Alex Jones and his media company Infowars have been ordered to pay an additional $473 million to Sandy Hook families for promoting false conspiracy theories about the 2012 school shooting, bringing his total damages up to nearly $1.5 billion.
According to AP, Connecticut Judge Barbara Bellis imposed the extra punitive damages on Thursday morning. In October, Jones was ordered to pay nearly $1 billion in a major defamation trial surrounding his lies about the massacre, which killed 20 students and six faculty members.
Throughout the years, Jones called the Sandy Hook shooting “as fake as the $3 bill,” claiming that the tragedy was staged by the government in order to take away Americans’ guns. Jones falsely claimed that the victims were actors who faked the massacre.
“The record clearly supports the plaintiffs’ argument that the defendants’ conduct was intentional and malicious, and certain to cause harm by virtue of their infrastructure, ability to spread content, and massive audience including the Infowarriors,” the judge wrote in a 45-page ruling, referencing the name for Jones’ fans.
Responding to the new damages on his show Thursday, Jones called the award “ridiculous” and a “joke,” saying he has little money to pay the damages, per AP.
“Well, of course I’m laughing at it,” Jones said. “It’d be like if you sent me a bill for a billion dollars in the mail. Oh man, we got you. It’s all for psychological effect. It’s all the Wizard of Oz … When they know full well the bankruptcy going on and all the rest of it, that it’ll show what I’ve got and that’s it, and I have almost nothing.”
When Jones was ordered to pay $965 million in October, former U.S. Attorney Harry Litman told MSNBC, “I just don’t see how he winds up anything but basically broke now for the rest of his life.”
In his defamation trial, Jones was found liable of violating Connecticut’s Unfair Trade Practices Act by using lies about the Sandy Hook massacre to sell products on his website. Under that law, there is no limit on punitive damages.
