Company run by Alex Jones’ dad that wanted $68M from Infowars settles for $375K in Sandy Hook case
News Times, Connecticut/January 6, 2025
By Rob Ryser
A company run by Alex Jones’ father that claimed it was owed $68 million from Infowars will get a fraction of that amount according to a settlement brokered by a federal bankruptcy official who is trying to get the most money he can for Sandy Hook families.
The settlement, which would pay the company run by Jones’ father $375,000, is a “small fraction” of what the company sought from the parent company of Jones’ broadcast and merchandising business Infowars, and means Sandy Hook families who sued Jones for defamation will not “be forced to share pro rata in the proceeds of (Infowars’ parent company) assets,” said the federal bankruptcy official, Christopher Murray, in a court filing.
Details about the payout to Jones’ father were not provided in Murray’s 10-page filing in federal bankruptcy court in Houston on Friday, except that Murray wanted to settle the matter because he was making progress on the larger issue of selling Infowars after last month’s sale to Sandy Hook families and a satirical news site was thrown out by the judge.
"The trustee is in the process of negotiating a sale of the (Infowars’ parent company) assets,” Murray said in the filing. "As such, (I) believe that expedited consideration of the (settlement) is warranted.”
The lead attorney for Sandy Hook families who won a $965 million defamation judgment against Jones in a 2022 trial in Connecticut did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday morning about the payout to the Jones-affiliated company.
The company in question, PQPR is “indirectly majority owned by Jones, minority owned by Jones’ parents, and managed by Jones’ father, David Jones,” according to the court filing.
The filing explains that shortly after Sandy Hook families in Connecticut and Texas sued Jones for calling the 2012 massacre of 20 first-graders and six educators at Sandy Hook Elementary School “staged,” “synthetic,” “manufactured,” “a giant hoax” and “completely fake with actors,” Jones and PQPR began recording debt that Infowars’ parent company owned PQPR “on account of products that PQPR had purchased and paid for from third parties,” the filing says.
It is up to Judge Christopher Lopez to decide whether to approve the settlement.
Lopez was in the headlines in early December when he threw out the sale of Infowars to the Onion and Sandy Hook families from the Connecticut defamation case based on “a question of the trustee’s business judgment.”
The same trustee, Murray, continues to be in charge of selling off Jones’ business interests and private interests to pay Sandy Hook families a fraction of the hundreds of millions Jones owes them.
