Alex Jones filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in Houston, three weeks after a judge ordered the InfoWars founder to pay another $473 million in Sandy Hook judgments. The sum comprises $150 million in punitive damages imposed for violations of Connecticut’s Unfair Trade Practices Act and $323 million for attorney costs.
In her ruling, Connecticut Judge Barbara Bellis said, “This depravity and cruel, persistent course of conduct by the defendants establishes the highest degree of responsibility and blameworthiness.”
Bellis has also frozen Jones’ assets over allegations that he may be hiding millions of dollars in shell companies, despite claims that he is essentially bankrupt.
She ordered that Jones “is not to transfer, encumber, dispose, or move his assets out of the United States, until further order of the court.”
The latest judgment brought his total for the two cases to $1.48 billion.
In October, a Connecticut jury ordered Jones and his parent company Free Speech Systems to pay $965 million to victims’ families for claiming that the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting was a hoax. He was also ordered to pay $49.3 million in damages to the parents of a 6-year-old boy killed in the shooting as part of a separate lawsuit in Texas.
Jones argued that the shooting was staged as a pretext for the government to take control of Americans’ guns, according to Reuters. Free Speech Systems, Jones’ main company with assets, filed for bankruptcy in June.
Relatives of the 20 children and six adults killed in the Sandy Hook shooting testified in the Connecticut case that they were threatened and harassed for years by people who believed the lies told on Jones’ show, InfoWars.
One parent, Mark Barden, testified that conspiracy theorists had threatened to dig up his 7-year-old son’s coffin and had urinated on the grave.
According to the Chapter 11 filing, Jones, a Dallas resident, estimates his assets to be worth between $1 and $10 million, with liabilities over $1 billion. Jones listed between 50 and 99 creditors to whom he owes money.
As previously reported by The Dallas Express, Infowars took in $165 million between 2015 and 2018. According to Bloomberg, Free Speech Systems took in $56 million in revenue in 2021 from selling clothing, vitamins, and mineral supplements.
Jones’ list of creditors includes Robert Parker, a Sandy Hook parent, awarded $120 million; William Aldenberg, an FBI agent who responded to the shooting, awarded $90 million; and Ian Hockley, whose 6-year-old son Dylan was killed in the mass shooting, awarded $81.6 million.
The list of plaintiffs continues, concluding with American Express, awarded $150,000. All judgments against Jones are marked as “disputed,” according to Zero Hedge.
“Like every other cowardly move Alex Jones has made, this bankruptcy will not work,” Chris Mattei, the attorney representing the Sandy Hook families, said in a statement.
On his show last month, Jones described the initial ruling as “a $965 million rigged deal where the judge said I was guilty, and told the jury that I was a bad person and wouldn’t let me put on evidence and put on fake evidence against me.” Jones characterized the proceedings as an attempt to get him “taken off air,” which he reported opposing counsel said “in their closing arguments in Texas and Connecticut.”
An attorney representing Jones in the bankruptcy case did not immediately return a message from WPLG News in Florida seeking comment.
Jones faces another trial in a third defamation lawsuit, tentatively scheduled for later this year, brought by the parents of another boy who died in the shooting.
