In early August, a Texas jury ordered extremist talk show host Alex Jones to pay nearly $50 million in total damages to the parents of a first-grader killed during the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. Conspiracy theorist Jones had falsely called the mass shooting a “hoax” coordinated by the United States government to spur a tightening of US gun laws.
While 26 people, most of them children, were killed in the 2012 mass shooting, Infowars host Jones’s claims caused tens of millions of his listeners to harass Sandy Hook family members, smearing them as liars and even issuing death threats against them.
In her new book, “Sandy Hook: An American Tragedy and the Battle for Truth,” New York Times journalist Elizabeth Williamson sounds the alarm over the spread of this and similar disinformation campaigns and conspiracy theories.
The August 5 judgment against Jones in a defamation case brought by Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis, parents of a 6-year-old killed in the attack, marks a high point in the Sandy Hook survivors’ legal battle against opportunists who profit off conspiracy theories. But the fact that the false claims were taken so seriously by so many is extremely troubling to Williamson.
“It’s really a foundational story about how false narratives and misinformation have grown,” Williamson told The Times of Israel in a phone interview. The journalist has been chronicling the Sandy Hook legal battle and conspiracy theories since 2018.
“I trace it in our society...
"I will note that in 2024, troops were -- that was Joe Biden by the way, Joe Biden -- were deployed to polling locations in 15 states," Hegseth said April 29, 2026 before the House of Representati...