Disgraced and reputedly bankrupt broadcaster Alex Jones is on the hook for some $1.5 billion in damages for defaming families of the Sandy Hook shooting across two lawsuits, with still more fallout from the case still to come. Now, Jones has offered to settle up with a payment of that would come to a minimum total of $55 million, coming from a proportion of his income and proceeds from the sale of property over the next ten years.
$55 million is a lot of money but little more than a drop in a $1.5 billion bucket, and the Sandy Hook families who won their cases in court have filed a motion of their own to liquidate practically everything Jones owns in order to get what is rightfully theirs.
Now, both proposals are on their way to US Bankruptcy Court in Houston, Texas, where they will be debated between now and February, when hearings and a final decision on the matter are currently scheduled.
Christopher Mattei, a Connecticut attorney representing the Sandy Hook families, released a press statement criticizing Jones’s offer:
“The families’ plan is the only feasible path for ensuring that Jones’ assets are quickly distributed to those he has harassed for more than a decade.”
The Jones proposal has him paying out at least $5.5 million per year over ten years, a similar figure to what his company Free Speech Systems had offered a month earlier.
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Attorneys representing Sandy Hook families have their work cut out for them in securing the settlement. They’ve taken issue with Jones’s reported personal spending topping out at $90,000 per month over the course of 2023, and they’ve filed another lawsuit accusing him of hiding millions of dollars from creditors, an allegation that an attorney for Jones dismissed as “ridiculous.”
Jones is also in the process of appealing the defamation awards as well, asserting that his claims that the shooting was a hoax and that the surviving family members were “crisis actors” fell under protected free speech, something that few if any judges or juries that have considered the matter have agreed with so far.