Alex Jones back on the hook for damages after bankruptcy choose sends Sandy Hook circumstances to Texas court

NEWTOWN — A federal bankruptcy choose has launched extremist Alex Jones from Chapter 11 protection and despatched his defamation circumstances again to state courtroom in Texas, the place the dad and mom of two boys slain within the Sandy Hook massacre await jury trials to see how a lot Jones will have to pay them.

“(We) are relieved but not shocked that Mr. Jones’ latest stunt has failed like all the others,” stated Mark Bankston, an lawyer representing four mother and father who gained two defamation instances in opposition to Jones in Texas last year. “Mr. Jones will now be held to account in a Travis County courtroom in the coming weeks, and these families will lastly have the closure and recompense they deserve.”

Bankston was referring to a month-long saga in Texas bankruptcy court docket where three Jones-controlled entities filed for Chapter 11 protection one week before a jury trial was to start to find out what damages Jones owed two parents he defamed when he called the worst crime in Connecticut history “staged,” “artificial,” “manufactured,” “an enormous hoax,” and “fully pretend with actors.”

The bankruptcy decide’s ruling means the first postponed defamation awards trial in Texas could begin as quickly as June, Bankston advised.

Among the disclosures that came out of the bankruptcy court hearings is that Jones has suffered financially as the Sandy Hook defamation circumstances have progressed. Jones has spent at least $10 million on authorized fees and has lost no less than $20 million, his representatives said in court. Jones did not file for bankruptcy safety himself, his representative mentioned in courtroom, because he feared it would damage his model within the conspiracy theory market.

In the meantime in Connecticut, the place an FBI agent and eight households who lost family members in the massacre of 26 first-graders and educators at Sandy Hook Elementary Faculty additionally won a defamation case in opposition to Jones in 2021, a listening to was deliberate in Connecticut chapter courtroom on Tuesday that is expected to end in an identical final result because the Texas cases.

The explanation has to do with a maneuver the Sandy Hook households took right here and in Texas to outflank Jones in bankruptcy court.

Jones’ Chapter 11 filing put on hold the 2 trials in Texas and the third planned in Connecticut, since federal courtroom trumps state proceedings. Legal professionals for households here and in Texas fought Jones’ Chapter 11 petitions as “bad religion” filings, since Jones himself and his money-making Free Speech methods did not file for bankruptcy. The three Jones-controlled entities that sought Chapter 11 protection have a mixed month-to-month income of $38,000 while Jones himself made at the least $76 million in 2019, his representatives said in court docket.

In response, the households dropped Jones’ three business entities in chapter from their lawsuits. Because the households no longer had a stake in the bankruptcies, they argued, their lawsuits towards Jones and Free Speech programs may very well be released back to the state courts for trial. The households argued that their target was Jones himself and Free Speech Techniques, who were not celebration to the bankruptcies.

In rulings on Thursday and Friday, the federal bankruptcy courtroom in Texas agreed.

It stays to be seen whether or not Connecticut bankruptcy court will rule equally. The trial to award defamation damages to the Sandy Hook households in Connecticut had been scheduled for August.

rryser@newstimes.com 203-731-3342