Your Conspiracy Bill, Sir - It’s $49 Million

InfoWars front man Alex Jones, the wacko’s wacko, has got away with peddling batshit conspiracy theories for years. He had “repeatedly argued that the Sandy Hook shooting was a hoax orchestrated by the government to strip Americans of gun rights, and that the parents of the dead children were ‘crisis actors’”. 20 children and six adults died in the mass shooting.

He had got away with that one, too - until the lawsuits began to rain down on him, and had even made money out of his wacko conspiracy theory, in what a lawyer for the Sandy Hook parents called “the monetisation of misinformation and lies”. But for Alex Jones, the moment of truth was at hand, and arrived in a Texas courtroom last week. If only it had happened rather earlier.

The parents of one of those dead children brought a defamation suit against Jones. They had not merely suffered distress: they, and others, had to hire their own private security detail. As a result, they sought as much as $150 million from Jones in damages. Their goal came that bit closer last week after the Parents’ lawyers brought the InfoWars front man bad news.

Jones’ own lawyers had inadvertently sent the plaintiffs two years’ worth of Jones’ phone text messages, a body of potentially incriminating evidence which is now being sought by those examining the events of January 6th last year when an attempted storming of the Capitol failed, despite Combover Crybaby Donald Trump initially declining to call off the insurrectionists.

It got worse: Jones had to be reminded that his views were not the same as the truth. He had to stick to facts in his replies to questioning, and could not pitch conspiracy theories in their place. The judge issued him a series of rebukes. He claimed InfoWars had not showed the judge being consumed by flames. He was then showed that this was exactly what InfoWars showed.

As the BBC has reported, “He has already lost a series of defamation cases filed by parents of the victims by default after failing to produce documents and testimony. But this was the first trial in which financial damages were agreed by a jury”. The damages for compensation seemed modest, at just $4.1 million. But then came the award for punitive damages.

That added $45.2 million to the bill, meaning Jones was now on the hook, as it were, for $49.3 million - plus all those lawyers’ bills. Would he be cleaned out? One opinion given at the trial was that InfoWars was worth $270 million, and it was pointed out that he had once raked in $800k in one day. But that the damages award would hurt was soon, effectively, admitted.

The admission came as the grift began: Roger Stone, who knows a little about being comprehensively discredited, went on InfoWars and told anyone watching “Alex Jones is a good and decent man. He’s a God-fearing Christian .. and right now, he needs our support”. And remember, “he’s done more for this movement than perhaps anyone you can name”. Or perhaps not.

But there was more. “There’s a place at the InfoWars store where you can go, just to make a contribution”. Without having to order BrainForce Plus™, eh? Do go on. “We’re not in the market for a book, or one of his great products”. Yes, the grift is on. And there is a good reason for that: the Sandy Hook families are not yet finished with Alex Jones. There will be more trials.

Two more trials. With Jones’ text messages most likely available to whichever plaintiffs request them. Alex Jones has at last had to confront reality - the reality of the Sandy Hook shootings which he denied for so many years, the reality of having to deal in truth and facts, rather than substitute lies as he saw fit, and the reality of having to pony up the thick end of $50 million.

Perhaps those in the UK, in the print media and elsewhere, who devise, promote and perpetuate conspiracy theory level drivel will cast an eye across the North Atlantic, then stop and think. More likely they will not: don’t worry, they will reassure themselves, the legal system is different over there, it can’t happen here, and there are still plenty of suckers to con.

Don’t you believe it. If it caught up with Jones, it could catch up with anyone.

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