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In a unanimous decision Wednesday, Oct. 12, the jury said the Infowars founder must dole out $965 million in damages to eight families of students killed, as well as an FBI agent, for repeatedly claiming that the school massacre in December 2012, which killed 20 students and six staff members, was a hoax carried out by “crisis actors.”
A judge had already found Jones liable for defamation, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and violating the state Unfair Trade Practices Act for lying about the attack.
The families’ lawyer told jurors to use $550 million as a “baseline” for calculating damages, or one dollar for every social media impression Jones’s social media accounts received in the six years following the shooting, Bloomberg reports.
Jurors made 15 individual awards ranging from $28.8 million to $120 million. The families and FBI agent also received separate punitive damages.
Robbie Parker, the father of shooting victim Emilie, was awarded the largest amount at $120 million in compensatory damages.
Parker has said he feels like he “failed” his daughter by not protecting her name or memory, NBC News reports.
Jones was not in the courtroom as the jury’s decision was read Wednesday, opting instead to livestream himself laughing at and mocking the verdict.
“Do these people actually think they’re getting any of this money?” he asked his followers.
“This must be what Hell’s like,” Jones continued. “They just read out the damages even though you don’t got the money. Why not make it trillions?”
Immediately following the verdict, Jones' lawyer vowed to appeal the decision.
The verdict capped the second trial that Jones has faced over his Sandy Hook conspiracy theories.
In August 2022, a Texas jury ordered him to pay nearly $50 million in damages to Scarlett Lewis and Neil Heslin, whose son Jesse died in the shooting.
Jones has argued that the lawsuits are an attack on his First Amendment right to say whatever he wants about the shooting.
While testifying on the stand, he said he was “done apologizing” for his statements and claimed that he had already admitted that the shooting actually happened, NBC News reports.
“I legitimately thought it might have been staged and I stand by that," Jones said. "I don’t apologize for it.”
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