A court-appointed bankruptcy trustee has indicated that right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ Infowars media empire will be sold to pay off some of the $1.5 billion (£1.18 billion) owed to Sandy Hook school massacre victims’ relatives.
In a court statement filed on Sunday, the trustee, Christopher Murray, stated that he intends to dissolve Infowars’ owner, Free Speech Systems, and “liquidate its inventory”.
The announcement comes a week after a bankruptcy judge ruled that Mr Jones’ personal assets will be liquidated to compensate the victims for disseminating disinformation about the deadly 2012 massacre at a suburban Connecticut school.
The judge assigned Mr Murray to handle the liquidation of Mr Jones’ assets.
The conspiracy theorist and his company, Free Speech Systems, filed for bankruptcy in 2022 after Mr Jones was sentenced to pay the $1.5b in numerous defamation cases over false claims about the Sandy Hook incident, in which 20 children and six adults were slain.
Despite the bankruptcy filings, a judge ruled last year that Mr Jones would be obligated to pay the payment.
However, the Sandy Hook family have yet to receive any money from Mr Jones as the bankruptcy process has progressed.
In his filing, Mr Murray requested that a judge halt Sandy Hook families’ efforts to collect money from Mr Jones, arguing that this would interfere with the process of selling off his Infowars parent business, Free Speech Systems.
He did so when Sandy Hook parents attempted to confiscate money from Free Speech Systems, which Mr Murray claimed would “throw the business into chaos.”
“The Trustee seeks this Court’s intervention to prevent a value-destructive money grab and allow an orderly process to take its course,” he stated in his motion.
The BBC has contacted Mr Jones and a lawyer representing the Sandy Hook relatives for comment.
Mr Jones had stated that Infowars would only continue its broadcasts for a few months.
“I’m going to try to move forward and maximize the amount of money we can make at Infowars to then have a wind-down,” Mr. Fisher said.
Jones spoke outside the courthouse following a previous bankruptcy hearing, according to CNN.
For years, Mr Jones, 50, wrongly claimed that the Sandy Hook shooting was “staged” as part of an intricate scheme to curtail gun rights.
The incorrect hypotheses resulted in harassment and death threats against victims’ families.
