Infamous conspiracy theorist and host of the much-maligned Infowars show Alex Jones has been ordered to pay an astounding $965,000,000 after losing a second defamation trial against the families of the victims of the Sandy Hook shootings.
As per reports, the verdict was read out at Waterbury state court in Connecticut yesterday, relatively close to where a gunman opened fire at Sandy Hook Elementary School in December 2012, killing 20 children and six staff members.
For many years now, Jones has been among the controversial voices claiming that the massacre never happened, and that it was instead a false flag event staged by the American government, who used actors in a plot to take away the guns owned by American citizens.
Yet earlier this week, a jury voted in favor of fining Jones millions of dollars per each family of the Sandy Hill shooting victims for his comments made about the atrocity. One family is said to have been awarded over $80 million.
Readers may remember that Jones and his company was ordered by another jury back in August to pay $49.3 million to Sandy Hook parents in a similar case in Austin, Texas, where the headquarters of Jones’ Infowars website is located.
The comments made by Jones – and indeed others like him – have led to the families of the victims being subjected to almost ten years of harassment, mental abuse and death threats by people who claimed they were lying.
“Every single one of these families (was) drowning in grief, and Alex Jones put his foot right on top of them,” attorney Chris Mattei said.
In the closing arguments made in court last week, lawyers representing the families of the Sandy Hook victims alleged that Jones and his company, Free Speech Systems LLC, made millions of dollars via essentially cashing in on the lies being purported about the shooting.
Not only were the families of the Sandy Hook victims forced to take turns recounting how Jones’ lies had deepened their grief, but an FBI agent who responded to the school shooting was also a plaintiff.
During the trial, Jones reluctantly admitted that his claims had been false, though threatened to throw proceedings into disarray when he refused to apologize to the victims’ families.
A third trial involving the parents of another child killed at Sandy Hook is set to begin later this year. Jones is expected to pay further damages pending a verdict.
I don’t know about you, but I think it’s disgusting that anyone can make such a claim. The poor family’s of those who lost their lives at Sandy Hook are forced to re-live their agony every time such a preposterous notion is brought up.
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