A Texas bankruptcy court judge brought Infowars back from the brink of death on Friday, a surprising ruling which conspiracy kingpin Alex Jones attempted to use to—naturally—make more money. This time, Jones is promoting a supplement company owned by his father.
Judge Christopher M. Lopez issued a split ruling last week, saying that Jones can follow through with a plan his attorneys had requested and liquidate most of his assets to pay the nearly $1.5 billion judgment he owes to the families of children and staff members killed at Sandy Hook after repeatedly calling the mass shooting a “hoax.”
Though Jones lost by default in defamation cases brought by Sandy Hook families in both Connecticut and Texas, the families have yet to see a dime of the money owed to them; Friday’s hearing was one piece of a long-awaited day of reckoning for the man they said was the single biggest driver of lies about their dead children and hatred, threats, and harassment directed toward their families.
But the judge rejected a bankruptcy plan that would have also liquidated Free Speech Systems, the parent company of Infowars, the 25-year-old media empire that made Jones into the foremost face of conspiracism in America. The network will live for now, although it remains unclear how long. Jones responded to the crisis in his usual way: by shilling supplements, albeit this time with a curious twist.
As the bankruptcy proceedings have dragged on—and on and on—Jones has used his one true talent to powerful effect, urging his viewers to send money to an entity not directly owned by him, and thus not answerable to the Sandy Hook families and his other creditors.
In recent weeks, Jones has been promoting a new supplements site, Dr. Jones Naturals, on air. He says it’s owned by his father, David Jones, a dentist. Alex Jones has been urging people to spend their money there in addition to, or instead of, at Infowars’ in-house store. “My dad is a sponsor, and he has a warehouse that’s not under their control, full of products ready to ship to you,” Jones said on-air last week. A representative for Free Speech Systems also testified in court that Infowars had stopped ordering supplements for its in-house store several weeks ago, expecting an imminent shutdown.
The things on offer from Dr. Jones Naturals don’t differ greatly from the things Infowars sells itself; there’s the usual bouquet of colloidal silver products, a longtime faux cure-all in the natural health world, along with something oxymoronically called Rocket Rest, a product called Top Brain, and, for the completist, a set of products called the Patriot Pack. There’s also a pack of “super silver lozenges,” where the product photo shows an expiration date of 2022.
“It’s an obvious fraud on the bankruptcy court,” Chris Mattei, an attorney for the Connecticut families, tells WIRED, referring to Jones’ directing people on-air to his father’s supplements website. “He’s not supposed to divert assets.”