Alex Jones can’t use bankruptcy to avoid paying Sandy Hook families nearly $1.1 billion, judge rules

HOUSTON — A Texas choose has dominated that Infowars host Alex Jones can not use chapter safety to keep away from paying almost $1.1 billion to households who sued over his conspiracy theories that the Sandy Hook college bloodbath was a hoax.

The choice is one other vital defeat for Jones within the wake of juries in Texas and Connecticut punishing him over spreading falsehoods in regards to the nation’s deadliest college capturing. U.S. District Decide Christopher Lopez of Houston issued the ruling Thursday.

Jones filed for Chapter 11 chapter safety final 12 months and more moderen monetary paperwork submitted by his attorneys put his private internet value round $14 million. However Lopez dominated that these protections don’t apply over findings of “willful and malicious” conduct.

“The households are happy with the Court docket’s ruling that Jones’s malicious conduct will discover no protected harbor within the chapter court docket,” mentioned Christopher Mattei, a Connecticut lawyer for the households. “Consequently, Jones will proceed to be accountable for his actions into the longer term no matter his claimed chapter.”

An legal professional for Jones didn’t instantly return a message searching for remark Friday.

After 26 individuals had been killed by a gunman at Sandy Hook Elementary College in Newtown, Connecticut, in 2012, Jones made a false conspiracy concept a centerpiece of his programming on his flagship Infowars present. He informed his viewers final 12 months he was “formally out of cash” and has requested them to buy on his Infowars web site to assist preserve him on the air.

However Jones’ private spending topped $93,000 in July alone, together with hundreds of {dollars} on meals and leisure, in response to his month-to-month monetary stories within the chapter case. The spending caught a nerve with Sandy Hook households as they’ve but to gather any of the cash that juries awarded them.

Sandy Hook households gained almost $1.5 billion in judgments towards Jones final 12 months in lawsuits over the repeated promotion of a false concept that the college capturing by no means occurred.

Relations of the victims testified on the trials about being harassed and threatened by Jones’ believers, who despatched threats and even confronted the grieving households in individual, accusing them of being “disaster actors” whose kids by no means existed.