Published: Less than 10 min ago
Alex Jones, who is the host of the website Infowars, and his company are ordered to pay an additional $473 million for promoting false conspiracy theories about the Sandy Hook school massacre, writes the AP news agency.
The additional millions means that he will have to pay a total of 1.44 billion dollars, that is, the equivalent of more than 14 billion kroner.
– Well, of course I’m laughing at it, Jones comments on the verdict in his program on Thursday.
– It would be as if you sent me a bill for a billion dollars in the mail, he says and states that he “has almost nothing”.
The damages will go to the family members who suffered from his false claims that the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School never took place.
The verdict is the second against Alex Jones. In August, he was also ordered to pay a total of more than $49 million to a couple whose six-year-old son was killed in the massacre.
A third and final trial over Jones’ claims about the Sandy Hook massacre is expected to begin around the end of the year in Texas.
Jones has admitted he was wrong about Sandy Hook. But in the courtroom he claimed to have been subjected to a violation of freedom of expression.
In December 2012, a 20-year-old man forced his way into Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, and shot and killed 20 young children and six adults. The perpetrator then also murdered his mother before committing suicide.
The school massacre is one of the deadliest in US history.