Alex Jones files for bankruptcy protection, lists Sandy Hook families as creditors
The bankruptcy filing by Alex Jones comes weeks after he was ordered to pay more than $1 billion to the family of Sandy Hook massacre victims.
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Alex Jones arrives at the court house as he faces a second defamation trial over Sandy Hook claims in Waterbury, Connecticut, September 22, 2022.
Michelle McLoughlin | Reuters
Infowars host Alex Jones filed for personal bankruptcy protection on Friday on the heels of a Connecticut jury and judge ordering him to pay $1.44 billion in damages to relatives of the Sandy Hook Elementary school shooting massacre victims, a new court filing shows.
An attorney for Sandy Hook families later told CNBC that Jones's move will not shield his assets from the legal damages imposed on him for making false claims that the shooting that killed 20 first-graders and six adults was a hoax.
Jones filed a voluntary petition under Chapter 11 in U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas, court records show.
In that filing, the notorious conspiracy theorist estimates his liabilities to be between $1 billion and $10 billion, against assets of between $1 million and $10 million.
He also estimates he has between 50 and 99 creditors.
The creditors identified by name in the bankruptcy filing include parents of children murdered on Dec. 14, 2012, at the Newtown, Connecticut, elementary school, who had sued him successfully for defamation, as well as an FBI agent who responded to the scene of the massacre.
The largest unsecured creditor in the filing was Robbie Parker, whose 6-year-old daughter Emilie was killed that day. Parker, who was awarded $120 million in damages from Jones, was accused with others by Jones of being "crisis actors" who participated in a conspiracy to stage the shooting.
An attorney for the Sandy Hook families told CNBC in an email, "Like every other cowardly move Alex Jones has made, this bankruptcy will not work."
"The bankruptcy system does not protect anyone who engages in intentional and egregious attacks on others, as Mr. Jones did," said Chris Mattei, a lawyer with the firm Koskoff, Koskoff & Bieder.
"The American judicial system will hold Alex Jones accountable, and we will never stop working to enforce the jury's verdict," Mattei said.
A Connecticut jury in October ordered Jones to pay nearly $1 billion in damages to Sandy Hook relatives. The judge in that case added $473 million in punitive damages to that bill the following month.
Jones' company, Free Speech Systems Inc., filed for bankruptcy protection in July. That filing came weeks before another civil jury in Texas awarded damages of $50 million from Jones and his company to the mother of a child murdered at Sandy Hook.
Relatives of Sandy Hook victims have said the harassment they received on the heels of the shooting by people who believed the massacre was a hoax has continued until this year.
On Thursday, Jones conducted an interview with Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West. During that Infowars appears, Ye made a series of antisemitic comments, praised Nazi leader Adolf Hitler and talked about his recent dinner with former President Donald Trump and white supremacist Nick Fuentes.
