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Alex Jones testifying in Waterbury, Connecticut on Sept. 22, 2022 (Law&Crime Network)
Sandy Hook families, through their attorneys, called out Alex Jones for living a “lavish lifestyle” and attempting to reap the benefits of a significant pay raise as the InfoWars host and his company Free Speech Systems trudge through bankruptcy proceedings in Texas federal court.
In Nov. 21 filings, Texas and Connecticut Sandy Hook families ripped into Jones and Free Speech Systems of attempting to “more than double Jones’s historical salary,” paying him “for the first time ever” a salary “equal to $1.5 million per year, even though no evidence suggests he ever received a salary from FSS greater than $640,000 in a single year.”
Slamming that attempted “massive salary increase” as grounded in “no legitimate rationale,” the Sandy Hook families further noted that Jones has carried on a “lavish lifestyle” during the Chapter 11 bankruptcy case:
Having sought bankruptcy protection, Jones should not be granted a windfall merely so that he can continue his lavish lifestyle (including in July and August alone: $11,800 on “housekeeping;” $7,053 on “groceries;” $10,563 on “meals and entertainment” not accounted for as “business expenses;” $15,026 on “childcare;” and a staggering $19,331 to maintain non-exempt real property that Jones has refused to sell).
Jones, the filing said, attempted to “circumvent the procedural and substantive requirements for the Salary Increase, disregard the Sandy Hook Families’ Employment Agreement Objection, and proceed unilaterally with the Salary Increase without Court approval[.]”
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The Sandy Hook families, therefore, asked U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Lopez to “prohibit the Debtor from effectuating the Salary Increase.”
The Associated Press reported Monday that while Judge Lopez denied the salary increase as improper, Sandy Hook families threw Jones a life raft of sorts by offering a settlement far below the billion-plus in debts owed: $85 million to be paid over 10 years.
Jones lawyer Vickie Driver reportedly remarked, however, that the settlement offer was too high.
“There are no financials that will ever show that Mr. Jones ever made that … in 10 years,” Driver reportedly said.
As recently October, Judge Lopez ruled that Jones couldn’t hide behind Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, meaning he remained on the hook for billion-dollar defamation judgments against him over his “willful and malicious” lies about the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School murders of 20 children and six educators — a mass shooting Jones called a “giant hoax” propped up by “crisis actors.”
In the ruling, the judge granted partial summary judgment in favor of plaintiffs Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis, the parents of 6-year-old Jesse Lewis, and in favor of Leonard Pozner and Veronique De La Rosa, the parents of Noah Pozner, the youngest victim of the school massacre who was murdered just weeks after his 6th birthday.
