Far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones has been ordered by a jury to pay out more than $4 million for repeatedly making false claims about the tragic Sandy Hook elementary school shooting, The Guardian reported.
The jury in Jones’s defamation trial ordered the extreme conspiracy theorist to pay $4.1 million in damages for repeatedly making claims the school shooting was a hoax.
The nine-day trial in Austin, Texas finished after jurors deliberated for an hour on Wednesday and seven hours on Thursday.
The verdict levied against Jones was far below the $150m or more the plaintiffs had requested that jurors award them. But the lawyers for the plaintiffs said their clients were thrilled with the result, and look forward to putting the money to good use.
In a statement on behalf of the parents of a six-year-old Sandy Hook victim whose lawsuit set the trial in motion, the attorney Mark Bankston said: “Mr. Jones … will not sleep easy tonight.”
In a separate phase on Friday, jurors are to determine whether Jones owes any punitive damages in addition to the compensation he was ordered to pay on Thursday.
“With punitive damages still to be decided and multiple [other pending legal matters], it is clear that Mr. Jones’s time on the American stage is finally coming to an end,” Bankston added.
For years Jones had repeatedly gone on his rightwing conspiratorial outlet Infowars, as well as his other media platforms, to trumpet lies that the 20 children and six adults murdered in the 2012 Connecticut school massacre never actually died.
Alex Jones claimed for years that the victims and their loved ones were “crisis actors,” and said Sandy Hook was an elaborate ploy to force gun control.
In his own testimony, Alex Jones apologized and conceded that the 2012 massacre at the elementary school in Connecticut was “100% real.”
His horrific remarks led to years of death threats and harassment aimed at the family members of the school shooting victims, piling on after already experiencing utmost tragedy.
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