Infowars conspiracy theorist Alex Jones is seeking permission from a bankruptcy court to liquidate his personal assets and give the proceeds to the Sandy Hook families who are owed more than $1.4 billion in damages for his lies about the 2012 school shooting.
Jones also filed separate bankruptcy for his company, Free Speech Systems, and at a hearing next Friday a judge will decide whether the company will also be liquidated, an outcome favored by most families. That would shut down Infowars, effective on the day of the ruling. It would also put the assets of Infowars studios and potentially Mr. Jones’ popular social media accounts in control of the families.
Silencing Mr. Jones, who for years has spread lies ranging from denying the Sandy Hook shooting to denying the results of the 2020 election, would be a definitive victory for the families.
“For too long, Alex Jones has profited from the lies and fear he peddles every day on Infowars, his corrupt business platform,” said Chris Mattei, a lawyer for the families who sued Mr. Jones in Connecticut. “Connecticut families, driven by the principle that Jones should not be allowed to hurt or profit from the pain of others, are now on the verge of stripping him of his ability to inflict massive harm.”
The financial outcome for families is much less certain. It will likely be years, if ever, before they receive a significant portion of the financial damages they won.
Mr. Jones’ personal and company financial assets combined are worth between $10 million and $12 million, a far cry from the more than $1.4 billion that Texas and Connecticut juries awarded to the families in late 2022.
Dividing $12 million among the plaintiffs who were awarded damages, the result is just over $630,000 each. That does not include attorney and trustee fees, or other administrative costs, which are paid first.
An earlier court ruling allows the families to pursue Mr. Jones for the rest of his life for money they are owed. But his future earnings are very uncertain given the trial against him, which would make it prohibitive to start another company like Infowars.
“Liquidating Jones’ assets under Chapter 7 is a major step toward dismantling Jones’ ability to inflict the harm he can cause on families,” said Avi Moshenberg, a lawyer for the families who sued Mr. Jones in Texas. “But it’s just one step toward paying the sentence.”
Marie T. Reilly, a bankruptcy law professor at Penn State University, said the families were achieving justice because “Alex Jones’ financial life will no longer belong to him.” Still, she said: “It’s sad that after all these disputes, the families are not going to receive life-changing compensation.”
Ms Reilly compared the case to the civil case brought against OJ Simpson by the family of Ron Goldman, one of the victims of the murders for which Mr Simpson was tried and acquitted. The Goldman family won a wrongful death judgment that with interest ballooned to $100 million over nearly three decades, but they failed to collect even a small fraction of that amount.
Jones has made a fortune selling dietary supplements, survival kits, and other products to audiences for his Infowars radio and online show. The families’ attorneys hope he will do everything he can to thwart efforts to collect from him. This week on his show, he urged dietary supplement buyers to buy products from a line owned by his father.
After 20 first graders and six educators were killed in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, Jones spent years spreading lies that the massacre was a hoax aimed at confiscating Americans’ firearms and that the victims’ families were actors. accomplice of the plot. The families suffered online abuse, personal confrontations and death threats from people who believed in the conspiracy theory.
In 2018, the families of 10 victims sued him for defamation and were awarded more than $1.4 billion in damages in lawsuits in Texas and Connecticut. When the cases came to trial in 2022, Infowars’ parent company, Free Speech Systems, filed for bankruptcy. Mr. Jones filed for personal bankruptcy soon after. Since then, families have been fighting him in bankruptcy court.
The settlement submissions come after confidential negotiations between the families and Mr Jones failed to reach an agreement that all family members could accept.
Jones offered late last year to pay the families $55 million over 10 years. But the bankruptcy case revealed that Mr. Jones’ monthly expenses averaged $100,000 and his settlement offer included a substantial salary for him.
The proposed settlement offer also included an agreement by him to never repeat his false claims about the shooting or the families. That promise was particularly important for families.
Instead of guaranteeing that promise, the families will now seek to close his business, which they anticipate will prevent him from doing further harm to them, as well as the victims and survivors of other mass shootings that he has denied.