AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — For years, bombastic far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones told his millions of followers that the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting was a hoax, that no children were killed and that parents were actors in the complex crisis gun control ruse.
Under oath and facing a jury that could award him $150 million or more in damages for his false claims, Jones said Wednesday that he now realizes he was irresponsible and believes what happened in America’s deadliest school shooting story is “100% real.”
Jones’ public remorse came on the final day of testimony in a two-week defamation lawsuit against him and his Austin-based media company, Free Speech Systems, brought by Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis, the parents of 6-year-old Jesse Lewis. Their son was a first-grader who was among the 20 students and six teachers killed at the school in Newtown, Connecticut, on December 14, 2012.
“I was unwittingly involved in things that hurt those people’s feelings,” said Jones, who also admitted to raising conspiracy claims for other mass tragedies, from the Oklahoma City and Boston Marathon bombings to the Las Vegas and Parkland mass shootings. Florida, “and I’m sorry about that.”
But an apology isn’t enough for Heslin and Lewis. They said Jones and the media empire he controls and uses to spread his false claims should be held accountable.
“Alex started this fight,” Heslin said, “and I’m going to finish it.”
Parents testified Tuesday about a decade of trauma caused first by their son’s slaying and what followed: shots fired at a home, online and phone threats and street harassment by strangers, all fueled by Jones and his conspiracy theory spread to his followers through his Infowars website.
A forensic psychiatrist testified that the parents suffered from “complex post-traumatic stress disorder” caused by ongoing trauma, similar to what might be experienced by a soldier at war or a victim of child abuse.
At one point in his testimony, Lewis looked directly at actor Jones, who was sitting barely 10 feet away.
“It seems so incredible to me that we have to do this — that we have to plead with you, punish you — to get you to stop lying,” Lewis told Jones.
Courts in Texas and Connecticut have already found Jones liable for defamation for his portrayal of the Sandy Hook massacre as a hoax involving actors aimed at increasing gun control.
Heslin and Lewis are now asking an Austin jury for $150 million in damages for defamation and intentional infliction of emotional distress. They will also ask the jury to assess additional punitive damages.
Jurors began deliberating on damages Wednesday. After determining whether Jones should pay the parents damages for defamation and emotional distress, they must decide whether he should also pay punitive damages. That part will include a separate mini-trial with Jones and an economist testifying about his and his company’s net worth.
Jones’ lawyer asked jurors to limit damages to $8 — one dollar for each of the compensatory charges they considered — and Jones himself said any award above $2 million “would sink us.”
At the end of Jones’ testimony, Mark Bankston, the family’s attorney, pulled a crumpled dollar bill from his pocket, showed it to Jones and placed it in front of the parents.
“The day Sandy Hook happened, Alex Jones planted a seed of misinformation that lasted a decade,” the parents’ attorney, Kyle Farrar, told the jury in closing arguments. “And he just watered that seed over and over until it bore fruit: cruelty and money.”
During his testimony, Jones said he had tried in the past to walk away from the fraud allegations, but “they (the media) won’t let me take it back.”
Jones — who has been banned from major social media platforms for hate speech and offensive behavior — described the lawsuit as an attack on his First Amendment rights and complained that he was “typecast as someone who runs around talking about Sandy Hook, makes money Sandy Hook is obsessed with Sandy Hook.”
Eight days of testimony included videos of Jones and Infowars staffers talking about the Sandy Hook conspiracy and even mocking Heslin’s description in a 2017 television interview that he held the body of his dead son Jesse “with a bullet hole in the head’. Heslin described that moment with his dead son to the jury.
Jones was the only witness to testify in his defense. And he came under scathing attacks from plaintiffs’ attorneys on cross-examination as they reviewed Jones’ own video claims about Sandy Hook over the years and accused him of lying and trying to hide evidence, including Sandy Hook text messages and emails. It also includes internal emails sent by an Infowars employee saying “this Sandy Hook stuff is killing us.”
At one point, Jones was told that his lawyers had mistakenly sent Bankston text messages for the past two years from Jones’ cell phone.
And shortly after Jones stated that “I don’t use email,” Jones was shown one that came from his address and another from an Infowars business employee who told Jones that the company had grossed $800,000 from the sale of its products in one day, which would amount to nearly $300 million in one year.
Jones has already tried to financially protect Free Speech Systems. The company filed for federal bankruptcy protection last week. The Sandy Hook families separately sued Jones over his financial claims, alleging the company was trying to protect millions owned by Jones and his family through shell entities.
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Associated Press writer Paul J. Weber contributed to this report.
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