A federal bankruptcy ruling has allowed cases to proceed against Alex Jones regarding the nearly $1.5 billion he has been ordered to pay to families of Sandy Hook victims.
Jones was ordered to pay $965 million to victims’ families for claiming that the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting was a hoax by a Connecticut jury in October, as previously reported by The Dallas Express. In November, Connecticut Judge Barbara Bellis then ordered the InfoWars founder to pay an additional $473 million to the families.
In the Connecticut case, relatives of the 20 children and six adults killed in the shooting testified that they were threatened and harassed for years by people who believed Jones’ claims.
Mark Barden, a parent, testified that followers of Jones urinated on the grave of his 7-year-old son and threatened to dig up his grave, as previously reported by The Dallas Express.
Jones filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in Houston at the beginning of this month, citing $1 billion to $10 billion in liabilities and $1 million to $10 million in assets. His media company Free Speech Systems filed for bankruptcy in June.
On Monday, Judge Christopher Lopez approved an order that was agreed upon by attorneys representing Jones, Free Speech Systems, and the Sandy Hook families.
The order lifts a stay that automatically halted the cases against Jones when he filed for bankruptcy. The cases can now move forward, but families cannot yet begin pursuing collection efforts.
Lopez also delayed a motion by Jones’ lawyers to force Free Speech Systems to pay the $1.3 million listed in his contract, which amounts to roughly $54,000 every two weeks. The judge said he will take up the issue during a hearing in January.
In a separate lawsuit in Texas, Sandy Hook families alleged that Jones hid millions of dollars in assets in shell companies after the families began filing lawsuits against him. The allegation has been denied by Jones’ attorney.
Judge Bellis, in her November ruling, froze Jones’ assets, ordering that he “is not to transfer, encumber, dispose, or move his assets out of the United States, until further order of the court.”
Within the next two months, a third trial over another lawsuit brought against Jones by the parents of another child killed in the Sandy Hook massacre is expected to begin in Texas.
These lawsuits have been filed in response to claims Jones made on his InfoWars show regarding the shooting. Jones reportedly argued the shooting was staged as a pretext for the United States government to enact stricter forms of gun control.
