Alex Jones is a huckster, a conspiracy theorist, one of the worst people ever to work in media (and that’s saying something), and, perhaps soon, a negative billionaire. A Connecticut jury ruled on October 12th that the InfoWars founder must pay out $965 million for defamation after he spent a decade spreading lies about the 2012 school shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary.
As reported by Reuters, CNN, Variety, and more, the case had 15 plaintiffs, including family members of eight victims of the shooting, plus a former FBI agent. Jones has repeatedly and falsely claimed that the shooting never happened — that 28 people, including 20 children didn’t die — and that anyone claiming otherwise was a paid actor for a government plot to unlawfully confiscate American’s guns. Jones called the massacre “as fake as the $3 bill.”
The trial took place at a state court in Waterbury, Connecticut, about a 30 minute drive from Sandy Hook Elementary School. The verdict was anonymous, and the jury found Jones liable of violating Connecticut’s Unfair Trade Practices Act (CUTPA) because he used the school shooting to sell products on his website. Under Connecticut law, punitive damages are usually capped, but that cap doesn’t extend to CUTPA violations.
Add this $965 million to the August defamation verdict in Texas in which the jury awarded Sandy Hook parents $45.2 million in damages, and the amount Jones owes has crossed the billion dollar mark.
According to legal observers, the awards are unlikely to be dischargeable through bankruptcy because they are “based on intentional tortious conduct.” And while InfoWars makes a lot of money — his lawyers accidentally revealed that the site has at times made as much as $5 million a week — it is not thought that he has a spare billion dollars. These rulings will likely hang over his head for the rest of his life.
Jones responded to the verdict live on his show, saying, “This must be what Hell’s like, they just read out the damages. Even though you don’t got the money.” He followed that by announcing a sale on “vitamineral fusion” from the InfoWars store.
Alex Jones is hoping there’s a cap on these damages and is now just mocking the verdict. “Why not make it trillions?”
This is not an amount he can fundraise or sell supplements to get out of.
Even Jones gave up trying to add up damages: “We’ve lost count, it’s in the billions.”
— Ben Collins (@oneunderscore__) October 12, 2022
Alex Jones responded to the Sandy Hook defamation verdict — in which he was ordered to pay $965 million in damages — by announcing a sale on “vitamineral fusion” from the InfoWars store. https://t.co/Ga8sVCC3Jxpic.twitter.com/O5Q7nFa1G7
— CONSEQUENCE (@consequence) October 12, 2022
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