Alex Jones has been ordered to pay $1 million in legal fees in three linked lawsuits against him, with more fines likely to come.
Jones made a massive name for himself in 2012, when he called the shooting of 26 first-graders and school staff at Sandy Hook Elementary school a staged hoax, accusing survivors and parents alike of being paid actors. He has since reversed his position on the shooting, saying that his accusations of staging were a symptom of mental illness, but that he still believes all his actions fell under his right to free speech.
Alex Jones, who prior to Sandy Hook was a far-right conspiracy theorist radio host of little notice, released private information of several Sandy Hook parents. Leonard Pozner, whose six-year-old son Noah was murdered in the shooting, was forced to move several times by harassment and death threats from Jones’ followers.
Jones has lost defamation lawsuits to Pozner and 16 other families of victims. He continuously refused to take the suits seriously, and was found in contempt nearly every time he was to come to court. In January 2021, he tried to have four of the lawsuits dismissed, but the Texas Supreme Court threw out his appeal without a hearing. Three months later, the US Supreme Court declined to hear another appeal from him, this one against a Connecticut court sanction against him.
In September 2021, Jones lost defamation lawsuits filed against him by two other Sandy Hook families, and by Marcel Fontaine, a Massachusetts teenager who Jones and writers working for Jones falsely accused of being behind the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in 2018. The current suit is over whether or not Jones and his companies, which are also named in the suit, have been illegally hiding assets to dodge paying damages. Three of his companies – Infowars, IWHealth, and Prison Planet TV, all declared bankruptcy this last Sunday.
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