Alex Jones has to pay $965m to the victims of Sandy Hook families

• Alex Jones, a conspiracy theorist, has been forced to pay $965 million (£869 million) in damages for making false claims that the Sandy Hook school shooting in 2012 was a fabrication.
• They claimed that the right-wing radio host’s false statements caused a decade of stalking and threats of death.
• Sandy Hook Elementary School saw the deaths of twenty children and six adults.

Alex Jones, a conspiracy theorist, has been forced to pay $965 million (£869 million) in damages for making false claims that the Sandy Hook school shooting in 2012 was a fabrication.

In the defamation trial in Connecticut, the families of eight victims and an FBI agent who responded to the attack had demanded at least $550 million.

They claimed that the right-wing radio host’s false statements caused a decade of stalking and threats of death.

Sandy Hook Elementary School saw the deaths of twenty children and six adults.

For years, Jones, the creator of the conspiracy-filled Infowars website and talk show, insisted that the shooting was a “staged” government operation to take away Americans’ firearms and that “no one killed.

He claimed that some of the victims’ parents were “crisis actors” and that some victims never existed.

He made a similar admission in August at a different defamation trial in Texas, and now he says the attack was “100% real.”

Many of the relatives were clearly distraught, some sobbing as the decision was announced on Wednesday in Waterbury, Connecticut, some 20 miles (32 km) from the scene of the 2012 massacre.

A series of parents’ emotional testimony during the three-week trial was notable.

Some claimed to have experienced an onslaught of internet abuse, while others claimed they were forced to relocate residences regularly out of fear. Mark Barden, a father, recalled learning that his son Daniel’s tomb was being desecrated by others “urinating on it and threatening to dig it up.”

The evidence Jones and his business, Free Speech Systems, used to convince the jury that they made millions of dollars selling nutritional supplements, outdoor gear, and other items on the Infowars website.

Jones broadcast himself mocking the court processes as he watched Wednesday’s ruling. Additionally, he made an urgent plea for donations from his supporters while promising that the money would not be used to cover his legal fees.

“The money does not go to these people,” he said. “It goes to fight this fraud and it goes to stabilize the company.”

Reporters were informed by his attorney, Norm Pattis, that an appeal will be filed.

“Candidly, from start to finish, the fix was in this case,” he said outside the court.

Chris Mattei, the plaintiffs’ attorney, said this during closing arguments: “Alex Jones stepped right on top of each and every one of these families as they were drowning in agony.”

Jones, on the other hand, had denounced the proceedings as being conducted by a “tyrant” judge in a “show trial” and said he was not to fault for the activities of his supporters.

“I’ve already said I’m sorry hundreds of times, and I’m done saying I’m sorry,” he said in dramatic testimony late last month that brought some in the courtroom to tears.

His attorneys urged the six-member jury to minimize damages and disregard the case’s political undertones.

His lead defense attorney, Mr. Pattis, received a harsh reprimand from the judge when he claimed that the opposing legal team had “manufactured anger” against them.

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