Those Who Live By The Sword ...

Alex Jones (aged 48), is variously described as being an American conservative,  or alt-right, or far-right radio show host .....

Alex Jones Radio And Web Host In Court

  ..... but is also well known as prominent conspiracy theorist.

He has hosted The Alex Jones Show from Austin Texas, which is heard across the USA and is also available on-line, and also runs the website, InfoWars (plus NewsWars, Banned.Video, and PrisonPlanet), all of which promote his and others conspiracy theories, hard right news, and also 'fake news', as well as selling commercial products. He apparently believes in the New World Order conspiracy, which he picked up as a teenager after reading the 1972 book None Dare Call It Conspiracy, by conspiracy theorist Gary Allen, that states that there is a sweeping conspiracy by the establishment's power elite (aka the insiders) to run most modern nations.

As with all these extreme/shock jocks, the more noise, attention he gathered, the more successful financially he became, so its perhaps its no big surprise that he gave a voice for Unite the Right rally (a white supremacist organisation meeting), as well as promoting the conspiracy theories that the US government either concealed information about, or outright lied or falsified the news about the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School mass shooting, the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, the September 11 attacks, and the 1969 Moon landings (yes, even that hoary old favourite) ...  amongst the other stupid conspiracies pushed by Jones websites/media, includes the ideas that the US government is creating floods and tornados as "weather weapons" against the American population, and that chemicals introduced to drinking water (fluoride? ... shades of United States Air Force Brigadier General Jack D. Ripper in Dr Strangelove?), are making frogs homosexual.

Also as a Trump supporter (despite some falling outs), Jones has vocally supported the false claims of electoral fraud in the 2020 presidential election, that of course Trump actually convincingly lost, but has refused to accept .... thus leading to the Capitol Hill invasion, in which Mr Jones also played a prominent part.

So he has, putting it simply, made a very good living selling diet supplements, gun paraphernalia and survivalist equipment ($800,000 dollars a day by some accounts), all because of the preposterous nonsense he has been peddling since the late 1990's, but is self declared to the courts as being worth around just $6.2m (despite allegedly having earned well over that amount, and regardless of having to allegedly spend large amounts on legal fees) .... however, in all his misinformation campaigns on various topics, he apparently made one major miscalculation, which was in his repeated claims that the Sandy Hook Elementary School mass shooting was a false flag operation by gun control advocates. He stated that "no one died" during the incident, and that it was “staged”, “synthetic”, “manufactured”, “a giant hoax,” and “completely faked" with actors. Presumably in his warped world, it was intended to support gun control advocates.

What he forgot, was that all those children killed had parents and family, who were not just going to let him spout off under the USA's free speech amendments. That they and teachers families, and even FBI officers who attended the scene, would and did sue him for defamation in 2018 (six families of victims and an FBI agent who responded to the attack), from then on Mr Jones was ill advised not to apologise profusely, and concede that he had no evidence for his claims, and wholeheartedly retract them, making a large donation to a suitable charity etc .... Instead he defended his himself, saying that the defamation action was an attack on his free speech rights under the First Amendment. However lawyers for the families later countered that "Speech is free, but lies you have to pay for."

He was then almost immediately found to be in contempt of court, even before any trial started, as he failed to produce witnesses and materials relevant to the court procedures, so was  fined a total of $126,000 in October and December 2019. 

Obviously his biggest problem in defending himself was that like most of the garbage he had spewed out over the decades, he had absolutely no proof of any of his claims that the children's deaths never happened, or that parents such as Leonard Pozner (father of six year old Noah Pozner, who was the youngest victim of Sandy Hook School shooting) were 'crisis actors', as he had previously claimed. 

Even after he was facing the defamation cases, he just couldn't stop himself ... when one of the Sandy Hook parents and defamation plaintiffs, Jeremy Richman, committed suicide in 2019, Jones initially offered condolences to his family, but then within hours, went on air to suggest that Richman had in fact been 'murdered', and that his death may even have had something to do with special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian election interference.

Eventually Mr Jones was required to testify under oath and forced to undergo a sworn deposition, along with three other defendants related to the operation of his Infowars website. So now, under legal advice, in the last week of March 2019, Mr Jones acknowledged the Sandy Hook deaths were '100% real', but he then claimed that his mental state meant that he had "almost like a form of psychosis", where he "basically thought everything was staged" ..... yep, the mental incompetence defence.

He then made several increasingly desperate attempts to get the mounting number of Sandy Hook defamation cases against him, thrown out, or dismissed throughout 2021, or at least to overturn the lower court decisions that forced him to testify under oath, but lost them all, with the US Supreme Court even declining in 2021 to hear his appeal against a Connecticut court sanction in the defamation lawsuit. The game was now up, and on or about March 29, 2022, Jones offered a settlement of $120,000 to each of the thirteen people involved in the defamation lawsuits ... the offer was rejected.

A new legal front opened up in April 2022, when the plaintiffs accused Jones of hiding assets worth millions of dollars, soon after he began being sued for defamation by the families of Sandy Hook victims, and they opened another lawsuit in Texas. The new lawsuit alleged that:

• Jones drew $18 million from the Infowars company beginning in 2018 and accuses Jones of claiming a "dubious" $54 million debt at about the same time, to another company alleged by the lawsuit to be also owned by Jones.
• Jones "conspired to divert his assets to shell companies owned by insiders like his parents, his children, and himself."

As expected Jones legal team rejected these claims as "ridiculous" and denied that there had been any attempt to conceal assets. But within days, three companies owned by Jones filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, which suspended further civil litigation claims against them. On July 29, 2022, the parent company of InfoWars, Free Speech Systems, LLC, also filed for bankruptcy, with alleged liabilities of between $50 million and $100 million, and assets of between $10 million to $50 million, this despite generating about $56 million in revenue last year alone, selling clothing, vitamins and mineral supplements. .

But the blood is now in the water and the legal sharks are circling .... Mr Jones faces a world of financial and reputational damage, as confirmed by a lawyer for the families involved in a Connecticut lawsuit against Jones stating that "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." 

In fact so bad is the reputational fallout from Jones cases expected to be, that in June 2022, Jones's current attorneys asked the judge in the Connecticut lawsuit to drop them from the case. The judge merely cited thirteen occasions in the past four years that Mr Jones' attorneys had asked to replace each other, or be dropped from the case .... so refused the request.

The first of three jury trials to determine defamation damages against Jones commenced on the 25th of July 2022, and it was confirmed that the plaintiffs' would be seeking an award of $150m (£123m) from the jury .... But once again Jones still couldn't stop himself, he continued to broadcast and commented that one of the plaintiffs, Neil Heslin, the grieving father of victim Jesse Heslin, was "slow" and being "manipulated by some very bad people." 

However as Mr Jones is the only person testifying in his defence (his supporters having evaporated), he was forced once again to admit that the Sandy Hook shooting was "100% real," and he also agreed with his own attorney, that it was “absolutely irresponsible” to promote falsehoods about the shooting and its victims. He was also caught lying under oath by the judge after:

1. Firstly stating that he had always complied with court requests (remember those fines for his failure to provide documents requested by the court).
2. Denying receiving text messages about Sandy Hook (his own defence team had 'accidentally' sent the plaintiffs legal team his entire text records for a two year spell, and then not taken any steps to identify it as privileged or protected information, despite being told of the error) ... with lawyers like this, who needs plaintiffs?
   

.... So its safe to say that its not going well for Mr Jones. 

Closing arguments in the first defamation damages case began on Wednesday the 4th of August 2022, before jurors determined that Mr Jones should pay $4.1m (£3.3m) in compensatory damages, but then further determined that he pay another $45.2m in punitive damages the day after. Now despite his claims to relative poverty, he's going to find it hard to wiggle out of this, even if he's tried to conceal funds or filed for bankruptcy protection under a modified Chapter 11 legislation. However the total damages amount will likely be reduced on appeal (which is the usual case in the US system, where punitive damages are typically capped at four times the amount of compensatory damages e.g. $16.4m).

But remember, this is only the first of at least three court cases to ascertain damages (he had already lost all four Sandy Hook defamation cases in the lower courts, and so the final fight was just for the amount of the damages) ..... Oh, and in December 2021, Erika Wulff Jones his second wife, was arrested for domestic violence after she struck him 'over 20 times' - including with a soap bottle - and tried to hit him with a five-pound stone ball (she missed) .... Mr Jones said said his wife suffered from a 'medication imbalance,' whilst the police reported that they detected alcohol on her breath.

Mr Jones is also fighting legal subpoenas, requiring that he give testimony on the Capitol Hill riots, as he was a speaker at a rally just before that event ... He claims that he does not want to testify before the committee because he fears Congressional leaders will accuse him of lying under oath. 'I don't want to testify before them, because they will lie and say I lied.' Owen Shroyer, his Infowars colleague had also spoken at the same rally event, and was charged with crimes related to it in August.

If the pen is truly mightier than the sword, and you live by the pen, then you still risk dying by the sword .... whether Mr Jones is sunk without trace, or is somehow able to be reborn with his crackpot supporters after these cases are settled will be interesting to see. Mr Trump still wields great power over the Republican Party and should he regain the Presidency in two years time, would he help Mr Jones?

Pre-post Update: On 02/12/2022 Alex Jones filed for personal bankruptcy after he was ordered to pay almost $1.5bn (£1.2bn) for falsely claiming the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting was a hoax. 

In his bankruptcy filing he states that he has between $1m and $10m of assets, and between $1bn and $10bn of debt, with between 50 and 99 creditors (including the individually named relatives of the victims, and an FBI agent who responded to the attack), with a third defamation trial over the Sandy Hook shooting due to begins in Texas in December 2022.

His legal team are also suffering .... Connecticut Superior Court Judge Barbara Bellis has suspended attorney Norm Pattis from the practice of law for six months, after he failed to safeguard the Sandy Hook plaintiffs’ protected medical and psychological records. He has appealed.

Another of his attorney's Andino Reynal, is facing substantial financial penalties for his part in “a bad faith scheme to disrupt this litigation with an abusive and frivolous bankruptcy and groundless removal.” 

I'll be interested to see how poor he is when all the legal dust settles .... will he just find a spare radio microphone somewhere, and just resume broadcasting .... building a new fortune from the same old audience? 

Update 17/02/2023:

Mr Jones has now declared his 'true' income and outgoings to the courts, to support his bankruptcy filing ..... I guess one man's bankruptcy, is another man's wealth. In this case, his financial documents submitted by his attorneys, put his personal net worth around $14 million.

Update 20/10/2023:

Apparently Mr Jones lawyers tried to argue that his bankruptcy filing now protected him from the financial claims of the Sandy Hook victims families, but U.S. District Judge Christopher Lopez of Houston, Texas, ruled that the 'Infowars' host, cannot use the 'bankruptcy' protection, to avoid paying the more than $1.5 billion to the families he owes to families who sued him, over his broadcast conspiracy theories, that the Sandy Hook school massacre was a hoax.

However, whether the families will ever see much money is another matter .... In response Jones Jones posted a video:

“It’s all academic. I don’t have a million dollars,” he said. “My company has a few million, but that’s just to pay the bills and my product in the future. So we are literally on empty. So this idea that … we’re going to take your money away doesn’t exist because the money doesn’t exist. It’s all political".

“At the end of the day, they won’t take my free speech away,” he said. “I’m still going to be on the air one way or another.” .... so no lessons learnt, and not much contrition either.

To add insult to injury for the victims families, while Jones has been asking his audience to donate to him, and also to continue to shop on the Infowars website, so that he can keep broadcasting his shows and pay his legal costs, he continues to spend large amounts on his personal lifestyle.

Its been reported that, according to his monthly financial reports in the bankruptcy case, Jones’ personal spending topped $93,000 in July 2023 alone, including thousands of dollars on meals and entertainment, while the Sandy Hook families have yet to collect any of the money that juries have awarded them. Justice delayed is Justice denied ..... in the UK we have court bailiffs to seize assets and freeze bank accounts, obviously the US operates differently.

There are still more Sandy Hook claimants, whose cases are yet to come to court, but there seems little chance of them receiving any cash, judging from the results so far.

Update 29/11/2023:

The debtors that Mr Jones currently owes $1.5bn to, realising that they will likely see nothing after he filed for bankruptcy, despite the judgement that he would still owe them $1.5bn, have made Mr Jones an offer he can't refuse .... pay us $85m over 10 years, or fire-sale all your material assets and give us the proceeds as final settlement ... oh plus the offer would also require Mr Jones to pay the families half of any income he earned over $9m (£7m) per year. This offer was prompted when they noted that "based on his monthly operating reports, he has spent approximately $900,000 since commencing" bankruptcy proceedings. 

But, being the kind of man that he really is, he has already had his lawyer argue in court on Monday, that the $85m figure was unrealistic and that Mr Jones would be unable to pay it.  

Update 15/06/2024:

The latest court decision means his house, cars, guns, boats ($8.6m in personal assets) can be seized to be sold .... but his company Free Speech Systems, which owns the Infowars brand is untouched .... it still makes profits selling dietary supplements and the decision does not remove Free Speech Systems' liability.