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| August 06, 2022
Infowars host and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones has blamed George Soros after he was ordered to pay $50 million in damages over comments he made about the 2012 shooting in Sandy Hook, Connecticut.
Jones said in a Friday broadcast that Soros had joined other "operatives" in coordinating the trial, though did not specify any names. He also accused Judge Maya Guerra Gamble of being a "blue-haired SJW" and claimed she "altered the record of the trial."
"This is beyond any kangaroo rigged court ever," Jones claimed without evidence.
GEORGE SOROS SAYS IT'S NOT HIS FAULT VIOLENT CRIME IS ON THE RISE
Jones alleged that Gamble had turned off the livestream of the trial at certain points when his lawyers were speaking in an attempt to discredit him. He also said she was "coordinating with the corporate media" who were present in the courtroom covering the trial.
The conspiracy theorist also denied that his lawyers handed over a digital copy of his cellphone to the opposition team, saying that he willingly handed over a copy of the phone. A Sandy Hook lawyer claimed on Wednesday that members of Jones's legal team "messed up" and sent over a file believed to contain all of the Infowars host's text messages going back two years.
The Infowars host's accusations come right after he received a punitive damage verdict of $45.2 million from the jury on Friday. The total of the punitive damage verdict is in addition to the $4.1 million in compensatory damages he must pay to Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis, the parents of a victim in the school shooting.
The trial over the past week is the first of three trials that Jones will face in relation to his claims that the Sandy Hook school shooting was a hoax. The other two are set for September, one in Texas and one in Connecticut, with eight families represented in the Connecticut trial.
On Wednesday, Jones conceded that he believes the shooting was "100% real" and that it was irresponsible to declare the shooting a hoax.
Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones attempts to answer questions about his emails during trial at the Travis County Courthouse in Austin, Texas, on Wednesday.
(Briana Sanchez/Austin American-Statesman via AP, Pool, File)
(Briana Sanchez/Austin American-Statesman via AP, Pool, File)
How Alex Jones helped mainstream conspiracy theories become part of American life
By Shannon Bond
Published August 6, 2022
Matt York
/
APA jury has ordered conspiracy theorist Alex Jones to pay millions of dollars for spreading lies about the Sandy Hook school massacre. But his influence in right-wing media and politics remains strong.
Name a traumatic news event in recent decades, and it's almost certain Alex Jones has claimed it didn't happen — or not the way you think it did.
The Boston Marathon bombing in 2013? Staged by the FBI.
The shooting of Arizona congresswoman Gabby Giffords in 2011? A government mind control operation.
The September 11th terrorist attacks? An inside job.
All lies.
The conspiracy theorist and radio host was confronted with his track record of fabulism this week in an Austin, Texas, courtroom. He was on trial to determine how much he should pay for defaming the parents of a first grader killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012, after years of falsely claiming that no children died and the families were "crisis actors" in a "giant hoax" designed to take away guns.
"Would you agree with me that there is not a mass tragedy, mass bombing, mass shooting that has occurred in America in the past 15 years that you have not attached the words 'false flag' to?" Mark Bankston, the parents' attorney, asked Jones.
"I have asked the question because I believe a lot of things are provocateur or allowed to happen," Jones replied.
The jury ordered Jones to pay $49.3 million in damages to Scarlett Lewis and Neil Heslin, the parents of 6-year-old Jesse Lewis, for the mental anguish caused by his lies about Sandy Hook.
Jones has a history of prolific fabulism
Jones got his start in public access broadcasting in Austin, Texas, in the 1990s. From his early days on air, he spouted conspiracy theories about the siege of the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, and the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.
When his wild claims got him fired from a local radio station, he founded Infowars in 1999 and started broadcasting over the internet and in radio syndication.
After the September 11th attacks, Jones surged to fame as a "truther," claiming the Bush administration was behind the tragedy.
As his audience grew, Jones popularized a vocabulary for pernicious doubt: not just that officials and media are hiding the truth, but that tragic events are being engineered for nefarious purposes.
"He's at least a catalyst of those prevailing narratives that follow almost every newsworthy tragedy, whether it's a mass shooting or otherwise," said Sara Aniano, a disinformation researcher at the Anti-Defamation League.
Jones's response to Sandy Hook was perhaps the most egregious example. For years, Infowars aired falsehoods that the tragedy was invented and implied the families of the murdered children were lying.
That created a template to cast doubt on subsequent mass shootings.
"A lot of people who share these theories that those were staged by the government for gun control reasons or that the children and parents are crisis actors will reference Sandy Hook as the basis of that conclusion," Aniano said.
The lies on Infowars had real-world consequences.
At the trial, Lewis and Heslin testified about the harassment and death threats they've received from people who believe Jones.
"When you say those things, there's a fringe of society that believe you, that are actually dangerous," Lewis said in emotional testimony addressed directly to Jones.
Infowars profits from "preaching apocalypse"
Infowars doesn't just disseminate harmful lies; it profits from them.
According to a forensic economist called by the parents' lawyers, Infowars' parent company raked in $64 million in sales of supplements, survivalist gear and other products last year.
The plaintiffs also presented evidence from Jones's own cell phone showing in 2018, Infowars was making as much as $800,000 a day.
The combined net worth of Jones and Infowars is between $135 million and $270 million, the economist estimated.
Jones is not the first person to grift off conspiracy theories, but Infowars harnessed the power of the internet to do so on a massive scale — a model that's been imitated by anti-vaccine advocates, COVID-19 deniers and champions of baseless claims that former President Donald Trump won the 2020 election.
"You preach apocalypse and then you sell stuff that can help you in an apocalypse," said Yunkang Yang, a communications professor at Texas A&M.
Elijah Nouvelage / Getty Images
/Jones inside the Georgia State Capitol during a "Stop the Steal" rally against the results of the U.S. presidential election on Nov. 18, 2020 in Atlanta, Ga.
Trump and Jones find common ground in conspiracism
Jones has also left a mark on conservative politics.
When Barack Obama was president, Infowars and Donald Trump both promoted the racist lie that he was not an American citizen.
Infowars was also a big spreader of the Pizzagate conspiracy theory, which falsely accused Hillary Clinton and other Democrats of running a child sex trafficking ring out of a Washington, DC pizzeria. Days after Jones urged his audience to investigate, a man, who told the New York Times he listened to Jones's radio show, entered the restaurant and fired a rifle. (Jones later apologized to the restaurant owner for promoting the lie.)
In late 2015, ahead of Republican primaries, Trump called into Infowars for a mutually fawning interview with Jones.
Trump "gave those folks who are conspiracy theorists signals that he was their guy and they had a candidate who was a conspiracy theorist for the first time," said Melissa Ryan, CEO of consulting firm CARD Strategies, which tracks disinformation and extremism.
"Trump won by being willing to appeal to this base of supporters that other people in the party would have kept at arm's length," she said, "lest they be called out for having extremist views."
The early years of Trump's presidency may have been the peak of Jones's mainstream influence. By 2018, pressure mounted on tech companies to crack down on hate speech and harmful falsehoods. Jones and Infowars were kicked off Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Apple's app store.
That curbed his ability to reach a wider audience, but according to evidence presented in court, he's still making plenty of money. The forensic economist called by the plaintiffs said Jones's deplatforming has not dented his revenues.
Now, Jones and Infowars are facing multiple trials that could put them on the hook for further damages to the victims of his lies.
Jones is trying to shield his assets through bankruptcy, but has vowed to keep Infowars alive.
But even if Jones were to go silent and Infowars went out of business tomorrow, the seeds of doubt he so effectively planted are flourishing.
"Conspiracy is a permanent part of our political and cultural discourse now," Ryan said. "I think you can say that Alex Jones was an innovator in that."
Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.
Shannon Bond is a business correspondent at NPR, covering technology and how Silicon Valley's biggest companies are transforming how we live, work and communicate.
See stories by Shannon Bond
By Shannon Bond
Published August 6, 2022
Matt York
/
APA jury has ordered conspiracy theorist Alex Jones to pay millions of dollars for spreading lies about the Sandy Hook school massacre. But his influence in right-wing media and politics remains strong.
Name a traumatic news event in recent decades, and it's almost certain Alex Jones has claimed it didn't happen — or not the way you think it did.
The Boston Marathon bombing in 2013? Staged by the FBI.
The shooting of Arizona congresswoman Gabby Giffords in 2011? A government mind control operation.
The September 11th terrorist attacks? An inside job.
All lies.
The conspiracy theorist and radio host was confronted with his track record of fabulism this week in an Austin, Texas, courtroom. He was on trial to determine how much he should pay for defaming the parents of a first grader killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012, after years of falsely claiming that no children died and the families were "crisis actors" in a "giant hoax" designed to take away guns.
"Would you agree with me that there is not a mass tragedy, mass bombing, mass shooting that has occurred in America in the past 15 years that you have not attached the words 'false flag' to?" Mark Bankston, the parents' attorney, asked Jones.
"I have asked the question because I believe a lot of things are provocateur or allowed to happen," Jones replied.
The jury ordered Jones to pay $49.3 million in damages to Scarlett Lewis and Neil Heslin, the parents of 6-year-old Jesse Lewis, for the mental anguish caused by his lies about Sandy Hook.
Jones has a history of prolific fabulism
Jones got his start in public access broadcasting in Austin, Texas, in the 1990s. From his early days on air, he spouted conspiracy theories about the siege of the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, and the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.
When his wild claims got him fired from a local radio station, he founded Infowars in 1999 and started broadcasting over the internet and in radio syndication.
After the September 11th attacks, Jones surged to fame as a "truther," claiming the Bush administration was behind the tragedy.
As his audience grew, Jones popularized a vocabulary for pernicious doubt: not just that officials and media are hiding the truth, but that tragic events are being engineered for nefarious purposes.
"He's at least a catalyst of those prevailing narratives that follow almost every newsworthy tragedy, whether it's a mass shooting or otherwise," said Sara Aniano, a disinformation researcher at the Anti-Defamation League.
Jones's response to Sandy Hook was perhaps the most egregious example. For years, Infowars aired falsehoods that the tragedy was invented and implied the families of the murdered children were lying.
That created a template to cast doubt on subsequent mass shootings.
"A lot of people who share these theories that those were staged by the government for gun control reasons or that the children and parents are crisis actors will reference Sandy Hook as the basis of that conclusion," Aniano said.
The lies on Infowars had real-world consequences.
At the trial, Lewis and Heslin testified about the harassment and death threats they've received from people who believe Jones.
"When you say those things, there's a fringe of society that believe you, that are actually dangerous," Lewis said in emotional testimony addressed directly to Jones.
Infowars profits from "preaching apocalypse"
Infowars doesn't just disseminate harmful lies; it profits from them.
According to a forensic economist called by the parents' lawyers, Infowars' parent company raked in $64 million in sales of supplements, survivalist gear and other products last year.
The plaintiffs also presented evidence from Jones's own cell phone showing in 2018, Infowars was making as much as $800,000 a day.
The combined net worth of Jones and Infowars is between $135 million and $270 million, the economist estimated.
Jones is not the first person to grift off conspiracy theories, but Infowars harnessed the power of the internet to do so on a massive scale — a model that's been imitated by anti-vaccine advocates, COVID-19 deniers and champions of baseless claims that former President Donald Trump won the 2020 election.
"You preach apocalypse and then you sell stuff that can help you in an apocalypse," said Yunkang Yang, a communications professor at Texas A&M.
Elijah Nouvelage / Getty Images
/Jones inside the Georgia State Capitol during a "Stop the Steal" rally against the results of the U.S. presidential election on Nov. 18, 2020 in Atlanta, Ga.
Trump and Jones find common ground in conspiracism
Jones has also left a mark on conservative politics.
When Barack Obama was president, Infowars and Donald Trump both promoted the racist lie that he was not an American citizen.
Infowars was also a big spreader of the Pizzagate conspiracy theory, which falsely accused Hillary Clinton and other Democrats of running a child sex trafficking ring out of a Washington, DC pizzeria. Days after Jones urged his audience to investigate, a man, who told the New York Times he listened to Jones's radio show, entered the restaurant and fired a rifle. (Jones later apologized to the restaurant owner for promoting the lie.)
In late 2015, ahead of Republican primaries, Trump called into Infowars for a mutually fawning interview with Jones.
Trump "gave those folks who are conspiracy theorists signals that he was their guy and they had a candidate who was a conspiracy theorist for the first time," said Melissa Ryan, CEO of consulting firm CARD Strategies, which tracks disinformation and extremism.
"Trump won by being willing to appeal to this base of supporters that other people in the party would have kept at arm's length," she said, "lest they be called out for having extremist views."
The early years of Trump's presidency may have been the peak of Jones's mainstream influence. By 2018, pressure mounted on tech companies to crack down on hate speech and harmful falsehoods. Jones and Infowars were kicked off Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Apple's app store.
That curbed his ability to reach a wider audience, but according to evidence presented in court, he's still making plenty of money. The forensic economist called by the plaintiffs said Jones's deplatforming has not dented his revenues.
Now, Jones and Infowars are facing multiple trials that could put them on the hook for further damages to the victims of his lies.
Jones is trying to shield his assets through bankruptcy, but has vowed to keep Infowars alive.
But even if Jones were to go silent and Infowars went out of business tomorrow, the seeds of doubt he so effectively planted are flourishing.
"Conspiracy is a permanent part of our political and cultural discourse now," Ryan said. "I think you can say that Alex Jones was an innovator in that."
Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.
Shannon Bond is a business correspondent at NPR, covering technology and how Silicon Valley's biggest companies are transforming how we live, work and communicate.
See stories by Shannon Bond
Massive verdict against Alex Jones isn't just vindication. It's a warning.
This is not only a large blow to Jones, who has already filed for bankruptcy, but to other conspiracy-theory fomenters.
By JoAnne Sweeny, professor of law at the University of Louisville’s Louis D. Brandeis School of Law
Alex Jones, host and creator of the far-right conspiracy-theory website Infowars, has received what is likely to be only the first of a series of expensive lessons about the importance of fact-checking.
On Thursday, a Texas jury ordered Jones to pay $4.1 million in compensatory damages to the parents of one child killed in the Sandy Hook massacre. The parents, Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis, had sued Jones for defamation after Jones accused them of faking the death of their son in order to attack gun rights.
The size of the verdict validates the strategy of going after conspiracy theorists on grounds of defamation.
On Friday, in addition to the $4.1 million, meant to compensate Heslin and Lewis for the emotional trauma they suffered, the jury determined Jones would also have to pay $45.2 million in punitive damages. Punitive damages are awarded against defendants to punish them for their bad behavior.
This is not only a large blow to Jones, who has already filed for bankruptcy, but to other conspiracy-theory fomenters who fill their audiences’ heads with stories of the deep state, a stolen election and a child-sex ring in the basement of a pizza restaurant.
Jones styles himself as a media broadcaster, and the media has historically been given a lot of latitude in publishing statements that are even partially false. That latitude has helped modern partisan news sites like Newsmax and Breitbart to use their platforms to spread outlandish theories with impunity.
But after the 2020 election and the Jan. 6 insurrection, individuals and companies have started to push back against media outlets that spread false information. Their weapon of choice is the defamation suit.
Fox News is currently being sued for $1.6 billion by Dominion Voting Systems for Fox News’ claim that Dominion voting machines helped rig the 2020 presidential election. The verdict against Jones should serve as a warning to the network and all the other conspiracy-peddlers out there. Repeating nonsense theories from 4chan or Reddit may not be protected free speech even if you attempt to disguise it as “questioning known liars in the media.”
Early on in his Texas case, Jones tried to invoke his freedom of speech in multiple ways. First, he argued that the case should be dismissed because he was speaking on a matter of public concern, and his speech should therefore be protected under the First Amendment. Second, he argued that his statements against the Sandy Hook families were mere opinions and therefore couldn’t be defamatory. He lost both of these arguments largely on procedural grounds because he refused to produce documents to the plaintiffs' attorneys despite a very clear court order.
It’s unfortunate that a jury never heard the merits of the case or Jones’ First Amendment defenses. The unusual path of this case allows for a considerable amount of uncertainty in whether conspiracy theories can be defended on free speech grounds in the future.
The Texas Court of Appeals, however, did indicate that many of Jones’ claims would not have succeeded before it sent the case back to the trial court whose jury determined the payout. In response to Heslin’s claim of defamation, which rested on Jones’ statements being provably false, Jones argued that his statements were not defamatory because he was just stating his opinion and not a false statement of fact.
The court of appeals, however, pointed to several of Jones’ statements claiming that Heslin had lied about holding his son’s body. Jones, cloaking his statements as merely “questioning” whether the media was lying because of allegedly conflicting evidence, was not enough for the court of appeals to find that Jones had made a statement of opinion rather than fact.
The court of appeals’ opinion, along with the massive payout faced by Jones — whose estimated net worth is between $135 million and $270 million — should give less financially secure conspiracy theorists pause before hitting the publish button.
The size of the verdict validates the strategy of going after conspiracy theorists on grounds of defamation. That’s significant because, though it has been argued that some of Jones’ activity crosses the line into outright criminal incitement, it’s much harder to make a case on that score.
After Jones broadcast the home address and other identifying details about Leonard Pozner, another one of the Sandy Hook parents, death threats followed. But this doesn’t necessarily show that Jones actually wanted Pozner to be harmed.
The closest thing Texas has to incitement is criminal solicitation, and this crime is limited to situations in which the parties are “acting together,” which means that the person who “encourages” the crime must have specifically wanted that crime to happen.
During his testimony this week, Jones apologized to the families and stated that he “never intentionally tried to hurt” them. Indeed, there isn’t a lot of evidence to support the accusation that Jones actively wanted his followers to harass and threaten the Sandy Hook families, even though that is what ultimately occurred.
Texas also has a criminal harassment law, which makes it illegal for a person who has the “intent to harass, annoy, alarm, abuse, torment, or embarrass another” to publish “on an Internet website, including a social media platform, repeated electronic communications in a manner reasonably likely to cause emotional distress, abuse, or torment to another person, unless the communications are made in connection with a matter of public concern.”
Again, Jones’ behavior almost fits the bill. He did make repeated broadcasts on his website that were likely to cause the Sandy Hook families emotional distress. But there isn’t much evidence that he did it specifically to harass them and, more important, the subject was certainly a matter of public concern.
Though it has been argued that some of Jones’ activity crosses the line into outright criminal incitement, it’s much harder to make a case on that score.
But with no recourse under criminal law, it was up to the Sandy Hook families to go after Jones’ wallet. This week, the only thing the jury was asked to determine was how much money Jones should be required to pay to Heslin and Lewis for his defamatory statements.
When assessing damages, Jones’ apology to the parents may have influenced the jury, though under Texas defamation law, there is no requirement that Jones intended to harm anyone; he merely had to be reckless in publishing information that he had reason to know was false. However, Texas law does state that Jones’ intent may impact how much in punitive damages the jury can award.
Texas’ definition of defamation and its requirement of actual ill-will for exemplary or punitive damages is typical across the country, so the plaintiffs who have sued Jones in Connecticut will have the same burden of proof for punitive damages.
Heslin and Lewis have said they are thrilled with the jury’s verdict. Absent criminal charges against Jones, a massive damages award and a bankruptcy filing will have to be punishment enough — along with the hope that this verdict will keep other conspiracy theorists from spreading lies.
This is not only a large blow to Jones, who has already filed for bankruptcy, but to other conspiracy-theory fomenters.
Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones attempts to answer questions about his emails asked by Mark Bankston, lawyer for Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis, during trial at the Travis County Courthouse in Austin, Texas, on Wednesday.
Briana Sanchez / Austin American-Statesman via AP, Pool
Aug. 6, 2022,
Aug. 6, 2022,
By JoAnne Sweeny, professor of law at the University of Louisville’s Louis D. Brandeis School of Law
Alex Jones, host and creator of the far-right conspiracy-theory website Infowars, has received what is likely to be only the first of a series of expensive lessons about the importance of fact-checking.
On Thursday, a Texas jury ordered Jones to pay $4.1 million in compensatory damages to the parents of one child killed in the Sandy Hook massacre. The parents, Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis, had sued Jones for defamation after Jones accused them of faking the death of their son in order to attack gun rights.
The size of the verdict validates the strategy of going after conspiracy theorists on grounds of defamation.
On Friday, in addition to the $4.1 million, meant to compensate Heslin and Lewis for the emotional trauma they suffered, the jury determined Jones would also have to pay $45.2 million in punitive damages. Punitive damages are awarded against defendants to punish them for their bad behavior.
This is not only a large blow to Jones, who has already filed for bankruptcy, but to other conspiracy-theory fomenters who fill their audiences’ heads with stories of the deep state, a stolen election and a child-sex ring in the basement of a pizza restaurant.
Jones styles himself as a media broadcaster, and the media has historically been given a lot of latitude in publishing statements that are even partially false. That latitude has helped modern partisan news sites like Newsmax and Breitbart to use their platforms to spread outlandish theories with impunity.
But after the 2020 election and the Jan. 6 insurrection, individuals and companies have started to push back against media outlets that spread false information. Their weapon of choice is the defamation suit.
Fox News is currently being sued for $1.6 billion by Dominion Voting Systems for Fox News’ claim that Dominion voting machines helped rig the 2020 presidential election. The verdict against Jones should serve as a warning to the network and all the other conspiracy-peddlers out there. Repeating nonsense theories from 4chan or Reddit may not be protected free speech even if you attempt to disguise it as “questioning known liars in the media.”
Early on in his Texas case, Jones tried to invoke his freedom of speech in multiple ways. First, he argued that the case should be dismissed because he was speaking on a matter of public concern, and his speech should therefore be protected under the First Amendment. Second, he argued that his statements against the Sandy Hook families were mere opinions and therefore couldn’t be defamatory. He lost both of these arguments largely on procedural grounds because he refused to produce documents to the plaintiffs' attorneys despite a very clear court order.
It’s unfortunate that a jury never heard the merits of the case or Jones’ First Amendment defenses. The unusual path of this case allows for a considerable amount of uncertainty in whether conspiracy theories can be defended on free speech grounds in the future.
The Texas Court of Appeals, however, did indicate that many of Jones’ claims would not have succeeded before it sent the case back to the trial court whose jury determined the payout. In response to Heslin’s claim of defamation, which rested on Jones’ statements being provably false, Jones argued that his statements were not defamatory because he was just stating his opinion and not a false statement of fact.
The court of appeals, however, pointed to several of Jones’ statements claiming that Heslin had lied about holding his son’s body. Jones, cloaking his statements as merely “questioning” whether the media was lying because of allegedly conflicting evidence, was not enough for the court of appeals to find that Jones had made a statement of opinion rather than fact.
The court of appeals’ opinion, along with the massive payout faced by Jones — whose estimated net worth is between $135 million and $270 million — should give less financially secure conspiracy theorists pause before hitting the publish button.
The size of the verdict validates the strategy of going after conspiracy theorists on grounds of defamation. That’s significant because, though it has been argued that some of Jones’ activity crosses the line into outright criminal incitement, it’s much harder to make a case on that score.
After Jones broadcast the home address and other identifying details about Leonard Pozner, another one of the Sandy Hook parents, death threats followed. But this doesn’t necessarily show that Jones actually wanted Pozner to be harmed.
The closest thing Texas has to incitement is criminal solicitation, and this crime is limited to situations in which the parties are “acting together,” which means that the person who “encourages” the crime must have specifically wanted that crime to happen.
During his testimony this week, Jones apologized to the families and stated that he “never intentionally tried to hurt” them. Indeed, there isn’t a lot of evidence to support the accusation that Jones actively wanted his followers to harass and threaten the Sandy Hook families, even though that is what ultimately occurred.
Texas also has a criminal harassment law, which makes it illegal for a person who has the “intent to harass, annoy, alarm, abuse, torment, or embarrass another” to publish “on an Internet website, including a social media platform, repeated electronic communications in a manner reasonably likely to cause emotional distress, abuse, or torment to another person, unless the communications are made in connection with a matter of public concern.”
Again, Jones’ behavior almost fits the bill. He did make repeated broadcasts on his website that were likely to cause the Sandy Hook families emotional distress. But there isn’t much evidence that he did it specifically to harass them and, more important, the subject was certainly a matter of public concern.
Though it has been argued that some of Jones’ activity crosses the line into outright criminal incitement, it’s much harder to make a case on that score.
But with no recourse under criminal law, it was up to the Sandy Hook families to go after Jones’ wallet. This week, the only thing the jury was asked to determine was how much money Jones should be required to pay to Heslin and Lewis for his defamatory statements.
When assessing damages, Jones’ apology to the parents may have influenced the jury, though under Texas defamation law, there is no requirement that Jones intended to harm anyone; he merely had to be reckless in publishing information that he had reason to know was false. However, Texas law does state that Jones’ intent may impact how much in punitive damages the jury can award.
Texas’ definition of defamation and its requirement of actual ill-will for exemplary or punitive damages is typical across the country, so the plaintiffs who have sued Jones in Connecticut will have the same burden of proof for punitive damages.
Heslin and Lewis have said they are thrilled with the jury’s verdict. Absent criminal charges against Jones, a massive damages award and a bankruptcy filing will have to be punishment enough — along with the hope that this verdict will keep other conspiracy theorists from spreading lies.
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