Tag: infowars
Alex Jones Files For Bankruptcy In Bid To Shield His Fortune From Justice

Alex Jones Files For Bankruptcy In Bid To Shield His Fortune From Justice

Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones filed for personal bankruptcy in a Texas court on Friday after weeks on the hook for over $1 billion for pushing heinous and defamatory lies about the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting.

For years, Jones, a Trump-supporting provocateur, falsely claimed on his far-right disinformation podcast, Infowars, that the Sandy Hook massacre, a tragedy that claimed the lives of 20 elementary school children and six adults, was an “inside job” instigated by the government as a pretext for the mass seizure of guns.

According to the New York Times, Jones’ websites and social media commandeered 1.4 million daily visits before major platforms like Facebook purged his content –. as Vox reported, for “glorifying violence… and using dehumanizing language to describe people who are transgender, Muslims and immigrants.”

Incited by Jones’ lies that the grieving parents of victims of Sandy Hook were “crisis actors,” Infowars listeners subjected the distraught families to years of violent threats and harassment, according to court testimony.

Reckoning arrived in 2018 when a group of families sued Jones and Infowar's parent company, Free Speech Systems, citing the stalking, death threats, and harassment they had endured due to Jones’ falsehoods.

In his Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing in the Southern District of Texas, Jones claimed insolvency due to the mostly business-related debts he said he owes to between 50 and 99 creditors, including Sandy Hook victims’ families, a value he estimated to be between $1 billion and $10 billion.

Jones said in his filing that his assets are worth between $1 million and $10 million, even though he earns up to $70 million annually peddling dietary supplements, quack cures, and other items including survival gear, reports the Times.

In a recent broadcast, the Infowars host pegged the amount at $2 million, telling his audience, "I’m officially out of money, personally,” even though a forensic economist estimated in court this summer that Jones and his business were worth up to $270 million.

An attorney for the Sandy Hook victims’ families, Chris Mattei, slammed Jones’ insolvency claims as a failed ploy to dodge accountability for his lies about the tragedy.

“Like every other cowardly move Alex Jones has made, this bankruptcy will not work,” Mattei said. "The American judicial system will hold Alex Jones accountable, and we will never stop working to enforce the jury’s verdict."

Jones' filing came a week after a Texas judge ordered him to pay $49 million in damages a jury awarded to the parents of a six-year-old killed in the shooting, a verdict Jones’ lawyer has publicly promised to appeal.

In October, before the Texas ruling, a jury in Connecticut awarded a contingent of eight Sandy Hook families $965 million in compensatory damages, the biggest penalty from Jones’ slate of legal woes.

A Connecticut jurist, Judge Barbara Bellis, pegged an additional $473 million in punitive damages to the tally early last month, bringing the bill up to $1.44 billion.

The Sandy Hook families challenged Jones’ insolvency claims, accusing the far-right fabulist of “systematically transferr[ing] millions of dollars” to himself and his relatives, according to a bankruptcy court filing in August.

“Alex Jones is not financially bankrupt; he is morally bankrupt, which is becoming more and more clear as we discover his plots to hide money and evade responsibility,” Kyle Farrar, an attorney for the Sandy Hook families, said at the time.

Jones funneled money from Free Speech Systems as the potential for damages mounted mid-trial, moving millions of dollars between August 2020 and November 2021 to business entities controlled by himself and his relatives, a Washington Postanalysis of Jones’ finances showed.

Jones claimed in his bankruptcy filing that Free Speech Systems, which filed for bankruptcy in July, owed $55 million to PQPR Holdings, a company he and his parents owned, a debt the Sandy Hook families called “fictitious,” per the Times.

Multiple media requests sent to Jones seeking comment on his filing have so far gone unanswered.

Alex Jones Hit With $45 Million In Punitive Damages For Defamation

Alex Jones Hit With $45 Million In Punitive Damages For Defamation

Washington (AFP) - A Texas jury ordered far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones on Friday to pay $45.2 million in punitive damages for falsely claiming that the deadly 2012 Sandy Hook elementary shooting was a "hoax."

The verdict came a day after the same jury awarded a couple whose child died at Sandy Hook $4.1 million in compensatory damages for the emotional stress caused by Jones broadcasting falsehoods for years on his InfoWars online and radio talk shows.

The huge sum ordered from Jones, who for years gathered a sizable following for his often outlandish conspiracy claims, vindicated the lawsuits against him by families of some of the 20 schoolchildren and six adults killed by a 20-year-old man in one of the country's deadliest school shootings.

The $49.3 million total judgement was far less than the $150 million sought by the plaintiffs in the Texas case, Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis, whose six-year-old son Jesse was killed.

Still, Lewis said that Jones had been "held accountable."

"Today the jury proved that most of America is ready to choose love over fear and I'll be forever grateful to them," Lewis tweeted.

Jones, a vocal supporter of former president Donald Trump, claimed for years on InfoWars that the shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, was "staged" by gun control activists.

He has since acknowledged it was "100 percent real," but the Sandy Hook families maintained that his denialism, coupled with his ability to influence the beliefs of thousands of followers, caused real emotional trauma.

He was also accused of pulling in massive profits from harmful lies and disinformation.

The judgment is not likely the end of legal woes for the 48-year-old Jones, who is also facing another defamation suit in Connecticut.

He has been found liable in multiple defamation cases brought by parents of the Sandy Hook victims, and the Texas case was the first to reach the damages phase.

He is also under scrutiny for his participation in the January 6, 2021, assault on the US Capitol by Trump supporters.

During the hearing ahead of the decision Friday, Wesley Ball, attorney for the parents who brought the case, urged the jury to take a stand against misinformation.

"You have the ability to send a message for everyone in this country and perhaps this world to hear," he said.

"And that is stop Alex Jones. Stop the monetization of misinformation and lies," he added.

"Stopping Alex Jones stops the root of his message and the root of his message is fear and hate."

The $45.2 million was close to the maximum allowed in relation to the original compensatory damages.

InfoWars declared bankruptcy in April and another company owned by Jones, Free Speech Systems, filed for bankruptcy last week.

Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers union, which represented the staff at Sandy Hook, praised Friday's verdict.

"Nothing will ever fix the pain of losing a child, or of watching that tragedy denied for political reasons," she tweeted. "But I'm glad the parents of Sandy Hook have gotten some justice."

Select Panel -- And Ex-Wife -- Will Subpoena Alex Jones' Text Messages

Select Panel -- And Ex-Wife -- Will Subpoena Alex Jones' Text Messages

The House Select Committee, a bipartisan House panel investigating the January 6 Capitol attack, is preparing to subpoena a trove of Infowars founder Alex Jones’s texts and emails accidentally sent to an attorney in the Sandy Hook court case, Rolling Stone reported Wednesday.

The report comes after a bombshell revelation on Wednesday that Jones’s lawyers had accidentally turned three years' worth of his private communications to the opposing counsel in an ongoing defamation trial.

Within minutes of the shocking twist, the January 6 select committee began internal deliberations in preparation to subpoena the phone data from the plaintiffs’ attorney, according to Rolling Stone, which cited a source familiar with the matter.

Attorney Mark Bankston, an attorney representing the parents of victims of the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary massacre, disclosed the gaffe while cross-examining Jones.

"Did you know [that] 12 days ago your attorneys messed up and sent me an entire digital copy of your entire cell phone, with every text message you've sent for the past two years?" Bankston said to Jones on Wednesday. "And when informed, [your team] did not take any steps to identify it as privileged, or protected in any way?"

Jones had testified under oath the day before that his team had complied with the discovery process. He also said he hadn’t mentioned Sandy Hook in his text messages.

“Do you know what perjury is?” Bankston asked a shocked Jones, suggesting the conspiracy theorist had lied on the stand.

“We fully intend on cooperating with law enforcement and US government officials interested in seeing these materials,” Bankston later told the court.

Jones, a far -right media personality, took to Infowars — his media outlet and megaphone for outlandish and disturbing conspiracies — in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook massacre to claim that tragedy, which claimed the lives of 20 children and six adults, was staged and that the victims’ bereaved families were“crisis actors.”

The Sandy Hook victims’ families sued Jones for $150 million in compensatory damages, and he was found liable for defamation in Connecticut and Texas last fall.

In April, three of Jones’s companies — Infowars, Prison Planet TV, and IW Health — filed for bankruptcy, a maneuver he hoped would obstruct court proceedings. Sandy Hook victims’ families warned a Houston bankruptcy judge that Jones could continue siphoning assets from Infowars parent company, Free Speech Systems LLC while stalling due process.

So far, Jones has lost four separate Sandy Hook defamation cases by default because he failed to comply with courts in Texas and Connecticut and didn’t produce documents demanded of him.

However, another run-in with the January 6 select committee is not necessarily the worst of Jone’s mounting legal troubles. His woes were compounded further on Wednesday when Jones’s ex-wife, Kelly Jones, said she planned to subpoena his records for her ongoing child custody court battle with Jones.

"I know the texts and information on his phone will be evidence of all the nefarious, truly conspiratorial things said between him and his employees in their plans to keep my kids from me," Kelly Jones toldInsider on Wednesday. "It's not even about my kids; it's about control. Controlling me."

Incensed by recent developments, Jones launched into an unhinged tirade outside the courthouse. He assailed the judge, blamed “judicial fraud” for the mountain of legal trouble he faced, and accused the Democratic Party of “weaponizing the judiciary” against him.

“[The judge] found me guilty,” Jones fumed. “She lied and said we didn’t give them the discovery, so she can have a show trial and tell the jury: ‘He’s guilty.’”

“The Democratic Party has fully weaponized the judiciary to persecute people, just like Rick Perry, who they indicted for vetoing a bill,” Jones falsely claimed.

It is unclear how recent developments will affect Jones’s trial or whether he could face new lawsuits.

Alex Jones

Facing Judgment, Alex Jones Begs For Help From The 'Deep State'

Facing growing legal troubles which three bankruptcy filings have only exacerbated, Alex Jones has turned to the U.S. government — which he so often called the “deep state” — for help.

Jones, a right-wing conspiracy theorist and avid Trump supporter, rose to prominence by making absurd allegations against the government and disseminating conspiracies of an alleged shadowy cabal of world-controlling pedophiles, a belief that’s the foundation of the QAnon movement.

Jones’ conspiracy empire has made him a massive fortune and attracted millions of daily visits to his websites and social media accounts, per the New York Times. Jones’ Infowars store raked in $165 million from 2015 to 18, all while he pleaded for donations from his supporters to help him stay financially solvent, according to records obtained by HuffPost.

Just what could Jones have sold to his supporters? According to the Texas Tribune, during the pandemic, Jones’ Infowars store sold products like “Nano Silver” toothpaste and “Superblue Silver Immune Gargle,” both of which he claimed could fight Covid-19. Jones has also sold doomsday pepper materials and diet supplements, products he labeled antidotes for the phony threats he made up on his shows.

Last Tuesday, Jones announced an “emergency blowout sale,” where “thousands of great items, books, you name it” will be sold on his Infowars store. "This is do or die time if you want to keep us on the air," Jones said, referring to the sale. "They are trying to silence you. They are trying to take down the leading voice of resistance."

Jones’ radio show, his so-called “voice of resistance,” is actually his bullhorn for a litany of conspiracy theories. Jones has claimed that Austin authorities often used “black helicopters” to survey the public; that 9/11 was an inside job orchestrated by the government; that the high school survivors of the tragic Parkland, Florida, shooting were “crisis actors” on the payroll of Democrats and George Soros, a regular target for right-wing conspiracies; that juice boxes made kids “gay”; and that Sandy Hook elementary school massacre was a hoax cooked up to curtail the right of U.S. citizens to own guns.

“Sandy Hook is synthetic, completely fake, with actors, in my view, manufactured,” Jones told his listeners in 2015. In subsequent episodes, Jones mocked the weeping parents mourning the death of the children and shared addresses and other personal information of the victims’ families.

After months of continued harassment by Jones’ Infowars supporters — one of whom was sentenced to prison for sending death threats to one victim’s family — the mourning parents fired back with defamation lawsuits, and Jones quickly admitted that the shooting happened but blamed “anti-free speech Democrats” and the media for his predicament.

Jones has tried to slow his legal reckoning by failing to obey court orders to turn over documents; filing late settlement offers, which the victims’ families have rejected; and even citing a bogus medical problem as a reason for failing to show up in court.

In September, Jones was found liable for defamation by a Travis County judge in lawsuits filed by two families of Sandy Hook victims. One month later, Jones lost again in a separate suit filed in Connecticut by eight other families of Sandy Hook victims.

However, Jones’ legal troubles don’t end there. He is also being investigated by the Justice Department for his role in the January 6 insurrection, an inquiry Jones contended could damage him more than the Sandy Hook defamation lawsuits.

Jones has rolled over for the Justice Department, desperate to share all he knows about the January 6 insurrection in exchange for prosecutorial immunity.

On April 18, one week before juries were to make their decision on damages in the Sandy Hook defamation lawsuits, three companies affiliated with Jones, including Infowars, filed for bankruptcy.

The Justice Department’s bankruptcy monitor quickly objected because Jones, who generates and controls Infowars’ income, didn’t file for bankruptcy himself. The bankruptcy filing was for three Infowars offshoots that had no assets, employees, or income.

A restructuring office for Infowars, Mark Schwartz, justified the move by saying Jones would ruin “his good name” and harm his “ability to sell merchandise” if he filed for bankruptcy himself, the Times reported.

Jones wanted the bankruptcy court to approve a $10 million settlement fund for the victims’ families suing him. The families, all of whom want to see Jones in court, filed a motion to dismiss his bankruptcy motion.

A judge has scheduled a status conference on Jones’s bankruptcy motion for Friday.