The 48-year-old radio host and founder of the right-wing website “Infowars” had claimed for years that the school massacre never happened. Rather, it was faked in order to enforce a tightening of gun laws.
In the Sandy Hook school massacre in the city of Newtown on December 14, 2012, the perpetrator shot 20 children and six adults before taking his own life. Last August, an Austin, Texas grand jury convicted Jones of paying nearly $50 million in damages to the parents of a boy killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School.
Jones, who is very influential in radical right-wing circles, has earned a lot of money and a large circle of supporters by spreading conspiracy theories. He is known as a supporter of former US President Donald Trump. Jones, for example, endorsed Trump’s false claim that the incumbent’s defeat by current President Joe Biden in the 2020 election was due to massive fraud.
Jones was also in Washington when radical Trump supporters stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021. He was questioned behind closed doors by the parliamentary inquiry into the storming of the Capitol. “Infowars” filed for bankruptcy in April.
