Infowars, the far-right conspiracy theory network that profited from lies, died Friday after losing its battle against the truth. It was 27.
The death comes nearly four years after disinformation merchant Alex Jones, founder of Infowars, was court-ordered to pay roughly $1 billion to several families whose loved ones were killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, after lying that they were “crisis actors” and that the shooting — which left 20 children and six adults dead — was “staged.”
A judge ruled last year that Infowars could be sold to help pay the families. That includes studio equipment like cameras, desks and microphones, along with the Infowars brand name. While satirical news outlet The Onion continues to wrestle for control of the Infowars brand, the website itself was taken down at midnight on Friday after a court-appointed receiver stopped paying rent and utilities for the studio space.
At the time of last year’s ruling, Jones remained defiant and said the two jury trials he lost were “rigged.”
“Here’s just a little reminder, though: They don’t want money in their fake, rigged, Sandy Hook trials run by Democrats,” Jones said on an Infowars broadcast at the time. “No, they want me off the air.”
Among the 20 kids killed at Sandy Hook was 6-year-old Jesse Lewis, described by his dad, Neil Heslin, as an energetic child who loved animals and helping others. The day of the shooting, Jesse led his classmates to safety and likely saved lives.
Heslin testified in a Texas courtroom in 2022 about the abuse his family endured at the direction of Jones and Infowars. Heslin said he didn’t want Jones’ money, but that hitting Jones’ wallet might be the only way to make him stop spreading lies.
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“I believe it’s the only way to put a stop to it, to prevent this from happening anymore,” Heslin said on the stand. “There’s got to be a strong deterrent to put a stop to what is being said.”
As Heslin testified, Jones was tucked away in the comfort of his Infowars studio just miles from the courthouse. He was in the middle of a broadcast where he whined about the supposed injustices of the trial and attacked Heslin as “slow” and “on the spectrum.”
‘Speech Is Free. But Lies You Have To Pay For.’
After he was fired in 1999 from his evening radio show on Texas’ KJFK for reportedly souring advertisers with his rants, Jones founded Infowars, which became ground zero for the spread of increasingly unhinged and toxic conspiracy theories.
Over the years, Jones used his platform to promote anti-government conpiracy theories, rant about what he called a “satanic pedophile, globalist New World Order,” and harass the surviving victims of tragedies. A steady stream of racism, antisemitism, Islamophobia and homophobia also permeated Infowars broadcasts.
The audience ate it up. Infowars made hundreds of millions of dollars hawking supplements and survival gear during its nearly three decades in the snake-oil business.
In recent years, what once might have been dismissed as the fringe thoughts of a lunatic started to become mainstream. In 2015, Jones hosted then-presidential candidate Donald Trump on Infowars, a dark foreshadowing of the years of disinformation to follow.
“Your reputation is amazing,” Trump told Jones at the time. “I will not let you down.”
The massive profits generated by Infowars came at the cost of innocent people — often victims and survivors of violence — caught in the crosshairs of dangerous falsehoods.
Brennan Gilmore recorded the moment a neo-Nazi drove a car into a crowd of people protesting against a white supremacist rally taking place in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017. Heather Heyer, 32, was killed in the attack.
Jones dismissed the far-right violence on his show, labeling Gilmore a “deep state shill” and “CIA asset” who wanted to undermine the Trump administration by sharing his video.
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In 2018, Gilmore sued Jones for defamation, alleging he received death threats and was physically accosted on the street following the Infowars broadcast. Jones admitted liability for defamation in 2022 and paid $50,000 to Gilmore.
Marcel Fontaine, a Boston resident, was falsely accused in an Infowars article of being the school shooter who left 17 people dead in Parkland, Florida, in 2018. In 2022, as part of a defamation suit Fontaine brought against the platform, longtime Infowars employee Kit Daniels cried during a deposition as he expressed regret for misidentifying Fontaine to millions of listeners based on a 4chan post he saw. The lawsuit stalled amid Jones’ bankruptcy case, and Fontaine died in a house fire last year.
It was the lies Jones spread about the victims and families of those who died in the Sandy Hook shooting that ultimately sealed the fate of Infowars. JS was the first to report in 2018 on lawsuits against Jones and Infowars brought by the parents of children killed in the shooting. Mark Bankston of the Texas law firm Farrar & Ball represented the parents in the initial lawsuit, along with Fontaine in his case against Jones.
Among the falsehoods posted on the Infowars website was a headline that screamed: “FBI SAYS NO ONE KILLED AT SANDY HOOK.”
During a November 2016 broadcast, Jones said that if “children were lost at Sandy Hook, my heart goes out to each and every one of those parents.”
But he didn’t stop there: “The only problem is, I’ve watched a lot of soap operas, and I’ve seen actors before. And I know when I’m watching a movie and when I’m watching something real.”
A former Infowars employee said in a video deposition that he was laughed at after repeatedly warning staff to stop publishing falsehoods.
Bankston, who represented Sandy Hook victim Jesse Lewis’ parents in their 2022 Texas trial, reminded jurors — and Jones himself — of the distinction between free speech and lies.
“Speech is free,” Bankston said. “But lies you have to pay for.”
A Child’s Grave Desecrated
Jones’ second trial took place later that year in Connecticut, just 20 minutes from where the deadly school shooting happened. Families broke down in tears during five weeks of testimony as they described the deaths of their loved ones and the additional nightmare that Jones unleashed.
Parent Robbie Parker, whose 6-year-old daughter Emilie was killed, said threats poured in after Jones called Parker a “crisis actor” after he gave a nervous laugh at a press conference. Parker said he found himself up late at night, desperately trying to delete vile messages from extremists shared on a memorial page for Emilie.
Mark and Jackie Barden, whose 7-year-old son Daniel was killed, said they received a letter from someone who claimed to have urinated on the child’s grave. In another letter, someone threatened to dig up Daniel’s grave to prove he didn’t exist.
Parents Ian and Nicole Hockley, whose 6-year-old son Dylan was killed, testified about how far Infowars’ acolytes would go to compound their trauma.
“I got sent pictures of dead kids because [harassers said] as a ‘crisis actor,’ I didn’t know what dead kids looked like,” Nicole Hockley testified.
The abuse never stopped. One morning in the first week of the second trial, as Sandy Hook families walked into the Connecticut courthouse, they passed Infowars stickers that someone had plastered on a nearby traffic sign and — more fittingly — a trash can.
No Remorse
Jones used one of his final days on Infowars to target the Sandy Hook families.
“All a big setup,” Jones said of the shooting in an April 22 broadcast. “Because they killed those kids with professional shooters, and that’s what they don’t want coming out. It’s in the police reports. There was a pile of kids in the bathroom in a pyramid with no blood.”
Jones also continued to hawk supplements and merchandise, all while making himself out to be a martyr. He promised that The Onion will be “in deep shit” for trying to take his platform.
“Just because you’re wearing my shirt, don’t mean you’re me,” a shirtless Jones said during an April 20 broadcast.
Jones may have lost Infowars, but he’s unlikely to disappear. He’ll still have platforms on X and Rumble, and he has a new website where he’s already hawking products and asking supporters for donations.
While he’s previously vowed to make an even bigger studio and to broadcast “20 hours a day,” Jones may have to recruit new talent.
Owen Shroyer, an Infowars staple who testified about his own Sandy Hook lies and who spent 60 days in prison for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack, left the network in September over mounting tensions between himself and Jones.
Jones was blindsided by the departure.
“You are a snake!” Jones yelled on his next broadcast. “You are a rat! You are a fraud! You are a backstabber! You are a hand-biter! You are a disgrace!”
More recently, Jones and Trump ended their yearslong friendship after Jones issued blistering rebukes of the Iran war that Trump started in February.
In a Truth Social post in early April, Trump targeted Jones and other right-wing voices that have criticized the war. He also gave a fitting eulogy for Infowars.
“Or Bankrupt Alex Jones, who says some of the dumbest things, and lost his entire fortune, as he should have, for his horrendous attack on the families of the Sandy Hook shooting victims, ridiculously claiming it was a hoax,” Trump posted. “These so-called ‘pundits’ are LOSERS, and they always will be!”