US Jury Orders Alex Jones to Pay $965Mln to Victims of Sandy Hook School Shooting

WASHINGTON (Sputnik) - A US jury in the state of Connecticut on Wednesday ordered Infowars host and creator Alex Jones to pay $965 million to the families of several victims of the Sandy Hook School shooting in connection to a defamation case over his claims that the massacre was a hoax.

Jones in a live online broadcast during the jury's reading of the verdict laughed and said the victims would not be getting any of the money he was ordered to pay.

The "InfoWars" host was found guilty of defaming 15 plaintiffs who family members of the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting during which 28 people died, 20 of which were between the ages of six and seven years old. Jones had made claims in his far-right radio show that the shooting didn't happen, and that grieving parents were "actors" who were hired in a gun-control conspiracy.

The plaintiffs included family members of the shooting victims, as well as a Federal Bureau of Investigation agent who was one of the first people to respond to the scene.

Though the plaintiffs were awarded millions of dollars by a Texas jury, one parent named Robbie Parker said he was proud that through the defamation trial they were able to "simply tell the truth." Parker lost his 6-year-old daughter Emilie in the Sandy Hook shooting. The jury awarded Parker, who had to move across the country to escape abuse and harassment following the shooting, $120 million.

"It would come in these waves,” Parker said of the harassment, which included rape and death threats, following Jones' accusation that he and his family were 'crisis actors.' “It was almost like I knew when Alex Jones said something, because we would get a huge wave of stuff.”

Mark Barden, the father of a slain seven-year-old child, added that conspiracy theorists urinated on the grave of his dead child, and threatened to dig up the coffin.

Jones, who will have to find some way to cough up nearly $1 billion in damages to the plaintiffs, decided to use the same tactic which landed him in court in the first place: conspiracy theories. Jones mocked the trial, calling it a "kangaroo court" and claimed the trial was a Democratic-run conspiracy making an effort to silence him.

“I’ve already said ‘I’m sorry’ hundreds of times, and I’m done saying I’m sorry,” he told the jury. Jones alleged he cannot pay damages over $2 million as his lawyers will work to try and reduce the damages. An economist testified that Jones and his company InfoWars, which increased its revenue after it began making Sandy Hook shooting conspiracy theories, is worth about $270 million.