Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones is allowed to continue operating his media company for at least the next two weeks while a bankruptcy court decides whether his assets need to be liquidated.
Following his loss in two major lawsuits that ordered him to pay $1.5 billion total to relatives of the victims of the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut in 2012, Jones and his Free Speech systems company recently filed for bankruptcy reorganization.
Those victims sued Jones after he said that the shooting — which resulted in six educators and 20 first graders at the Newtown, Connecticut, school — was a hoax. They claimed that it amounted to defamation and inflicted much emotional distress on them.
Those families are now opposing the reorganization plans that Jones has put forth.
They filed an emergency motion on Sunday to convert the bankruptcy reorganization put forth by Free Speech Systems into a liquidation. They are arguing that Jones hasn’t made any progress to show how he plans to pay the judgments from the lawsuit.
Christopher Lopez, a U.S. Bankruptcy Court judge in Houston, said earlier this week that he’ll address that motion on June 14. At that time, it’s expected that a decision on whether Jones’ assets and those of his company will be liquidated.
Last weekend, Jones took to his radio and web show with “emergency broadcasts” to claim that his company, which includes his Infowars show, are about to be shut down by the federal government and the U.S. bankruptcy system.
He even urged many of his listeners to form a human chain around his studios in Austin, Texas, to protect the show and the company.
That didn’t happen, though.
Still, Jones said on the show on Sunday:
“There’s really no avenue out of this. I’m kind of in the bunker here. And don’t worry. I’ll come back. The enemy can’t help but do this attack.”
He added:
“At the end of the day, we’re going to beat these people. I’m not trying to be dramatic here, but it’s been a hard fight. These people hate our children.”
Layers in the bankruptcy cases say that Jones’ weekend broadcasts came in response to disputes that have arisen between Jones, the bankruptcy court-appointed chief restructuring officer and another company that supplies nutritional supplements that Jones plugs on his shows.
According to one of the lawyers in the case, Jones made comments that were disparaging about the restructuring officer.
A lawyer who represents that supplement company — PQPR Holdings Limited, which Jones mostly owns — said that Jones is allowed to continue operating his company through the June 14 court date.
Yet that lawyer, Stephen Lemmon, told the judge that Jones wasn’t being cooperative during bankruptcy discussions. He even called for Free Speech Systems to be shut down immediately.
He said:
“We think that everybody is better off if this just gets shut down right now.”
