Alex Jones asks Supreme Court to halt $1.4 billion defamation judgement

Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones urged the Supreme Court Thursday to immediately halt a $1.44 billion defamation judgment he owes for falsely claiming the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting was a hoax. 

Jones appealed the massive judgment to the high court last month, and the justices were already scheduled to review it at their closed-door conference Friday. 

Jones is now bringing an emergency appeal, which seeks to halt the judgment until the Supreme Court resolves the case. Jones warned that the shooting victims’ families are otherwise poised to take control of his InfoWars site and hand it over to The Onion, a satirical news site. 

“Without a stay now, when this case is reviewed and later reversed, InfoWars will have been acquired by its ideological nemesis and destroyed — which Jones believes is the Plaintiffs’ intention. Hence, Jones will clearly experience irreparable injury if a stay is not granted,” Jones’ lawyers wrote. 

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, an appointee of former President Obama, is assigned by default to handle emergency appeals arising from Connecticut. She could act on Jones’ request alone or refer it to the full court for a vote. 

The Hill has reached out to the families’ legal team for comment. 

A Connecticut jury in 2022 ordered Jones to pay the staggering sum for repeatedly claiming the massacre was a hoax, becoming one of the largest defamation judgments in U.S. history. 

Jones and his company filed for bankruptcy, and at one point, InfoWars was nearly turned over to The Onion in an auction until a judge rejected the sale.  

“It would have been as if the KKK levied on a judgment against the NAACP or a group of atheists took over a church or synagogue — ideologically polar opposites — and began to use the opposition entity for its own ideological purposes,” Jones’ lawyers described the proposal to the justices. 

Though Jones has expressed confidence that “all or substantially all” of the justices are inclined to rule in his favor, the court has yet to signal interest in the case.  They have not requested the families submit a response to the earlier petition.