The families of the victims of the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting have offered floundering conspiracy theorist Alex Jones a viable “path out of bankruptcy.” All he has to do, their attorneys said in a new settlement offer, is agree to pay them a minimum of $85 million over 10 years—a mere 6 percent of the $1.5 billion he owes them in defamation damages.
The offer was filed last week as a part of Jones’ personal bankruptcy battle in Houston, according to the Associated Press. The deal would also require him to pay half of any annual income he makes over $9 million in the same period, “with a proportionate reduction of liabilities for each year of full payment.”
“Jones has failed in every way to serve as the fiduciary mandated by the Bankruptcy Code in exchange for the breathing spell he has enjoyed for almost a year. His time is up,” it reads.
ADVERTISEMENT
The Infowars founder was also offered the option to liquidate his assets and fork the proceeds over to his creditors. But either way, the filing states, the “time has come for Jones to choose whether he is willing to pay his creditors a reasonable portion of what they are owed or would prefer to remain embroiled in costly and time-consuming litigation for years to come.”
Jones filed for bankruptcy last December; his company, Free Speech Systems, followed suit over the summer. A judge ruled last month that Jones couldn’t use the declaration to evade paying out the verdicts, won in a civil defamation suit brought by eight of the Sandy Hook families in Connecticut last year.
Besides, the families’ lawyers pointed out, Jones has continued to live large since his Chapter 11 filing, noting pointedly in previous court documents that his personal expenditures over a three-month period this year totaled $242,219. Last week’s settlement offer estimates that Jones’ estate is burning through up to $90,000 a month to fund his “extravagant lifestyle.”
Jones’ attorneys in the bankruptcy case had not directly responded to the families’ offer by Tuesday, according to the court docket. But the AP reported that, at a Monday court hearing, lawyer Vickie Driver suggested that even an $85 million price tag would be too steep for Jones.
“There are no financials that will ever show that Mr. Jones ever made that... in 10 years,” she said.
A day before the proposal was filed last week, Jones’ lawyers said that he was working on his own plan to get out of bankruptcy. That “draft plan” will be presented next month, they said.
Jones was ordered by the court to shell out nearly $1.5 billion to the families over the various lies he propagated about the shooting while on the air, including that it had been a “false flag” operation staged by the government to interfere with Americans’ right to bear arms. While Jones has admitted to the falsehoods, he is appealing the judgments.
