by Far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones raged live on InfoWars as the jury in his defamation trial awarded nearly billions of dollars in damages against him to the families of the victims of the Sandy Hook mass shooting.
“This is exactly what I’ve been waiting for,” Mr Jones said during the live stream on his website.
The Connecticut jury reached its verdict Wednesday afternoon after three days of deliberations. Attorneys representing the families of the eight victims and an FBI agent who pursued Jones had sought $550 million in damages, and the jury ended up awarding them about $1 billion.
“This is all just delusional left-wing bullshit, like two men can make a baby,” Jones said as events in the courtroom turned against him.
The finding came after four weeks of testimony from family members about how Jones’ conspiracy theories about the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, and repeated attacks on many of the family members involved affected their life.
The extent of the damages — just one planter received $120 million — may jeopardize the future of InfoWars. Jones certainly wasted no time after reading about the damage, pleading with his viewers to help him “fight back” by donating and buying supplements and other products on his website.
Jones promised his viewers that no donations would go towards paying the damages he owes, but said he was almost “out of money” and mocked the planters for expecting him to pay them the damages he now owes. Jones’ net worth is estimated to be between $135 million and $270 million, a fraction of what he now owes.
“This is what Hell must be like,” Jones said at one point. “They just read the damages even though you don’t have the money.”
Jones promised earlier in the trial that he was “done apologizing” for his lies about the Sandy Hook victims and their families, including that the victims were “actors” and that the mass shooting was a “giant hoax.” In the years following the shooting, he continued to claim — and profit from the claim — that the shooting was a “false flag” operation. As a result, the planters said, they were publicly harassed and re-injured.
Jones suggested Wednesday that he would continue to speak similarly about other traumatic mass shootings that have occurred in recent years.
“They want to scare us away from the Uvalde or Parkland question,” Jones said. “We will not leave. We’re not going to stop.”
As his show continued Wednesday, Jones peddled baseless conspiracy theories about Covid-19 vaccines, CNN, the Democratic Party and a host of other topics. He continued to hawk supplements and other products on the show’s website.
Jones’ bill could grow further in the coming weeks as a judge decides whether to award the planters further punitive damages for their claims that Jones violated Connecticut’s Unfair Trade Practices Act.
