Judge Strips Alex Jones Of Bankruptcy Protection Against $1.5 Billion Sandy Hook Defamation Ruling

ByJoseph Gibsonon December 23, 2022inArticles›How Much Does

Disgraced broadcaster Alex Jones got some more bad news this week. A few ago Alex filed for bankruptcy, seeking to protect himself from the roughly $1.5 billion in damages he was ordered to pay Sandy Hook families after losing several defamation cases earlier this year. Unfortunately that bankruptcy filing is now essentially moot. Houston Judge Christopher M. López just ruled that bankruptcy will not protect Jones from those damages. The ruling lifts a stay that automatically went into place when Jones filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

That approximately $1.5 billion in damages he owes various Sandy Hook families following several defamation suits stemming from his years of conspiracy theorizing is now up for collection by those families, according to López’s ruling, which states in part to “immediately to (i) allow the Sandy Hook Post-Trial Families’ Cases to continue to proceed to entry of final judgment and (ii) once judgments are entered, to allow appeals, if any, to proceed and the Sandy Hook Post-Trial Families to pursue, respond to and participate in any such appeals without further order of the Court.”

Judge Strips Alex Jones Of Bankruptcy Protection Against $1.5 Billion Sandy Hook Defamation Ruling - 1

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Connecticut reporter John Craven added more details to the story on Twitter, stating that “[t]he families agreed to not pursue collection efforts yet,” although the precise reason for this (be it some sort of strategy for collecting the money later on or something else) isn’t known.

Craven also reports that Jones is seeking a pay raise from the judge presiding over his bankruptcy proceedings, “something the Sandy Hook attorneys and US bankruptcy trustee are both vigorously opposing.” According to Jones’s own attorneys, he needs a bump in salary in order to keep doing his “Infowars” program, which he needs to do in order to pay off the various rulings against him. His attorney Vickie Driver puts it simply: “He’s just out of money.”

A ruling on the question of Jones’s “Infowars” salary is scheduled to happen on January 20.

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Alex Jones Offers To Pay $55 Million Over Next Decade To Clear $1.5 Billion Sandy Hook Defamation Damages

ByJoseph Gibsonon December 21, 2023inArticles›Celebrity News

Disgraced and reputedly bankrupt broadcaster Alex Jones is on the hook for some $1.5 billion in damages for defaming families of the Sandy Hook shooting across two lawsuits, with still more fallout from the case still to come. Now, Jones has offered to settle up with a payment of that would come to a minimum total of $55 million, coming from a proportion of his income and proceeds from the sale of property over the next ten years.

$55 million is a lot of money but little more than a drop in a $1.5 billion bucket, and the Sandy Hook families who won their cases in court have filed a motion of their own to liquidate practically everything Jones owns in order to get what is rightfully theirs.

Now, both proposals are on their way to US Bankruptcy Court in Houston, Texas, where they will be debated between now and February, when hearings and a final decision on the matter are currently scheduled.

Christopher Mattei, a Connecticut attorney representing the Sandy Hook families, released a press statement criticizing Jones’s offer:

“The families’ plan is the only feasible path for ensuring that Jones’ assets are quickly distributed to those he has harassed for more than a decade.”

The Jones proposal has him paying out at least $5.5 million per year over ten years, a similar figure to what his company Free Speech Systems had offered a month earlier.

Judge Strips Alex Jones Of Bankruptcy Protection Against $1.5 Billion Sandy Hook Defamation Ruling - 2

Jon Cherry/Getty Images

Attorneys representing Sandy Hook families have their work cut out for them in securing the settlement. They’ve taken issue with Jones’s reported personal spending topping out at $90,000 per month over the course of 2023, and they’ve filed another lawsuit accusing him of hiding millions of dollars from creditors, an allegation that an attorney for Jones dismissed as “ridiculous.”

Jones is also in the process of appealing the defamation awards as well, asserting that his claims that the shooting was a hoax and that the surviving family members were “crisis actors” fell under protected free speech, something that few if any judges or juries that have considered the matter have agreed with so far.

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  • Court Approves Liquidation Of Infowars Platform To Help Pay Alex Jones’s Nearly $1.5 Billion In Sandy Hook Damages
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