![\"Mark](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/1787594182_818_.webp\")
Mark Bankston, lawyer for Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis, asks Alex Jones questions about text messages during the trial at the Travis County courthouse in 2022. (Briana Sanchez | Pool via Reuters)<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\tMark Bankston, lawyer for Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis, asks Alex Jones questions about text messages during the trial at the Travis County courthouse in 2022. (Briana Sanchez | Pool via Reuters)<\/p>\n
A Texas appeals court drastically reduced the amount of money Austin-based conspiracy theorist Alex Jones owes to victims of the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre.<\/p>\n
The Third Court of Appeals ruled Friday that the $50 million previously awarded<\/a> to two Connecticut families targeted by Jones\u2019 Infowars platform was an overstep, reducing the amount owed to $1.5 million between the two parties.<\/p>\n Jones consistently called the 2012 shooting that left 20 schoolchildren and six adults dead a hoax. He repeatedly called families \u201ccrisis actors\u201d on his Infowars platform and Jones\u2019 supporters harassed Sandy Hook families for years. Jones later said a \u201cform of psychosis<\/a>\u201d led him to push the narrative that the shooting was a ploy by the government to restrict gun rights.<\/p>\n The families successfully sued Jones for defamation in 2022 and he filed for bankruptcy shortly after. A Connecticut judge also sided with families, ordering Jones pay $1.4 billion in damages. Friday\u2019s ruling in Texas does not impact the Connecticut case.<\/p>\n The ruling ends a back-and-forth over legal damages in Texas courts for now. Jones has been repeatedly knocked<\/a> by a bankruptcy court in Houston and a Travis County court for failing to provide evidence throughout the proceedings, and families successfully pleaded the Travis County judge award more than Texas\u2019 $750,000 cap on damages in 2023.<\/p>\n The Third Court\u2019s ruling Friday said that plaintiffs didn\u2019t prove their damages should exceed the state\u2019s cap on damages, reducing the money owed to $750,000 to each family.<\/p>\n Jones\u2019 assets \u2014 including his Infowars platform \u2014 have been tied up in his bankruptcy case for years. A court ordered Jones shut down<\/a> Infowars in May. The satirical publication The Onion effectively took over the brand to parody Jones last month<\/a> after years of trying to acquire the brand. Onion CEO Ben Collins told KUT\u2019s Austin Signal the goal of the takeover was to mock Jones\u2019 brand of brash misinformation and provide some money to Sandy Hook families.<\/p>\n \u201cHe reached the line a long time ago when he started saying people who died in a mass shooting in a school wasn\u2019t real,\u201d Collins said. \u201cAnd that is not a joke to me. That is evil and weird.\u201d<\/p>\n The Onion\u2018s attempted takeover of Infowars is still playing out in a Travis County court.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mark Bankston, lawyer for Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis, asks Alex Jones questions about text messages during the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":415496,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[97013,132,134,133,97014,6481,223,97078,27],"class_list":["post-416161","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-alex-jones","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news","tag-infowars","tag-kut","tag-news","tag-sandy-hook","tag-texas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416161","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=416161"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416161\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/415496"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=416161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=416161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=416161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}