VICTORIA, Texas (AP) — Infowars filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection as the website’s founder and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones faces defamation lawsuits over his comments that the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting was a hoax.
The bankruptcy filing Sunday in Texas puts civil litigation on hold while the business reorganizes its finances.
In its court filing, Infowars said it had estimated assets of $50,000 or less and estimated liabilities of $1 million to $10 million. Creditors listed in the bankruptcy filing include relatives of some of the 20 children and six educators killed in the 2012 school massacre in Connecticut.
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The plaintiffs in that case have said they have been subjected to harassment and death threats from Jones’ followers because of the hoax conspiracy that Jones promoted. Jones has since conceded the shooting did happen. The families have already won defamation lawsuits against Jones.
Another newly filed lawsuit accuses Jones of hiding millions of dollars in assets. “After Alex Jones was sued for claiming the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary was a hoax, the infamous conspiracy theorist conspired to divert his assets to shell companies owned by insiders like his parents, his children, and himself,” reads the lawsuit, which was filed in April in Austin, Texas, by some of the Sandy Hook families.
According to the lawsuit, Jones is accused of drawing about $18 million from his Infowars company over three years, starting in 2018 when the defamation lawsuits were filed. Jones is also accused of claiming a “dubious” $54 million debt around that time to another company, which the lawsuit alleges is indirectly or directly owned by Jones. An attorney for Jones has called that allegation “ridiculous.”
