Alex Jones, a conspiracy theorist, filed for bankruptcy on Friday after being forced to pay almost $1.5 billion for fabricating details of the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting.
Jones requested Chapter 11 protection from creditors at the Houston bankruptcy court of the United States, according to a court record.
The declaration claims that Jones’ liabilities range from $1 billion to $10 billion and his assets range from $1 million to $10 million.
Uncertainty surrounds Jones’ personal riches.
Jones has long maintained that the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, involved actors and led to the deaths of 20 students and six staff members and was part of a government plan to seize American firearms.
Although he has finally confessed to the incident, the plaintiffs claimed Jones made a fortune for years by lying about the massacre.
Chris Mattei, a lawyer for the Sandy Hook families, stated that this bankruptcy “will not work, like every previous shameful move Alex Jones has done.” The statement continued, “Alex Jones will be held accountable by the American legal system, and we won’t give up attempting to make the jury’s verdict stand.”
Jones had engaged in deliberate and outrageous attacks, according to Mattei, and the bankruptcy system would not shield him.
Jones’s lawyer did not respond to requests for comment right away.
A Connecticut jury determined in October that several families of Sandy victims should receive close to $1 billion in damages from Jones and Free Speech Systems, Infowars’ parent business.
Later, Jones was required to pay $473 million more in punitive penalties by the Connecticut court.
The families’ weeks-long emotional testimony throughout the trial, in which they described how Jones’s lies about Sandy Hook made their grief worse, served as a defining feature of the proceedings.
In July, a bankruptcy petition was filed by Free Speech Systems.
In a different Texas case, a jury determined in August that Jones must pay the parents of a 6-year-old boy murdered in the Sandy Hook shooting $45.2 million in punitive damages in addition to the compensatory damages of $4.1 million.
The Connecticut and Texas verdicts will be appealed, according to Jones’ attorneys.
Debts that the debtor caused “willfully or maliciously” cannot be discharged through bankruptcy.
According to Susan Block-Lieb, a professor of bankruptcy law at Fordham University School of Law, Jones’ lies seem to fit this criterion.
“Defamation is very obviously an intentional tort, and in Alex Jones’s instance, it is extremely clear,” said Block-Lieb.
Jones runs the prospect of having to reveal all of his assets in court as a result of the petition, according to bankruptcy attorney Sidney Scheinberg.
Sheinberg claims that because he filed for bankruptcy, his assets are now known to the general public. A federal offence is hiding assets while a bankruptcy is being processed.
Jones’ net worth in Texas is estimated to be between $135 million and $270 million, according to an economist.
The plaintiffs who obtained judgments against Jones are listed as his biggest unsecured creditors in the bankruptcy filing.
