Alex Jones defiantly says 'we’re not going away' and labels $1bn Sandy Hook lies judgement 'a joke'
13 October 2022, 08:03
Alex Jones vowed that he is ‘not going away’ and ‘not going to stop’ despite being ordered to pay $1bn dollars in compensation for lies he told about the Sandy Hook school shooting.
He repeatedly peddled the lie that the 2012 massacre, which left 20 children and six teachers dead was a ‘hoax’ and was ‘staged’. His actions caused devastation to the families of victims.
He said live on his show: “Do these people actually think they’re getting any money?" in a broadcast that ran in tandem with the court hearing, which he did not attend.
He called the $965 million judgment against him a "joke" before then trying to convince his audience to send him money.
Jones was told he should pay 965 million dollars (£869m) to people who suffered from his false claim that the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting was a hoax, a jury in the US decided yesterday.
It is the second big judgment against the Infowars host over his relentless promotion of the lie that the 2012 massacre never happened.
His lies extended as far as claiming grieving families seen in news coverage were actors hired as part of a plot to take away people's guns.
The relatives of five children and three teachers killed in the mass shooting filed a claim against him, plus an FBI agent who was among the first emergency services at the scene.
A Texas jury in August awarded nearly 50 million dollars (£45 million) to the parents of another murdered child.
The Connecticut trial featured tearful testimony from parents and siblings of the victims, who described how they were threatened and harassed for years by people who believed the lies told on Jones' show.
Strangers showed up at their homes to record them. People hurled abusive comments on social media.
Erica Lafferty, the daughter of murdered Sandy Hook head teacher Dawn Hochsprung, testified that people posted rape threats to her house.
Mark Barden said conspiracy theorists had urinated on the grave of his seven-year-old son, Daniel, and threatened to dig up the coffin.
Testifying during the trial, Jones acknowledged he had been wrong about Sandy Hook. The shooting was real, he said. But both in the courtroom and on his show, he was defiant.
He called the proceedings a "kangaroo court," mocked the judge, called the plaintiffs' lawyer an ambulance-chaser and called the case an affront to free speech rights.
He claimed it was a conspiracy by Democrats and the media to silence him and put him out of business.
"I've already said I'm sorry hundreds of times and I'm done saying I'm sorry," he said during his evidence.
Twenty children and six adults died in the shooting on December 14, 2012.
The defamation trial was held in Waterbury, about 20 miles from Newtown, where the attack took place.
The case accused Jones and Infowars' parent company, Free Speech Systems, of using the mass killing to build his audience and make millions of dollars.
Experts gave evidence that Jones' audience swelled when he made Sandy Hook a topic on the show, as did his revenue from product sales.
In both the Texas case and the one in Connecticut, judges found the company liable for damages by default after Jones failed to co-operate with court rules on sharing evidence, including failing to turn over records that might have showed whether Infowars had profited from knowingly spreading misinformation about mass killings.
Because he was already found liable, Jones was barred from mentioning free speech rights and other topics during his evidence.
Jones now faces a third trial, in Texas, at the end of the year, in a claim filed by the parents of another child killed in the shooting.
It is unclear how much Jones can afford to pay.
During the trial in Texas he said he could not afford any judgment over two million dollars (£1.8 million).
Free Speech Systems has filed for bankruptcy protection.
But an economist gave evidence in the Texas proceeding that Jones and his company were worth as much as 270 million dollars (£243 million).
