Radio host Alex Jones stands on the brink of losing his Infowars media platform as a federal bankruptcy judge is set to rule Friday on whether to liquidate his assets to help pay the $1.5 billion he owes for his false claims about the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.
A hearing is scheduled for the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Houston to decide the fate of the outlet he turned into a multimillion-dollar moneymaker over the past 25 years, AP reports.
AP details Jones has been telling his web viewers and radio listeners that Infowars’ parent company, Free Speech Systems, is on the verge of being shuttered because of the bankruptcy.
File/Infowars founder Alex Jones is questioned by plaintiff’s attorney Chris Mattei beside Judge Barbara Bellis, right, during testimony at the Sandy Hook defamation damages trial at Connecticut Superior Court in Waterbury, Conn. Thursday, Sept. 22, 2022. (Tyler Sizemore/Hearst Connecticut Media via AP, Pool)
He’s also reportedly been urging them to download videos from his online archive to preserve them and pointing them to a new website of his father’s company if they want to continue buying the dietary supplements he sells on his show.
Jones, 50, is reported to have said on his show Wednesday it could be a matter of hours or days before he loses the company but he remained optimistic about his own future:
I think it’s very accurate to say Infowars is a sinking ship.
Infowars will live on through all the great work we’ve done, all the reports we’ve filed, through you saving them and you sharing them, and of course I will come back stronger than ever.
But I’m going to stay with the ship until it fully sinks. … At the last moment, I will then step onto the next ship.
A liquidation would mean Jones’ assets would be sold off to meet absolve his debts.
It could also mean Jones ultimately loses ownership of Free Speech Systems, Infowars, the company’s social media accounts and all associated copyrights, as Breitbart News reported.
Final details are not yet decided.
Jones and Austin, Texas-based Free Speech Systems filed for bankruptcy protection in 2022, when relatives of many victims of the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting that killed 20 first graders and six educators in Newtown, Connecticut, won lawsuit judgments of more than $1.4 billion in Connecticut and $49 million in Texas.
File/Infowars host Alex Jones rallies supporters, Nov. 5, 2020, in Phoenix. A federal bankruptcy judge cleared the way for a defamation lawsuit, filed by relatives of some victims of the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, to proceed against Jones. (AP Photo/Matt York, File)
Lawyers for the Sandy Hook families have been seeking liquidation.
“Doing so will enable the Connecticut families to enforce their $1.4 billion in judgments now and into the future while also depriving Jones of the ability to inflict mass harm as he has done for some 25 years,” said Chris Mattei, a lawyer for the families in the Connecticut case, according to the AP report.
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