Lies don't come for free. Alex Jones, conspiracy theorist, appeared on his Inforwars platform this Friday to congratulate himself because, the day before, the jury had "only" imposed on him the payment of 4.1 million dollars in compensation for his repeated mockery for years and to assure that the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, was a setup to confiscate weapons from Americans. That falsehood caused a lot of damage to the parents of the 20 children who died, in addition to the six educators who lost their lives.
He sang victory too soon. Jones was ahead of events. The same jury imposed this Friday the additional payment of 45.2 million dollars as punishment for damages to Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis, whose six-year-old son, Jesse, was one of those who died. So the total sum reaches 49.3 million, which, below the 150 million that they claimed, is no longer a figure to congratulate. This is the first time that he faces financial responsibility for his falsehoods.
The founder of Infowars had already been found guilty of defamation and that was only the first of four hearings in which the jury must decide the amount of compensation to different families who have suffered the consequences of their inventions, unpunished until now .
“I cannot describe what these nine and a half years have been like, the life in hell that I and others have had to endure because of the recklessness and negligence of Alex Jones,” Heslin confessed at trial. He also recounted the harassment and threats that Jones's followers caused him. There were people who shot at his house and received countless messages warning them of the danger they were running.
"Jesse was real and I'm a real mom," Lewis explained, in emotionally charged testimony to Jones. "I know you know that and that's the problem," she told him. "I know you believe me and I know you you will leave this room and you will say again in your show that it is a lie”, he reproached him.
Once on the stand, and under the notice of the judge - “this is not one of your shows. His beliefs do not make something true. He is under oath "-, Jones claimed to have been shocked by the parents' confessions and remarked on the massacre: "It was 100% real."
However, his interrogation showed the stuff this conspirator and good friend of another renowned storyteller like former president Donald Trump is made of.
“You know what perjury is, don't you?” asked Mark Bankston, attorney for the plaintiff family, the question taking Jones by surprise and the explanation even more so.
Bankston revealed, to the astonishment of the audience, that the legal team of the founder of Infowars had "inadvertently" provided him with a copy of the contents of his phone. The apparent error revealed previously unknown messages about the massacre and financial information on the media platform.
These messages showed that he lied by denying that he had never referred to the Connecticut school massacre in his texts. In one of them, one of his collaborators warns him of how inappropriate it was to say that in the pandemic they had used mannequins to simulate the deceased and add that this was "another Sandy Hook."
The information on his cell phone also denied the poor economic health of his business, which he argued to avoid paying millions in compensation. It came to light that she was earning $800,000 a day recently from advertising and product sales on his shows.
Jones replied “this is your moment Perry Mason”, in reference to the fictional lawyer, and great television success, who always impressed with his discoveries in the courtroom. Jones excused his lies about those messages: "I'm not a tech guy."
