Alex Jones‘ personal assets must be liquidated to pay the families of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting victims over the conspiracy theorist’s false claims that the massacre was a hoax, a federal judge ruled Friday.
Jones, founder and host of right-wing fringe site InfoWars, had already filed for personal bankruptcy protection after juries in two separate states ordered him to pay nearly $1.5 billion in damages to the Sandy Hook families. Judge Christopher Lopez of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas approved converting Jones’ proposed bankruptcy to a liquidation. Still to be determined is whether the assets of InfoWars’ parent company, Free Speech Systems, also should be liquidated.
Jones has moved to sell his Texas ranch, worth about $2.8 million, along with his gun collection and other assets, the AP reported. However, Jones’ home in the Austin area and some other of his possessions are exempt from the liquidation order.
Jones has about $9 million in personal assets, per court filings. Free Speech Systems has about $6 million in cash on hand and about $1.2 million worth of inventory, the AP reported, citing J. Patrick Magill, the chief restructuring officer appointed by the court to run Free Speech Systems during the bankruptcy proceedings.
Both Jones and Free Speech Systems filed for bankruptcy protection in 2022.
Families of Sandy Hook victims sued Jones after he called the mass murder a “giant hoax” as “phony as a $3 bill” perpetrated by “crisis actors,” and that “no one died.” He falsely accused the parents of the children killed at the elementary school of colluding with the U.S. government in an imagined plot to curtail gun rights. After he lost the civil suits in Connecticut and Texas, Jones and his company filed for bankruptcy protection.
Jones also has accused the U.S. government of being behind the 9/11 attacks; has said that NFL players protesting during the national anthem were “kneeling to white genocide”; attacked transgender and Muslim people; and suggested that Lady Gaga’s 2017 Super Bowl halftime show was a satanic ritual.