A Texas jury on Friday ordered Infowars presenter Alex Jones to pay Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis, parents of a 6-year-old child who died in the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Connecticut , $45 million in compensatory damages. Plus, he’s due to give the couple an additional $4 million starting today.
As Jones repeatedly claimed on his well-known right-wing podcast, Infowars, that the Sandy Hook school shooting was a fake, Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis had demanded $150 million from him. The parents’ lawyer alleged that Jones took advantage of his claims that the US government orchestrated the Sandy Hook and other mass shootings in order to tighten gun control regulations and therefore control the public .
Amruta Alex Jones was forced to pay $45 million in punitive damages
The charges against Alex Jones
The Independent claims leaked texts between Alex Jones and his lawyers showed the Infowars host made huge sums of money selling merchandise through his shows. His exposure as a result of the conspiracy theories he promoted about the Sandy Hook shooting, according to Heslin and Lewis’ attorney, is the cause.
Wesley Todd Ball, the lawyer for Heslin and Lewis, said in an interview with CNN that the case should serve as a lesson to people who make money spreading false information.
Jones argued that the penalty was excessive because it would force Infowars to declare bankruptcy. Ball responded by saying that was the intended outcome and that it would be impossible for him to continue having a platform.
Ball admitted that even $45 million in punitive penalties wouldn’t have been enough to lessen the Infowars presenter’s impact in light of the published scripts, which showed how much money Jones actually made from the podcast.
In court, Jones’ attorney, F. Andino Reynal, claimed the punishment would not have a deterrent effect. Reynal, unlike Ball, claimed that Jones was crucial in opposing shady practices allegedly employed by the US government.
Jones claimed in court Wednesday that the massacre was real. He, however, also claimed in court that the government was undermining him by using Scarlett Lewis and Neil Heslin as tools.
