The Alex Jones–Sandy Hook Legal Fight Could End Infowars
Infowars, as it’s currently known, may soon be coming to an end.
In the latest development of the yearslong legal saga of far-right provocateur Alex Jones, the court-appointed trustee handling his media company indicated in a court filing on Sunday that he intends to shutter the business and sell off its properties. The trustee, Christopher Murray, wrote that he plans to conduct “an orderly wind-down process and asset sale” of the business. Such a sale would likely include Infowars, Jones’s flagship media website.
It was earlier this month that a judge ruled that Jones must liquidate his personal assets to pay the $1.5 billion in legal penalties he owes to Sandy Hook families, but his company, Free Speech Systems, LLC, wasn’t included in the decision. This allowed some of the families to begin their attempts to collect the money Jones was ordered to pay up after his continued promotion of lies and conspiracies following the 2012 mass shooting.
CNN reports that Murray asked the court to pause any asset seizures after a Sandy Hook parent filed in Texas, seeking the company’s holdings. “The specter of a pell-mell seizure of FSS’s assets, including its cash, threatens to throw the business into chaos, potentially stopping it in its tracks, to the detriment of the interests of the chapter 7 estate for which the Trustee is responsible,” he wrote.
In August 2022, Jones was ordered to pay $45.2 million in damages to parents of a child killed in the shooting. Later, in October, a Connecticut jury ordered Jones to pay $965 million to several Sandy Hook families he was found liable for defaming. A judge added an additional $473 million to that total. Infowars filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection that year, reporting up to $10 million in liabilities and as little as $50,000 in assets, per the New York Times. Jones himself filed for bankruptcy, citing the sizable judgments against him.
In response to reports about Infowars’s imminent closure, Jones posted a video saying the news is “not accurate” and that more information will emerge in the coming days. Although he denied the veracity of the reports, Jones suggested there could be a future for his program beyond its current platform.
“Infowars is only this building and equipment and our great crew. They can go anywhere. I can work anywhere. They’re not shutting anything down,” he said in the clip.