Right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ personal spending has increased since he was ordered to pay $1.5 billion in liabilities to Sandy Hook families, none of whom has seen a penny from the disgraced Infowars host, according to court documents.
In July alone, Jones spent $93,180 — excluding legal and professional fees — including $15,184 on payments to his wife Erika Wulff Jones, $7,900 on housekeeping, $6,338 on meals and entertainment, and a separate $3,388 on groceries, an August 29 court filing from lawyers for the families shows. The payments to Jones’ wife, the lawyers alleged, were textbook “fraudulent transfers” under a claimed prenuptial agreement.
His May and June bills were equally hefty, with Jones spending $63,925 and $85,114, respectively, again without taking stock of legal and professional fees, the filing said. An attorney for Jones did not respond to a CNN request for comment Thursday.
Jones filed for bankruptcy in December 2022 after he was ordered to pay nearly $1.5 billion to Sandy Hook families over his false claims about the elementary school massacre. At the time, he estimated his assets to be worth between $1 million and $10 million, and his liabilities to be between $1 billion and $10 billion, CNN previously reported.
In filing for bankruptcy, the money Jones owes the Sandy Hook families is put on hold until a payment plan is established. Jones declined the initial budget proposed to him by attorneys representing the families in December 2022 that would have allowed him to pay the liabilities and spend a diminished amount on himself, court documents show. Jones instead responded with a budget of his own on May 8, proposing that he be allowed to spend over $700,000 a year. Despite this figure, Jones’ monthly operating reports indicate that he’s surpassed his own proposed budget.
As of December 30, 2022, Jones claimed he’d submitted around $900,000 of his own money for bankruptcy protection to avoid having his operations shut down, court documents show. Yet the Sandy Hook families were given no evidence of this contribution. On his Infowars show Tuesday, Jones pleaded for donations from his audience, saying that he is currently “in the hole” more than $1 million.
“I won’t be able to continue this show in a month myself if I don’t raise $1 million,” Jones said. “We’ve raised $133,000 and we’re in the hole for $1 million. That’s almost a year of my lawyers taking the case.”
“With all my expenses and things, that’s nothing. I don’t care about that — I’m wearing a shirt that I bought like eight years ago and I love it to death,” Jones continued. “If anything, I like to go to nice restaurants, that is my deal, I like to go on a couple of nice vacations a year — but I think I’ve pretty much have earned that in this fight. I’m not complaining.”
Following the 2012 mass shooting in Sandy Hook that left 26 people dead, Jones repeatedly stated that the incident had been staged and that both the families and the first responders involved in the incident were “crisis actors.” Jones repeatedly lied about the shooting and, while he has since acknowledged that the events did take place, his lies catalyzed several lawsuits.
BlackBriar Advisors, which acts as Jones’ financial adviser, has been able to provide some documentation explaining Jones’ expenses to attorneys, which shows they’re seeking to adopt a more “proactive role” in overseeing Jones’ expenses in the future.
Still, attorneys for the Sandy Hook families say that if Jones does not curb his spending, they will seek to begin “further waste” of Jones’ estate assets, pursue appointing a trustee over his assets or dismiss the bankruptcy case altogether.
— CutC by cnn.com
