InfoWars Final Liquidation

Alex Jones’ personal bankruptcy has been converted to a formal liquidation, meaning a trustee will decide how Jones will pay down $1.5 billion in defamation judgments.

Jones and families of Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting victims who he defamed have for months been unable to agree on how he will pay them. The families won their state defamation judgments against the right-wing conspiracy theorist and his media platform, Infowars, after he repeatedly called the 2012 school shooting a hoax.

Bloomberg reports US Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Lopez on Friday said Jones’ case doesn’t trigger any exceptions to the law that would bar it from being converted to a Chapter 7 liquidation. Lopez declined a request from Sandy Hook families to include provisions laying out how the handover of Jones’ case to a trustee will proceed.

The judge said he would issue a “very clean order’’ on the matter.

A trustee could determine the future of Infowars’ bankrupt parent, Free Speech Systems LLC.

Even if Infowars is liquidated, Jones could potentially start a successor broadcast, Kyle J. Kimpler, of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP, said on behalf of some of the Sandy Hook families during the hearing.