“He said it was a hoax and all the parents were actors.”
How is that actionable? There are scores of people who say the 1969 moon landing was a hoax, and that the astronauts were actors. Are they now subject to charges?
There must be more than that. I’ll have to check this out.
They’re not rich.
At his peak in 2018, Alex Jones was raking in $800k each day from InfoWars.
And they’re looking to take all of it.
It is difficult for public figures (politicians, government officials, astronauts, etc.) to win slander lawsuits. The courts set the bar high. And that’s as it should be. Otherwise people would be afraid to criticize public officials.
The bar is set much lower when the target of the slander is a private person. Alex Jones targeted private people, in a rather nasty way. He deserves whatever slap-down he gets.
“Are they now subject to charges?”
There were no “charges”. It’s a civil suit. And yes, if you said something defamatory against those astronauts, the astronauts could sue you for defamation.
The difference is the astronauts were public figures, so proving a defamation case would be nearly impossible for them. But Jone was dumb enough to make his statements against people who were not public figures, so they could win their suits quite easily.