The jury decided that Alex Jones will have to pay nearly a billion dollars in damages to the families of Sandy Hook for claiming that the massacre was staged
Jones could lose his Infowars media empire after the unprecedented verdict – the media star claimed: “The judges and lawyers were biased, the trial was rigged”
Right-wing talk show host Alex Jones will have to pay eight families of victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting and one of the first responders nearly $1 billion in damages, a Connecticut state jury ruled Wednesday.
The decision could shrink or even completely destroy the media empire ‘Infowars’ founded by Jones.
The decision marks a turning point in a process that began in 2018, when the bereaved families took legal action against Jones and his company, Free Speech Systems, which is the parent company of the media organization Infowars.
Jones briefly claimed (and later retracted) that after the 2012 mass shooting that killed 26 people, including 21 children, that the event was actually staged and that the families and first responders on the scene were “crisis actors.”
At one point Jones retracted the claims and apologized.
Throughout the trial, the prosecutors described in sharp words how his words caused severe damage to the bereaved families and added to the emotional agony resulting from the loss of their loved ones.
Christopher Mattei, a lawyer on behalf of the plaintiffs, urged the jury to award at least half a billion dollars in damages – an amount that turned out to be less than the final amount.
The figure, he said, represented more than 550 million online impressions that Jones’ words about Sandy Hook allegedly received on the Internet.
“You can say it is [סכום] Astronomical. It is,” said Matei.
“[אך] This is exactly what Alex Jones has prepared for himself. This is what he built. He built a lie machine that could push this stuff out. You reap what you sow,” argued the lawyer.
The decision in the ultra-liberal state of Connecticut comes about two months after a separate jury in Texas ruled that Jones and his company should award two parents of Sandy Hook students who sued that state an amount of nearly $50 million.
Later this month, the judge in that case will consider whether to reduce the punitive damages awarded under Texas law. ,
In a particularly explosive moment in the Texas trial, Jones got into trouble with a lawyer representing the prosecutors, accusing them of “chasing ambulances”, before rebuking the American left in court.
Jones attacked the legal process, calling the legal processes addictive and contrary to the First Amendment to the Constitution.
He even called the judge “rudent”, the media star also stated that he intends to appeal the verdict.
? Did the article interest you?