A Houston bankruptcy judge on Friday ordered Infowars conspiracy theorist Alex Jones to liquidate and sell his personal assets and distribute the proceeds to families of victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School bombing, but the judge exempted Jones from having to liquidate his Infowars business empire.
The ruling means Jones can continue broadcasting on Infowars, but his family will continue to seek huge damages for defamation.
The ruling has deeply divided Sandy Hook families. Those who sued Jones in Texas supported Friday’s ruling, which would allow him to stay on the air but may award him a larger damages award. Those who sued Jones in Connecticut favored a smaller award that would allow him to go off the air, while acknowledging it may not be possible to silence him completely.
Either way, the family is unlikely to receive any compensation any time soon: Jones is appealing the ruling, in a battle that is expected to drag on for years.
Jones’ personal assets are estimated to be worth less than $5 million, according to court documents, far short of the $1.4 billion that juries in Texas and Connecticut awarded his family in late 2022.
Dividing $5 million by the number of plaintiffs entitled to damages comes to just under $250,000 per person, but that doesn’t include the significant bankruptcy-related legal and administrative fees that will be paid out initially.
The ruling came nearly 12 years after the December 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, left 20 first-graders and six teachers dead.
Jones spent years spreading the lie that the massacre was a hoax designed to confiscate Americans’ firearms, and that the victims’ families were part of a conspiracy. The victims’ families faced online abuse, personal confrontations, and death threats from believers in the conspiracy theory.
