Alex Jones must pay Sandy Hook families $965 million, jury says

Infowars host Alex Jones speaks to the media outside Connecticut Superior Court during his Sandy Hook defamation damages trial in Waterbury, Conn., Friday, Sept. 23, 2022. (Christian Abraham/Hearst Connecticut Media via AP)

Alex Jones must pay $965 million in damages to numerous families of victims of the 2012 Sandy Hook mass shooting for falsely claiming they were actors who faked the tragedy, a Connecticut jury said on Wednesday, marking the second multimillion-dollar verdict against the conspiracy theorist in just over two months.

The verdict came after three weeks of testimony in a state court in Waterbury, Connecticut, not far from where a gunman killed 20 children and six staff members at Sandy Hook Elementary School in December 2012. Jones claimed for years that the massacre was staged as part of a government plot to take away Americans' guns.