Conspiracist ordered to pay Sandy Hook parents $4m
A Texas jury yesterday ordered conspiracy theorist Alex Jones to pay more than US$4 million ($6.35m) — significantly less than the US$150 million being sought — in compensatory damages to the parents of a 6-year-old boy killed in the Sandy Hook massacre.
It marks the first time the Infowars host has been held financially liable for claiming the deadliest school shooting in US history was a hoax.
The Austin jury must still decide how much the Infowars host should pay in punitive damages to Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis, whose son Jesse Lewis was among the 20 children and six educators who were killed in the 2012 attack in Newtown, Connecticut.
The parents had sought at least US$150 million in compensation for defamation and intentional infliction of emotional distress. Jones’ attorney asked the jury to limit damages to US$8 — one dollar for each of the compensation charges they considered — and Jones himself said any award over US$2 million “would sink us”.
It likely won’t be the last judgment against Jones — who was not in the courtroom — over his claims that the attack was staged in the interests of increasing gun controls.
A Connecticut judge has ruled against him in a similar lawsuit brought by other victims’ families and an FBI agent who worked on the case. He also faces another trial in Austin.
Outside the courthouse, the plaintiffs’ attorney Mark Bankston insisted that the US$4.11 million amount wasn’t a disappointment, noting it was only part of the damages Jones will have to pay.
The jury returns today to hear more evidence about Jones and his company’s finances.
In a video posted on his website yesterday, Jones called the reduced award a major victory.
“I admitted I was wrong. I admitted it was a mistake. I admitted that I followed disinformation but not on purpose. I apologised to the families. And the jury understood that. What I did to those families was wrong.
“But I didn’t do it on purpose,” he said.
Bankston suggested any victory declarations might be premature.
“We aren’t done folks,” Bankston said. “We knew coming into this case it was necessary to shoot for the moon to get the jury to understand we were serious and passionate . . . he’s going to owe a lot more.”
The total amount awarded in this case could set a marker for the other lawsuits against Jones and underlines the financial threat he’s facing.
It also raises new questions about the ability of Infowars — which has been banned from YouTube, Spotify and Twitter for hate speech — to continue operating, although the company’s finances remain unclear. Jones, who has portrayed the lawsuit as an attack on his First Amendment rights, conceded during the trial that the attack was “100 per cent real” and that he was wrong to have lied about it.
But Heslin and Lewis told jurors that an apology wouldn’t suffice and called on them to make Jones pay for the years of suffering he has put them and other Sandy Hook families through.
Meanwhile, Bankston said in court yesterday that the US House January 6 committee investigating the 2021 attack on the US Capitol has requested the records and that he intends to comply.
He said he wasn’t familiar with everything that was in the records yet, including whether they include any information that the committee is seeking, because there was so much information in them.
“We certainly saw text messages from as far back as 2019 . . . In terms of what all is on that phone, it’s going to take a little while to figure that out.”
A spokesperson for the committee declined to comment yesterday.
Last month, the January 6 committee showed graphic and violent text messages and played videos of rightwing figures, including Jones, and others vowing that January 6 would be the day they would fight for Trump.
As Jones testified at the trial, Bankston revealed that the Infowars host’s lead attorney, Andino Reynal, had mistakenly sent him the last two years’ worth of texts from Jones’ cellphone.
Reynal asked Judge Maya Guerra Gamble to declare a mistrial over the mistaken transfer of records and said they should have been returned and any copies destroyed.
Gamble rejected the request.