Lies now have a price

Six Connecticut jurors — or shall we call them justice actors? — just ordered Alex Jones to pay $965 million total to 14 parents and siblings of children and teachers murdered at Sandy Hook Elementary School on Dec. 14, 2012, and one smeared FBI agent. America’s First Amendment free speech protections have always allowed the punishment of those who libel and slander. In this case, Jones has already been convicted of defamation for calling family members of murdered kids crisis actors, subjecting them to waves of torment beyond the unimaginable pain they were already enduring.

The only question was how much that defamation and slander and emotional distress should cost him. Now we know: nearly a billion dollars. Amen.

Along the way, of course, Jones has tried to plead poverty. The protestations have been every bit as believable as his claims that he was not smearing the families of Newtown but merely engaging in goodfaith, no-harm-intended conspiracy-mongering.

To this day, his Infowars website assaults viewers with ads for supplements that promise to improve the mind and strengthen the muscles.

In 2016, Hulk Hogan won a $115 million judgment against Gawker, bankrupting it for posting the sex tape of a public figure. It is an abomination of libel law that six years later, Jones’ Infowars — one of a constellation of websites and media outlets routinely smearing people, fomenting followers who buy into nonsense conspiracy theories to rain rage upon them — continues to profit.

Never forget that in 2015, when the Sandy Hook lies were still raw, Donald Trump went on Jones’ radio show and slobbered all over the “amazing” host, pledging “I will not let you down.”

Every person who profits by shamelessly packaging virulent lies should pay a similar price.