Court fines Alex Jones $1 million to pay litigants' legal fees after filing for bankruptcy protection

Alfred Branch
Patch
Tue, 19 Apr 2022 19:09 UTC

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Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones reportedly was ordered to pay $1 million in legal fees for the families of some Sandy Hook victims.

The Infowars founder was ordered to pay legal fees for families of two Sandy Hook victims, and a Norwalk native falsely accused of a crime.

A day after he filed for bankruptcy protection, Infowars founder Alex Jones was ordered by a Texas court to pay $1 million in legal fees for the families of two victims in the Sandy Hook mass shooting, the News-Times reported.

Comment: See: Alex Jones' Infowars files for bankruptcy protection

Additionally, Jones, who lost two defamation lawsuits in connection with the 2012 Sandy Hook murders, also must pay legal fees of a Norwalk native who was falsely accused on Jones's Infowars website of being the shooter in the fatal 2018 Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Florida.

Jones and Infowars have 30 days to pay the legal fees for Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis, the parents of first-grader Jesse Lewis, who was killed in the mass slaying, and for Lenny Pozner and Veronique De La Rosa, the parents of first-grader Noah Pozner, who also was killed.

The two were among the 20 students and six educators killed at the school in December 2012. Jones had called the slaying a hoax, but later recanted those remarks and said it did happen.

Jones also must pay the legal fees for Marcel Fontaine, who was falsely accused of the Parkland, Florida mass killing.

Comment: More from newstimes:

The order is from the same Texas judge who is overseeing two upcoming trials to determine damages from defamation lawsuits Jones lost to Sandy Hook parents, and comes one day after three Jones-controlled businesses filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
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Meanwhile Guerra Gamble has scheduled a conference on Wednesday to discuss whether the first trial to award defamation damages will begin as scheduled on April 25. The question is complicated even though a bankruptcy filing automatically delays a civil proceeding, because neither Jones himself nor his Free Speech Systems filed for bankruptcy protection. Both Jones and Free Speech Systems are defendants in the lost defamation suits.

In Connecticut, where Jones lost a third defamation lawsuit to an FBI agent and eight families whose loved ones were slain in the Sandy Hook massacre, Superior Court Judge Barbara Bellis called off a conference planned for Wednesday after learning Jones had filed a separate motion in bankruptcy court "which appears to remove the entire case, including the plaintiffs' claims against the other defendants."

"Therefore, this court will take no further action unless and until all or part of this matter is remanded back by the bankruptcy court," Bellis wrote.