Alex Jones Hit With $1 Million In Court Fees Over Sandy Hook, Parkland Lawsuits

Alex Jones has lost two court cases against Sandy Hook parents. (Photo: HuffPost Illustration/Reuters)

Alex Jones was ordered to pay more than $1 million for his continued disregard of court proceedings related to multiple defamation lawsuits against him.

In a court filing released Friday, Judge Maya Guerra Gamble ordered that Jones and his company Free Speech Systems, LLC, pay a total of $1,078,653 to several people suing Jones for lies he spread about them on his conspiracy platform Infowars. He has 30 days to pay the more than $1 million sum to the different parties, according to the filing.

Jones will have to pay all attorneys’ fees and other expenses to two pairs of Sandy Hook parents who won their lawsuits against him last year after Jones routinely failed to provide discovery documents and appear for depositions. The parents, who lost their children in the 2012 school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, dealt with death threats after Jones falsely and continuously claimed they were “crisis actors.”

The largest sum he’s been ordered to hand over — more than $730,000 — will be split between the four Sandy Hook plaintiffs. Those plaintiffs are being represented by Texas law firm Farrar & Ball, not to be confused with another Sandy Hook lawsuit that Jones lost brought on by Connecticut law firm Koskoff Koskoff & Bieder.

Jones was also ordered to pay the plaintiffs additional separate sums, with amounts ranging from $6,000 to more than $100,000 to cover their attorneys’ fees and expenses.

Though Jones has already lost his lawsuits against the Sandy Hook families, he’ll still have to sit in a Texas courtroom next week while a jury decides how much he will ultimately have to pay two of the plaintiffs in damages for his lies.

That’s not all. Infowars and Jones’ LLC will also have to cough up more than $100,000 in attorney’s fees and expenses to Marcel Fontaine, whom an Infowars editor falsely accused of being the 2018 Parkland school shooter who left 17 people dead in Florida.

The editor, Kit Daniels, who is also a defendant in that suit, cried during a deposition when confronted with the damage he caused Fontaine, HuffPost first reported.

Part of the payment to Fontaine includes more than $18,000 for evidence tampering after Jones’ lawyers attempted to conceal documents from the court.

Gamble eviscerated Infowars and Jones’ LLC in a previous filing announcing the sanctions earlier this month.

“The Court finds that Defendants have intentionally thwarted the legitimate discover process in these cases,” Gamble’s ruling read. “The egregious and repetitiveness of Defendants’ obstruction exhibits a disregard for and disrespect of the integrity of this Court and our judicial system. Plaintiff’s discovery of facts necessary to properly present their claim for damages has been irreparably prejudiced in virtually all respects. Absent severe action from this Court, Defendants will ultimately profit from this sabotage of the discovery process.”

In 2020, Jones was hit with a similar sanction for failing to provide discovery documents related to the Sandy Hook lawsuit and had to pay $100,000.

He doesn’t seem to have learned any lessons. Along with his failure to turn over documents related to the defamation cases against him, Jones recently failed to show up to a deposition in Texas related to a Sandy Hook case. He was ultimately fined $75,000, then got the money back when he eventually showed up.

He’s continued to evade accountability. On Sunday, just a week before he’s set to attend a trial in his Sandy Hook case, Jones filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, a possible last-gasp attempt at pausing his incoming judgment. The Sandy Hook parents filed a petition under the Texas Uniform Fraudulent Transfer Act earlier this month accusing Jones and Infowars of “conspir[ing] to divert his assets to shell companies owned by insiders like his parents, his children, and himself,” Motherboard reported.

HuffPost was also the first to report an inside look at the Infowars store, which sold more than $165 million in products from 2015 to 2018.

Remington Arms, the gunmaker that marketed the weapon used to kill 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook, also filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. At the time, the Sandy Hook families who sued the gunmaker accused Remington of using the bankruptcy to avoid accountability. Earlier this year, Remington lost its lawsuit and was ordered to pay the families $73 million.

Attorney Mark Bankston, who represents the Sandy Hook and Parkland plaintiffs, said his clients look forward to Jones’ trial.

“Our clients are pleased that Mr. Jones’ unlawful attempts to sabotage these lawsuits has been met with a decisive response,” Bankston said in a statement. “Our clients now look forward to telling their story to a jury.”

A lawyer representing Jones did not immediately return a call for comment.

This article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been updated.