Judge: Alex Jones must pay families of Sandy Hook shooting victims despite bankruptcy

A Texas judge has ruled that Infowars host Alex Jones can’t use bankruptcy protections to avoid paying money to the families of the victims of the Sandy Hook shooting.

Jones is intended to pay $1.1 billion to the families who sued him over his conspiracy theories that claim the massacre — which left 26 people, including 20 children, dead — was a hoax.

Jones filed for bankruptcy in December after a Connecticut jury ordered him to pay $965 million in damages to 15 relatives of the victims. A Connecticut judge added $473 million to the judgment in attorneys’ fees.

The decision by the Texas U.S. District Judge Christopher Lopez is another significant defeat that punishes Jones for spreading misinformation and falsehoods about one of the deadliest school shootings in U.S. history.

Jones filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, but Lopez ruled the protections do not apply in findings of “willful and malicious conduct.”

According to The Associated Press, Jones posted on his Infowars website that the ruling will have little effect because he is already more than $1 million in debt.

Jones promoted a theory that the U.S. government either concealed information about or falsified a Newtown, Conn., shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School that left 26 dead in 2012. Sandy Hook families won a lawsuit in 2022 over repeated promotion of the false theory, that the shooting never happened.

Jones has asked his viewers to donate so he can continue his show and pay his legal fees. The AP reviewed Jones’s recent monthly bankruptcy report that showed he spent $93,000 in July, including tens of thousands of dollars on meals and entertainment.

Another lawsuit is pending in Texas, brought by the parents of 6-year-old Noah Pozner, one of the children who was killed in the shooting. A trial date has not been set but the amount of money Jones owes could grow, the AP reported.