Alex Jones and Infowars’ parent company must pay $965 million to the family members of eight victims of the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary and an FBI agent who responded to the scene, a jury ruled Wednesday.
The family members and FBI agent William Aldenberg sued Jones over his false claims that the shooting, which killed 20 first graders and six staff members, was a hoax staged by crisis actors to gin up opposition to the Second Amendment.
The money will be divided among 14 relatives of the victims and Aldenberg.
Christopher Mattei, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, suggested the jury should order Jones to pay at least $550 million during closing arguments because Jones’s content about the massacre received roughly 550 million views from 2012 to 2018.
“Their lives were shattered by December 14, 2012, but Alex Jones has made it so they can’t escape,” Mattei said. “Every single one of these families were drowning in grief, and Alex Jones put his foot right on top of them.”
Relatives of the victims of the shooting say they have been subjected to harassment and death threats from Jones’s followers.
After years of peddling the hoax conspiracy theory, Jones has now said he believes the massacre did occur.
The jury’s decision comes after a judge had already found Jones liable of defamation after he refused to hand over critical evidence before the trial. The six-member jury only had to decide how much Jones should pay.
Jurors said the plaintiffs should also be awarded attorney’s fees, at an amount to be determined in November.
Jones’s companies, including his far-right website Infowars, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in April after being hit with several defamation lawsuits over his claims about the Sandy Hook massacre.
The ruling comes after a Texas jury ordered Jones to pay nearly $50 million in damages in August to Scarlett Lewis and Neil Heslin. Their son Jesse was killed in the shooting.
Jones said he planned to appeal Wednesday’s ruling during a live broadcast as the verdict was read. He said there “ain’t no money” to pay the amount the jury awarded the plaintiffs and that Infowars’ bankruptcy would protect the company for now.
Jones’s attorney Norm Pattis responded to the verdict on Wednesday suggesting the families had been “used for political purposes.”
“My heart goes out to the families, we live in divided times,” he added. “They’ve been weaponized and used for political purposes in this country, in my view, and today is a very, very, very dark day for freedom of speech.”