Federal Court Strikes Down Alex Jones’ Bankruptcy Petition
Alex Jones
Far-right conspiracy theorist and Infowars host Alex Jones has tried to paint himself as a martyr for both the First Amendment and the Seconnd Amendment, but the courts haven’t agreed — finding that he crossed a line by bullying families of the Sandy Hook Elementary School victims and claiming that they were part of a “false flag” operation. Now Jones has suffered another legal defeat, this time involving his bankruptcy claims.
On Friday, June 10 in Texas, according to the Associated Press, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Lopez dismissed a bankruptcy protection case involving three companies that Jones controls: InfoW LLC, Prison Planet TV and IW Health.
“The judge's action allows the parents' defamation lawsuits against Jones to continue in Texas and Connecticut, where trials are pending on how much he should pay families after judges in both states found Jones and his companies liable for damages,” AP reports. “The families' lawsuits say they have been subjected to harassment and death threats from Jones' followers because of the hoax conspiracy. Jones, based in Austin, Texas, has since said he believes the shooting did occur.”
The Sandy Hook tragedy occurred in Newtown, Connecticut on December 14, 2012, when gunman Adam Lanza shot and killed 26 people — 20 of them children — before killing himself. Jones, on his show, pushed the nonsense conspiracy theory that the Sandy Hook massacre was a false flag operation designed to attack the Second Amendment rights of gun owners. And the families of the victims suffered a great deal of abuse, according to the defamation lawsuits against Jones, when his followers took his baseless claims seriously.
Earlier this year, Jones agreed to a settlement in the lawsuit from relatives of children who were killed in the Sandy Hook massacre, saying he would pay $120,000 per plaintiff — an offer that they rejected.
InfoW LLC, Prison Planet TV and IW Health filed for bankruptcy protection on April 17. Never Trump conservative Jonathan V. Last, in an article published by The Bulwark on April 30, slammed Jones’ bankruptcy filing as a sleazy maneuver designed to protect his net worth.
AP notes that although the Sandy Hook families recently agreed to drop InfoW LLC, Prison Planet TV and IW Health from their defamation lawsuits, the “lawsuits will continue against Jones himself and his largest moneymaking company, Free Speech Systems.”
According to AP, “The families and the U.S. Trustee’s Office — a Justice Department agency that oversees bankruptcy cases — had questioned the legitimacy of the three companies' bankruptcy filing and sought to throw out the case, saying it was only a tactic to delay the lawsuits. Jones' lawyers denied the allegations.”
Reprinted with permission from Alternet.
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