Alex Jones has asked a bankruptcy court for permission to sell the majority of his assets, including the conspiracy theory media empire InfoWars, in order to pay the roughly $1.5 billion he owes the families of people who died in the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School, according to a report from the Associated Press Friday.
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Free Speech Systems, the company founded by Jones that runs InfoWars, previously filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy after the conspiracy theorist lost a defamation suit brought by the families he defamed. But this week’s filings seek to reorganize both Jones and Free Speech Systems’ filings into a Chapter 7 liquidation, according to the AP.
The families of the victims accepted the terms of the liquidation on Friday evening, according to Reuters, but a judge still needs to approve the process. The families had rejected previous terms because it would have allowed Jones to keep control of InfoWars.
Jones, who had called the Sandy Hook shooting that killed 20 children and six adults a “hoax” with “actors,” appeared to force out some tears in a performative cry on his show last week. Jones was upset about having to sell his $2.8 million ranch to help pay the families what he owed them. But the hardest road for Jones may lie ahead as he attempts to liquidate just about everything but his primary home in Texas.
Jones was previously banned from X before it was purchased by billionaire Elon Musk but was reinstated late last year, providing a social media avenue for his unhinged rants. Every other major social media platform has banned the conspiracy theorist, but if Jones loses InfoWars he could still conceivably start fresh with a new brand on X and build something new from scratch.
Or, in an even more wild hypothetical, InfoWars and Free Speech Systems could be sold to someone ideologically aligned with Jones, who would then just reinstall him as the centerpiece of entertainment.
The Associated Press explains this latest move to turn the Chapter 11 into a Chapter 7 only comes after failed negotiations with the families:
Jones had offered a bankruptcy reorganization plan that would have let him keep operating Free Speech Systems and Infowars while paying the Sandy Hook families a minimum total of $55 million over 10 years. Before that proposal, the families had offered to settle their debt for a minimum of $85 million.
As the AP notes, Free Speech Systems currently has 44 employees and roughly $4 million in cash on hand. The business generated about $3.2 million in revenue this past April, and had expenses totaling about $1.9 million, according to the AP.
A bankruptcy court hearing has been scheduled for June 14, when we’ll presumably learn more about the potential liquidation of the assets so near and dear to Jones’s heart.