Government

After Jerking Them Around For Five Years, Alex Jones Exhorts Sandy Hook Plaintiffs To Negotiate With Him Fairly OR ELSE

He also claims to be broke.

By  
on
Demonstrators Protests At Texas State Capitol Against Governor’s Stay At Home Order

(Photo by Sergio Flores/Getty Images)

Alex Jones is bankrupt, or so he says anyway. But the malevolent conspiracy theorist says a lot of stuff that isn’t true, so take it with a grain of salt. As we noted last week when he filed for Chapter 11, his bankruptcy lawyer Vickie L. Driver is being paid half a million dollars by some entity known as “The Missouri779384 Trust,” so clearly there’s cash somewhere.

This is Jones’s third foray into the courtroom of US Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Lopez, who briefly hosted three worthless LLC’s declared bankrupt on the eve of the Sandy Hook defamation trials as a blatant attempt to delay judgment. Since then, the court fielded an acrimonious filing by Free Speech Systems (FSS), the Infowars parent company, which claims to be bankrupt thanks to a $55 million securitized debt to a Nevada LLC wholly owned by Jones and his family. And now, with $1.5 billion in jury verdicts, Jones himself seeks bankruptcy protection of his own assets.

On Tuesday, in preparation for a status conference, Driver filed an initial status report informing the court that Jones seeks to extend the automatic stay of final judgment in the Sandy Hook tort cases, noting that “both Jones and FSS intend to prosecute appeals to final judgment if a settlement is not reached.”

The implication is not subtle. Jones, who claims a net worth of less than $12 million, sought to use the first, abortive bankruptcy to fob the 20-odd plaintiffs off with a measly $10 million, an amount which wouldn’t even cover their legal bills. Indeed, Jones himself claims to have spent $13 million on litigation thus far, despite his abject failure to cooperate with discovery, netting himself default judgments in two states. Nevertheless, Jones insists that he “comes to this Court in good faith and wants to reach an amicable resolution between all the parties” and threatens to “prosecute appeals to final judgment if a settlement is not reached.”

The status report also contained this paragraph explaining in peak Alex Jones style why it’s not his fault his books are a mess:

In addition to the overwhelming cost of the litigation with the Plaintiffs (estimated to exceed $13 million), Jones has incurred multiple other related legal costs. Furthermore, Jones’s attention over last few years has been focused on his talk show and his family, and thus his personal finances, somewhat disorganized, are being reviewed and analyzed to ensure clarity and integrity of information going forward. Jones and FSS lost a great deal of money trusting people who did not have the ability or the character to handle the finances. As an example, Jones’ contributions to FSS during only 2022 reflects the scope of this problem. Jones contributed (i) approximately $9 million to FSS up through the filing of its Chapter 11 case, and (ii) an additional $1.3 million to fund product shipping and consignment product purchases to maintain the FSS operations.

Sponsored

If only Alex Jones, a man who makes a living claiming that the parents of dead children are “crisis actors,” weren’t so trusting! And where did Jones, who supposedly makes just $2 million per year, find $10.3 million in cash to keep his business afloat? The filing does not say, nor does it mention the $8 million in Bitcoin donations this year which Jones pocketed, according to testimony at his trial. But don’t worry, because “Jones is in the process of hiring and educating a reputable financial advisor to assist him with getting all details of past and present transactions organized and reported.”

So, we’re cool, right?

In the event, we were not cool. At yesterday’s status conference, David Zensky, an attorney for the Sandy Hook plaintiffs, reminded the court that it wasn’t simply Jones’s disorganized books which netted him default judgments and sanctions — it was his repeated failures of candor to the plaintiffs and the court.

“We are here today because Mr. Jones’ stock and trade is lies, not truth,” Zensky said, according to the Connecticut News-Times. “We will hope with cautious optimism that (Jones) understands his obligations of disclosure … and all of his transactions and transfers will be a key focus of the Sandy Hook families.”

Indeed, the Texas plaintiffs already sued in state court alleging that Jones siphoned tens of millions of dollars out of FSS in preparation for litigation in a series of fraudulent transfers. So you can bet your bottom dollar that these plaintiffs are going to get to the bottom of every shell company and alphabet soup mystery trust to find the money. And no amount of aw, shucks, I’m just real bad at accounting by Jones is going to put them off.

Sponsored

Alex Jones’ bankruptcy filing says he’s worth $12M; it’s ‘impossible’ to pay $1.5B to Sandy Hook families [News-Times]
Alex Jones Bankruptcy [Docket via Court Listener]
Free Speech Systems LLC Bankruptcy [Docket via Court Listener]

Liz Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.

Topics

, , , , ,