InfoWars Lawsuit: Alex Jones Ordered To Pay $100,000 In Sandy Hook Case

Alex Jones, right-wing media figure and host of the controversial InfoWars show, has been issued a steep fine in a defamation case leveled against him by the parent of a Sandy Hook victim. On Dec. 20, Judge Scott Jenkins of Travis County, Texas, ordered the infamous conspiracy theorist to pay roughly $100,000 in legal fees.

This order came as a result of Jones failing to produce “witnesses and other materials” for the plaintiff, Neil Heslin. As a result of this failure, Jenkins ruled Jones was essentially in contempt of court and ordered him to pay two lawyer fees for Heslin – $65,825 and $34,323, respectively, totaling a little over $100,000 in total. Jenkins also dismissed a motion by Jones and his legal team which attempted to dismiss the suit.

Heslin brought the defamation suit against Jones for repeated assertions made on his show that the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting was a hoax orchestrated by the U.S. government in an effort to push gun control legislation. Heslin’s son, Jesse Lewis, who was 6 years old at the time of the shooting, was among the 20 students killed by an armed gunman at the school in Newtown, Connecticut. Six teachers were also killed.

“Mr. Jones is learning that he cannot treat the courts with the same contempt he showed my clients,” Mark Bankston, Heslin’s lawyer, wrote in an email to the New York Times. “In disobeying court orders, Mr. Jones has shown how desperate he is to ensure nobody finds out how Infowars really operates, or the lengths the company went to carry out its five-year campaign of malicious harassment against these parents.”