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Ana Merlan
A ruling by a Texas bankruptcy court brought Infowars back to the breaking point of death on Friday, an unexpected move that conspiracy leader Alex Jones tried to use to naturally make more money. This time, Jones is selling a corporate supplement owned by his father.
Judge Christopher M. Lopez issued a split ruling last week, saying Jones could simply comply with the plan requested by his lawyers and liquidate most of his assets to pay off the nearly $1. 5 billion he owed the children’s families and staff. Members killed in Sandy Hook after calling the mass shooting a “hoax. “
Although Jones has lost for default in defamation cases brought before Sandy Hook families in Connecticut and Texas, the families have yet to get a penny of the cash they are owed; Friday’s hearing is one step in a long-awaited day of trial for the man they say is the main reason for lies about the deaths of his children and the hatred, threats and harassment directed at their families.
But the ruling rejected a bankruptcy plan that would also have liquidated Free Speech Systems, the parent company of Infowars, the 25-year-old media empire that made Jones the main face of the conspiracy in the United States. At the moment, we don’t know how long. Jones responded to the crisis in the same way as always: by providing supplements, but this time with a curious twist.
As the bankruptcy process dragged on (again and again), Jones used his true skill with harsh results, urging his audience to send cash to an entity that does not directly belong to him and is not accountable to the Sandy Hook families and their enjoyees. some. other creditors.
In recent weeks, Jones has been airselling a new supplement site, Dr. Jones Naturals. He says it belongs to his father, David Jones, a dentist. Alex Jones suggested other people spend their money on it in addition to or instead of the Infowars internal store. “My father is a sponsor and he has a warehouse that is not under his control, full of products in a condition to ship to him,” Jones said on air last week. A representative for Free Speech Systems also told the court that Infowars stopped ordering supplements for its in-house store several weeks ago, expecting an imminent closure.
The products presented through Dr. Jones Naturals do not differ much from those sold by Infowars; the same old bouquet of colloidal silver products, a long-standing false panacea in the herbal fitness world, as well as something contradictorily called the Rocket Rest, a product called Top Brain, and, for the complete maximum, a product bundle called the Patriot Pack. . There is also a package of “super silver balls”, whose expiration date in the product photo is 2022.
“It’s an apparent fraud in bankruptcy court,” Chris Mattei, an attorney for the Connecticut families, told Wired, referring to Jones directing others on air to his father’s supplement website. “He does not intend to embezzle assets. “
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This isn’t the first time the families have credibly accused Jones of diverting Infowars assets to companies owned by family members. When the company first filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2022, lawyers for the Texas families accused Jones of “conspiring to divert his assets to shell corporations owned by insiders such as his parents, children, and himself. “One such corporation is an entity called PQPR Holdings, a purported Infowars supplier that claims to supply virtually everything in its online store. Other shell corporations, according to the lawyers, owned corporations that the lawyers said were “directly or indirectly” owned by Jones, his parents or children, and in some cases bore his initials (the fight over the PQPR continues in bankruptcy court).
For both teams of families, the fear about Jones’ alleged looting of the company on his way out remains very real. Lawyers for the families made it clear at the hearing that they are ultimately trying to maintain the company’s price so that they can create a fair distribution of Jones’ assets among his many, many creditors and, of course, save him from achieving what they claim. It is the newest fraudulent scheme that you use to hide money.
At the hearing, Jones’ assets were ordered dissolved. While he will be allowed to stay in his home, other non-public belongings, such as his gun collection, may also be auctioned. But since the court rejected Free Speech Systems’ bankruptcy plan, families can now prove the judgments they won in state court. The Connecticut plaintiffs had asked that the ruling pave the way for an “orderly cessation” of Jones’ cases, as several lawyers have said, while the Texas families favored a plan to keep the company operational for now, and their lawyers argue it would make it less difficult for them to file their clients’ claims.
In addition to promoting his father’s material, before the hearing, Jones also tapped into all the content and attention imaginable from the impending non-existence of Infowars. He sat down for glowing interviews with Tucker Carlson and Russell Brand broadcast by Infowars and reflected aloud on what he called “the sunset” of the network and “the countdown to the end of this place. “
The last week of Jones’ performances has been a huge hit with bizarre characters from across the conspiracy world. In addition to Brand and Carlson, Mikki Willis, the filmmaker of the viral mockumentary Plandemic, also came with friends to promote a new project. as was Stew Peters, a far-right anti-Semitic broadcaster who was recently appointed communications director for an armed national militia. Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes also hosted a segment in which he denounced Black Lives Matter.
On Friday morning, Jones posted a video of X driving down a Texas highway to the courthouse, claiming that “the Democratic Party and the deep state” were seeking to seize his assets and social media accounts.
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“It’s tyranny,” he said, adding that if Trump is re-elected, “he’s going to put them all in jail. “
Jones also claimed on air last week that shutting down Infowars would only make it more powerful. “They make it bigger in the end, you fools,” he said. After the verdict, at an “emergency show” over the weekend, Jones called the hearing “absolutely epic” and denounced as “false” allegations that he “stole money. “
The verdicts against Jones, Mattei told WIRED last week, were “a cathartic moment of validation. And on Friday, if the judge decides that the company will have to be liquidated, it will be at another time when they will do it. “They feel that they have done everything they can to protect others. They did not go to bed.
But evidently that’s not what happened. “It’s just biblical,” Jones extolled over the weekend, addressing one of his replaced young hosts. “It’s almost as if God was having fun with all of this and just needed the fight to continue. “
Even if the families have fought hard, Friday’s split resolution is a sign that their fight, for now, is not even close to ending. And while Jones and Infowars continue to protect their own unlikely survival, they continue to sell their in-house store and Dr. Jones’ Naturals.
“We’re selling it for $12 and change,” Jones said at one point in the “emergency broadcast,” extolling the virtues of a safe supplement. He paused for a moment. ” My father is. “
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