Jones of Infowars files for Chapter 11
WASHINGTON — Infowars fabulist Alex Jones filed for Chapter 11 personal bankruptcy Friday in the Southern District of Texas in Houston, citing nearly $1.5 billion in damages that juries awarded this year to the families of Sandy Hook shooting victims, who won a series of defamation cases against Jones after he lied for years about the school shooting on his radio and online show.
The filing comes atop a bankruptcy filing by Free Speech Systems, Infowars’ parent company, in late July. The new filing could further delay payment of the damages to the families, who would need to seek payment through the bankruptcy courts alongside other creditors. But it could also force a greater degree of scrutiny on the finances of Jones’ empire.
For more than four years, Jones has stonewalled the courts on providing business records, financial information and other records in the
Sandy Hook cases. In another lawsuit, the victims’ families have accused Jones of improperly siphoning assets from his business and channeling them to himself and his family. He will now ostensibly be required to reveal more about those assets.
“The bankruptcy system does not protect anyone who engages in intentional and egregious attacks on others, as Mr. Jones did,” said Chris Mattei, a lawyer for the families in the damages case in Connecticut. “The American judicial system will hold Alex Jones accountable, and we will never stop working to enforce the jury’s verdict.” In that case, in October, Jones was ordered to pay $1.4 billion. Two other cases were litigated in Texas.
Hours after the Dec. 14, 2012, shooting of 20 first-graders and six educators at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., Jones began spreading lies that the massacre was planned by the government as a pretext for confiscating Americans’ firearms and that the families were complicit in the plot. He continued lying about the shootings for years, exposing the families to online abuse, confrontation and death threats by people who believed the false claims.
Jones earns up to $70 million a year selling products tailored to his audience’s distrust of government and established science, including
diet supplements and quack cures, survivalist gear and gun paraphernalia. In mid-2018, the families of 10 Sandy Hook victims filed four defamation lawsuits, later combined into three, against Jones in Texas and Connecticut.
The litigation has been defined by Jones’ stonewalling, as he refused to submit relevant records and testimony. His intransigence prompted judges in Texas and Connecticut to rule him liable by default in all the Sandy Hook lawsuits late last year. The families’ sweeping victory set the stage for three trials for juries to decide how much he must pay the families in damages.
In the first trial this summer, in Austin, where Infowars is based, a jury awarded nearly $50 million in damages to Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis, parents of Jesse Lewis, a Sandy Hook victim. Shortly before that verdict, Jones put Free Speech Systems into Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
In October, the families of eight Sandy Hook victims won more than $1.4 billion in damages from Jones. A third and final trial in a lawsuit brought by Lenny Pozner and Veronique De La Rosa, whose son Noah Pozner was the youngest Sandy Hook victim, is scheduled to begin March 27.
Cordt Akers, a lawyer for the families who is challenging the bankruptcy filing in Texas, called Jones’ Chapter 11 filing “the latest in a long line of tricks by Alex Jones to keep the Sandy Hook families from the justice to
which they are entitled.”
“It won’t work,” he added. In Friday’s bare-bones filing, Jones estimated that he owed money to between 50 and 99 creditors, a list topped by the names of the Sandy Hook relatives. His biggest creditor is Robert Parker, whose daughter Emilie died at Sandy Hook. Jones for years played a videotape on Infowars of Parker’s tearful news conference the night after his daughter’s murder, calling the grieving father an “actor” and the news conference “disgusting.” Conspiracy theorists who believed Jones’ lies tormented, threatened and personally confronted Parker and his family.
In October, the jury in Connecticut ordered Jones to pay Parker $120 million as part of the
$1.4 billion judgment.
Jones estimates his assets to be worth $1 million to $10 million in the filing. That number will almost certainly be challenged by the families, who said in their filing that Jones had siphoned nearly $62 million from his business into financial vehicles benefiting himself and his family beginning in 2018, when they first filed suit. In court in Texas this summer, a forensic economist, Bernard Pettingill Jr., estimated that Jones and his business were worth $130 million to $270 million.
“I’m officially out of money, personally,” Jones said. “It’s all going to be filed. It’s all going to be public. And you will see that Alex Jones has almost no cash.”
Jones said he would not be
commenting further on the bankruptcy.
At the core of his bankruptcy claim is Jones’ assertion that Free Speech Systems, which he owns, owed $54 million to PQPR Holdings, a company owned and operated directly and indirectly by Jones and his parents. The debt is fictional, the families’ lawyers said in Thursday’s filing, and “a centerpiece of Jones’ plan to avoid compensating the Sandy Hook families.”
In documents filed in Free Speech Systems’ bankruptcy case in Texas, a budget for the company for Oct. 29 to Nov. 25 estimated that product sales would total $2.5 million, while operating expenses would be about $740,000. Jones’ salary was listed at $20,000 every two weeks.
Jones has become increasingly emblematic of how misinformation and false narratives have gained traction in American society. He has played a role in spreading some of recent history’s most pernicious conspiracy theories, such as Pizzagate — in which an Infowars video helped inspire a gunman to attack a pizzeria in Washington, D.C. — as well as coronavirus myths and “Stop the Steal” falsehoods about election fraud before the U.S. Capitol assault Jan. 6, 2021.
Jones is under scrutiny by the House Jan. 6 committee and the Justice Department for his role in planning events around the attack on the Capitol, which he broadcast live.