Alex Jones Ordered to Pay Nearly $1B to Sandy Hook Families

Infowars founder and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones was ordered by a Connecticut jury to pay the family members of eight Sandy Hook victims and an FBI agent who responded to the 2012 school shooting $965 million for describing the massacre as a hoax.

Jones was found liable for defamation on Wednesday after spending years describing the shooting, in which 20 first-graders and six school administrators were killed, as a hoax and accusing the victims involved of being actors complicit in staging the deadly tragedy. The jury also awarded attorneys' fees and costs.

There are 15 plaintiffs in the case. Robbie Parker, whose 6-year-old daughter was killed at Sandy Hook, received $120 million alone.

This is the second multimillion-dollar verdict against Jones, who was ordered in August to pay $4 million in compensatory damages and $45.2 million in punitive damages to another set of parents whose child was killed in the Sandy Hook shooting. Wednesday's verdict is more than 19 times the amount awarded in the Texas lawsuit.

Responding to the verdict, Jones reportedly called the verdict "a joke" that is meant to "scare people" and said he'd appeal to "keep them in court for years."

Jones still has a third Sandy Hook trial pending in Texas, stemming from a suit he lost to parents of another child who died in the Sandy Hook shooting. The case in Connecticut was expected to be the largest financial threat because there is no cap on punitive damages under Connecticut's Unfair Trade Practices Act, which is the law Jones was found liable of violating.

Jones admitted during the trial that he now believes the shooting was real but declined to apologize to the families of the victims.

Chris Mattie, the plaintiffs' attorney, asked the jurors in the case to "think about the scale of defamation" that Jones' claims had, like that the families "faked their 6- or 7-year-old's death."

For a decade, Jones had called the tragedy a "cover-up" and "a giant piece of theatre" that he claimed to be a lie to advocate for gun control.

Families of the victims testified to the harassment they experienced because of Jones' remarks, with some parents even describing letters they received in which people claimed to have urinated on their children's grave and threatened to dig up their bodies.

Prosecutors were asking for $550 million, while Jones' attorney tried to rationalize with the jury, saying, "It would take a person earning $100,000 a year hundreds of years to make $550 million."

The damages awarded on Wednesday ultimately far exceeded the amount requested by prosecutors.

Newsweek reached out to Jones' attorney, Norm Pattis, for comment.

Update 10/12/22, 4:54 p.m. ET: This article was updated with additional information and background.