Alex Jones’s InfoWars media platform is to be shut down in an “orderly” liquidation process and its assets sold off to help pay the $1.5 billion penalty Mr. Jones has been ordered to pay for calling the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting a hoax, according to a plan revealed to the public by a U.S. bankruptcy court trustee.
Mr. Murray wrote in the filing that he intends to carry out an “orderly wind-down” and liquidate the inventory of Free Speech Systems LLC, abbreviated in court documents as FSS, the Jones-owned company behind the media platform InfoWars.
Mr. Jones and FSS filed for bankruptcy protection after relatives of the Sandy Hook shooting won lawsuit judgments of more than $1.4 billion in Connecticut and $49 million in Texas.
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In a development that prompted the liquidation trustee to file his motion on June 23, lawyers for one of the 20 children killed in the Sandy Hook shooting asked a state judge in Texas to order FSS to turn over some of its assets, including money in bank accounts, to the victims’ families.
Judge Gamble’s order included some real estate held by FSS, as well as all its money, including money held in any bank accounts held or controlled by any third parties at the direction of FSS.
Mr. Murray, the liquidation trustee, said in his Sunday filing that the judge’s order to turn over some FSS assets to one of the Sandy Hook families was disruptive to his plans for the orderly liquidation and sell-off of the company’s assets.
“The specter of a pell-mell seizure of FSS assets, including its cash, threatens to throw the business into chaos, potentially stopping it in its tracks, to the detriment of the interests of the (Jones’ personal liquidation bankruptcy) for which the trustee is responsible,” Mr. Murray wrote in the filing. “Thus, the Trustee seeks this court’s intervention to prevent a value-destructive money grab and allow an orderly process to take its course.”
Mr. Murray, who did not disclose a timetable for his plan to carry out the orderly liquidation of InfoWars’ parent company, also asked the judge to clarify his authority over Mr. Jones’s bank accounts.
It is unclear when the bankruptcy judge will address the trustee’s request.
“Just sit back and watch, the next few days, the next week or so, I'll be able to tell you what’s really going on here,” Mr. Jones said. “But InfoWars is hard to kill and I’m hard to shut down.”
Christopher Mattei, a lawyer for the Sandy Hook families in the Connecticut lawsuit, told The Associated Press that they supported Mr. Murray’s emergency motion, adding that Judge Gamble’s request by the Texas plaintiffs would “undercut” a fair distribution of Mr. Jones’s assets to all the families.
Attorneys for the Texas plaintiffs were not immediately available for comment.
