Infowars sales spiked as Jones talked about Sandy Hook

WATERBURY, Conn. (AP) — Infowars' revenues and website viewership spiked as Alex Jones alleged on his show in 2014 that the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting was a hoax, according to documents shown to a jury Thursday.

Jones and his Free Speech Systems company are on trial in Connecticut in a lawsuit brought by an FBI agent who responded to the shooting and relatives of eight of the 20 first graders and six educators killed in the December 2012 massacre in Newtown. They say Jones inflicted emotional and psychological harm on them, and they have been threatened and harassed by Jones' followers.

Jones has already been found liable for spreading the myth that the shooting never happened and the six-member jury in Waterbury will be deciding how much he and his company should pay the plaintiffs in damages. The trial started Tuesday and is expected to last a month.

Christopher Mattei, a lawyer for the families, showed internal Infowars documents detailing the revenue and website-visit spikes around the time of an article on Sept. 24, 2014, on the Infowars website that said no one died at Sandy Hook and Jones discussing the article on his show the next day.

The families’ lawsuit claims that Jones trafficked in lies to increase his audience and sales of the nutritional supplements, clothing and other merchandise he sells on the Infowars website and hawks on his web show. Jones and guests on his show said the shooting was staged with crisis actors as part of gun control efforts.

The discussion of revenue and web viewership came Thursday as Mattei spent a second day questioning Brittany Paz, a Connecticut lawyer hired by Jones to testify about his companies' operations.

Documents showed daily revenues to the Infowars online store increased from $48,000 on Sept. 24 to more...