Alex Jones spent years making as much as $800,000 per day by sowing lies and misinformation across Infowars, including his claims that the 2012 Sandy Hook mass shooting was a hoax by liberals to undermine gun rights. Now, he’ll be paying for those false allegations for years to come.
On Wednesday, a jury in Connecticut ordered him to pay $965 million to eight families he was found guilty of defaming with his claims about the massacre, plus an FBI agent who has been targeted by conspiracists. Robbie Parker, whose daughter Emilie was killed in the shooting and was portrayed on Infowars as an “actor” faking his grief, was ordered to receive $120 million alone.
The massive sum in Connecticut means that Jones has been ordered to pay over $1 billion to the families of the victims when combined with a separate verdict of almost $50 million issued by a Texas jury in August for two Sandy Hook parents. (The Texas trial featured some bizarre developments, like when Jones’s lawyers accidentally provided all the information in their client’s phone to the plaintiffs.) The damages in Connecticut rose close to the ten-figure mark thanks to the state’s Unfair Trade Practices Act, which has no limit to punitive damages.
It’s unlikely that Jones will have to pay out the entirety of the court-ordered sum; already, his lawyer said they “look very much forward” to appealing the sum. “Do these people actually think they’re getting any of this money?” Jones asked, as he watched the verdict come in on a livestream. But he isn’t out of financial trouble either, facing yet another defamation trial determining damages in Texas later this year.
