Alex Jones can't hide behind bankruptcy protection to avoid paying more than $1 billion in damages to the families of Sandy Hook victims who sued the conspiracy theorist for repeatedly claiming the deadly shooting at the Connecticut elementary school was a hoax.
The decision by U.S. District Judge Christopher Lopez on Thursday marks another major defeat for Jones.
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Last year, juries in Texas and Connecticut awarded the families historic damages in defamation lawsuits against the bombastic broadcaster. This week's ruling severs the possibility that Jones could liquidate Infowars and force the families to accept money from the sale, giving himself the opportunity to start a new business and pick up where he left off.
The Houston-based judge ruled that Jones can't use his personal bankruptcy proceedings to escape the financial punishment tied to his false on-air statements about the 2012 school shooting.
Jones filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last year, and his lawyers alleged he has only $14 million to his name, less than 1% of what he owes to the families, but Lopez ruled that those protections didn't apply over findings of "willful and malicious" conduct.
"The families are pleased with the Court's ruling that Jones's malicious conduct will find no safe harbor in the bankruptcy court," Christopher Mattei, a Connecticut lawyer for the families, said in a statement. "As a result, Jones will continue to be accountable for his actions into the future regardless of his claimed bankruptcy."
Jones has claimed for years the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School was simply theater and that the victims were child actors. Last October, a Connecticut jury awarded the victims' families $965 million in compensatory damages, while the judge added another $473 million in punitive damages. In 2022, a Texas jury also awarded the parents of a child killed in the shooting $49 million in damages.
On his Infowars show, Jones said he was broke and asked viewers to shop on his website to keep his show on the air. The site features products such as "Super Male Vitality" drops for $52.45, "Ultimate Bone Broth Plus Formula" for $37.45, and "Prebiotic Fiber" for $23.95. Despite Jones being broke, his spending topped $93,000 in June alone and included thousands of dollars on pricey meals at fancy restaurants, as well as entertainment, according to his monthly financial reports in his bankruptcy case.
As Jones was dining out, his legion of faithful listeners went after the families of the victims who testified they had been harassed, threatened, and told that the parents of the children murdered at Sandy Hook were "crisis actors" whose children never existed.
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Jones got his start in broadcasting in the 1990s in Austin, Texas. His conspiracy theories about the Branch Davidian compound in Waco and the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City got him booted off a local radio station. In 1999, he founded Infowars, which started small but morphed into a place for him and his guests to rattle on, often without any evidence, about conspiracy theories.
The tragedy at Sandy Hook — where 20 first graders and six school employees were gunned down before the shooter, who had killed his mother earlier in the day, turned the gun on himself — has been Jones's meal ticket for years.