Alex Jones’ personal assets to be sold to pay $1.5B Sandy Hook debt

HOUSTON (AP) — A federal judge on Friday ordered the liquidation of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones ‘ personal assets but dismissed his company’s separate bankruptcy case, leaving the future of his Infowars media platform uncertain as he owes $1.5 billion for his false claims that the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting was a hoax.

Judge Christopher Lopez approved converting Jones’ proposed personal bankruptcy reorganization to a liquidation, but threw out the attempted reorganization of his company, Austin, Texas-based Free Speech Systems. Many of the Sandy Hook families had asked that the company also be liquidated.

If Free Speech Systems’ bankruptcy reorganization had been converted to a liquidation, Jones could have lost ownership of the company, its social media accounts, the Infowars studio in Austin and all copyrights as the company’s possessions were sold. Jones smiled as the judge dismissed the company’s case.

It wasn’t immediately clear what will happen to Free Speech Systems, Infowars’ parent company that Jones built into a multimillion-dollar moneymaker over the past 25 years.

One scenario could be that the company and Infowars are allowed to keep operating while efforts to collect on the $1.5 billion debt are made in state courts in Texas and Connecticut, where the families won lawsuits against Jones, according to lawyers involved with the case.

Another scenario is that lawyers for the Sandy Hook families go back to the bankruptcy court and ask Lopez to liquidate the company as part of Jones’ personal case, because Jones owns the business, lawyers said.

Lopez said his sole focus in determining whether to dismiss Free Speech Systems’ case or order a liquidation was what would be best for the company and its creditors, including the Sandy Hook families. Lopez also said Free Speech Systems’ case appeared to be one of the longest running of its kind in the country, and it was approaching a deadline to resolve it.

“I was never asked today to make a decision to shut down a show or not. That was never going to happen today one way or another,” Lopez said. “This case is one of the more difficult cases I’ve had. When you look at it, I think creditors are better served in pursuing their state court rights.”