Washington — Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones asked the Supreme Court on Thursday to halt a nearly $1.5 billion judgment for making false claims that the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School was a hoax.
Jones, the host of the show InfoWars, is asking the high court to freeze enforcement of the record-breaking sum that he was ordered to pay after he was found liable in 2021 for damages in lawsuits brought by the families of children who were killed in the massacre.
A six-person jury had decided that Jones should pay $965 million to the families as compensation for defamation, inflection of emotional distress and violations of a Connecticut law, and a state court judge added on another $474 million in punitive damages.
Jones had repeatedly claimed that the 2012 shooting that killed 20 students and six teachers was staged by “crisis actors” as part of a plan to enact more restrictive gun laws. Relatives of the victims and an FBI agent testified during the defamation trial that they were threatened and harassed by Jones’ listeners who believed his lies about the massacre.
In a different lawsuit brought in Texas, Jones testified that the shooting was “100% real.” Still, he had slammed the Connecticut trial as a “kangaroo court” and argued it violated his free speech rights.
Jones and Free Speech Systems, his company, filed for bankruptcy protection after he was ordered to pay the families, and the satirical publication The Onion tried to purchase InfoWars at a bankruptcy auction for an undisclosed price last year. But a bankruptcy judge rejected the sale of InfoWars to The Onion last December. Jones’ lawyers said there is still an effort underway for InfoWars to be sold.
In his request for emergency relief from the Supreme Court, Jones’ lawyers said he should not have to pay the $1.5 billion while the justices consider whether to take up his appeal of the sanction.
He argued that the plaintiffs who sued him for defamation were public figures, and said the lies underpinning the judgment were based on his coverage of the shooting, which he said was of public concern.
Jones claimed that absent emergency relief, InfoWars “will have been acquired by its ideological nemesis and destroyed — which Jones believes is the Plaintiffs’ intention,” and its listeners will be deprived of a “valued source of information.”
