Elon Musk has restored the X account of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, pointing to a poll on the social media platform formerly known as Twitter that came out in favor of the Infowars host who repeatedly called the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting a hoax.

It poses new uncertainty for advertisers, who have fled X over concerns about hate speech appearing alongside their ads, and is the latest divisive public personality to get back their banned account.

Musk posted a poll on Saturday asking if Jones should be reinstated, with the results showing 70% of those who responded in favor. Early Sunday, Musk tweeted, “The people have spoken and so it shall be.”

A few hours later, Jones’ posts were visible again and he retweeted a post about his video game. He and his Infowars show had been permanently banned in 2018 for abusive behavior.

Musk, who has described himself as a free speech absolutist, said the move was about protecting those rights. In response to a user who posted that “permanent account bans are antithetical to free speech,” Musk wrote, “I find it hard to disagree with this point.”

The billionaire Tesla CEO also tweeted it’s likely that Community Notes — X’s crowd-sourced fact-checking service — “will respond rapidly to any AJ post that needs correction.”

It is a major turnaround for Musk, who previously said he wouldn’t let Jones back on the platform despite repeated calls to do so. Last year, Musk pointed to the death of his first-born child and tweeted, “I have no mercy for anyone who would use the deaths of children for gain, politics or fame.”

Jones repeatedly has said on his show that the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, that killed 20 children and six educators never happened and was staged in an effort to tighten gun laws.

Relatives of many of the victims sued Jones in Connecticut and Texas, winning nearly $1.5 billion in judgments against him. In October, a judge ruled that Jones could not use bankruptcy protection to avoid paying more than $1.1 billon of that debt.

Relatives of the school shooting victims testified at the trials about being harassed and threatened by Jones’ believers, who sent threats and even confronted the grieving families in person, accusing them of being “crisis actors” whose children never existed.

Jones is appealing the judgments, saying he didn’t get fair trials and his speech was protected by the First Amendment.

Restoring Jones’ account comes as Musk has seen a slew of big brands, including Disney and IBM, stop advertising on X after a report by liberal advocacy group Media Matters said ads were appearing alongside pro-Nazi content and white nationalist posts.

They also were scared away after Musk himself endorsed an antisemitic conspiracy theory in response to a post on X. The Tesla CEO later apologized and visited Israel, where he toured a kibbutz attacked by Hamas militants and held talks with top Israeli leaders.

But he also has said advertisers are engaging in “blackmail” and, using a profanity, essentially told them to go away.

“Don’t advertise,” Musk said in an on-stage interview late last month at The New York Times DealBook Summit.

After buying Twitter last year, Musk said he was granting “amnesty” for suspended accounts and has since reinstated former President Donald Trump; Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, following two suspensions over antisemitic posts last year; and far-right Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who was kicked off the platform for violating its COVID-19 misinformation policies.

Trump, who was banned for encouraging the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection, has his own social media site, Truth Social, and has only tweeted once since being allowed back on X.

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WATERBURY, Conn. (AP) — Jurors ordered conspiracy theorist Alex Jones on Wednesday to pay nearly $1 billion to Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting victims’ relatives and an FBI agent, who said he turned their loss and trauma into years of torment by promoting the lie that the rampage was a hoax.

The $965 million verdict is the second big judgment against the Infowars host for spreading the myth that the deadliest school shooting in U.S. history never happened, and that the grieving families seen in news coverage were actors hired as part of a plot to take away people’s guns.

The verdict came in a defamation lawsuit filed by some of the families of 26 people who were killed in the 2012 shooting, plus an FBI agent who was among the first responders. A Texas jury in August awarded nearly $50 million to the parents of another slain child.

Robbie Parker, who lost his 6-year-old daughter, Emilie, said outside the Connecticut court that he was proud that “what we were able to accomplish was just to simply tell the truth.”

“And it shouldn’t be this hard, and it shouldn’t be this scary,” said Parker, who became an early target of conspiracy theorists after he spoke at a news conference the day after the shooting. The jury awarded him the most of any plaintiff: $120 million.

Jones wasn’t at court but reacted on his Infowars show.

As courtroom video showed the jury awards being read out, Jones said that he himself had never mentioned the plaintiffs’ names.

“All made up. Hilarious,” he said. “So this is what a show trial looks like. I mean, this is the left completely out of control.”

Jones’ lawyer, Norm Pattis, portrayed the trial as unfair and pledged to appeal.

“Today is a very, very, very dark day for freedom of speech,” he said outside court.

The jury awarded various sums to the victims’ relatives, who testified that they were threatened and harassed for years by people who believed the lies told on Jones’ show. Strangers showed up at the families’ homes to record them. People hurled abusive comments on social media.

Mark Barden testified that conspiracy theorists urinated on the grave of his 7-year-old son, Daniel, and threatened to dig up the coffin; Barden and his wife were together awarded about $86 million. Now-retired FBI Agent William Aldenberg, awarded $90 million, described the horror he saw at the school as he responded alongside other law enforcement, and his outrage at seeing online claims that he was an actor.

Erica Lafferty, the daughter of slain Sandy Hook principal Dawn Hochsprung, testified that people mailed rape threats to her house.

“I wish that after today, I can just be a daughter grieving my mother and stop worrying about the conspiracy theorists,” Lafferty said outside court. But she predicted that Jones’ “hate, lies and conspiracy theories will follow both me and my family through the rest of our days.”

To plaintiff William Sherlach, the verdict “shows that the internet is not the wild, wild West, and that your actions have consequences.”

He had testified about seeing online posts that falsely posited that the shooting was a hoax; that his slain wife, school psychologist Mary Sherlach, never existed; that he was part of a financial cabal and somehow involved with the school shooter’s father; and more. He told jurors the shooting deniers’ vitriol made him worry for his family’s safety.

“Going forward — because, unfortunately, there will be other horrific events like this — people like Alex Jones will have to rethink what they say,” Sherlach said.

Testifying during the trial, Jones acknowledged he had been wrong about Sandy Hook. The shooting was real, he said. But in the courtroom and on his show, he was defiant.

He called the proceedings a “kangaroo court,” mocked the judge, called the plaintiffs’ lawyer an ambulance chaser and labeled the case an affront to free speech rights. He claimed it was a conspiracy by Democrats and the media to silence him and put him out of business.

“I’ve already said ‘I’m sorry’ hundreds of times, and I’m done saying I’m sorry,” he told jurors.

Twenty children and six adults died in the shooting on Dec. 14, 2012; relatives of five children and three educators sued in Connecticut. The trial was held at a courthouse in Waterbury, about 20 miles (32 kilometers) from Newtown, where the attack took place.

The lawsuit accused Jones and Infowars’ parent company, Free Speech Systems, of using the mass killing to build his audience and make millions of dollars. Experts testified that Jones’ audience swelled, as did his revenue from product sales, when he made Sandy Hook a topic on the show.

In both the Texas and Connecticut lawsuits, judges found the company liable for damages by default after Jones failed to cooperate with court rules on sharing evidence, including failing to turn over records that might have showed whether Infowars had profited from knowingly spreading misinformation about mass killings.

Because he was already found liable, Jones was barred from mentioning free speech rights and other topics during his testimony.

Jones now faces a third trial, in Texas, in a lawsuit filed by the parents of another child killed in the shooting.

It is unclear how much of the verdicts Jones can afford to pay. During the trial in Texas, he testified he couldn’t afford any judgment over $2 million, and his lawyers plan to appeal and try to reduce the damages there. Free Speech Systems has filed for bankruptcy protection.

But an economist testified in the Texas proceeding that Jones and his company were worth as much as $270 million.

A lawyer for the families in the Connecticut case, Josh Koskoff, said that “if this verdict shuts down Alex Jones, good.”

“He’s been walking in the shadow of death to try to profit on the backs of people who have just been devastated,” Koskoff said. “That is not a business model that should be sustainable in the United States.”

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CHICAGO (AP) — Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones arrived at a Texas courthouse for his defamation trial for calling the Sandy Hook Elementary School attack a hoax with the words “Save the 1st” scrawled on tape covering his mouth.

Although Jones portrays the lawsuit against him as an assault on the First Amendment, the parents who sued him say his statements were so malicious and obviously false that they fell well outside the bounds of speech protected by the constitutional clause.

The ongoing trial in Austin, which is where Jones’ far-right Infowars website and its parent company are based, stems from a 2018 lawsuit brought by Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis, whose 6-year-old son was killed in the 2012 attack along with 19 other first-graders and six educators.

Jones took the stand Tuesday and Wednesday in his own defense.

Here’s a look at how the case relates to the First Amendment:

ARE ALL DEFAMATION LAWSUITS FIRST AMENDMENT CASES?

They are. Defamation laws evolved through decades of U.S. Supreme Court rulings on what is and isn’t protected speech.

Typically, the first question jurors answer at trials is whether the speech qualifies as unprotected defamation. If it does, they address the question of damages.

Jones’ trial largely skipped the first question and went straight to the second. From the start, it focused not on whether Jones must pay damages, but how much.

WHY IS HIS TRIAL DIFFERENT?

Jones seemed to sabotage his own chance to fully argue that his speech was protected by not complying with orders to hand over critical evidence, such as emails, which the parents hoped would prove he knew all along that his statements were false.

That led exasperated Judge Maya Guerra Gamble to enter a rare default judgment, declaring the parents winners before the trial even began.

Judges in other lawsuits against Jones have issued similar rulings.

“I don’t know why they didn’t cooperate,” said Stephen D. Solomon, a founding editor of New York University’s First Amendment Watch. “It is just really peculiar. … It’s so odd to not even give yourself the chance to defend yourself.”

It might suggest Jones knew certain evidence would doom his defense.

“It is reasonable to presume that (Jones) and his team did not think they had a viable defense … or they would have complied,” said Barry Covert, a Buffalo, New York, First Amendment lawyer.

HAVE BOTH SIDES REFERRED TO THE FIRST AMENDMENT?

Yes. During opening statements last week, plaintiffs’ lawyer Mark Bankston told jurors it doesn’t protect defamatory speech.

“Speech is free,” he said, “but lies you have to pay for.”

Jones’ lawyer Andino Reynal said the case is crucial to free speech.

And Jones made similar arguments in a deposition.

“If questioning public events and free speech is banned because it might hurt somebody’s feelings, we are not in America anymore,” he said.

Jones, who had said actors staged the shooting as a pretext to strengthen gun control, later acknowledged it occurred.

WHAT ARE KEY ELEMENTS OF DEFAMATION?

Defamation must involve someone making a false statement of fact publicly — typically via the media — and purporting that it’s true. An opinion can’t be defamatory. The statement also must have done actual damage to someone’s reputation.

The parents suing Jones say his lies about their child’s death harmed their reputations and led to death threats from Jones’ followers.

IS IT EASIER FOR NON-PUBLIC FIGURES TO PROVE DEFAMATION?

Yes. They must merely show a false statement was made carelessly.

In New York Times v. Sullivan in 1964, the Supreme Court said the bar for public figures must be higher because scrutiny of them is so vital to democracy. They must prove “actual malice,” that a false statement was made “with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not.”

ARE THE PARENTS PUBLIC FIGURES?

Their lawyers say they clearly aren’t in the category of politicians or celebrities who stepped voluntarily into the public arena.

The high court, however, has said those who temporarily enter public debates can become temporary public figures.

Jones argues that Heslin did just that, entering the national debate over guns by advocating for tougher gun laws on TV and before Congress.

WHAT DAMAGES ARE BEING SOUGHT?

The plaintiffs are seeking $150 million for emotional distress, as well as reputational and punitive damages.

Reynal told jurors that his client has been punished enough, losing millions of dollars being booted off major social media platforms.

He asked them to award the plaintiffs $1.

CAN FIRST AMENDMENT ISSUES INFLUENCE THE TRIAL’S OUTCOME?

Indirectly, yes.

Jones can’t argue that he’s not liable for damages on the grounds that his speech was protected. The judge already ruled he is liable. But as a way to limit damages, his lawyers can argue that his speech was protected.

“Jurors could say (Jones’ defamatory statements) is actually something we don’t want to punish very hard,” said Kevin Goldberg, a First Amendment specialist at the Maryland-based Freedom Forum.

COULD JONES HAVE WON IF THE TRIAL WAS ALL ABOUT FREE SPEECH?

He could have contended that his statements were hyperbolic opinion — that wild, non-factual exaggeration is his schtick.

But it would have been tough to persuade jurors that he was merely riffing and opining.

“It was a verifiable fact the massacre occurred at Sandy Hook,” said Solomon. “That’s not opinion. It is a fact.” Even if the parents were deemed public figures, imposing the higher standard, “I think Alex Jones would still lose,” he said.

But Covert said defamation is always a challenge to prove.

“I wouldn’t discount the possibility Jones could have prevailed,” he said. “Trying to speculate what a jury would find is always a fool’s errand.”

MIGHT THE SUPREME COURT BE SYMPATHETIC TO ANY JONES APPEAL?

Conservatives and liberal justices have found that some deeply offensive speech is protected.

In 2011, the high court voted 8-to-1 to overturn a verdict against the Kansas-based Westboro Baptist Church for picketing military funerals with signs declaring that God hates the U.S. for tolerating homosexuality.

“As a Nation we have chosen … to protect even hurtful speech … to ensure that we do not stifle public debate,” the ruling said.

But it and the Jones case have key differences.

“They were both extreme, outrageous, shocking, deplorable. But the Westboro Baptist Church was also manifestly political and not defamatory … not about any one person’s reputation” Goldberg said.

He added: “I’d be shocked if (Jones’) case ever ended up in the Supreme Court.”

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The subpoenas include demands for documents and testimony from Stone and Jones as well as three people accused of organizing and promoting the two rallies that took place on Jan. 6.

“The Select Committee is seeking information about the rallies and subsequent march to the Capitol that escalated into a violent mob attacking the Capitol and threatening our democracy,” said Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson, the Democratic chairman of the panel. “We need to know who organized, planned, paid for, and received funds related to those events, as well as what communications organizers had with officials in the White House and Congress.”

The subpoenas issued Monday are the latest in a wide net the House panel has cast in an effort to investigate the deadly day when a group of Trump’s supporters, fueled by his false claims of a stolen election, brutally assaulted police and smashed their way into the Capitol to interrupt the certification of Democrat Joe Biden’s victory.

The committee has already interviewed more than 150 people across government, social media and law enforcement, including some former Trump aides who have been cooperative. The panel has subpoenaed more than 20 witnesses, and most of them, including several associates who helped plan the massive “Stop the Steal” rally the morning of Jan. 6, have signaled they will cooperate.

Stone was convicted in special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation of lying to Congress about his efforts to gather inside information about Russia-hacked Democratic emails that were published by WikiLeaks in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election. He was subsequently pardoned by Trump.

The House subpoena notes that Stone spoke at rallies on the day before the Capitol insurrection and used members of a far-right group, the Oath Keepers, as personal security guards while he was in Washington.

In a statement, Stone said he has yet to see the details of the subpoena but called any allegation of his involvement on that day as “categorically false.”

“I have said time and time again that I had no advance knowledge of the events that took place at the Capitol on that day,” the conservative provocateur said. “After the subpoena is served and after my counsel reviews the requests, I will make the determination of how I will proceed.”

The House panel also wants to hear from Jones, with Thompson saying that the conspiracy theorist and radio personality helped organize the Jan. 6 rally at the Ellipse that preceded the insurrection. The letter from Thompson says that Jones repeatedly promoted Trump’s claims of election fraud, urged his listeners to come to Washington for the rally and marched from the Ellipse to the Capitol. Thompson also wrote that Jones “made statements implying that you had knowledge about the plans of President Trump with respect to the rally.”

A lawyer who has represented Jones previously did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The other three subpoenas were issued to Dustin Stockton, Jennifer Lawrence and Taylor Budowich for their alleged involvement in the promotion and organization of the series of rallies following the 2020 presidential election that promoted false information regarding the election results, including the Ellipse rally that preceded the violent attack on the Capitol.

Stockton and Lawrence were key leaders of the “Stop the Steal” movement after the election and helped to organize the rally on Jan. 6 that preceded the attack on the Capitol. The couple said they planned to testify and would turn over documents requested by the committee.

Both have disavowed the violence. Stockton said he had previously reached out to the committee to cooperate voluntarily.

“We were shocked and horrified by what happened on the 6th,” Lawrence told The Associated Press on Monday. “We need to get to the bottom of what really happened so we can move forward as a country.” Budowich, who now serves as Trump’s chief spokesperson, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The results of the election were confirmed by state officials and upheld by the courts. Trump’s own attorney general, William Barr, had s aid the Justice Department found no evidence of widespread fraud that could have overturned the results.

The committee is seeking information from Stockton and his fiance, Lawrence, who they say were involved in organizing some of the rallies. The committee alleges Stockton was concerned enough that the Ellipse rally would lead to “possible danger” that he escalated those concerns to then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows.

The panel has already demanded documents and testimony from several other Trump advisers — some have cooperated and some have not. Steve Bannon, a longtime ally of Trump, was indicted on Nov. 12 on two counts of criminal contempt of Congress after he defied a subpoena from the House committee. The committee is giving Meadows more time to comply with a subpoena before the panel moves forward with a contempt vote.

___

Associated Press writers Eric Tucker and Nomaan Merchant in Washington and Jill Colvin in New York contributed to this report.

FARNOUSH AMIRI | AP News

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