Alex Jones tells Elon Musk he apologizes to Sandy Hook families, suggests raising money for gun safety

Alex Jones apologized again for statements he made about the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in a conversation with Elon Musk after being reinstated to X on Sunday. 

The controversial Infowars host who was permanently banned from the platform once known as Twitter more than five years ago was pressed about the issue during an X Spaces conversation co-hosted by Musk and entrepreneur Mario Nawfal on Sunday. 

"One of the questions I really have to just get out of the way and I and you’re probably talking about this already before is the whole Sandy Hook thing," Musk asked Jones. "So what exactly did you say and what is wrong with that situation?"

Noting former President Trump’s own legal battle in New York, Jones claimed he fell victim to a politically motivated judge and said he was simply trying to cover the news of the mass shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, that killed 20 children and six educators. 

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"And I had a very small operation and did not even understand how powerful I was. And so when that event is called, the school shooting, which I do believe happened, happened 11 years ago," Jones responded. "The Internet exploded, and it was the top story for off and on for years with all the with all these professors and former school safety people and all of them saying they believed it was a drill and I simply covered them covering that."

"And so suddenly I would wake up and there would be sometimes 100 articles or more a day, every major news channel saying that I was currently saying nobody died – currently sending people to their houses, currently peeing on graves," he said. 

On his Infowars show, Jones previously discussed the allegation that the massacre 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 billion of that debt. Family members of the school shooting victims testified at the trials about being harassed and threatened by Jones’s followers, 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.

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On Sunday, Jones said he did not personally believe the Sandy Hook shooting was staged and has issued several apologies before. 

"I apologize on every show. And I’ll say it again, I apologize that I just gave my commentary because I’m really just a guy …  talk radio host. So I do that on the Internet. I just take calls and interview guests and that I play devil’s advocate," Jones explained. "And if that hurt people’s feelings, I apologize. But I did not send people to your houses. I did not pee on graves. I don’t know any of the stuff that went on."

Jones also said he’d love to raise money on X with the families of the Sandy Hook victims for gun safety awareness.

"I don’t want to fight with them though," Jones said. "The media ran a year of articles attacking them in my name, saying things I never said as a straw man. Enraging them against me – so they have been victimized, they have been manipulated by a PR operation, and so I would love to come on X with the families. I’d love to raise money on this show or your show, Elon, or any of them. I’d love to come on here and raise them $10 million for gun safety awareness next week. I would love to be in an open panel with them."

Musk, who purchased Twitter in October 2022 with the goal of restoring freedom of speech to the platform, said the move to reinstate Jones was about protecting free speech. 

In 2018, Twitter permanently banned Jones and his Infowars show, saying an unrelated video he shared violated the company's policy for abusive behavior. 

The move came just a day after Twitter's then-CEO Jack Dorsey had testified before Congress about alleged bias against conservatives on the platform. Jones shared a video of himself yelling at CNN journalist Oliver Darcy for some 10 minutes in between the two congressional hearings where Dorsey testified.

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Before Musk's takeover, Twitter had rarely banned anyone not associated with former President Trump, allowing international despots like Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and even terrorist groups to remain. 

The Associated Press contributed to this report.