“I don’t want to say I’m having an orgasm right now,” Jones said figuratively on his show after the announcement, Vice reported. “But it’s a joke.”
According to the Associated Press, Jones further spoke about the verdict on his show and said, “Well, of course I’m laughing at it.”
“It’d be like if you sent me a bill for a billion dollars in the mail. Oh man, we got you. It’s all for psychological effect,” Jones said, the AP reported. “When they know full well the bankruptcy going on and all the rest of it, that it’ll show what I’ve got and that’s it, and I have almost nothing.”
Connecticut Judge Barbara Bellis on Thursday ordered Jones to pay the additional amount for previously spreading conspiracy theories about the Sandy Hook school shooting, which left 28 individuals dead in 2012. Jones has previously said that the school shooting was staged and was planned to act as a “cover-up” to promote gun control in the U.S.
“The record clearly supports the plaintiffs’ argument that the defendants’ conduct was intentional and malicious, and certain to cause harm by virtue of their infrastructure, ability to spread content, and massive audience including the infowarriors,” Judge Bellis wrote in a ruling, the AP reported.
The announcement on Thursday comes shortly after Jones was ordered by the judge to pay $965 million to the Sandy Hook families last month for his past remarks about the shooting. Thursday’s ruling brings the amount to over $1 billion that Jones is required to pay.
According to the AP, the $473 million Jones was ordered to pay on Thursday includes punitive damages for violating the Unfair Trade Practice Act in Connecticut, as well as attorney costs for the 15 plaintiffs in the case.
During his trial last month, Jones acknowledged that the Sandy Hook shooting was a real event but said that the ruling was a “joke.”
Earlier this month, Jones spoke about the trial during his Infowars show and said that he was approached by lawyers for the Sandy Hook families and asked to remove his support for the Second Amendment to drop the defamation allegations made against him. While talking about the trial, he said that the lawyers told him, “‘We want you to come out against the Second Amendment and we’ll drop all this.’”
“Oh, I can sit in your lap and then you’ll be nice to me, you oily, gross lawyers,” Jones added.
Erica Lafferty, the daughter Dawn Lafferty Hochsprung, the principal of Sandy Hook Elementary School that was killed in the shooting, recently penned an essay in Newsweek about the verdict and wrote, “What they did, not just for our families and not just in that courtroom, but the precedent they set for people like Jones, was nothing short of historic. I am proud to have been a part of it and so incredibly thankful.”
In a statement sent to Newsweek following the verdict on Thursday, Jones’ lawyer, Norm Pattis said, “To paraphrase Karl Marx, the verdict was tragedy, this latest ruling is farce. It makes our work on appeal that much easier.”
Newsweek reached out the attorney representing the Sandy Hook families, Christopher Mattei, for comment.
