The nearly $1 billion in damages a jury ordered Alex Jones and his Infowars company to pay for defaming the families of eight Sandy Hook victims this week was an overwhelming victory in the families’ quest for accountability. But the fight for the money has only begun, the New York Times reported. Lawyers for the families started early Thursday to navigate what promises to be a circuitous path to delivering as much as possible of the $965 million verdict, plus court costs, to the families. There is also the $50 million awarded to two other Sandy Hook parents in a trial this past summer, and damages yet to be assessed in an upcoming third and final trial this year. “We are going to chase Alex Jones to the ends of the earth,” for “every last dollar,” Josh Koskoff, one of the lawyers for the 15 Connecticut plaintiffs, said Thursday. The group includes eight victims’ families and an FBI agent implicated in the bogus Sandy Hook theories spread by Jones, who for years said that the 2012 shooting that killed 20 first graders and six educators at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut, was a government hoax and that the families were actors in the plot. But experts said that Wednesday’s verdict was so staggering as to be largely symbolic, since Jones’ empire is likely worth a maximum of $270 million, according to a forensic economist who had testified in the earlier trial.
