A U.S. bankruptcy court trustee is planning to shut down Alex Jones’ Infowars media platform and liquidate its assets to help pay the $1.5 billion in lawsuit judgments Jones owes for repeatedly calling the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting a hoax.

In an “emergency” motion filed Sunday in Houston, trustee Christopher Murray indicated publicly for the first time that he intends to “conduct an orderly wind-down” of the operations of Infowars’ parent company and “liquidate its inventory.” Murray, who was appointed by a federal judge to oversee the assets in Jones’ personal bankruptcy case, did not give a timetable for the liquidation.

Jones has been saying on his web and radio shows that he expects Infowars to operate for a few more months before it is shut down because of the bankruptcy. But he has vowed to continue his bombastic broadcasts in some other fashion, possibly on social media. He also had talked about someone else buying the company and allowing him to continue his shows as an employee.

  • LovstuhagenOPM
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    5 days ago

    I do not understand this - he advanced a conspiracy involving a mass shooting. Only in the most indirect way would he really be defaming anyone by implying that the official narrative is a lie. Potentially he has implied that the parents are in on the lie - I don’t see any other way as to how it would be remotely rational to charge him - but it seems a bit bizarre to not allow his right to free speech take precedent since he is commenting on a public event involving public discourse and it is not designed to deprive anyone involved of their civil rights or negatively impact their business.

    Also doesn’t help that he didn’t show up to several trials (which made him lose by default) and lied about damn near everything.

    I am not that familiar with him, but the guy seems unstable, and it would not be beyond the pale to suggest he has a psychological disorder that should be considered in this, right… If you were to tell me that Alex Jones has issues distinguishing truth from fiction and keeping a story straight in his head and was not to be held culpable in a conventional sense for the lies he said, I would not be surprised.

    I suppose you’d need some court approved psychologist to make that part of the offiical narrative, but it certainly should be part of the unofficial considerations of everyone involved with this - we are taking a guy with very little credibility who is famous for having an audience of people who want to hear wild, crazy thing, either because they believe in garbage or for entertainment… Having him be seriously sued into the dirt and financially destroyed forever for this is pretty wild for any free country to do.

    • Alexstarfire@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      5 days ago

      He didn’t imply the parents were lying. He said it directly. Among many other things.

      The place for him to make your claims was court. And multiple juries found him guilty. I don’t see how you can claim free speech was breeched when multiple juries found him guilty. In different states. It’s not some one off.

      And if you want to know about the cases, you can look them up. They’ll have all the facts presented to the court in them.

      • LovstuhagenOPM
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        5 days ago

        It does not matter much to me in this case what the courts decided because it clearly violates the principle of free speech as I understand it.

        To me, these decisions represent the decay of all our rights.

        • Alexstarfire@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          5 days ago

          Your rights end where other’s begin. I don’t see how you can have that opinion on this when those affected by it have had so much trouble in their lives as a result.

          The decisions made by the courts aren’t new precedence. They’re upholding what is already there. You can say you don’t like it and that they got it wrong, but reality indicates otherwise.