It looks like Alex Jones may – finally – lose it all, and the families of the Sandy Hook victims want to make sure the conspiracy theorist has no recourse to rebuild his disinformation empire. Ahead of a bankruptcy hearing Friday that will likely force Jones to sell his Infowars stake, the Sandy Hook families have asked that his properties be placed in trust to “secure the assets and prevent further destruction of value.”
Jones – who owes nearly $1.5 billion to the relatives of children killed in the 2012 massacre – has been accused of manipulating his assets to avoid a huge debt owed to the victims of his on-air remarks.
The founder and host of Infowars claimed the mass shooting — in which 20 elementary school students were killed — was a hoax and that both the children killed and the victims' parents were crisis actors. In a series of defamation lawsuits settled in 2022, the Sandy Hook families were awarded $42.5 million by a Texas court. In a separate lawsuit filed in Connecticut, Jones was ordered to pay nearly $1 billion in restitution and $473 million in legal fees to the families. Jones filed for bankruptcy soon after the trials were completed, and the families have yet to receive a single dollar.
Last week, Jones asked a judge to convert the bankruptcy filing into liquidation. The families argue that Jones is now trying to remove businesses and assets from the umbrella of Infowar's parent company, Free Speech Systems LLC., in order to prevent them from being seized and liquidated by the court. Shortly after reaching an agreement with the families, Jones had a tearful breakdown on what he said would be one of his final Infowars shows, calling the ordeal “a tough fight.”
“The blatant and repeated attempts to funnel the assets of FSS's estate to an unrelated entity owned by his father — while using the Infowars brand and infrastructure to do so — are intentionally destructive,” Friday's filing said.
Earlier this week, the families also asked the court to order a seizure Jones' social media accounts, claiming that his large social media following was “no different than a customer list of any other liquidated business”. They accused Jones of using his social media accounts to redirect Infowars followers and customers to businesses owned by his father that would be protected from bankruptcy proceedings.
In a video posted early Friday morning — as he drove to Houston for the hearing — Jones claimed the “CIA, the FBI” were using the Sandy Hook families as “fronts.”
“Whenever you hear 'Sandy Hook Families,' that FBI, CIA is all over it.”
Jones also maintained that his social media accounts were his “personal thing” and that his father runs a completely independent business that buys ads only on Free Speech Systems.
“I didn't kill those kids,” Jones said, “I hardly ever talked about them, I covered the Internet questioning the shooting […] Now they're literally trying to figure out my social media.”
from our partners at https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/alex-jones-bankruptcy-hearing-infowars-1235040204/
