Jury decides conspiracy theorist Alex Jones should pay nearly $1 billion in damages to Sandy Hook families for his lies about the school massacre

CNN Business — Far-right talk show host Alex Jones should pay eight families of Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting victims and one first responder nearly $1 billion in compensatory damages, a Connecticut jury decided Wednesday, capping a wrenching weeks-long trial that put on display the serious harm inflicted by the conspiracy theorist’s lies.

With its punishing award, the decision could shrink or even doom Jones’ Infowars media empire, which has been at the center of major conspiracy theories dating back to former President George W. Bush’s administration and was embraced by President Donald Trump.

The decision marks a key moment in the years-long process that began in 2018 when the families took legal action against Jones and his company, Free Speech Systems, the parent of the fringe media organization Infowars.

Jones baselessly said again and again after the 2012 mass shooting, in which 26 people were killed, that the incident was staged, and that the families and first responders were “crisis actors.” The plaintiffs throughout the trial described in poignant terms how the lies had prompted unrelenting harassment against them and compounded the emotional agony of losing their loved ones.

Plaintiffs in the trial included family members of eight school students and employees, in addition to one FBI agent who responded to the scene. The three cases were all condensed into the single trial.

Christopher Mattei, an attorney for the plaintiffs, urged jurors to award at least a half a billion dollars for having permanently mangled the lives of his clients. The figure, he said, would represent the more than 550 million online impressions Jones’ Sandy Hook lie allegedly received online.

“You may say that is astronomical. It is,” Mattei said. “It’s exactly what Alex Jones set himself up to do. That’s what he built. He built a lie machine that could push this stuff out. You reap what you sow.”