Alex Jones’ theatrical nuisance of a trial performance is not ending well for him. And it ain’t over yet, but so far, the jury is not on his side. The first installment of a bifurcated case/verdict landed on Thursday afternoon, and let’s just say that all of Jones’ snake oil supplements — and he has been pushing those “Instahard” virility pills like crazy this week — are going to be sales that he needs to pay this initial verdict for his lies about the Sandy Hook families.
CNN reports that Jones has been ordered by a jury (with 10 out of 12 members in official accordance) to shell out $4 million and a little bit of change to the parents (Scarlett Lewis and Neil Heslim) of two victims of the Sandy Hook mass school shooting. It’s a heck of a semi-ending for a very public defamation case about the horrible harm that’s been done by Jones peddling conspiracy theories, all to make some money on his Infowars sites. Punitive damages are yet to come (the jury comes back on Friday for that consideration), but here’s how the default judgment happened so fast with the jury barely deliberating to come up with the compensatory damages:
Jones baselessly said in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook shooting, in which 26 people were killed, that the incident was staged. Facing multiple lawsuits, Jones later acknowledged the shooting occurred. He testified in court this week that he now believed it to be “100% real.”
But Jones failed to comply with court orders during the discovery process of the lawsuit. His failure to do so led to Heslin and Lewis winning default judgments judgements against Jones.
Get ready for a Jones blowout over this. He’s already been ranting about his lawyer screwing up because he handed over the contents of Jones’ phone to the other side. The lawyer moved for a mistrial, which clearly did not happen, and now, the Jan. 6 House committee has decided subpoena those texts. In other words, it doesn’t pay to be a conspiracy theorist in the long run, kids.
(Via CNN)