Infowars founder Alex Jones pushed false theory that the 2012 school mass shooting was a hoax
Alex Jones says he's near bankruptcy after defamation lawsuits by families of the 26 murdered schoolchildren and educatorsAlex Jones must pay $965m in damages to families and an FBI agent ravaged by the Infowars founder’s lie that the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre was a hoax, a Connecticut jury found.
At a news conference after the verdicts were read out, Mattei said evidence at trial showed that Jones’s fabrications had reached at least a billion people. He said Jones had carried out a 10-year assault “that made him very rich and exploited the fears and resentments of his audience”. The families’ lawyers had suggested the six-person state jury use $550m as a “baseline” for calculating the compensatory damages it was to award — roughly $1 for every social media impression Jones’s Facebook, Twitter and YouTube accounts jointly racked up during six years following the mayhem in Newtown.
It isn’t clear whether Jones will appeal the verdict. Pattis couldn’t immediately be reached for comment. The jury was asked to calculate only how much Jones owes the families and William Aldenberg, an FBI agent who responded to the shooting, for defamation and emotional distress, because the judge had already found him liable in a separate proceeding.
The second-biggest verdict, $90m, is for Aldenberg. Jones seized on an outdated agency vest the agent wore to the chaotic scene as evidence that the shooting was staged by “crisis actors”. During the trial, which took place about 32km from where the shooting occurred, victims’ families told the jury about how Jones’s repeated lies not only deepened their pain but also drove his followers to stalk them in person and online.
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