Alex Jones is ‘holding firearms’ for Jan. 6 rioters, bankruptcy docs show
As Infowars founder Alex Jones is facing bankruptcy for damages he owes to the families of victims of the mass killing at Sandy Hook Elementary School, a new filing shows the right-wing conspiracy theorist has been “holding firearms” for those who participated in the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Jones, who owes nearly $1.5 billion to the families after years of saying the 2012 massacre in Newtown, Conn., in which 20 children and six adults were killed, was a hoax, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the Southern District of Texas last December. Jones’s personal financial disclosures were shared in a bankruptcy filing on Tuesday that was obtained by The Washington Post.
In the section of the bankruptcy statement that asks Jones to identify property he owns or controls for somebody else, the right-wing conspiracy theorist described the items he has in limited detail.
“Holding firearms for certain January 6th participants to be provided,” the entry says.
The filing does not state why Jones, who participated in the Stop the Steal rally that preceded the attack on the Capitol, is holding the weapons for the rioters or where they are located.
Read the bankruptcy filing:
In addition to the firearms, Jones, 49, lists boats and lifetime helicopter access as part of his personal financial disclosures, records show. Jones reported his gross income in 2021, the most recent year that data is available, as $617,143.02, according to the filing. He reported a gross income of nearly $639,000 in 2020, the filing shows.
The filing says that Jones has reported assets worth an estimated $10 million — significantly less than the $1.4 billion in a Connecticut case and $45.2 million in a Texas case that he owes to the Sandy Hook families in damages. Jones and his legal team have said they would appeal.
Neither an Infowars spokesperson nor Vickie L. Driver, Jones’s personal bankruptcy attorney, immediately responded to requests for comment early Thursday. Driver said at a Tuesday hearing that while Jones will continue working at Free Speech Systems, the bankrupt parent company for the Infowars website, her client has taken a pay cut during the bankruptcy. She added that Jones also has a pending request to the court to increase his salary, and that his employment with Free Speech Systems is predicated on “a good result in this case.”
“Just because someone is making alternative plans to support their family does not necessarily mean that they’re abandoning ship,” Driver said, according to Bloomberg Law, the first to report the story. “It’s just that I think any prudent person would think about how they would take care of their family or make a living if they weren’t going to be able to do so at their current place of work.”
Driver did not specify how much of a pay cut Jones has taken during the bankruptcy.
The personal financial disclosures come about a month after Norman Pattis, the lawyer who represented Jones in the landmark defamation case in Connecticut, was suspended from practicing law in the state for six months after a judge found that he improperly released the confidential medical records of family members of Sandy Hook victims. In a trial in which family members testified that they had experienced years of harassment and anguish because of Jones, the discovery process found that about 4,000 pages of their medical and mental health records were released to lawyers in the case. Barbara Bellis, a superior court judge in Connecticut, wrote in an order that Pattis not only improperly released the records but he did so without even telling the recipients that the material was sensitive and protected by court order.
Jones was issued a subpoena in November 2021 by the House select committee investigating the attack on the Capitol. Jones’s role in organizing the rally that preceded the attack on the Capitol, along with his promotion of former president Donald Trump’s false claims of election fraud and urging of people to travel to Washington for the Jan. 6 rally, made him a person of interest. Jones turned over more than two years’ worth of text messages to the House committee last August, including messages showing how Jones was in touch with Trump’s allies.
About 1,000 people have been charged and arrested for crimes linked to the insurrection at the Capitol, according to a Justice Department database.
After Free Speech Systems filed for bankruptcy in July, Jones did the same in December, marking the $969 million worth in bankruptcy claims that he owed to 17 people in the Sandy Hook cases as “disputed.” Jones claimed his estimated debts to be between $1 billion and $10 billion, and said last year that his debts were primarily business debts and estimated that he owed 50 to 99 creditors.
This week’s filing of his personal financial disclosures shed more light on the extent of Jones’s debt and financial situation. Before he filed for bankruptcy, Jones reported that he paid more than $747,600 to a group of 11 creditors that included JPMorgan Chase, his attorneys, Allstate and Travis County, Tex., according to the filing.
Within a year of filing for bankruptcy, Jones reported that he paid more than $1.3 million in debts that he owed to people classified as “insiders,” which include any relatives or business partners. Among those listed is Erika Wulff Jones, his second wife whom he married in 2017 and with whom he has a child. Alex Jones reported paying Erika Wulff Jones more than $680,800 as part of what’s listed as a “premarital agreement.”
Driver announced this week that Jones has made a “solemn promise” to refrain from posting additional episodes to his new subscription-based podcast. Connecticut families said that Jones had indicated on his show earlier in the week that he would spend more of his time on “Alex Jones Live,” his new venture, and less on Infowars.
His attorney said at a Tuesday hearing that Jones’s promise to not post more episodes for his new podcast was done to address the concerns from Sandy Hook parents that Jones could transition to the show full-time as his main source of revenue and liquidate a bankrupt business that owes them money.
U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Lopez said at a hearing in Houston that he’s considering a request from the parents of a 6-year-old boy killed in the Sandy Hook massacre for a third trial against Jones, according to Reuters. Leonard Pozner and Veronique De La Rosa, whose son Noah was among the victims, had previously sued Jones and Free Speech Systems for repeatedly lying about the shooting. After a Texas court previously found Jones and the parent company liable, Lopez said he would consider the parents’ request at a March 24 hearing.
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