AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — A Texas jury on Thursday ordered conspiracy theorist Alex Jones to pay more than $4 million — well short of the $150 million sought — in restitution to the parents of a 6-year-old boy killed in the Sandy Hook massacre. marking the first time the Infowars host has been held financially accountable for repeated claims that the deadliest school shooting in US history was a hoax.
An Austin jury still has to decide how much the Infowars host must pay in punitive damages to Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis, whose son Jesse Lewis was among the 20 children and six educators who were killed in the 2012 attack in Newtown , Connecticut.
The parents have sought at least $150 million in damages for defamation and intentional infliction of emotional distress. Jones’ attorney asked jurors to limit damages to $8 — one dollar for each of the damages counts they consider — and Jones himself said any award above $2 million “is going to sink us.”
It will likely not be the last conviction against Jones – who was not in the courtroom – because of his claims that the attack was staged in the interest of increasing gun control. A Connecticut judge ruled against him in a similar lawsuit filed by the families of other victims and an FBI agent who worked on the case. He also faces another trial in Austin.
Jones’ lead attorney, Andino Reynal, winked at his co-defendant before leaving the courtroom. He declined to comment on the verdict.
Outside the courthouse, plaintiffs’ attorney Mark Bankston insisted that the $4.11 million was not a disappointment, noting that it was only part of the damages Jones would have to pay.
The jury returns on Friday to hear more evidence about Jones and his company’s finances.
In a video posted on his website Thursday night, Jones called the reduced award a major victory.
“I admitted I was wrong. I admitted it was a mistake. I admitted to following misinformation, but not on purpose. I apologized to the families. And the jury got it. What I did to these families was wrong. But I didn’t do it on purpose,” he said.
The award was “more money than my company and I personally have, but we’re going to work on trying to make restitution for it,” Jones said.
Bankston suggested that any declarations of victory might be premature.
“We’re not done, folks,” Bankston said. “We knew going into this case that we needed to shoot for the moon to make the jury know we were serious and passionate. After tomorrow he will owe a lot more.
The total amount awarded in this case could set a marker for other lawsuits against Jones and underscores the financial threat he faces. It also raises new questions about the ability of Infowars — which was banned by YouTube, Spotify and Twitter for hate speech — to continue operating, even as the company’s finances remain unclear.
Jones, who framed the case as an attack on his First Amendment rights, admitted during the trial that the attack was “100 percent true” and that he was wrong to lie about it. But Heslin and Lewis told jurors that an apology would not be enough and urged them to make Jones pay for the years of suffering he put them and other Sandy Hook families through.
The parents testified Tuesday about how they endured a decade of trauma, first caused by their son’s slaying and what followed: shots fired at a home, online and phone threats and street harassment by strangers. They said the threats and harassment were fueled by Jones and his conspiracy theory spread among his followers through his Infowars website.
A forensic psychiatrist testified that the parents suffered from “complex post-traumatic stress disorder” caused by ongoing trauma, similar to what might be experienced by a soldier at war or a child victim of abuse.
At one point in his testimony, Lewis looked directly at Jones, who was sitting barely 10 feet away.
“It seems so incredible to me that we have to do this — that we have to plead with you, punish you — to get you to stop lying,” Lewis told Jones.
Barry Covert, a Buffalo, N.Y., First Amendment attorney who was not involved in the Jones case, said the $4 million in compensatory damages was lower than he would have expected given the evidence and testimony.
“But I don’t think Jones can take that as a victory,” he added. “The fact is that $4 million is significant, even if we thought it would be a bit more.”
Juries often decline to award any punitive damages after deciding on the amount of damages. But when they do decide, the penalty amount is often higher, Covert said. He said he expected the parents’ lawyers to argue that the jury should send the message that no one should profit from defamation.
“They’re going to want juries to send the message that you can’t make a quarter of a billion in profit from injuring someone and say you’re just going to take the loss of damages in court,” Covert said.
Jones was the only witness to testify in his defense, and he attended the trial only sporadically while still appearing on his show. And he came under scathing attacks from plaintiffs’ lawyers on cross-examination as they reviewed Jones’ own video claims about Sandy Hook over the years and accused him of lying and trying to hide evidence, including text messages and emails about the attack. It also includes internal emails sent by an Infowars employee saying “this Sandy Hook stuff is killing us.”
At one point, Jones was told that his lawyers had mistakenly sent Bankston text messages for the past two years from Jones’ cell phone. Bankston said in court Thursday that a Jan. 6 U.S. House committee investigating the 2021 attack on the Capitol had requested the records and that he intended to comply.
And shortly after Jones stated that “I don’t use email,” Jones was shown one that came from his address and another from an Infowars business employee who told Jones that the company had grossed $800,000 from the sale of its products in one day, which would amount to nearly $300 million in one year.
Jones’ media company Free Speech Systems, which is the parent company of Infowars, filed for bankruptcy during the two-week trial.
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Associated Press writer Michael Tarm in Chicago contributed to this report.
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