Jones, the founder of Infos, specifically claimed that the relatives of the students killed at Sandy Hook, Connecticut, were in fact the actors.
On Wednesday, a jury in a state court ruled that the accused must pay the victims’ families and an FBI agent a total of $965 million in damages for defamation and moral damage.
In 2012, a young man armed with a semi-automatic rifle killed 20 children and 6 adults in this school, in a massacre that sparked a wave of fear in the United States and opened debate on legislation related to the sale and possession of weapons in the country.
And Alex Jones, a right-wing extremist who follows the conspiracy theorists, asserted on his website that the massacre did not take place, but that what happened was just a play fabricated by opponents of firearms in the country, ignoring all the evidence that proved the falsehood of his allegations.
Several families of the victims have filed lawsuits against Jones, claiming that his lies ignited court hearings and allowed him to make millions of dollars, while they became the target of harassment from conspiracy theorists.
When the verdict was pronounced, a number of relatives of the victims who were inside the courtroom burst into tears.
Jones, who followed the proceedings of the hearing live on his website, said that he would appeal this ruling, stressing that he did not have, and “not even two million dollars in cash.”
The Texas judiciary had ordered Jones to pay $50 million in damages for defamation and damages he caused to a married couple whose 6-year-old son was killed in the massacre.
Eventually Jones publicly admitted that the massacre did occur, but refused to cooperate with the courts.
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