Why Alex Jones was ordered to pay millions

Washington: Imagine this. You are the parent of her 6-year-old who died in the deadliest school shooting in U.S. history.

After a horrifying incident, a far-right conspiracy theorist used his online platform to lie about murder, resulting in his followers harassing you while you grieved.

It all seems too unconscionable, but that’s exactly the kind of mess Scarlett Lewis and Neil Heslin were forced to endure after Alex Jones. Infowars – told the audience that the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting was a hoax and that the grieving parents of the dead were actors.

10 years after the mass shooting. justice has finally been servedLosing a child can never be taken away, but a jury in Texas today ordered Jones to pay $45.2 million in punitive damages to the parents of Sandy Hook victim Jesse Lewis. .

The payment proved Jones’ years of deception correct. He was convicted last year of defaming the family of a victim, Sandy Hook, whose 20 children and six staff members were killed, as part of a government plan to confiscate the guns. There was a conspiracy theory that the victim’s family was complicit. in the plot.

As a result of Jones’ lie, some of his followers shot at Jesse’s parents’ house. Others have threatened over the phone or gone online.

But Sandy Hook wasn’t his only fabrication: Jones also claimed the Pentagon was using chemical weapons to make people gay. COVID19 is not real. 9/11 was an “inside operation” by the government.

And even this week’s trial itself, the first of three to determine how much Jones owes the victims’ families for the suffering he caused, was riddled with falsehoods.