Alex Jones Will Not Be Eligible For Bankruptcy Protections In $1.1 Billion Sandy Hook Damages, Judge Rules

ByJoseph Gibsonon October 25, 2023inArticles›Celebrity News

The Associated Press reports that Alex Jones will not be able to use bankruptcy protections to avoid paying $1.1 billion out of the roughly $1.5 billion in damages he owes some of the families of victims of the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting . Jones is facing multiple lawsuits in both Connecticut and his native Texas over defamatory claims he made about the shooting being a hoax, and now a judge in Texas has hit him with his most recent legal setback.

Jones declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy last year, but U.S. District Judge Christopher Lopez of Houston has declared that those protections will not apply to the damages against Jones due to the “willful and malicious” nature of his conduct. The only exception is the $322.5 million that families in Connecticut have been awarded for common-law punitive damages, meant to go towards legal expenses, CNN reports.

Alex Jones Will Not Be Eligible For Bankruptcy Protections In $1.1 Billion Sandy Hook Damages, Judge Rules - 1

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Christopher Mattei, representing the Sandy Hook families in Connecticut, is understandably pleased with the ruling, issuing a press statement in favor of Jones being held accountable for his actions:

“The families are pleased with the Court’s ruling that Jones’s malicious conduct will find no safe harbor in the bankruptcy court. As a result, Jones will continue to be accountable for his actions into the future regardless of his claimed bankruptcy.”

Jones himself reportedly responded to the ruling in a video on his Infowars site, claiming that he can’t pay the rulings regardless of what a judge might say:

“It’s all academic. I don’t have a million dollars…My company has a few million, but that’s just to pay the bills and my product in the future. So we are literally on empty. So this idea that … we’re going to take your money away doesn’t exist because the money doesn’t exist. It’s all political.”

However, documents in Jones’s own bankruptcy case show plenty of existent money being spent on meals and entertainment, with roughly $93,000 in personal spending for July of this year alone.

Jones owes about $1.5 billion to Sandy Hook families and will likely continue to owe more, as there is at least one more lawsuit connected to the case pending in Texas.

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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.

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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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