March 30 (UPI) — Alex Jones, the conspiracy theorist behind the right-wing media company Infowars, filed court documents offering several family members whose children were killed in a 2012 Connecticut school shooting $120,000 each to resolve the defamation case they filed against him.
Jones filed the court documents Tuesday ahead of a trial to decide compensation after a Connecticut judge ruled in mid-November that he is liable for demages for defaming the families of the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre by calling them “actors” and the shooting a hoax.
Twenty-eight people were killed in the shooting, including 20 first graders, and the victims’ families had argued that Jones had profited off of spreading the false information about the deaths of their family members, which also resulted in their harassment from his fans.
Jones failed to turn over documents to the court during the proceedings and the judge ruled he was guilty by default.
“Mr. Jones extends his heartfelt apology for any distress his remarks caused,” his lawyers said in the court document filed Tuesday that was obtained by Law and Crime.
The families individually rejected the offer.
“The so-called offer is a transparent and desperate attempt by Alex Jones to escape a public reckoning under oath with his deceitful, profit-driven campaign against the plaintiffs and the memory of their loved ones lost at Sandy Hook,” a rejection filed Tuesday on behalf of plaintiff Carlee Soto Parisi states, according to a copy obtained by Crime and Law.
The announcement comes after gunmaker Remington agreed last month to pay nine families of victims in the massacre $73 million to settle a lawsuit connected to the Remington Bushmaster XM15-ES AR-15 used in the shooting.
A month before he was found guilty in Connecticut, a judge in Texas ruled in October that Jones is responsible for damages to family members of victims there who also sued him for defamation.
