Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones cannot use his personal bankruptcy to escape paying at least $1.1 billion in defamation damages stemming from his repeated lies about the 2012 Sandy Hook elementary school massacre, a U.S. bankruptcy judge ruled Thursday.
Couldn’t have happened to a more deserving “person”. This isn’t going to bring the kids back but at least it’ll stop people from fucking harassing the parents decades later. Jones is mentally fucked up and he deserves to be locked up.
And yet I believe he still will not pay them a dime… just like if trump loses all his court cases in New York, I really believe he will just refuse to pay and force them to chase him around asking for that money for the rest of his life. Rich people never have to pay fines in the US, its all for show, they always find a way to get around everything.
The victims will almost certainly not see the full $1.1B, or even anything close to that. Not because Jones will hole up his money and refuse to pay, but because Jones doesn’t have the assets to cover it, and never will. With a judgement hanging over him, he will be unable to raise the capital necessary to ever pay it back–it takes money to make money, especially when you need to crack the billion dollar mark.
Jones himself is still fucked. Rich people get away with stuff because they hire good lawyers. Jones forgot that part of the plan.
Jones hired good lawyers, then fired them, then hired more, then fired them, then hired more, then fired them… etc.
During the sandyhook trials he went through something like 30 lawyers. Often the parents lawyers interacted with a different set of lawyers basically on every deposition.
I have to imagine Jones’s lawyers told him to STFU, which he never could do.
You are aware that he doesn’t have a choice whether he pays, right?
Court orders will be issued for his assets. You don’t see rich people paying for their crimes because they get away with it. Successful scumbags don’t put themselves in positions like this.
Right. Successful scumbags have lawyers that are worth a damn, and make some kind of defense before the judge stops waiting and enters a default judgement. Jones already failed that part. The rest is inevitable.
Successful scumbags listen to their lawyers every now and then BEFORE they get sued. At least then if they do get sued their asses are coverable.
Yeah but the way he incorporated the business, his parents own most of the business interests, which is going to take a lot to claw back. It’s really insidious.