Judge Orders Sale of Alex Jones’s Personal Assets however Keeps Infowars in Business

A Houston chapter judge on Friday ordered the non-public property of the Infowars conspiracy theorist Alex Jones to be liquidated and offered, with the proceeds distributed among the many Sandy Hook households. But the judge spared him from having to liquidate his Infowars enterprise empire.

The ruling will enable Mr. Jones to proceed broadcasting on Infowars, whereas the households proceed to pursue cost of the big defamation damages awarded them.

The end result sharply divided the Sandy Hook households. Families who sued him in Texas favored Friday’s determination, which can preserve Mr. Jones on the air however enable them to probably obtain extra in damages. The households who sued Mr. Jones in Connecticut favored settling for much less cash and shutting Mr. Jones down, though they acknowledged it might maybe not silence him fully.

Either means, it’s prone to be years earlier than the households obtain any important share of the damages they’re owed. Mr. Jones is interesting the huge judgments towards him, a battle that’s anticipated to take years.

Estimates in courtroom filings place the worth of Mr. Jones’s private and enterprise property mixed at lower than $10 million, nowhere close to the $1.4 billion that juries in Texas and Connecticut awarded the households in late 2022.

Dividing $10 million by the plaintiffs who’re entitled to damages comes out to lower than $500,00 every, however that doesn’t embody substantial bankruptcy-related authorized and administrative prices, that are paid first.

The judge’s determination got here practically a dozen years after 20 first graders and 6 educators died within the taking pictures at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., in December 2012.

Mr. Jones spent years spreading lies that the bloodbath was a hoax geared toward confiscating Americans’ firearms, and that the victims’ households have been actors complicit within the plot. The households suffered on-line abuse, private confrontations and dying threats from individuals who believed the conspiracy concept.