 |
| Photo Credit: AP. |
A Connecticut Judge has ordered conspiracy theorist and Infowars founder Alex Jones to pay additional $473 million in damages in connection with his false claims that the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre was staged.
Judge
Barbara Bellis said Jones and his Free Speech Systems’ “conduct was intentional
and malicious,” noting that it was intended to “cause harm by virtue of their
infrastructure, ability to spread content.”
In October
Jones was ordered to pay $965 million in damages to eight families of those who
died in the gunfire as well as an FBI agent who responded to the scene of the
2012 massacre as a price for repeatedly calling the mass shooting a staged
“hoax.”
The
conspiracy theory peddler said the incident was a government “false flag,” and
called the victims’ families “crisis actors.”
A Texas jury
ordered Jones to pay $49 million in separate case related to the Sandy Hook
massacre earlier this year.
Jones said Thursday
following the ruling that he has only some “hundred thousand dollars in his
savings account and laughed off attempts to make him pay reparations that now
stands at over a billion dollars.
Jones’
punitive damages include $150 million for violating the Unfair Trade Practices
Act as well as $323 million for the plaintiffs’ attorney fees.
20 first graders and six educators died in the 2012 massacre. Mr. Jones and his Free Speech Systems were dragged to court by families of eight of the victims and an FBI agent who responded to the school.