Alex Jones ordered to pay $4M to parents
AUSTIN, Texas – A Texas jury on Thursday ordered conspiracy theorist Alex Jones to pay more than $4 million in compensatory damages to the parents of a 6-year-old boy who was killed in the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre, marking the first time the Infowars host has been held financially liable for repeatedly claiming the deadliest school shooting in U.S. history was a hoax.
The Austin jury must still decide how much the Infowars host must 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 $150 million in compensation for defamation and intentional infliction of emotional distress. Jones’ attorney asked the jury to limit damages to $8 –$1 for each of the compensation charges they are considering – and Jones said any award over $2 million “would sink us.”
It likely won’t be the last judgment against Jones over his claims that the attack was staged in the interests of increasing gun control. 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.
The Texas award could set a marker for other cases 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 conceded during the trial that the attack was 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.
Jones’ media company Free Speech Systems, which is Infowars’ parent company, filed for bankruptcy during the twoweek trial.
Also on Thursday, an attorney for the parents said that the U.S. House Jan. 6 committee has requested two years’ worth of records from Jones’ phone.
Attorney Mark Bankston told the Texas court where Jones is on trial to determine how much he owes for defaming the parents that the committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S.
Capitol has requested the digital records. He later said outside of court that he plans to comply with the request.
A spokesperson for the committee declined to comment Thursday.
As Jones testified at the trial on Wednesday, 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.
Reynal also accused Bankston of trying to perform “for a national audience.” He said the material included a review copy of text messages over six months from late 2019 into the first quarter of 2020.
Bankston said his team followed Texas’ civil rules of evidence and that Jones’ attorneys missed their chance to properly request the return of the records.
“Mr. Reynal is using a fig leaf (to cover) for his own malpractice,” Bankston said.
He said the records mistakenly sent to him included some medical records of plaintiffs in other lawsuits against Jones.
“Mr. Jones and his intimate messages with Roger Stone are not protected,” Bankston said, referring to former President Donald Trump’s longtime ally.
Rolling Stone, quoting unnamed sources, reported Wednesday evening that the Jan. 6 committee was preparing to subpoena the data from the parents’ attorneys to assist in the investigation of the deadly riot.
Bankston said outside of court Thursday that the committee had requested the phone records, but hadn’t subpoenaed them. He also 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 don’t know (yet) the full scope and breadth,” of the material, Bankston said. “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.”
“The Jan. 6 committee doesn’t have any more information about what’s on that phone than I do. I don’t know if it even covers the time period they are interested in,” he said.
Jones didn’t attend Thursday’s court proceedings. But on his Infowars show Thursday, he said the records were from a year before Jan. 6 and had “nothing to do with it.”