A jury in the United States has ordered Alex Jones, known for his provocative political commentaries and theories, to pay $965 million in damages to the people suffered over his claims that the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting was a hoax.    

A Connecticut jury on Wednesday ordered Infowars host Alex Jones to pay the damages to the numerous families of victims.

The families of victims, and also an FBI agent who responded to the attack, had sought at least $550 million in the defamation trial in Connecticut.

Jones, the founder of the 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".

The trial was marked by weeks of grief-stricken testimony from the families who took turns telling how Jones’ claims about Sandy Hook worsen their grief. An FBI agent who responded to the shooting was also a plaintiff in the case.

Reacting to the verdict in real time on his live show on Wednesday, the Infowars host suggested the families likely wouldn’t see the money since he didn’t have the funds.

“I’m in bankruptcy,” Jones said, before directing his listeners to support him. ‘We’re fighting Goliath. … You want to fight, that’s fine. That’s where we are, that’s the whacked-out system of the left.”

The Sandy Hook school shooting occurred on December 14, 2012, in Newtown, Connecticut, when 20-year-old Adam Lanza fatally shot 20 children between six and seven years old, as well as six adult staff members, before killing himself. Prior to driving to the school, Lanza shot and killed his mother at their home.

Although the Sandy Hook massacre was the third-deadliest mass shooting in US history, Congress has consistently failed to pass federal gun control legislation due to the influence of the powerful gun lobby.

No major national legislation to increase gun control has succeeded in the decade since, despite numerous Democratic politicians, including Biden, calling for bans on sales of assault-style weapons and other measures.

More than 3,000 children and teens have been shot and killed and 15,000 more have been shot and injured since Sandy Hook, according to data from Everytown for Gun Safety, which tracks gun violence and other shootings on school grounds.