Houston (AFP) – A US judge on Friday approved the liquidation of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ personal assets to help repay the nearly $1.5 billion in damages he owes the families of a mass shooting at a Connecticut school, media reported.
The ruling by a bankruptcy court in Houston throws into doubt the future of Jones’s far-right website InfoWars that has long been notorious for peddling misinformation.
The serial provocateur had been ordered to pay nearly $1.5 billion in damages for calling a 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook elementary school in the state of Connecticut –- which left 20 first graders and six adults dead — a “hoax.”
But Jones subsequently declared personal bankruptcy in Texas, his home state, saying his liabilities far exceeded his assets that were worth between $1 million and $10 million.
Free Speech Systems, the Texas-based parent company of InfoWars, also declared bankruptcy.
The judge on Friday allowed Jones to convert his personal bankruptcy case into a straightforward liquidation, but was yet to rule on whether his company should also be liquidated, US media reported.
Jones has amassed what experts call a fortune by successfully merging the conspiracy theories with merchandise and dietary supplements from his InfoWars store.
The site hawked male vitality supplements and testosterone boosters, while claiming the government was feminizing men or turning them gay by using chemical pollutants.
Jones accused the government of deliberately putting fluoride in drinking water, while his store peddled fluoride-free toothpaste.
His audience, he claimed, can survive various doomsday scenarios with other products that his store can supply — storable food, body armor and even components for homemade guns.
© 2024 AFP
