Welcome to the lead. I'm John Burman in for Jake Tapper and we do start with the breaking

news. A jury has just awarded nearly $1 billion in damages to Sandy Hook Elementary

families and an FBI agent in the Connecticut defamation trial against Alex Jones. Eight

families and a first responder sued the far-right conspiracy theorist for the lies. He told

about the 2012 school massacre. This trial is the second of three against Jones concerning

the Sandy Hook massacre and comes after a Texas jury decided in August that Jones and

his company should pay nearly $50 million. But the Connecticut jury, nearly $1 billion.

Let's go straight to CNN's Brinjingrass outside the courtroom. Brin, you were in there

when these really big figures were read out loud walk us through the jury's decision.

Big figures, John leading up to the announcement of these numbers, even the jurors were taking

a deep sigh and there was just so much pressure and tension inside that room and then what

a release from these family members when those numbers were being read and tallied. I can

tell you as we've talked about Robbie Parker, he has received the biggest amount of this

nearly $1 billion dollar rather awarding of compensatory damages and he just put his hands

in his face. He started crying and John something I just want to tell you is that these family

members have been coming to this trial for several weeks now here in Waterbury listening

through testimony, doing their own testimony, recounting where they were when they learned

the news about their loved ones dying and they themselves have become this family and

that is what I saw in the courtroom as these numbers were being read. They would be fist bumping

each other. They were crying for each other. I can tell you that David Wheeler, who if you

remember Alex Jones said he was actually the FBI agent Bill Aldenberg and spread that

all around that they were crisis actors. They weren't really who they said they were.

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