Alex Jones, the longtime figurehead in extreme-right media who has infamously faced defamation litigation over bonkers conspiracy theories he helped spread about the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, could soon see payments that he made to associates of his — including his wife — undone.
Plaintiffs in those cases, who have now involved themselves in bankruptcy proceedings associated with Jones, have raised the prospect of reversing money transfers including $1 million Jones provided his wife. The basic idea is that the movements of funds may have been meant to intentionally evade looming financial obligations associated with the defamation cases, in which he eventually was hit with judgments against him by default after he failed to comply with obligations associated with the discovery process.
Discovery, in this context, is the period before trial in which involved parties have the opportunity to assemble relevant pieces of evidence in forms including depositions and documentary materials. The trials Jones eventually did face were only over how much to actually make him pay. The total amount Jones now owes has been cited as around $1.5 billion.
At present, mediation in Jones’s bankruptcy proceedings is evidently continuing, though as reported by Reuters, a lawyer on the side of the families who sued Jones raised the concern about transfers the longtime broadcaster made during recent court proceedings. “U.S. bankruptcy law allows debtors or their creditors to unwind asset transfers that were made before bankruptcy in an attempt to avoid paying debts,” Reuters notes. Presumably, Judge Christopher Lopez, who is handling these bankruptcy proceedings, could eventually rule on the possibility of reversing those payments if the mediation efforts fail. For the mediation, Lopez set a deadline of July 21.
Besides direct payments, Jones has also faced scrutiny for claims of tens of millions of dollars of debt at his company Free Speech Systems supposedly owed to a separate company in which reports have suggested he and his own family were involved. That other corporate entity was evidently part of Jones’s supplement business.
