US

Jury Orders Alex Jones To Pay $4.1 Million In Sandy Hook Lawsuit

(Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

Nicole Silverio Media Reporter
Font Size:

InfoWars host Alex Jones was ordered to pay $4.1 million by an Austin jury Thursday after a lawsuit by the family of a 6-year-old victim killed in the December 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.

Scarlett Lewis and Neil Heslin’s son Jesse Lewis died after 20-year-old Adam Lanza opened fire inside Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, killing 20 children and six adults. They sued Jones for $150 million for defamation and intentional infliction of emotional distress for making false statements and repeated suggestions that the incident was a hoax, according to NBC News.

The jury was asked to conclude whether Jones should pay the family for emotional stress and reputational damage, according to NBC News. The judge had reportedly already found Jones liable for not turning over relevant evidence before trial kicked off and, denied the request of Jones’ attorney, Andino Reynal, for a mistrial Thursday following his team sending a digital copy of Jones’ cellphone to opposing counsel by mistake, the outlet reported.

Reynal said his client paid the price already after being removed from social media platforms and losing followers several years ago, NBC News reported. He requested the jury to only award the family $1.

Screenshot/YouTube/LawAndCrime

Screenshot/YouTube/LawAndCrime

“He made a terrible mistake,” Reynal said during the defamation trial. “That mistake was weaponized by the same political forces that had descended upon Sandy Hook when it happened.”

The core of the trial stemmed in part from Jones suggesting Heslin lied about holding his son “with a bullet hole through his head,” according to NBC News. Heslin made the comment about holding his son during an episode of “Sunday Night With Megyn Kelly” in 2017. The couple argued during testimony that Jones perpetuated fear through his remarks about the shooting. (RELATED: Alex Jones Realized On The Stand That His Lawyers Accidentally Sent Private Texts To His Opposition)

“Having a 6-year-old son shot in front of his classroom is unbearable and you don’t think you’re going to survive and then to have someone on top of that perpetuate a lie that it was a hoax, that it was a false flag,” Lewis said during her testimony. “I don’t think you understand the fear you perpetuate, not just to the victim’s family but to our family, our friends and any survivor from that school.”

In addition to Heslin and Lewis, several other families have sued Jones and InfoWars after the shooting. Jones lost another lawsuit in October 2021 filed by Leonard Pozner and Veronique De La Rosa, whose son, Noah Ponzer, died in the shooting. Their lawsuit alleged that Jones suggested the shooting was staged by the government and that the parents of the victims were part of the act. The judge ordered him to pay “reasonable attorney’s fees in connection with Plaintiff’s Motion.”

PREMIUM ARTICLE: Subscribe To Keep Reading

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign Up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
BENEFITS READERS PASS PATRIOTS FOUNDERS
Daily and Breaking Newsletters
Daily Caller Shows
Ad Free Experience
Exclusive Articles
Custom Newsletters
Editor Daily Rundown
Behind The Scenes Coverage
Award Winning Documentaries
Patriot War Room
Patriot Live Chat
Exclusive Events
Gold Membership Card
Tucker Mug

What does Founders Club include?

Tucker Mug and Membership Card
Founders

Readers,

Instead of sucking up to the political and corporate powers that dominate America, The Daily Caller is fighting for you — our readers. We humbly ask you to consider joining us in this fight.

Now that millions of readers are rejecting the increasingly biased and even corrupt corporate media and joining us daily, there are powerful forces lined up to stop us: the old guard of the news media hopes to marginalize us; the big corporate ad agencies want to deprive us of revenue and put us out of business; senators threaten to have our reporters arrested for asking simple questions; the big tech platforms want to limit our ability to communicate with you; and the political party establishments feel threatened by our independence.

We don't complain -- we can't stand complainers -- but we do call it how we see it. We have a fight on our hands, and it's intense. We need your help to smash through the big tech, big media and big government blockade.

We're the insurgent outsiders for a reason: our deep-dive investigations hold the powerful to account. Our original videos undermine their narratives on a daily basis. Even our insistence on having fun infuriates them -- because we won’t bend the knee to political correctness.

One reason we stand apart is because we are not afraid to say we love America. We love her with every fiber of our being, and we think she's worth saving from today’s craziness.

Help us save her.

A second reason we stand out is the sheer number of honest responsible reporters we have helped train. We have trained so many solid reporters that they now hold prominent positions at publications across the political spectrum. Hear a rare reasonable voice at a place like CNN? There’s a good chance they were trained at Daily Caller. Same goes for the numerous Daily Caller alumni dominating the news coverage at outlets such as Fox News, Newsmax, Daily Wire and many others.

Simply put, America needs solid reporters fighting to tell the truth or we will never have honest elections or a fair system. We are working tirelessly to make that happen and we are making a difference.

Since 2010, The Daily Caller has grown immensely. We're in the halls of Congress. We're in the Oval Office. And we're in up to 20 million homes every single month. That's 20 million Americans like you who are impossible to ignore.

We can overcome the forces lined up against all of us. This is an important mission but we can’t do it unless you — the everyday Americans forgotten by the establishment — have our back.

Please consider becoming a Daily Caller Patriot today, and help us keep doing work that holds politicians, corporations and other leaders accountable. Help us thumb our noses at political correctness. Help us train a new generation of news reporters who will actually tell the truth. And help us remind Americans everywhere that there are millions of us who remain clear-eyed about our country's greatness.

In return for membership, Daily Caller Patriots will be able to read The Daily Caller without any of the ads that we have long used to support our mission. We know the ads drive you crazy. They drive us crazy too. But we need revenue to keep the fight going. If you join us, we will cut out the ads for you and put every Lincoln-headed cent we earn into amplifying our voice, training even more solid reporters, and giving you the ad-free experience and lightning fast website you deserve.

Patriots will also be eligible for Patriots Only content, newsletters, chats and live events with our reporters and editors. It's simple: welcome us into your lives, and we'll welcome you into ours.

We can save America together.

Become a Daily Caller Patriot today.

Signature

Neil Patel