The Supreme Court denied a last-ditch effort on Tuesday by controversial InfoWars founder Alex Jones to overturn a $1.4 billion judgment against him for false claims he made about the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.
The high court did not elaborate on its decision to reject Jones’s petition for review, which was widely believed to be a long shot. The Supreme Court’s order comes days after Jones had asked the justices to pause the judgment against him pending their decision on his petition, a request that is now moot.
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Jones was ordered by a Connecticut jury in 2022 to pay the more than $1 billion judgment after falsely claiming the 2012 school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, in which 26 people were killed, was a hoax.
The families of victims successfully sued Jones for the harm his false statements about the massacre caused them, with multiple appeals courts rejecting Jones’s attempts to toss the ruling. Jones’s bid at the Supreme Court was his last chance to stop the judgment from being handed down.
Jones’s lawyer had argued the high court was “obligated to make its own independent evaluation of the entire record here, which can only be done” by reviewing the case, claiming the lower courts in Connecticut had not properly ensured the families had proven Jones committed actual malice with his comments. The Supreme Court decided the case was not worthy of its review.
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Facing the prospect of paying the significant judgment, Jones filed for bankruptcy in 2022, and the courts then sought to take control and sell off his assets to pay the families. Last year, a bankruptcy judge rejected a bid from satirical news outlet the Onion to buy Jones’s InfoWars, citing the lack of transparency and uneven playing field in the bid process.
Jones’s lawyers said in filings to the Supreme Court that the families “have no possible hope of collecting all” of the $1.4 billion judgment.