Alex Jones trial – latest: Jury orders Infowars host to pay $45.2 million in punitive damages on top of $4 million in restitution to Sandy Hook parents

Alex Jones was back on the airwaves almost immediately Friday after being ordered to pay nearly $50 million to the grieving parents of Sandy Hook — continuing to insist the cards were stacked against him as he blamed George Soros and “the workers” for his legal problems.

This defiance was in stark contrast to the red-faced, slack-jawed shock that registered on Jones’ face during the trial when it emerged that his lawyers had mistakenly sent incriminating evidence to opposing counsel.

This week, media mogul Infowars, estimated to be worth about $270 million by an economist witness, lost the first of many lawsuits against him for spreading conspiracy theories and disinformation. He has repeatedly insisted that the 2012 Sandy Hook school massacre in Newtown, Connecticut – when a gunman killed 20 six- and seven-year-olds at an elementary school – was staged as a hoax.

Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and his company Free Speech Systems are worth as much as $270 million, an economist testified Friday before a jury trying to determine whether Jones should pay punitive damages to the family of a 6-year-old boy killed in Sandy in 2012. Hook Elementary School shootings.

The same court ordered Jones to pay Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis $4.1 million in defamation damages. Punitive damages are being determined as a separate matter, and the parents want to punish Jones for a decade of false hoax claims they say led to a decade of trauma and abuse from fans of the Infowars host.

The court told Alex Jones to pay an additional $45.2 million in punitive damages on top of the $4.1 million in restitution he was ordered to pay yesterday.

Jones and his company now owe a total of $49.3 million.

After a jury reached a verdict in Alex Jones’ defamation suit and ordered him to pay the plaintiffs $4.1m (£3.4m) in damages, the bombastic Infowars presenter nevertheless declared victory.

Jones was brought to court by Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis, the parents of six-year-old Sandy Hook massacre victim Jesse Lewis, after they claimed they had endured years of torture and anguish over his claims that the 2012 mass shooting was a hoax.

While the jury awarded a sum significantly less than the plaintiffs’ request for $150m (£124m), it was far more than the $8 (£6.6m) offered by Jones’ lawyer – a dollar for each count against him.

Trump ally and self-proclaimed political “dirty crook” Roger Stone is accusing Infowars host Alex Jones’ lawyers of intentionally leaking the contents of the right-wing TV station’s cell phone during the recent Sandy Hook libel trial.

On Friday, Mr. Stone made a Telegram post highlighting how Jones’ lawyer, Antino Reynal, had worked for the Obama-era Justice Department.

“Now do you think the release of Jones’ text messages was ‘accidental’ or a mistake? If I were Jones, I would sue this guy for the exact same amount the jury finds against him,” Mr. Stone wrote.

There is nothing more pleasing in this world than to see a bad man coming. The pleasure of watching someone go down after repeatedly “getting away with murder” is better for the human body and soul than vegetables and religion. But in recent years, the consequences haven’t really looked like they were on paper for many prominent individuals. Bad men no longer find their match. They get book deals, or a TV show, or get elected prime minister. Bad men get rich.

Unless your name is Alex Jones, that is, in which case the bad guys are humiliated over and over again in an extremely public forum and then taken to the cleaners by the vulnerable people who used to make a name for themselves.

Right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones has been ordered to pay $4.11m (£3.38m) in restitution to the family of a Sandy Hook victim.

Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis, whose six-year-old son Jesse was among the 20 students and six adults killed in the mass shooting, sued Jones and his media company over claims he made that the massacre was an operation of “fake flag”. and that the victims did not actually exist.

Graeme Massie was watching the trial for The independent.