Disgraced broadcaster Alex Jones got some more bad news this week. A few ago Alex filed for bankruptcy, seeking to protect himself from the roughly $1.5 billion in damages he was ordered to pay Sandy Hook families after losing several defamation cases earlier this year. Unfortunately that bankruptcy filing is now essentially moot. Houston Judge Christopher M. López just ruled that bankruptcy will not protect Jones from those damages. The ruling lifts a stay that automatically went into place when Jones filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
That approximately $1.5 billion in damages he owes various Sandy Hook families following several defamation suits stemming from his years of conspiracy theorizing is now up for collection by those families, according to López’s ruling, which states in part to “immediately to (i) allow the Sandy Hook Post-Trial Families’ Cases to continue to proceed to entry of final judgment and (ii) once judgments are entered, to allow appeals, if any, to proceed and the Sandy Hook Post-Trial Families to pursue, respond to and participate in any such appeals without further order of the Court.”
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Connecticut reporter John Craven added more details to the story on Twitter, stating that “[t]he families agreed to not pursue collection efforts yet,” although the precise reason for this (be it some sort of strategy for collecting the money later on or something else) isn’t known.
Craven also reports that Jones is seeking a pay raise from the judge presiding over his bankruptcy proceedings, “something the Sandy Hook attorneys and US bankruptcy trustee are both vigorously opposing.” According to Jones’s own attorneys, he needs a bump in salary in order to keep doing his “Infowars” program, which he needs to do in order to pay off the various rulings against him. His attorney Vickie Driver puts it simply: “He’s just out of money.”
A ruling on the question of Jones’s “Infowars” salary is scheduled to happen on January 20.