After being found guilty of defaming the grieving parents of Sandy Hook mass
shooting victims, Alex Jones, was ordered to pay $1.4 billion of damages.
However, new reporting indicates that not only does it appear that he is trying to
hide his money, but he's taking advantage of some new laws pertaining to bankruptcy
back in 2022 to skirt any financial responsibility to the victims he defamed.
So let's get to the details.
What has he been up to and what do we think is likely to happen?
Now, keep in mind that Jones is estimated to have a net worth of $270 million.
Now Jones has transferred millions of dollars in property, cash, and
business deals to family and friends, including to a new company run by his
former personal trainer, all potentially out of reach of creditors.
He has also spent heavily on Luxuries including $80,000
on a private jet, bodyguards, and
a rented villa where he was in Connecticut to testify at a trial last fall.
We had also previously shared with you that he declared bankruptcy.
He declared both businesses and personal bankruptcy last year.
And that was the first red flag indicating that he was gonna try to skirt having to
pay any damages to the families.
Earlier this Month, Jones offered to pay the families and his other creditors
a total of 43 million over five years as part of the bankruptcy plan,
which lawyers for the families immediately dismissed as laughable and
ridiculed with financial holes.
Now, looking into this story, it's pretty clear to me that for the families,
it's not even about the money, it's about getting rid of Alex Jones, so
he doesn't continue victimizing people the way they've been victimized by him.
But he argues, and this is during his podcast last month,
if anyone thinks they're shutting me down, they're mistaken.
And he wants to keep doing what he's doing.
He has continued lying on his show on a regular basis,
because he thinks he's untouchable and he can get away with murder.
And based on some of the actions he's taken and
how difficult it might be to get him to pay the damages, he might be right.
Although Infowars has has estimated revenues of some 70 year,
hardly a mom and pop shop, Jones was able to file for
chapter 11 under the more lenient bankruptcy rules of
the Small Business Reorganization Act, known as Subchapter V.
The law first took effect in early 2020 but
was soon broadened to assist small businesses struggling during the pandemic.
So that is what he's exploiting in order to skirt having to pay damages.
>> Yeah, so this is an issue that affects the whole country and Alex Jones
is going to get to use a loophole meant for the rich and for corporations.
And to be fair to him, he is rich and he does have a bunch of companies, right?
So now does, that mean he should be able to skirt the law?
Of course not, but they didn't design the law for Alex Jones, they design it for
the rich donors that pay off Democrats and Republicans, right?
So what is it?
Chapter 11 subchapter V,
allows him to do this more effectively hide his money.
And the way that he's hiding his money is actually super brazen, it's barely hiding.
Some are hard to track, he went to the Cayman Islands on vacation at a place
where people go for vacation maybe.
But really most of the time people go to Cayman Islands to hide money.
So that part and other parts are a little bit vague.
Some is super obvious as Ana's gonna tell you, right?
But he's basically going, well, you let other companies declare bankruptcy and
avoid all their debtors, why not me?
And that's a real problem because, look,
Biden back when he was a senator, led the charge in making sure
the students could never declare bankruptcy on their student loans.
Because the bankers wanted all that money and
students are regular Americans who don't bribe American politicians.
So they crushed the average person.
But when it came to richer people and corporations,
they let him off the hook left and right.
You took all the money and you declare bankruptcy, golly, gee,
I transferred it to my dog.
[LAUGH] I don't have it anymore.
And they let them cheat to high heaven, and so
that's what Alex Jones is doing now.
>> So just to give you a sense of what changed with the bankruptcy laws,
when it comes to that Small Business Reorganization Act or Subchapter V.
Unlike traditional chapter 11 bankruptcy, Subchapter V gives creditors,
like the Sandy Hook families in this case, virtually no say in a restructuring plan,
nor can they file a competing plan, right?
So it actually disempowers the victims in this case who
are supposed to be paid damages.
They can challenge Jones's approach, but an impasse in talks could result in
liquidation of the company, putting them in line to collect a fraction
of the damages as opposed to something even close to resembling the full amount.
Now, a liquidation would end in four wars, but
Jones would be free to create another company just like it.
So that's why Jones is feeling honestly super cocky right now, because he's, no,
they think they're gonna get rid of me, they're not gonna get rid of me.
And it's because of this.
Now, he's also clearly hiding money.
Something that we've also talked about before.
For instance, last month, Jones, lawyers submitted a statement of his personal
finance affairs, prefaced by five pages of disclaimers saying that Jones did not
fully remember where he holds bank accounts.
>> No, he doesn't remember where he hides millions of dollars.
>> He doesn't have any ideas.
I mean, that's normal, right?
>> Where did I place it?
Is it under my pillow?
I can't tell.
>> Totally normal that people would know where their bank accounts are.
How many trusts he had set up over the past decade and
the whereabouts of his 2022 W-2 form documenting his wages.
He has not filed a federal income tax since 2020, by the way.
Now there's other pretty clear evidence of him trying to move money around.
For instance, his property was valued at a total of $10 million,
including a home lake house, and rural acreage worth 5.4 million.
The statement said, Jones owned two cars and two boats valued at $274,000 but
listed as unknown, the value of his premarital agreement,
eight limited liability companies, and several trusts.
His stated monthly income was $129,000, but 104,
000 of that was from sources that were not disclosed.
So those are some of the financial holes in his statement,
which is why his lawyer prefaced the statement by saying like,
there's a lot that Alex Jones doesn't know about his money.
In February last year, Jones also transferred a $3 million home overlooking
the Barton Creek Greenbelt in Austin to his current wife, Erica Wolfe Jones.
On July 29th, the parent company Jones fully owns free speech systems filed for
Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
At the core of the claim was 54 million that Jones said free speech
systems with claimed assets of only 14.6 million owed to PQPRA,
company controlled by Jones and his parents.
[LAUGH] I mean, is it really this easy?
It's that easy?
It's that easy to do this.
>> If you remember, when everybody was celebrating, they got Alex Jones.
I said, he's gonna hide the money and he's easily got away with this.
>> This isn't even hiding it guys.
This is him saying, this company had to file bankruptcy because
we owed money to another company that's also owned by me and my family.
>> So I can't give the creditors any money,
the people who won the lawsuit against me, but I can give myself money.
So I'm gonna bankrupt that company and give it all to me.
[LAUGH] Okay, but this whole system is a joke.
So we shouldn't be surprised by any of this.
That's why I told you on day one.
No, he's largely gonna get away with it.
There's no way they're gonna get that money.
By the way, he's now making even more money cuz he's telling his audience,
my God, I was just trying to shut us down, send me money right away by
the penis bills, by the plane bills, you got no right away, okay?
But he's just taking the money and using private jets,
buying $10 million properties.
He's, I mean I have to spend at least $129,000 a month, okay?
Wait, I thought you were running out of money,
who's got $129,000 a month that they spend, that's running out of money,
let alone all of the giant properties that he has.
>> So there is a little bit of hope, and I wanna be clear about that too, right?
Because he is moving money around, it looks super suspicious, I mean,
it's obvious.
And so a federal bankruptcy judge in Texas, Judge Christopher Lopez,
decided to replace Jones's Chief Restructuring Officer for
the Infowar's case.
And expanded the powers of the justice department appointed trustee
Melissa Housden who looked at everything and was like, no,
I see what you're doing here.
So the new chief restructuring officer ended the contracts with
these two other companies that Jones owned and operated, right?
So the whole point of that was so he would stop moving his money to
these other companies that were obviously controlled by him or family members.
When a times reporter called Charles Cicak,
who's apparently someone who works with Alex Jones to ask about his
work with Infowars, he claimed ignorance of the relationship and
then deleted references to Infowars from his social media accounts.
Now he was relevant because,
[LAUGH] last year Infowars asked the court to approve contracts tied to
an entrepreneur who had sold products through Free Speech Systems in the past.
And that's that Charles guy that I just referred to.
So he's again, trying to move money and assets to other individuals.
And this new woman who's come into the case,
who's now overseeing the restructuring of Infowars is kind of calling the shots and
preventing him from making certain moves that are meant to hide the money.
Whether that's enough, I guess we'll have to wait and see.
>> No, it's definitely not enough.
He'll get away with most of the money, but there is actually hope for
a different reason in my opinion.
So look, when the rich killed any effective way of getting money out of
people who declare bankruptcy without actually being bankrupt,
the alternate plans, let's just give you a quick example of that.
For example, if a company goes under and they owed the employees a lot of money for
their pensions, right?
In the old way of doing things before corrupt Democrats and
Republicans changed the law, the company that went bankrupt could say,
hey, listen, I've got a plan and
the plan is I transfer all the money to a new company owned by me, right?
And the employees would go wait, wait, wait, wait, and other creditors too, we
have an alternate plan and then the judge could pick the alternate plan, right?
Now, you don't even get to do an alternate plan so
they can cheat all the way that they like.
But the judge could decide that Alex Jones is not allowed to
declare bankruptcy in this case.
And in that case, the creditors would get control of his assets directly.
That's a win that would actually begin to bankrupt him, right?
But now it's a no brainer if you're an honest judge and you look at this and
you go, this guy's cheating like crazy.
He's doing it brazenly, I'm not gonna let him declare bankruptcy.
But the judges are probably worried, well, then what would that do to my beloved
business friends who also do the same trick?
Would that set a precedent that would not allow them to do this kind of chicanery,
right?
So, I don't know the judge, I don't know how they're gonna rule,
but this should be a no brainer except for
the fact that business interest do this same trick all the time.