re so broke.”

Last week, Free Speech Systems filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and revealed that Infowars’ owners took more than $62 million out of business. Jones and Infowars’ parent company, Free Speech Systems, has so far spent more than $15 million in attorneys’ fees and expenses in the Sandy Hook lawsuits, according to court documents.

During the Texas trial, Jones’ attorneys had inadvertently sent his cell phone records – which Jones had denied existed – to Bankston, the family’s legal counsel. (The judge in the case denied the request of Jones’ attorneys to declare a mistrial for their mistake.) Bankston later said that the Jan. 6 House Select Committee overseeing the pro-Trump attack on the US Capitol investigated, had requested the phone records from Jones and that he was willing to hand them over.

Jones, 48, is “quite possibly the most prolific conspiracy theorist in America today,” according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. In 2018, YouTube, Facebook, Spotify and Apple Podcasts banned Jones from their platforms, citing violations of their hate speech policies.

In addition to his damaging lies about Sandy Hook, Jones has denied that Trump lost the 2020 presidential election, saying this December, “We will never shrink from the satanic pedophile, the globalist New World Order and their walking resuscitated corpse Joe Biden, and we will never recognize him.” He has also accused the US government of being behind the 9/11 attacks; said “left-wing Jews” wanted to create conflict through “clothing”.[ing] stand up as Nazis”; and mistakenly said President Obama “is al-Qaeda”.