Alex Jones has become infamous across the internet for not only his extremely far-right views, but for his whole-hearted belief in unfounded conspiracy theories that have brought nothing but heartache and grief to those he's affected.
Now, he'll have to pay for that behavior, quite literally. The verdict of a defamation trial has him paying $965 million to families of the victims of the Sandy Hook school shooting, which he claimed never happened.
Alex Jones, conspiracy theorist and host of far-right news property Info Wars, is finally being made to pay up after years of claiming the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting was a hoax.
Twenty children and six adults were killed at Sandy Hook elementary school that day, but Jones didn't think that was true.
They were seeking at least $550 million in a defamation trial held in Connecticut. Jones had been claiming that the shooting was a "staged" event planned by the government to take guns away from American citizens, believing that no one actually died.
A separate defamation trial in Texas had him admit that the attacks were "100% real" earlier this year. In that trial, he was ordered to pay $49.3 million in damages to separate parents of one of the victims.
This verdict of an additional $965 million brings his total owed to various victims' families to over $1 billion.
There's a third defamation trial set for later this year, also in Texas.
Jones hasn't taken these proceedings particularly well, saying this is a "show trial" run by a "tyrant" judge. "I've already said I'm sorry hundreds of times, and I'm done saying I'm sorry."
In the closing arguments, the plaintiffs' attorney Chris Mattei said, "When every single one of these families were drowning in grief, Alex Jones put his foot right on top of them."
h/t: BBC
