Alex Jones Hit With $1 Million In Court Fees Over Sandy Hook, Parkland

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Alex Jones was ordered to pay more than $1 million for his continued disregard of court proceedings related to multiple defamation lawsuits against him. In a court filing released Friday, Judge Maya Guerra Gamble ordered that Jones and his company Free Speech Systems, LLC, pay a total of $1,078,653 to several people suing Jones for lies he spread about them on his conspiracy platform Infowars. He has 30 days to pay the more than $1 million sum to the different parties, according to the filing. Jones will have to pay all attorneys’ fees and other expenses to two pairs of Sandy Hook parents who won their lawsuits against him last year after Jones routinely failed to provide discovery documents and appear for depositions. The parents, who lost their children in the 2012 school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, dealt with death threats after Jones falsely and continuously claimed they were “crisis actors.” The largest sum he’s been ordered to hand over — more than $730,000 — will be split between the four Sandy Hook plaintiffs. Those plaintiffs are being represented by Texas law firm Farrar & Ball, not to be confused with another Sandy Hook lawsuit that Jones lost brought on by Connecticut law firm Koskoff Koskoff & Bieder. Jones was also ordered to pay the plaintiffs additional separate sums, with amounts ranging from $6,000 to more than $100,000 to cover their attorneys’ fees and expenses. Though Jones has already lost his lawsuits against the Sandy Hook families, he’ll still have to sit in a Texas courtroom next week while a jury decides how much he will ultimately have to pay two of the plaintiffs in damages for his lies. Jones recently failed to show up to a deposition in Texas related to a Sandy Hook case. He was ultimately fined $75,000, then got the money back when he eventually showed up. He’s continued to evade accountability. On Sunday, just a week before he’s set to attend a trial in his Sandy Hook case, Jones filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, a possible last-gasp attempt at pausing his incoming judgment. The Sandy Hook parents filed a petition under the Texas Uniform Fraudulent Transfer Act earlier this month accusing Jones and Infowars of conspiring to divert his assets to shell companies owned by insiders like his parents, his children, and himself. Remington Arms, the gunmaker that marketed the weapon used to kill 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook, also filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. At the time, the Sandy Hook families who sued the gunmaker accused Remington of using the bankruptcy to avoid accountability. Earlier this year, Remington lost its lawsuit and was ordered to pay the families $73 million. It remains to be seen if anyone will see a dollar from Jones due to his bankruptcy filing.