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A US jury decided on Wednesday that conspiracy theorist Alex Jones should pay $965m (£869m) to those who suffered losses for falsely claiming the Sandy Hook primary school shooting was a hoax.
The verdict is the second major verdict for the Infowars host for his ruthless promotion of the lie that the 2012 massacre never happened and news reports that grieving families were hired as part of a plot to take people’s guns actor.
That’s a claim filed by relatives of the five children and three teachers killed in the mass shooting, as well as an FBI agent who was one of the first emergency services on the scene.
A Texas jury awarded the parents of another murdered child nearly $50 million (£45 million) in damages in August.
After the verdict was read, some of the plaintiffs hugged in court.
Jones was not present, but a live video of the courtroom was played on a split screen on his Infowars show.
“Hey guys, don’t go and buy a big house,” he said.
The Connecticut trial featured tearful testimony from the victims’ parents and siblings, who described how they had been threatened and harassed over the years by people who believed the lies told on the Jones show.
Strangers show up in their homes to record them. People made abusive comments on social media.
Erica Lafferty, daughter of murdered Sandy Hook principal Dawn Hochsprung, testified that rape threats were made at her house.
Mark Baden said conspiracy theorists urinated on the grave of his seven-year-old son Daniel and threatened to dig up the coffin.
In testifying during the trial, Jones admitted he was wrong about Sandy Hook. He said the shooting was real. But both in court and in his performances, he was defiant.
He called the lawsuit a “kangaroo court”, mocked the judge, called the plaintiff’s lawyer an ambulance chaser and called the case an affront to the right to free speech.
He claimed it was a conspiracy by Democrats and the media to silence him and bankrupt him.
“I’ve said sorry hundreds of times, and I’ve said sorry,” he said in his testimony.
Twenty children and six adults were killed in the December 14, 2012 shooting.
The defamation trial was held in Waterbury, about 20 miles from Newtown, where the attack took place.
The case alleges that Free Speech Systems, the parent company of Jones and Infowars, used mass killings to build his audience and make millions.
Experts have provided evidence that when Jones featured Sandy Hook as the subject of his show, his audience surged, as did his revenue from product sales.
In the Texas case and the Connecticut case, judges ruled that Infowars tacitly agreed after Jones failed to cooperate with court rules on sharing evidence, including failing to turn over records that could show whether Infowars profited from knowing Taking responsibility for damages spreads misinformation about mass killings.
Because he had been found responsible, Jones was barred from speaking about free speech rights and other topics during his testimony.
Jones is now facing a third trial in Texas at the end of this year after the parents of another child killed in a shooting filed a claim.
It’s unclear how much Jones can afford.
During his trial in Texas, he said he could not afford any sentence of more than $2 million (£1.8 million).
Free Speech Systems has filed for bankruptcy protection.
But an economist gave evidence in the Texas lawsuit that Jones and his company were worth as much as $270 million (£243 million).
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