FILE - Infowars founder Alex Jones appears in court to testify during the Sandy Hook defamation damages trial at Connecticut Superior Court in Waterbury, Conn., Thursday, Sept. 22, 2022. Jones has filed for personal bankruptcy protection in Texas as he faces nearly $1.5 billion in court judgments over conspiracy theories he spread about the Sandy Hook school massacre. Jones filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in bankruptcy court in Houston on Friday, Dec. 2. (Tyler Sizemore/Hearst Connecticut Media via AP, Pool, File)
Republished December 22, 2022 - 7:56 PM
Original Publication Date December 22, 2022 - 6:16 PM
HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — A Connecticut judge on Thursday denied Infowars host Alex Jones' motion seeking a new trial and the overturning of a jury verdict requiring him to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to families of victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre.
The ruling found the motion was not supported “by any evidence or case law.”
Chris Mattei, an attorney for the Sandy Hook families, said in a statement that the court “has now affirmed the jury’s historic and just rebuke of Alex Jones.”
Jones' attorney Norm Pattis called it “an expected and disappointing decision" and said they would be heading to the appellate courts.
For years Jones described the 2012 shootings in Newtown, Connecticut, as a hoax on his Infowars broadcasts.
In October the jury decided that he must pay victims’ families $965 million in compensatory damages, and a judge later added on another $473 million in punitive damages.
The Connecticut decision came after a separate jury in Texas awarded the parents of a child killed in the shooting $49 million in damages earlier this year.
Jones filed for personal bankruptcy earlier this month.
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This story has been corrected to show that the year of the massacre was 2012.
News from © The Associated Press, 2022