Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones has been ordered to pay $965m (£869m) in damages after falsely claiming the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting was a hoax.
The families of eight victims, and an FBI agent who responded to the attack, had sought at least $550m in the defamation trial in Connecticut.
They alleged the right-wing radio host’s misinformation led to a decade’s worth of harassment and death threats.
Twenty children and six adults were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School.
Jones, who founded the conspiracy-laden Infowars website and talk show, argued for years that the massacre was a “staged” government plot to take guns from Americans and that “no one died”.
He now acknowledges the attack was “100% real”, a concession he made in August at a separate defamation trial in Texas.
As the verdict was read out on Wednesday in Waterbury, Connecticut – some 20 miles (32 km) from the site of the 2012 shooting – many of the families were visibly emotional with some seen in tears.
The three-week trial was marked by emotional testimony from a succession of parents.
Read more: Alex Jones told to pay $965m damages to Sandy Hook victims’ families
