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Topics: US News, Politics, Crime, Conspiracy Theories
Rachel Lang
Topics: US News, Politics, Crime, Conspiracy Theories
Infowars host Alex Jones has revealed he has less than $12 million of the eye watering sum he owes the victim's families of the Sandy Hook school shooting.
The right-wing conspiracy theorist was ordered to cough up at least $965 million in damages in October by a court in Connecticut.
An additional $473 million in punitive damages was also declared for defaming the families.
In August, he was told to pay a further $49 million by a Texas court to two other parents of the Sandy Hook children who died in the 2012 tragedy.
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The total amasses a monstrous figure of nearly $1.5 billion owed to the grieving parents and families who not only lost their loved ones, but were harassed and abused for years in the wake of the tragedy.
Jones, who claims he does not have that sort of money, has filed for bankruptcy in Houston.
Reuters reports he did not appear in court on December 7.
Instead, Jones' lawyer, Vickie Driver, told the court he does want to settle with the Sandy Hook families but he simply just does not have the funds.
However, attorney for the Sandy Hook families David Zensk did not buy Jones' claim one bit.
He told the court, as per Reuters, Jones had spread vicious lies about the Sandy Hook shootings and therefore questioned if the Infowars host would fully disclose his whole financial reality.
Driver added that Jones had also covered up information pertaining to Inforwars and another company he has, Free Speech Systems, which adds further doubt to his bankruptcy claims.
At the hearing, Zensky said: "We're here because Mr Jones's stock in trade is lies, not truth."
Jones has repeatedly claimed on Infowars he doesn't have the funds to fork out the full damages for the families.
"Ain’t going to be happening. Ain’t no money," he said in one episode, as per The Guardian.
Jones added: "This must be what hell’s like - they just read out the damages. Even though you don’t have the money."
While Jones has claimed he only has a meagre $12 million in the bank and in assets, an economist estimated in August that the right-wing conspiracy peddler was worth about $270 million, as per the New York Times.
Lawyers for the Sandy Hook families said during the Connecticut trial that Jones' lies about the massacre boosted traffic to his website.
They also claimed it made him millions of dollars in revenue as the victims' families suffered a decade-long campaign of harassment and death threats by Jones’ followers.
During the trial, Jones admitted that his claims about the shooting had been false, but refused to apologise to the families.
28 people were killed on December 14 in 2012 after a lone gunman entered the grounds of Sandy Hook Elementary School to execute what would be one of the deadliest school shootings in US history.