Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones loses two Sandy Hook defamation cases, ordered to pay $1.5 billion in damages

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A right-wing broadcaster claimed for years that the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, was a government hoax orchestrated to promote gun control, calling the parents of children killed in the massacre “crisis actors.” The families of victims and several school staff members sued him for defamation in four separate cases. After a judge sided with the plaintiffs in a technical ruling, a Texas jury ordered Jones to pay nearly $50 million in damages in the first of four cases. In the second trial, a Connecticut jury ordered Jones to pay nearly $1 billion in compensatory damages. 

Key Players

Alex Jones, a conspiracy theorist and far-right figure, has gained prominence for spreading lies and misinformation on his radio program, “The Alex Jones Show,” and his website, InfoWars.

Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis lost their 6-year-old son, Jesse Lewis, in the Newtown attack that left 20 children and six educators dead.

Further Details

Jones has repeatedly called the school shooting a “false flag” operation executed by the government as a pretext for confiscating Americans’ guns, The New York Times reported. He consistently insinuated that the parents of the children murdered in the attack participated in the ruse.

In 2018, Heslin and Lewis filed two defamation lawsuits against Jones in Texas state court for lies he told in interviews and on his show, The Associated Press reported. The first focused on accusations Jones made in the summer of 2017. The broadcaster said Heslin had lied about seeing a bullet hole in his son’s head and holding his child’s body after the shooting. The lawsuit called the claims “a continuation and elaboration of a years-long campaign to falsely attack the honesty of the Sandy Hook parents” that reinvigorated conspiracy theories about the massacre and caused significant emotional distress.

On Sept. 27, 2021, state District Judge Maya Guerra Gamble ruled against Jones and his co-defendants because of their “callous disregard” of court orders to give documents to the parents’ lawyers. According to Gamble, Jones’s “egregious” refusal to cooperate with the court and the plaintiffs justified “a presumption that [his] defenses lack merit.” A Connecticut court also entered a default judgment against Jones for noncompliance in a lawsuit brought by other Sandy Hook parents.

Ahead of a jury trial to determine how much he owed Heslin and Lewis for his defamatory statements, Jones sought to protect his assets. In April 2022, InfoWars and two more of Jones’s businesses filed for bankruptcy protection, leading the judge to delay the start of the trial until July, NPR reported. Documents released during the proceedings show that Jones sold more than $50 million worth of diet supplements, gun paraphernalia, body armor, and doomsday prep gear each year to his millions of listeners, The Times reported. After the trial began on July 26, Jones’s parent media company, Free Speech Systems, also filed for bankruptcy.

During a break in the first day of the trial, Jones told reporters the case was a “witch hunt.”

“Ladies and gentlemen, if you want to be bamboozled and lose your First Amendment … go ahead,” Jones said. “You’re having your rights to a trial by jury to decide if you’re guilty or innocent stolen from you. This is a kangaroo court.”

During the trial, Heslin testified that Jones made his life a “living hell” by falsely claiming Sandy Hook was a hoax. Heslin said his car and home had been shot at, he had been harassed in the street and online, and he had received death threats, NPR reported. Heslin and Lewis sought at least $150 million for the torment they suffered from Jones’s lies. 

Jones has claimed his statements are protected by the First Amendment. He arrived at the first day of the trial with a piece of duct tape featuring the phrase “Save the 1st” over his mouth, the AP reported.

“If questioning public events and free speech is banned because it might hurt somebody’s feelings, we are not in America anymore,” Jones previously said in a deposition for the Connecticut defamation lawsuit he lost.

During the trial, however, Jones admitted that the massacre was “100% real.”

“I never intentionally tried to hurt you,” Jones told Lewis. “I never even said your name until this came to court — I didn’t know who you were until this came up. The internet had questions. I had questions.”

Lewis and Heslin, alongside other Sandy Hook families, said their lawsuits aimed to bring attention to the damage caused by misinformation and conspiracy theories, The Times reported. “What was said about me and Sandy Hook itself resonates around the world,” Heslin said. “As time went on, I truly realized how dangerous it was.”

Addressing Jones, Lewis testified that although the broadcaster had called the Sandy Hook shooting a hoax, “you know that’s not true.”

“When you say those things, there’s a fringe of society that believe you that are actually dangerous,” she told him.

An attorney for the parents, Wesley Ball, urged the jury to end the “gold rush of fear and misinformation” with its verdict. “Send the message to those who desire to do the same: Speech is free. Lies, you pay for,” Ball said. “This is a case about creating change.”

Jones’s lawyer, Andino Reynal, warned that high damages would have a chilling effect on people seeking to hold the government accountable. “You’ve already sent a message,” Reynal said. “A message for the first time to a talk show host, to all talk show hosts, that their standard of care has to change.”

Outcome 

Jury orders Jones to pay nearly $50 million in damages to Heslin and Lewis

On Aug. 4, 2022, jurors awarded Heslin and Lewis $4.1 million in compensatory damages, marking the first time Jones was held financially responsible for disseminating untruths about the school shooting. 

That night, Jones called the ruling “a major victory for truth” in a video posted on InfoWars. He claimed the parents acknowledged they had been “manipulated” into thinking he had hurt them intentionally, The Times reported

The next day, jurors ordered Jones to pay $45.2 million in punitive damages. Lewis said Jones was held responsible for his actions, the AP reported. “This is an important day for truth, for justice,” Lewis said. “And I couldn’t be happier.”

Reynal announced that he intended to appeal the decision and request that the court dramatically reduce the award. According to The Times, Texas law caps punitive damages at double the compensatory damages plus $750,000.

After the verdict, Reynal said Jones believes “the First Amendment is under siege, and he looks forward to continuing the fight.” The three other cases against Jones — one in Connecticut and two in Texas — remain paused because of Free Speech Systems’ bankruptcy filing, The Times reported. 

Second defamation suit filed against Jones

Afterward, 15 plaintiffs, including relatives of eight children and adults killed in the shooting, as well as an FBI agent who responded to the scene, filed another defamation lawsuit against Jones. 

Similar to the Texas trial, Jones was found liable by default for refusing to turn over evidence to the court, such as financial documents and website analytics. 

On Sept. 22, the trial took place in state court in Waterbury, Connecticut. Attorneys for the plaintiffs claimed the families were targeted with harassment and death threats by Jones’s followers. 

Jones also briefly took the stand and chaotically ranted against “liberal” critics and refused to apologize to the victims’ families, Reuters reported. 

In closing arguments, a lawyer for the plaintiffs told the jury, “Every single one of these families [was] drowning in grief, and Alex Jones put his foot right on top of them.”

Jury awards families $965 million in second defamation case

On Oct. 12, a six-person Connecticut jury ordered Jones to pay $965 million in compensatory damages to the families of victims for falsely claiming the tragedy was a hoax. The verdict significantly outweighed the Texas ruling, exceeding an initial request from the plaintiffs that Jones pay $500 million in damages. The jury also decided that Jones owed punitive damages. 

“Today, a jury representing our community rendered a historic verdict, a verdict against Alex Jones’ lies and their poisonous spread, and a verdict for truth and our common humanity,” Chris Mattei, the lead lawyer for the plaintiffs, said. 

Norm Pattis, the defense attorney for Jones, rebuked the monumental ruling. 

“We disagree with the basis of the default, we disagree with the court’s evidentiary rulings. In more than 200 trials in the course of my career I have never seen a trial like this,” Pattis said, adding, “Today is a very, very dark day for freedom of speech.”

Jones appeals, claiming ‘substantial miscarriage of justice’

On Oct. 21, Jones appealed the nearly $1 billion verdict, arguing that Judge Barbara Bellis’ pretrial rulings were a “substantial miscarriage of justice” and requested that the $965 million verdict be thrown out in exchange for a new trial, CNBC reported. 

“The amount of the compensatory damages award exceeds any rational relationship to the evidence offered at trial,” Jones’ lawyers wrote.

Pattis also argued that there was a lack of evidence to show that Jones was responsible for the people who harassed and threatened the victims’ families, describing the hearings as a “memorial service, not a trial.” 

“Instead, there was a shocking abuse of a disciplinary default and its transformation into a series of half-truths that misled a jury and resulted in substantial injustice,” Pattis wrote.

Plaintiffs ask federal judge to force Jones to relinquish control of companies

Families involved in both the Connecticut and Texas trials asked a federal bankruptcy judge to force Jones to surrender control of Free Speech Systems, claiming that Jones had manipulated bankruptcy protections to avoid the damages and send “millions of dollars to himself,” Axios reported. 

In September, a federal bankruptcy judge had ordered “new oversight” of Free Speech Systems, citing a “lack of candor” throughout bankruptcy proceedings and “lavish” spending by Jones, The Times reported. 

The ruling extended the authority of a U.S. Department of Justice-appointed trustee to oversee the financial restructuring of Free Speech Systems in an attempt to increase transparency and accountability during the bankruptcy process. “Without transparency, people lose faith in the process,” the judge said.

Jones files for bankruptcy, further legal fate to be decided