Alex Jones’ Infowars will be auctioned off to pay Sandy Hook families

Alex Jones’ fate as a broadcaster most likely depends on who buys his business. Photo / Nic Antaya, The New York Times

A Houston bankruptcy judge ruled today that assets from conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ Infowars empire can be auctioned off to help pay families of the Sandy Hook mass shooting victims the defamation awards he owes them.

The auction, set for mid-November, will include Infowars’ website, social media accounts, broadcasting equipment, product trademarks and inventory owned by Free Speech Systems, Infowars’ parent company.

Jones’ fate as a broadcaster most likely depends on who buys his business. Though the Infowars name and assets are potentially of interest to a range of entities on the far right, under the terms of the sale anyone can bid.

Jones spent years spreading lies that the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, that killed 20 first-graders and six educators was a hoax aimed at confiscating Americans’ firearms, and that the victims’ families were actors complicit in the plot. The families suffered online abuse, personal confrontations and death threats from people who believed the conspiracy theory.

Relatives of 10 victims sued Jones in 2018 for defamation and were awarded more than US$1.4 billion (about $2.2b) in damages in trials in Texas and Connecticut. But the most the families are likely to ever see is a small fraction of that, and they have been divided over how to equitably distribute the money.

As the cases headed to court in 2022, Jones’ company declared bankruptcy. Jones declared personal bankruptcy soon afterward.

Since then, the families have been wrangling in bankruptcy court over assets and revenue that are far less than they originally envisioned. Jones’ personal and business assets combined are worth less than US$10 million, according to independent valuations presented in court. His lawyers and other bankruptcy professionals will be paid first, leaving even less for the families.

The Connecticut and Texas sides divided sharply over how to go after Free Speech Systems. Lawyers for the families who sued Jones in Connecticut – relatives of eight victims – favoured shutting down the company and liquidating its assets, with the money distributed among the family members.

Lawyers for families who sued Jones in Texas favoured a settlement in which he would pay them a percentage of his income over the next decade, most likely netting more money for each relative. As a condition of the latter deal, Jones would have had to agree never to mention the shooting again.

The asset sale is probably the least lucrative option for the family members, though its potential for shutting down Infowars appealed to some. Juries in the two lawsuits awarded individual relatives widely varying amounts, and lawyers from the Connecticut and Texas sides have been duelling over how to fairly allocate the money.

The situation is further complicated by the fact a jury has yet to decide how much in damages Jones must pay Lenny Pozner and Veronique De La Rosa, whose son Noah Pozner died in the shooting.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

Written by: Elizabeth Williamson

Photographs by: Nic Antaya

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