Who is Alex Jones, and what did he say about Sandy Hook?

Alex Jones, 48, is a far-right radio and web-streaming host from Texas who rose to national prominence in the lead-up to the 2016 presidential election, when he became one of former president Donald Trump’s most vocal supporters — and one of Hillary Clinton’s most vociferous critics. Jones has long embraced conspiracy theories centering on the idea that the public is ignorant of malicious and shady forces pulling the strings of world events. He has spread false claims about many political events, notably blaming the federal government for the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing and for the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. But his claims that the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown was staged by advocates of gun control sparked a years-long legal battle. Jones, who has used his website Infowars as an unfiltered platform to spread and amplify conspiracy theories and far-right political ideas for decades, labeled grieving parents of the victims “crisis actors” and called the massacre “the fakest thing since the $3 bill.” “They’re clearly using this to go after our guns,” he said in a 2013 video. At one point, Jones appeared to dial back some previous false claims that the mass shooting had been staged, acknowledging in court in Texas earlier this year that what happened at Sandy Hook was “100 percent real” and expressing some regret for his statements. But last month, he once again told his audience that people were right to raise questions about the massacre, saying, “I don’t really know what really happened there.”

Why is Jones being sued for his Sandy Hook comments?

Jones faces three separate defamation lawsuits for his comments about Sandy Hook. In 2018, families of some of the children killed in the shooting, along with an FBI agent who was among the first to respond at the scene, sued Jones in Connecticut. This is the case in which a jury decided Wednesday that Jones should pay $965 million in damages for the emotional distress the plaintiffs said Jones’s claims — which in some cases targeted individual parents — caused them. Reacting to the verdict outside the courthouse, Jones’s lawyer, Norm Pattis, described it as a “very, very, very dark day for freedom of speech,” and he pledged to appeal on behalf of his client. The size of the damages awarded in that case signaled that the jurors found Jones’s conduct particularly reprehensible and harmful. Outside the courtroom after the verdict was read, Robbie Parker , whose 6-year-old daughter was killed at Sandy Hook and who was awarded the highest amount in damages of any Connecticut plaintiff, said he was grateful to the jury. “Every day in that courtroom, we got up on the stand and we told the truth. Telling the truth shouldn’t be so hard, and it shouldn’t be so scary,” he said. Jones could be ordered to pay even more for violating a Connecticut law on deceptive marketing practices as part of the defamation case. A judge will decide on those punitive damages next month. Jesse Gessin, a trial lawyer in California, told “PBS NewsHour” that the amount Jones owes the plaintiffs could increase by a factor of up to 10 once punitive damages are awarded.

Will Jones pay $1 billion to Sandy Hook families?

Jones claims he is unable to pay large-scale damages to the families suing him for defamation. The $965 million damages awarded to the plaintiffs in the Connecticut case mark a stunning increase from what a Texas jury ordered Jones to pay in August as part of a separate defamation suit over his comments about Sandy Hook. Then, he was ordered to pay $45.2 million in punitive damages and $4.1 million in compensatory damages — and because Texas imposes a strict limit on punitive damages, Jones is unlikely to have to pay that full amount. A trial regarding a third lawsuit, filed in Texas by the parents of another shooting victim, is expected to begin this year. Jones, watching on television from his Infowars studio, was largely unrepentant Wednesday after the jury’s verdict in the Connecticut defamation suit. After previously dismissing the judge as a “tyrant” and the proceedings as a “kangaroo court,” Jones appeared to laugh as the verdict was read out. “This is hilarious,” he said, as the separate awards were listed. He repeatedly pumped his fists in the air before a camera live-streaming his reaction to the Infowars site. “Do these people actually think they’re getting any money?” he asked.

How much is Alex Jones worth?

In years past, Jones sat at the helm of a sprawling digital misinformation empire that brought in sizable revenue. Infowars raked in $165 million between 2016 and 2018, according to testimony from an earlier defamation trial. But what has happened to that money — and the current state of his finances — is unclear to most people. According to his legal team, he has struggled financially since Infowars was banned by almost all mainstream social media platforms in 2018. Jones claimed Wednesday that he has less than $2 million to his name, much less the nearly $1 billion that the court ordered him to pay in this latest case. “I don’t have any money, so this is all a big joke,” he said. But, given that he has repeatedly refused to make his financial information public — or that of Free Speech Systems, the Infowars parent company that filed for bankruptcy in April — it has not been possible to verify Jones’s claims. Testifying in August during another defamation trial against Jones, the forensic economist Bernard Pettingill Jr. estimated Jones’s combined net worth with his business entities to be between $135 million and $270 million. According to Gessin, although Jones’s media company has filed for bankruptcy, a decision by Jones himself to file for bankruptcy could affect the verdicts of the defamation trials against him. “It is certainly possible that [the Connecticut] verdict and the Texas verdict could be swept up into the bankruptcy and significantly decreased under U.S. bankruptcy law,” he said.

What happens if Jones can’t pay the damages ordered?

In August, Jones testified that “any compensation above $2 million” would “sink” Infowars. But lawyers for the Connecticut families have vowed to pursue payment for “as long as it takes.” “We will be active down in Texas in an action we brought to track fraudulent transfers of assets he’s made, and in bankruptcy court where we are now very significant creditors of Alex Jones and Free Speech Systems,” Christopher Mattei, a lawyer representing the families, said Wednesday outside the courthouse. “We are going to enforce this verdict as long as it takes, because that’s what justice requires,” he added. Joshua Koskoff, another lawyer representing the plaintiffs, vowed Thursday on MSNBC that the Sandy Hook families would “chase Alex Jones to the ends of the Earth” to make him “pay every last dollar” of the verdict. Jones has used the verdict as an opportunity to fundraise — pleading with Infowars fans to donate money and buy vitamin supplements from his online store to keep the platform financially viable. “We’re fighting Goliath,” he said. Infowars on Wednesday prominently featured news articles about the verdict on its website and encouraged readers to “help Alex by making a donation to his legal defense.” The website linked to a fundraiser on GiveSendGo, a self-described Christian site with a history of hosting fundraisers for far-right groups. As of early Thursday, it had raised just over $185,000 out of a total goal of $500,000.

clockThis article was published more than 1 year ago

Will Alex Jones pay Sandy Hook families $1B? What to know about the huge award.

By Annabelle Timsit

Leo Sands

and

Joanna Slater

October 13, 2022 at 9:36 a.m. EDT

Alex Jones appears in court to testify during the Sandy Hook defamation damages trial at Connecticut Superior Court in Waterbury, Conn., on Sept. 22, 2022. (Tyler Sizemore/AP)

Infowars founder Alex Jones was ordered to pay nearly $1 billion to relatives of victims of the 2012 Sandy Hook mass shooting for spreading the lie that the massacre was staged — a stunning verdict that one lawyer called “probably one of the largest defamation verdicts in U.S. history.”