Alex Jones Ordered to Pay $965 Million to Sandy Hook Families
Jurors have decided that the hack known as Alex Jones must pay $965 million to the families of eight Sandy Hook shooting victims and one FBI agent for damages. Despite lamenting he doesn’t have any money and promising to appeal, it is still a massive blow Jones, the far-right talking head behind The Alex Jones Show and InfoWars who has peddled hurtful and damaging conspiracy theories for years.
According to NBC News, “The jury made 15 individual awards that ranged from $28.8 million to $120 million. The families and agent also received separate punitive damages.” It might be years before any money is exchanged, but this decision from the jury has allowed the families impacted to land a blow to Jones publicly.
So why is Alex Jones being ordered to pay these damages?
Since the tragic Sandy Hook shooting in 2012, Jones has spouted false information about the event and hugely profited from the attention. He called the shooting a hoax and accessed families of being “crisis actors” lying about their grief. It has led to massive amounts of harassment and a fever of misinformation online that has spread to multiple corners of the internet.
The Sandy Hook massacre took place on Dec 14th, 2012, when a gunman entered Sandy Hook Elementary school and murdered twenty children and six teachers. After his dangerous lies, Jones was sued for defamation and damages in a series of lawsuits spanning several years. The jury’s awards on October 12, 2022 were the result of a trial that combined three different suits. The total awarded $965 million—nearly a billion dollars—would be shared between 15 different plaintiffs. Since Jones will no doubt appeal and has been accused of hiding his assets, however, it’s unclear what damages the plaintiffs will truly receive. The importance of an jury decision of this magnitude is to demonstrate just how grave Jones’ actions were.
One of the lawyers for the victims, Christopher Mattei, first suggested that Jones should pay at least $550 million, which is the estimated amount of views Jones got from the Sandy Hook content between 2012 and 2018. “Their lives were shattered by December 14, 2012, but Alex Jones has made it so they can’t escape,” Mattei said. “Every single one of these families were drowning in grief, and Alex Jones put his foot right on top of them.”
Parents of the fallen children described the pain of their loss and the constant harassment they received over the years, including pictures of dead children. Nicole Hockley, who lost her son, said: “I got sent pictures of dead kids, because I was told that as a crisis actor, I didn’t really know what a dead kid looked like, so this is what it should look like.” Another parent talked about his child’s grave being vandalized: “To hear that people were desecrating it and urinating on it and threatening to dig it up, I don’t know how to articulate to you what that feels like.”
Alex Jones’ disgusting lies and misinformation sparked a never-ending horror show for these parents. In response, Jones was defiant, saying he was tired of apologizing. “I legitimately thought it might have been staged and I stand by that. I don’t apologize for it.”
A true monster.
The murder victims of the massacre are:
Nancy Lanza, 52 (mother of the gunman)
Rachel D’Avino, 29
Dawn Hochsprung, 47
Anne Marie Murphy, 52
Lauren Rousseau, 30
Mary Sherlach, 56
Victoria Leigh Soto, 27
Charlotte Bacon, 6
Daniel Barden, 7
Olivia Engel, 6
Josephine Gay, 7
Dylan Hockley, 6
Madeleine Hsu, 6
Catherine Hubbard, 6
Chase Kowalski, 7
Jesse Lewis, 6
Ana Márquez-Greene, 6
James Mattioli, 6
Grace McDonnell, 7
Emilie Parker, 6
Jack Pinto, 6
Noah Pozner, 6
Caroline Previdi, 6
Jessica Rekos, 6
Avielle Richman, 6
Benjamin Wheeler, 6
Allison Wyatt, 6
(via NBC, image: Sergio Flores/Getty Images)
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