Alex Jones Ordered To Cough Up $1 Million, Gets Defamation Suits Delayed With Conveniently Timed Bankruptcy Filing
But it's not all rage bait on the Alex Jones front.
Alex Jones’s gambit to delay the defamation cases brought by Sandy Hook shooting survivors by declaring bankruptcy looks to be paying off.
Today, Travis County District Court Judge Maya Guerra Gamble delayed the Texas trial which was to begin Monday in light of the bankruptcy filing by three of the named defendant companies, although Jones himself has not filed for bankruptcy protection. And in Connecticut, Superior Court Judge Barbara Bellis also canceled a scheduled conference, noting that the Chapter 11 filing “appears to remove the entire case, including the plaintiffs’ claims against the other defendants.”
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After Jones referred to the victims as “crisis actors” on his podcast and claimed the murders of 26 people at an elementary school was “a giant hoax,” the victims’ families suffered years of harassment and death threats from Jones’s demented audience. Jones spent years ducking discovery in their defamation suits, earning himself “death penalty” sanctions in both Texas and Connecticut along the way.
The only issue remaining at the upcoming trials is how big a check Jones is going to have to cut these plaintiffs. And according to a lawsuit filed by the Texas plaintiffs last week under the Texas Uniform Fraudulent Transfer Act, Jones has already “doomsday prepped” for the inevitable judgment day by siphoning off $18 million for himself, and routing another $54 million through invoices to “shell companies owned by insiders like his parents, his children, and himself.”
This did not stop Jones from using the lawsuits as a fundraising vehicle, according to the Washington Post.
“We’re already totally maxed out, and I’m already expending my backup capital,” he told his audience Monday. “And I’m very happy to do that, I’m honored to do that, but once it runs out that’ll be it, we’ll have to start laying off people and cutting stuff.”
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Which is exactly the level of sincerity you’d expect from a guy who sent his lawyers to tell a judge he was too sick to be deposed at the very moment he was on air calling for Dr. Anthony Fauci’s execution.
But it’s not all rage bait on the Alex Jones front. According to the Connecticut News-Times, Judge Guerra Gamble gave Jones 30 days to fork over $1 million in legal fees to the Sandy Hook plaintiffs and a Boston man whom Jones falsely claimed was part of a plot to stage a “hoax” shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.
As for the plaintiffs, they’re soldiering on.
“Alex Jones is just delaying the inevitable: a public trial in which he will be held accountable for his profit-driven campaign of lies against the Sandy Hook families who have brought this lawsuit,” the Connecticut plaintiffs’ lawyer Christopher Mattei told PBS.
On the other hand, justice delayed is justice denied. And this guy is doing a pretty bloody good job at delaying.
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Texas judge orders Alex Jones to pay $1M in legal fees for Norwalk native, 4 Sandy Hook parents [Connecticut News-Times]
Liz Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.