A retired FBI agent who was reportedly the lead investigator for Special Counsel John Durham was awarded $90 million as part of the near-billion-dollar verdict against Alex Jones for his phony claims that the Sandy Hook massacre was a hoax.
William Aldenberg, who as an FBI agent responded to the December 14, 2012 shooting at a Connecticut elementary school and testified at the Connecticut trial to determine how much Jones must pay in damages, was one of the government witnesses in the trial. He told the jury he was hurt by Jones’ claims the shooting, in which 20 first-graders and six educators were killed, was a hoax perpetrated by “crisis actors.”
“No, no. No, sir,” an emotional Aldenberg testified when attorney Christopher Mattei, who represented families of the victims, asked if there were any actors at the school. “No. It’s awful, awful.”
🤔Second name from the bottom, Bill Aldenberg, was John Durham's lead FBI investigator…. pic.twitter.com/3NBur5mUvk
— TheLastRefuge (@TheLastRefuge2) October 13, 2022
Jones later acknowledged the mass shooting, by a 20-year-old mentally disturbed man, had occurred. The shooter killed himself and his mother on the same day of the massacre.
Aldenberg and the families of eight victims were awarded a total of $965 million Wednesday by a jury in Connecticut. The verdict was the second against InfoWars founder Jones, following a ruling from a separate jury in Texas ordered Jones to pay $4.1 million in compensatory damages and $45.2 million in punitive damages, an amount that may soon be reduced due to state laws capping the amount of damages.
The Connecticut case involved 15 plaintiffs including parents who lost children in the shooting and Aldenberg. A third case brought in Texas, where Jones’ company, Free Speech Systems, is based, has yet to be scheduled. Jones has filed for bankruptcy and says he doesn’t have the money to pay any of the awards.
Aldenberg has been identified as the lead investigator for Durham, the former U.S. Attorney for Connecticut who was appointed by former Attorney General William Barr to investigate how an actual hoax, Trump-Russia collusion, originated. Durham’s team is currently prosecuting Igor Danchenko, a key sub-source for the discredited Steele dossier, for allegedly lying to the FBI.
Few details are publicly known about the makeup of Durham’s team, but The Conservative Treehouse, an influential blog run by a conservative sleuth known as Sundance, identified Aldenberg as Durham’s key man in 2020 and met with him the same year. It is unknown if Aldenberg is still on the team.
“How did you find me?” Aldenberg allegedly asked when they sat down to discuss the Trump-Russia collusion case.