Infowars Host Alex Jones Connecticut filed for personal bankruptcy protection Friday on the heels of jury and judge ordered him to pay $1.44 billion in damages For relatives of the massacre victims who were shot at Sandy Hook Elementary School, a new court filing shows.
An attorney for the Sandy Hook families later told CNBC that Jones’ move would not protect their property from legal damages imposed on them for making false claims that the shooting that killed 20 first-graders and six adults had died, was a hoax.
Jones filed a voluntary petition under Chapter 11 in the US Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas, court records show.
In that filing, the notorious conspiracy theorist estimated his liabilities to be between $1 billion and $10 billion, against assets of between $1 million and $10 million.
He also estimates that he has 50 to 99 creditors.
Creditors identified by name in the bankruptcy filing include parents of children killed at a Newtown, Connecticut, elementary school on December 14, 2012, who successfully sued for defamation, as well as an FBI agent who visited the scene. The response was butchery.
The largest unsecured creditor in the filing was Robbie Parker, whose 6-year-old daughter, Emily, was murdered that day. Parker, who received $120 million in damages from Jones, was accused by Jones of being a “crisis actor” along with others who participated in the plot to carry out the shooting.
“Like every other cowardly move Alex Jones has made, this bankruptcy will not work,” an attorney for the Sandy Hook families told CNBC in an email.
“The bankruptcy system does not protect anyone who engages in willful and egregious attacks on others, as Mr. Jones did,” said Chris Mattei, an attorney with the firm Koskoff, Koskoff & Beider.
“The American judicial system will hold Alex Jones accountable, and we will never stop working to enforce the jury’s decision,” Mattei said.
A Connecticut jury ordered Jones to pay nearly $1 billion in October. At a loss to Sandy Hook relatives. The judge in that case added $473 million in punitive damages to that bill the following month.
Jones’ company, Free Speech Systems Inc., filed for bankruptcy protection in July. The filing came weeks before another civil jury in Texas awarded Jones and his company $50 million in damages to the mother of a child killed in Sandy Hook.
Relatives of Sandy Hook victims have said that the harassment they received after the shooting by people who believed the massacre was a hoax continued this year.
On Thursday, Jones conducted an interview with Ye, formerly known as Kanye West. During that Infowars appears, Yeh made a series of antisemitic remarks, praised Nazi leader Adolf Hitler and talked about his recent dinner with former president Donald Trump and white supremacist Nick Fuentes.