A Texas jury has ordered conspiracy theorist and Infowars owner Alex Jones to pay the parents of a Sandy Hook shooting victim $4 million in compensatory damages in an ongoing defamation lawsuit.
Jones has spent almost a decade arguing that the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School — which left 28 people, including 20 children, dead — was a hoax, and that the parents of the victims were “crisis actors” upholding the lie. One set of parents, Scarlett Lewis and Neil Heslin, sued Jones and his company, Free Speech Systems, in 2018 for defamation, and originally asked for $150 million in compensatory damages.
In a verdict signed by 10 members of the 12-member jury, the group landed on $4 million, but a separate trial to decide how much Jones will pay in punitive damages is still forthcoming. “It seems so incredible to me that we have to do this,” Lewis said at the trial, speaking directly to Jones. “That we have to implore you — not just implore you, punish you — to get you to stop lying … It is surreal what is going on in here.” Lewis said she felt hitting Jones with monetary damages was necessary because she believed it would be the only thing to get him to change his behavior.
Still, it looks like the $4 million bill may not be enough to resonate with Jones. At its peak, Infowars generated as much as $5 million in revenue per week.
Just a day before the jury settled on a number for compensatory damages, it was revealed that Jones’ lawyers accidentally emailed the full contents of his phone to the attorneys representing Lewis and Heslin, providing dozens of emails and texts that contradicted Jones’ sworn testimony and suggesting he committed perjury. Throughout the case, Jones repeatedly asserted that he had no text messages about Sandy Hook to turn over during the discovery process. The phone did in fact contain messages related to Sandy Hook, as well as information regarding Infowars’ profitability.
Lewis and Heslin are just one set of Sandy Hook parents with ongoing lawsuits against Jones. Two more trials are expected to begin in Texas in the coming months, while a group of families in Connecticut was granted a default judgment against the radio host. A trial was scheduled to begin in September, but bankruptcy claims from Free Speech Systems — which lawyers have described as Jones’ way of protecting himself from further damage judgments — stalled jury selection.
Breaking news: Alex Jones ordered to hand over $4,100,000 to Sandy Hook parents.
Sandy Hook lawyers had been asking for $150 million. Jones’ lawyers had been asking for $8 in compensation.
Verdict signed by 10 members of the 12-member jury.
— Ben Collins (@oneunderscore__) August 4, 2022