The damages come after Jones was found liable for defamation. He spent years spreading lies about the 2012 shooting, which killed 20 children and six adults.
A jury in Connecticut ruled that conspiracy theorist Alex Jones must pay the families of eight victims killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting and an FBI agent who responded to the scene almost $1 billion in damages for spending years falsely claiming the shooting was a hoax.
Jones had been found liable for defamation last year after he spent years spreading lies about the 2012 shooting, which killed 20 children and six adults. The families of the victims said Jones profited off of his lies while his followers continuously harassed them. The verdict from the six-person jury, announced on Wednesday afternoon, came after three weeks of testimony in a state court in Waterbury, Connecticut. During the trial, the plaintiffs, relatives of victims, and the FBI agent testified that they were harassed by Jones’ supporters who believed his lies about the shooting.. Jones was not there, but a live video from the court played on his Infowars show, which he was filming.on his live stream as the damages were being announced.
Six families and the FBI agent first filed this defamation lawsuit against Jones in 2018, claiming that Jones “developed, amplified and perpetuated claims that the Sandy Hook massacre was staged,” said the press release from when the lawsuit was originally filed. “Jones’s actions subjected the families and survivors of the Sandy Hook shooting to physical confrontations and harassment, death threats and personal attacks on social media,” the release stated., a jury in Texas awarded the parents of a six-year-old child killed at Sandy Hook more than $48 million in damages.for the first time that the shooting did happen. In that trial, parents testified to the harassment and threats they had faced as a result of Jones’ false claims.