US apex court rejects conspiracy theorist's appeal of $1.4 bn defamation judgment. Details here

The US apex court declined to hear a challenge by conspiracy theorist Alex Jones on Tuesday (October 14) to a judgment worth $1.4 billion, which was awarded to families of the Sandy Hook Elementary School mass shooting victims. The Supreme Court judge shunned the appeal of the Connecticut Appellate Court's decision in a defamation lawsuit against him to uphold most of the judgment issued by a judge and jury in 2022 to 14 family members of children and school employees who were killed, and an FBI agent who responded to the shooting. Jones had falsely claimed that the shooting was a hoax.

The Supreme Court did not provide a reason for its decision, according to its orders list released.

Jones is the founder of a website called Infowars. He also hosts a popular radio show. For four years in his show, Jones claimed that the shooting was "staged" by gun control activists and that the parents were "crisis actors," but he has since acknowledged it was "100 percent real."

Jones filed for personal bankruptcy in his home state of Texas after losing the defamation case.

In a statement to CNN on the Supreme Court’s ruling, Chris Mattei, an attorney representing the victims’ families, said: “The supreme court properly rejected Jones’s latest desperate attempt to avoid accountability for the harm he has caused. We look forward to enforcing the jury’s historic verdict and making Jones and Infowars pay for what they have done.”