A lawyer for families of victims of the 2012 Sandy Hook mass shooting on Thursday urged a Connecticut jury to hold conspiracy theorist Alex Jones accountable for building a “lie machine” that profited off of falsehoods about the tragedy, Reuters reported. The attorney, Chris Mattei, said during his closing arguments that Jones and his Infowars website encouraged legions of followers to harass and threaten Sandy Hook families with false claims that they were actors complicit in a government plot to seize guns. “He built a lie machine that put this stuff out,” Mattei said. “You reap what you sow.” Jones and his company, Free Speech Systems LLC, have already been found liable for defamation. The state court jury in Waterbury, Connecticut, is charged only with deciding how much they must pay for claiming the killing of 20 young children and six staff members at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., was staged. During his closing arguments Thursday, Jones’ lawyer urged jurors to ignore the polarizing political undercurrents of the case and focus narrowly on the plaintiffs' actual losses.
