Alex Jones files for bankruptcy — RT World News
Lawyers for Sandy Hook families claim InfoWars host is trying to dodge $1.5 billion payout
On Friday, controversial InfoWars host Alex Jones filed for bankruptcy, telling a Texas court that he had insufficient assets to cover debts exceeding $1 billion. The move comes after Jones was ordered to pay nearly $1.5 billion to attorneys and families of victims of the Sandy Hook school shooting for claiming he was staged.
The filing informed the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas in Houston that Jones had “between 1 and 10 million dollars” in assets and face “between 1 and 10 billion dollars” in the liabilities of “50 to 99 creditors.”
As major media like AP, Reuters and the New York Times reported on the case, lawyers for the Sandy Hook families accused Jones of trying to evade payment of the hundreds of millions in damages stemming from two libel suits in Connecticut and Texas.
“The American justice system will hold Alex Jones accountable, and we will never stop working to uphold the jury’s verdict.” Chris Mattei, the families’ attorney in the Connecticut case, said in a statement quoted by AP and Reuters.
Jones was sadly skeptical of the account of the 2012 Sandy Hook massacre, when former student Adam Lanza murdered his mother, six other adults and 20 children before shooting himself in the head. Some of the parents have since sued gun manufacturers and sellers over the purchase of firearms from Lanza. Ten families also sued Jones for claiming that some of them were “crisis actors” on his show.
In October, a Connecticut jury ordered Jones to pay $965 million in compensatory damages to the various Sandy Hook families, with a judge adding another $473 million in punitive damages. A separate lawsuit in Texas resulted in Jones being ordered to pay an additional $49 million to a Sandy Hook family. His lawyers said they would appeal both verdicts.
Lawyers for the families have filed motions to stop Jones from using bankruptcy protection to avoid paying judgments, saying he transferred more than $60 million from InfoWars to shell companies starting in 2018, when their lawsuits were first filed.
Jones testified that he had “legitimately thought” when filming could have taken place, but later changed his mind and apologized “hundreds of times”. He also called the lawsuits an attack on the constitutionally protected right to free speech and described the proceedings as a “wrestling session” in China.
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