Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ latest bankruptcy plan would pay Sandy Hook families a minimum total of $55 million over 10 years, a fraction of the nearly $1.5 billion awarded to the relatives in lawsuits against Jones for calling the 2012 Newtown school shooting a hoax.
The families, meanwhile, have filed their own proposal seeking to liquidate nearly all of Jones’ assets, including his media company Free Speech Systems, and give the proceeds to them and other creditors.
The dueling plans, filed late Friday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Houston, will be debated and challenged over the next two months, with hearings scheduled for February that will result in a final order saying how much Jones will have to pay out.
I totally agree that Jones should have been punished for the harm he and his platform has caused, but I also felt like the cartoonish amount of money they expected him to pay was venturing into “cruel and unusual” territory.
I don’t think that it is of any benefit to the people that the courts can throw a $1,500,000,000 bill at an individual and it is not contested or lowered, even if he is an abhorrent human being. $1.5bn is basically a shorthand for “permanent abject poverty” for the vast majority of any person alive today, and we can apparently punish people with this?
A bill this large should be paid by multinational companies, not citizens.
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Won’t someone think of the felons!?