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(Photo by Zach Roberts/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Alex Jones and his lawyers do not lack for chutzpah. In fact, it would be appropriate to say that they have some balls.
Last week, they filed an emergency motion to amend the bankruptcy order for Free Speech Systems (FSS), the parent company of Infowars, which is selling so much swag that it needs more cash to pay its vendors.
“Actual sales have far exceeded the budgeted sales projections,” they gushed, citing weekly sales of close to a million dollars during the first Sandy Hook defamation trial, a 60 percent increase over projections. And because they’re making money hand over fist, FSS demanded and got the court to disburse funds from the estate to pay vendors, some of whom are companies owned by Jones personally.
But that was then, and this is now. Yesterday, those same lawyers were back in bankruptcy court begging Judge Christopher Lopez not to remand the Connecticut plaintiffs’ Sandy Hook claims back to state court for trial because it will cost FSS too much money if Alex Jones has to take time off work to face the parents of slain children whom he called “crisis actors” participating in a “hoax.”
“The costs of litigating the Connecticut Plaintiffs claims for the next 2 ½ months plus the revenue lost by Alex Jones being off the air would place at risk the improvements to the Debtor’s financial condition in recent weeks and its ability to ultimately pay creditors under a plan of reorganization in this chapter 11 case,” they argue in an audacious display of mendacity.
In point of fact, Jones is already going to be “off the air” during that trial anyway — or not, as the case may be. Because last week US Bankruptcy Judge Julie Manning in Connecticut, remanded the Connecticut plaintiffs’ Sandy Hook defamation suit against Jones personally to state court.
Jones doesn’t appear to have missed a single broadcast during the first Sandy Hook defamation case in Texas. And since publicity from the first trial sent Infowars’ sales through the roof, the specter raised by FSS’s lawyers of plummeting revenue for the estate “if Jones was required to have an extended absence over the course of the Connecticut trial and the Debtor lacked the ability to set up an alternative studio in Connecticut” seems pretty remote.
Considering Jones’s on-air commentary during the first trial, in which he called the judge a “dwarf goblin,” described the plaintiff as “slow” and “on the spectrum,” and said that the jurors “do not know what planet they are on,” his trial counsel might wish that he could be prevented from doing his show. But it seems a safe bet that Jones will find his way to a microphone come hell or high water. We are, after all, talking about a person who claimed to be too sick to be deposed, only to have plaintiffs’ counsel turn on his computer to show that the defendant was at that very moment doing his podcast live in-studio.
FSS’s lawyers go on to insist that “the Debtor cannot presently afford to litigate the Connecticut Action through a jury trial at this time without significant disruptions to its ability to operate and reorganize.” They estimate legal fees for the trial would reach $600,000, i.e. less than one day’s sales at Infowars. They also speculate that “the Debtor would also face difficulties in securing representation in the Connecticut Action if the automatic stay was lifted,” despite the fact that FSS was represented in every prior phase of this case by Jones’s longtime lawyer Norm Pattis, who continues to represent Jones in the upcoming trial.
Moreover, Jones and FSS were represented in the Connecticut case by attorney Andino Reynal, of “please disregard” the contents of my client’s entire phone which I just placed in our shared Dropbox fame. And while both lawyers are facing possible sanctions for mishandling confidential medical records, it seems pretty clear that Connecticut Judge Barbara Bellis isn’t about to delay this trial any further by tossing them off the case during jury selection.
Because this case has been delayed for years thanks to Jones’s shenanigans. In fact, his egregious refusal to cooperate with discovery earned him default judgments in two states! And that was before Jones put three worthless shell companies in bankruptcy and offered to buy the plaintiffs off with money he found in his couch cushions.
And yet his attorneys argue that “the Connecticut Action has never been delayed by any actions of the Debtor or Alex Jones.”
Ah, well, you know what they say — shoot for the moon, you might end up in the stars. Or you might end up back in the Superior Court in Waterbury, Connecticut. That’s also a possibility.
Free Speech Systems LLC Bankruptcy [Docket via Court Listener]
Liz Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.
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