In 2018 the families of 10 Sandy Hook victims filed four defamation lawsuits against Mr. Jones in Texas and Connecticut. Mr. Jones, an avid supporter of former President Donald J. Trump, is also under scrutiny for his role in organizing events surrounding the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection.
A united front. Alex Jones, a far-right conspiracy theorist, is the focus of a long-running legal battle waged by families of victims of a mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., in 2012. Here is what to know:
Defamation lawsuits. The families of 10 Sandy Hook victims sued Mr. Jones in four separate lawsuits. The cases never made it to a jury; Mr. Jones was found liable by default in all of them because he refused to turn over documents, including financial records, ordered by the courts over four years of litigation.
Mr. Jones’s line of defense. The Infowars host has claimed that his right to free speech protected him, even though the outcome of the cases was due to the fact that he failed to provide the necessary documents and testify.
Three new trials. A trial in Austin, Texas this July was the first of three that will determine how much Mr. Jones must pay the families of the Sandy Hook victims. The other two are scheduled for September, but are on hold after Mr. Jones put the Infowars parent company, Free Speech Systems, into Chapter 11 bankruptcy last week, halting all pending litigation.
Late last year, shortly before Mr. Jones lost all four Sandy Hook lawsuits by default after refusing to submit business records and testimony ordered by the court, he began transferring up to $11,000 per day and up to 80 percent of Infowars’s sales revenue to PQPR, the families’ filing said. Infowars’s explanation for the payments has shifted over time, with the company’s representatives most recently saying that the money was payment on debts to PQPR for merchandise.
The families’ sweeping victory in the four suits set the stage for three trials in which juries would decide how much he must pay the families in damages. Shortly before the end of the first trial, which resulted in the award of nearly $50 million in damages to the Sandy Hook parents, Mr. Jones put Free Speech Systems into Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
The families say the payments are “fraudulent transfers designed to siphon off the debtor’s assets to make it judgment-proof” — in essence, an effort by Mr. Jones and his family to be the first party paid in any liquidation of his empire. The families are also pursuing a fraudulent transfer of assets lawsuit against Mr. Jones and his companies in Texas.
Contrary to Mr. Jones’s company’s claims, the new filing said, “PQPR performs no services, has no employees and has no warehouse,” adding that “money that Free Speech Systems pays PQPR ends up in Alex Jones’s pockets.”
Mr. Jones has continued to parlay his Sandy Hook lies and the Texas jury award into a boon for his business. Like the former president, Mr. Jones claims he is being pursued by “deep state” enemies, and the Sandy Hook lawsuits are part of a sweeping conspiracy to silence him.
Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/25/us/politics/alex-jones-lawsuits-bankruptcy.html
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