Alex Jones’s notorious Infowars channel is set to be shut down after an emergency motion was put forward in bankruptcy court.
Jones, 50, declared bankruptcy last year when he was ordered to pay $1.5bn to the families of the Sandy Hook school shooting victims after he was sued for promoting a false theory that the massacre was a hoax.
A judge later ruled that he would not be released from paying the settlement despite the bankruptcy filings.
Since then he has failed to pay out any of the sum, with a federal judge in Texas ruling this month to liquidate Jones’s personal assets. The judge did not determine the fate of Infowars at the time.
However, the trustee in charge of Jones’s bankruptcy proceedings has now said that he will move to “conduct an orderly wind-down” of his Infowars media site and liquidate Jones’s business assets.
In his filing, court-appointed trustee Christopher Murray also asked a judge to put a pause on Sandy Hook families’ efforts to collect their payments from Jones, as he argued that would interfere with the process to sell off his Infowars’ parent company, Free Speech Systems.
He did so after the parents sought to seize money from Free Speech Systems, a move that Murray said would “throw the business into chaos”.
“The Trustee seeks this Court’s intervention to prevent a value-destructive money grab and allow an orderly process to take its course,” he wrote in the filing.
Jones has continued to broadcast on Infowars since declaring bankruptcy, but has said that he expects the platform to be shut down in the coming months.
He previously accused federal authorities of trying to shut down his show.
He has pledged to continue his show on another platform if it is shut down or as an employee under potential new ownership, though specifics on the plan are unknown.
“This is probably the end of Infowars here very, very soon. If not today, in the next few weeks or months,” Jones told reporters outside court before a hearing earlier this month, The Associated Press reported. “But it’s just the beginning of my fight against tyranny.”
Jones has estimated in court records that he has less than $12m in assets, meaning he will carry an enormous legal debt even after the media platform and his other assets are sold.
