Sandy Hook families fight over control of Alex Jones’ assets : NPR

A court-appointed bankruptcy trustee for conspiracy theorist Alex Jones has filed an emergency motion asking a court to settle a dispute among Sandy Hook families over what should happen to the company that runs Jones’ Infowars show.

The families won nearly $1.5 billion in damages in two separate defamation suits against Jones for spreading lies that the 2012 school shooting never happened. The majority of the families, which are in Connecticut, are accusing a set of parents in Texas of attempting a “money grab” that would get them “outsized recoveries,” possibly leaving the rest of the families with little to nothing.

The dispute follows a federal bankruptcy judge’s decision earlier this month to liquidate Jones’ personal assets — and dismiss the bankruptcy protection for his company, Free Speech Systems.

The Texas parents quickly filed papers in state court to collect their damages from FSS, arguing they are well within their rights to try to recover whatever they can. But the trustee in Jones’ personal bankruptcy immediately asked the bankruptcy court to stop them. He says it’s within his purview to control Jones’ ownership stake in FSS and maximize its value to pay the families. The trustee and the other families say an orderly shutdown and sale of FSS would result in more money overall and a more equitable distribution of the proceeds among all the families.

Writing in an emergency motion to stop the parents’ collection attempt, trustee Christopher R. Murray says “the specter of a pell-mell seizure of FSS’s assets, including its cash, threatens to throw the business into chaos,” which would amount to a “value-destructive money grab” that he argues would imperil plans to “wind-up FSS’s operations and liquidate its inventory.”

The bulk of the families also want the bankruptcy court to stop the move, noting that the “race to the courthouse risked a ‘winner take all’ outcome.” It would be “the most disastrous end possible,” these families’ lawyers wrote in court papers, if parents “holding less than 5% of the liquidated claims against FSS and Jones would be entitled to recover 100% of the value of FSS, which is Jones’ most valuable asset.”

For his part, Jones is vowing to continue his Infowars show, even if part of some new arrangement; for example, if his company is bought by an ally of his or by another company.

“Infowars is hard to kill, and I’m hard to shut down,” he said in a video posted on X. “Really, overall, it’s just me. … I can work anywhere. They’re not shutting anything down.”