DAVE COLLINS
Updated Thu, September 14, 2023
Alex Jones, second from right, arrives at the Travis County Courthouse in Austin, Tuesday Aug. 2, 2022. Lawyers for several Sandy Hook families are criticizing Alex Jones' personal spending as they seek nearly $1.5 billion they won in lawsuits against the Infowars host, for his calling the 2012 Newtown school shooting that killed 26 a hoax.
HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — As Alex Jones continues telling his Infowars audience about his money problems and pleads for them to buy his products, his own documents show life is not all that bad — his net worth is around $14 million and his personal spending topped $93,000 in July alone, including thousands of dollars on meals and entertainment.
The conspiracy theorist and his lawyers file monthly financial reports in his personal bankruptcy case, and the latest one has struck a nerve with the families of victims of Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. They're still seeking the $1.5 billion they won last year in lawsuits against Jones and his media company for repeatedly calling the 2012 massacre a hoax on his shows.
“It is disturbing that Alex Jones continues to spend money on excessive household expenditures and his extravagant lifestyle when that money rightfully belongs to the families he spent years tormenting,” said Christopher Mattei, a Connecticut lawyer for the families. “The families are increasingly concerned and will continue to contest these matters in court.”
In an Aug. 29 court filing, lawyers for the families said that if Jones doesn’t reduce his personal expenses to a “reasonable” level, they will ask the bankruptcy judge to bar him from “further waste of estate assets,” appoint a trustee to oversee his spending, or dismiss the bankruptcy case.
On his Infowars show Tuesday, Jones said he’s not doing anything wrong.
“If anything, I like to go to nice restaurants. That is my deal. I like to go on a couple of nice vacations a year, but I think I pretty much have earned that in this fight,” he said, urging his audience to donate money for his legal expenses.
Jones' spending in July, which was up from nearly $75,000 in April, included his monthly $15,000 payment to his wife, Erika Wulff Jones — payouts called “fraudulent transfers” by lawyers for the Sandy Hook families. Jones says they’re required under a prenuptial agreement.
Also that month, Jones spent $7,900 on housekeeping and dished out more than $6,300 for meals and entertainment, not including groceries, which totaled nearly $3,400 — or roughly $850 per week.
A second home, his Texas lake house, cost him nearly $6,700 that month, including maintenance and property taxes, while his vehicles and boats sapped another $5,600, including insurance, maintenance and fuel.
Sandy Hook families won nearly the $1.5 billion in judgments against Jones last year in lawsuits over repeated promotion of a false theory that the school shooting that killed 20 first graders and six educators in Newtown, Connecticut, never happened.
Relatives of the victims testified at the trials about being harassed and threatened by Jones' believers, who sent threats and even confronted the grieving families in person, accusing them of being “crisis actors” whose children never existed.
Collecting the astronomical sum, though, is proving to be a long battle.
When Jones filed for bankruptcy, it put a hold on the families' efforts to collect the lawsuit judgments in state courts as a federal bankruptcy court judge decides how much money Jones can actually pay his creditors.
Lawyers for the families have said in court that it has been difficult for them to track Jones' finances because of the numerous companies he owns and multiple deals among those corporate entities.
Meanwhile, Jones is still broadcasting. He and his media company, Free Speech Systems, are seeking court approval for a new contract that would pay him $1.5 million a year plus incentive bonuses, up from his current $520,000-a-year salary. The company also filed for bankruptcy protection last year.
On Infowars, Jones said Tuesday that he is more than $1 million in debt. If he gets the salary increase, he said, he would be left with about $300,000 a year after paying his legal bills.
“With all my expenses and things, that’s nothing,” he said. “And I don’t care about that. I’m wearing a shirt I bought, like, eight years ago, and I love it to death.”
Financial documents filed by Jones and his bankruptcy lawyers say his personal net worth is around $14 million. His assets include a home worth $2.6 million, a $2.2 million ranch, a $1.8 million lake house, a $500,000 rental property, and four vehicles and two boats worth more than $330,000 in total. Jones had nearly $800,000 in his bank accounts on July 31, court documents show.
Free Speech Systems, meanwhile, continues to rake in cash from the sale nutritional supplements, survival supplies and other merchandise that Jones hawks on Infowars, bringing in nearly $2.5 million in revenue in July alone, according to Jones' financial reports, which he signed under penalty of perjury. The company's expenses totaled about $2.4 million that month.
Meanwhile, some of the Sandy Hook families have another pending lawsuit claiming Jones hid millions of dollars in an attempt to protect his wealth. One of Jones' lawyers has called the allegations “ridiculous.”
Jones, who is appealing the $1.5 billion in lawsuit awards against him, sat for a deposition in his bankruptcy case Tuesday and Wednesday in his hometown of Austin, Texas, where Infowars is based.
On his show Tuesday, he denied financial wrongdoing.
“I’m not Lex Luthor ... when it comes to finances and life,” he said. “I mean, I’m a straight-up guy. I’m a do-good in Mayberry RFD.”
Will Carless, USA TODAY
Fri, September 15, 2023
Following a USA TODAY investigation into the US military’s apparently failing efforts to combat extremism, a coalition of human rights groups pressed the Secretary of Defense on his progress. Meanwhile, conspiracy theorist Alex Jones has been spending lavishly on himself, without paying his victims a cent, a pro-Russia propagandist accused of participating in the Jan. 6 insurrection has fled to Russia, and a Boogaloo Boy in Nevada receives a life sentence for threatening a 2020 Black Lives Matter protest.
It’s the week in extremism
.
Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin speaks during a meeting with German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius at the Pentagon in Washington, Wednesday, June 28, 2023.
Coalition calls for transparency in military’s anti-extremism effort
In July, USA TODAY published an investigation of the U.S. military’s two-year effort to combat extremism in the ranks. We found that despite a set of orders from the Secretary of Defense and a later task force, most reforms appear to have either failed or stalled.
On Wednesday, a coalition of 35 human rights groups called on the Secretary of Defense to open up about the military’s extremism reform efforts, citing USA TODAY’s work.
The coalition wrote a letter to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, urging him to make more information public about the reforms he announced in April 2021.
In 2021, Austin ordered a study into the extent of extremism in the military’s “total force,” which USA TODAY exclusively reported was completed in June 2022, but has yet to be released.
“Extremism undermines the strength of the military and our democracy,” the groups, led by Human Rights First, wrote in the letter.
Alex Jones, living the high life, hasn’t paid victims a cent
Last year, conspiracy theorist and extremist broadcaster Alex Jones was ordered to pay more than $1.5 billion in judgments to families of children killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook massacre. A series of court rulings ordered the payments after Jones spread false conspiracy theories about their children’s deaths. While Jones still hasn’t paid his victims a cent, he spent $93,000 on himself in July, according to bankruptcy filings reported by the Associated Press.
Jones has been paying his wife $15,000 a month. In July, he spent $7,900 on housekeeping, $6,300 on meals and entertainment, and $6,700 on a second home, the AP reports.
“If anything, I like to go to nice restaurants. That is my deal. I like to go on a couple of nice vacations a year, but I think I pretty much have earned that in this fight,” Jones said on his Infowars show.
Christopher Mattei, a lawyer for the victims said the families will continue to fight: “It is disturbing that Alex Jones continues to spend money on excessive household expenditures and his extravagant lifestyle when that money rightfully belongs to the families he spent years tormenting,” Mattei said.
Pro-Russian activist reportedly flees to Russia
Charles Bausman, a pro-Kremlin propagandist, has apparently fled to Russia, leaving behind property worth almost $1 million, according to a new report from the Southern Poverty Law Center. The SPLC previously reported that anonymous online activists had identified Bausman among people in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
Bausman, who according to the report has lived in Russia on-and-off for 30 years, founded the pro-Kremlin website Russia Insider in 2014.
Bausman left the U.S. for Russia soon after Jan. 6, 2021, the report says, apparently abandoning a property in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. He is reportedly delinquent on the taxes for the property.
“Of all the people that have been arrested after Jan. 6 ... I might have been one of them had I not fled to Russia!” Bausman said on an appearance on a Russian-language streaming radio show last July, according to the report.
The Justice Department told the SPLC it would not comment on possible investigations. As USA TODAY has previously reported, many people who have been identified in the Jan. 6 riot have yet to be charged.
Running tally: January 6 arrests Running tally: January 6 arrests
In this file photo a member of the far-right militia, Boogaloo Bois, walks next to protestors demonstrating outside Charlotte Mecklenburg Police Department Metro Division 2 just outside of downtown Charlotte, North Carolina, on May 29, 2020. - A far-right movement whose followers have appeared heavily armed at recent US protests has suddenly become one of the biggest worries of law enforcement, after one killed two California police officers.
(Photo by Logan Cyrus / AFP)
Boogaloo sentenced to life for threatening BLM protest
Late last week, Stephen Parshall, a 39-year-old former Navy enlistee and Nevada resident, was sentenced to life in prison with parole for his role in a plot to bomb an electrical substation near a Black Lives Matter protest in Las Vegas in 2020.
According to court documents, Parshall self-identified as a member of the “Boogaloo” movement, a loosely affiliated, mostly online collection of anti-government and pro-gun extremists who advocate for a second civil war they call the “Boogaloo.”
Parshall also previously pleaded guilty to distribution of child pornography and two counts of sexual exploitation of children.
Statistic of the week: 86%
That’s the percentage of a set of 300 posts promoting hate that were reported to X, formerly known as Twitter, but were not removed, according to a new report released Wednesday by the Center for Countering Digital Hate.
The CCDH has previously been highly critical of X’s content moderation efforts. Elon Musk, who owns X, sued the center in late July, claiming it is driving away advertisers.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Alex Jones hasn't paid Sandy Hook victims any of the $1.5B he owes
No comments:
Post a Comment