Government

Infowars Exits Bankruptcy, Gets Immediately Attached By Sandy Hook Creditors

It's a GLOBALIST CONSPIRACY!

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alex jones

(Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

On June 21, US Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Lopez booted Free Speech Systems (FSS) out of bankruptcy, ending Alex Jones’s desperate attempt to avoid paying off the Sandy Hook parents he’d grievously defamed.

Approximately one hour later, Mark Bankston, attorney for the tranche of parents who sued Jones and FSS in Texas, marched into the Travis County Courthouse and filed writs of attachment — known in Texas as a “turnover order” and a “writ of garnishment” — against FSS and all its property, including its IP.

This is what Judge Lopez authorized at the end of a marathon hearing, when he conceded that it would be better to put an end to the two-year farce of FSS’s Subchapter V “small business” bankruptcy and allow the Sandy Hook parents to “pursue their state remedies.” It’s what the Connecticut plaintiffs warned of when they begged him to instead convert the FSS bankruptcy to a Chapter 7 liquidation, presaging a race to the courthouse pitting the creditors against each other. And it will be the first dollar that any of those victims have seen out of Alex Jones after nearly 12 years of harassment and lies.

The June 14 hearing highlighted the tension between the Connecticut plaintiffs, who are owed $1.4 billion, and the Texas plaintiffs, who are owed somewhere between $4 million and $50 million, depending on the size of the haircut they take from the Texas appeals court. If the assets are divided up on a pro rata basis, the Texas plaintiffs are going to get functionally nothing, and so they had every incentive to oppose the conversion to Chapter 7 and take their chances at grabbing assets. Judge Lopez, mindful of the limited role of the bankruptcy court, had little choice but to agree, even as he acknowledged the terrible inevitability of what was about to happen.

At the same hearing, Jones’s personal bankruptcy was converted from a Chapter 11 to a Chapter 7, in preparation to sell off everything he hasn’t managed to shift into trusts controlled by his parents. The prospect of FSS emerging from bankruptcy and reverting to Alex Jones’s control so alarmed the Subchapter V Trustee Melissa Haselden that she filed a motion requesting that the court “clarify” whether the newly appointed Chapter 7 Trustee Charles Murray would control FSS, which is wholly owned by Jones, or whether Jones would get control of the accounts and be free to transfer assets out at will. But Judge Lopez rebuffed this request at the hearing, mumbling vaguely about Murray getting his feet under him before being ordered around by the court.

In the event, the issue may become academic thanks to Bankston’s move to seize the company lock, stock and barrel. Murray responded with an emergency motion asking Judge Lopez to stay the state collections process for 90 days, as well as to clarify that Murray controls FSS’s bank accounts.

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“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,” Murray wrote. “Thus, the Trustee seeks this Court’s intervention to prevent a value-destructive money grab and allow an orderly process to take its course.”

Essentially he is asking the court to treat FSS not as a separate entity subject to collections, but as an estate asset in the Jones bankruptcy, which must be liquidated in the “orderly,” pro rata fashion contemplated by Chapter 7. This would not appear to accord with Judge Lopez’s emotional concession that he was leaving the Sandy Hook parents to purse their “state remedies,” but Murray is a highly experienced practitioner, so presumably he knows whereof he speaks.

In the meantime, the Travis County District Court signed the Turnover Order, instructing FSS to “turn over all its nonexempt property to the Travis County Sheriff’s Office,” including “money held in any bank accounts or being held or controlled by any other third parties.” It also enjoined the transfer of any assets to “insiders or affiliates” — just in case Jones got any bright ideas about filling his pockets on the way out the door.

It’s a hot, hot mess. But at least the prospect of Infowars continuing as a vector for damaging conspiracy theories is functionally dead.

Alex Jones Bankruptcy [Docket via Court Listener]
Free Speech Systems LLC Bankruptcy [Docket via Court Listener]

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Liz Dye lives in Baltimore where she produces the Law and Chaos substack and podcast.

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