Alex Jones Just Cost Himself Everything

After a weekend full of crisis-actor-level tears from right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, he has officially moved to liquidate all of his assets in order to pay the $1.5 billion he owes to the families of children murdered at Sandy Hook Elementary.

The “hoax”-pushing supplement hawker, who was found guilty of defamation in 2022, filed for bankruptcy under Chapter 11 that same year, allowing him to maintain operations of his businesses and rely on reorganization to come up with the funds. But it wasn’t enough, with the families warning in 2023 that Jones’s plan fell “woefully short.”

In a filing on Thursday, Jones’s lawyers wrote that there was “no reasonable prospect for a successful reorganization” and that filing for liquidation under Chapter 7 was the massacre denier’s only option. This latest decision lays the groundwork for Alex Jones to lose his stake in InfoWars, the pulpit from which the podcaster has continued to spew misinformation.

Earlier this week, a judge prolonged Jones’s slow financial death and allowed him to continue running his media company Free Speech Systems until June 14. This newest move signals that Jones’s ownership will more than likely be sold, according to Avi Moshenberg, an attorney for the families, who spoke to CNN on Thursday. Free Speech Systems had nearly $4 million in cash on hand at the end of April.

The decision came after Jones posted several videos of himself in hysterics, in which he wailed over the prospect of selling his media company. “All we’re trying to do is save America, and they’re fucking us over, over and over again,” he sobbed in an “emergency broadcast” on Saturday. “And it’s just so sick—it’s sick, it’s sick. I want to leave—because it’s going to be over, folks.”

On Thursday, a lawyer for the families, Chris Mattei, said that Jones’s decision to liquidate his assets “will hasten the end of these bankruptcies and facilitate the liquidation of Jones’s assets, which is the same reason we have moved to convert his company’s case to Chapter 7.”

Mattei had accused Jones in court Monday of “manufacturing a crisis.”

Last month, Jones was granted permission to sell his ranch, which is valued at $2.8 million, one large chunk of his approximate total $9 million in assets.

A unique detail of Jones’s case is that he can’t skirt payments by declaring bankruptcy. The judge who presided over Jones’s bankruptcy filing last year made his debt “non-dischargeable” through bankruptcy, meaning he has to continue paying the families until he has fully settled the $1.5 billion debt.

As a result, Jones will likely be “basically broke now for the rest of his life,” Harry Litman, a former U.S. attorney, told MSNBC at the time.

During an appearance Thursday on a web show hosted by Phil McGraw, also known as Dr. Phil, Donald Trump spoke of his recent conviction on 34 felony counts in his hush-money trial—and his appetite for revenge against his political rivals.

Dr. Phil McGraw—once an acclaimed talk show staple—now hosts a web show sympathetically interviewing far-right trolls and peddling extremist conspiracies, going the way of innumerable has-beens. McGraw griped that the country is in such shambles that Trump regaining office would be too busy to “have time to get even.”

“Well, revenge does take time,” Trump replied. “And sometimes revenge can be justified, Phil. I have to be honest. Sometimes it can.”

Trump has repeatedly spoken about his revenge fantasies after being convicted, at least three times alone this week. On Newsmax Tuesday, he suggested he may pursue charges against Biden in retaliation for his hush-money trial—an investigation that he blames on Biden but which began in 2018—more than a year before Biden announced his 2020 run for president.

“It’s a terrible, terrible path that they’re leading us to,” Trump said on Newsmax, framing his felony conviction by a New York jury as a dangerous precedent instead of a rare instance of the criminal justice system asserting that no one is above the law. “And it’s very possible that it’s going to have to happen to them,” Trump added.

“Does that mean the next president does it to them? That’s really the question,” Trump continued.

On Wednesday, he repeated his promise for retribution, telling Fox’s Sean Hannity that he has the “right” to send the Department of Justice against his political enemies.

Aspiring to imprison political enemies is nothing new for Trump. He infamously led calls to “lock her up” while running against Hillary Clinton—a phrase Trump now claims he never said.

Two police officers who were injured by rioters during the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol were met with an appalling cacophony of boos and hisses from several Republicans during a visit to the Pennsylvania House of Representatives. Some lawmakers even stormed out of the hall.

Former U.S. Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn and former Sergeant Aquilino Gonell had been touring through Pennsylvania as part of President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign, but according to The Washington Post, several so-called conservative state lawmakers just couldn’t handle their presence Wednesday and threw a complete tantrum.

Dunn, who was pepper-sprayed and injured in hand-to-hand combat during the insurrection, said it was “sad though unsurprising that [Donald] Trump’s allies in the Pennsylvania state House followed his lead in mocking the January 6 attack.”

“The fact they’re scared to listen to those of us who were there and witnessed the political violence of January 6 firsthand speaks volumes,” he said Thursday in a statement.

Gonnell, who was battered during the riot three years ago, wrote in a post on X that Pennsylvania House Republicans had “abandoned the truth” and “sided with those who attacked us.”

Pennsylvania Democrats rallied to the former officers’ defense. Representative Arvind Venkat told the Post that he was “shocked and appalled” to see eight to 10 of his Republican colleagues walk out as the two were announced. Representative Mike Schlossberg said that a majority of Republicans did not stand and applaud the two men, who were introduced as “heroes” by House Speaker Joanna McClinton.

McClinton released a statement about the incident, saying, “The GOP members’ shameful behavior was unbecoming of our institution for any guest, let alone two of the men responsible for defending our democracy during a dark day in our nation’s history.”

Representative Jordan A. Harris, also a Democrat, criticized the Republican response to honoring members of law enforcement. “We talk about backing the blue, but people turned their backs on blue yesterday,” said Harris.

But Pennsylvania House Republican Leader Bryan Cutler hit back at the criticism from Democrats, accusing them of “antagonizing members and inviting division and discord for their political and campaign purposes.” He insisted that he had stayed on the floor.

The shocking incident is a sign of how divisive the January 6 insurrection is, with many Republicans continuing to insist that rioters had not been in the wrong and that the 2020 election was rigged.

Joe Biden’s continued support of Israel’s brutal war on Gaza has crossed a line for the NAACP.

The civil rights organization on Thursday released a statement urging the Biden administration to end weapons shipments to Israel and calling for “an immediate and permanent ceasefire.”

“As the nation’s leading civil rights organization, it is our responsibility to speak out in the face of injustice and work to hold our elected officials accountable for the promises they’ve made,” said NAACP President and CEO Derrick Johnson. “Over the past months, we have been forced to bear witness to unspeakable violence, affecting innocent civilians, which is unacceptable.”

The statement cites Israel’s offensive in Rafah, where displaced Palestinians from across Gaza have been forced to flee, noting that over Memorial Day weekend, the Israeli military killed 45 Palestinians (with U.S.-made weapons) and injured over 200 people, many of whom were young children. Johnson also said in the statement America’s efforts were key to ending the conflict.

“The Middle East conflict will only be resolved when the U.S. government and international community take action, including limiting access to weapons used against civilians,” Johnson said. “The NAACP calls on President Biden to draw the red line and indefinitely end the shipment of weapons and artillery to the state of Israel and other states that supply weapons to Hamas and other terrorist organizations.”

“It is one thing to call for a ceasefire, it is another to take the measures necessary to work towards liberation for all.”

The statement is unexpected, especially since the organization has historically been on good terms with Democrats. Last month, Biden spoke at the Detroit NAACP’s sixty-ninth annual Fight for Freedom Fund Dinner, where he received a lifetime achievement award.

“My name’s Joe Biden, and I’m a lifetime member of the NAACP. Matter of fact, the first organization I ever joined was the NAACP,” Biden said at the event.

Will this statement sway Biden’s support for Israel’s war, though? The Biden administration has shown no sign of changing its policies, even though, as the war’s eighth month begins, Israel has killed nearly 37,000 Palestinians, including at least 15,000 children, with thousands more civilians missing.

The right thing to do now, as it has been for a long time, is what the NAACP, as well as the The New Republic’s, editors recommend: End weapons shipments to Israel.  

House Democratic candidate Mondaire Jones has united pretty much everyone against him after his petty endorsement of Westchester County executive George Latimer over progressive Representative Jamaal Bowman. Latimer is largely considered to be running a Republican-backed campaign solely to oust Bowman, and Jones’s endorsement of his campaign has rankled several progressive groups.

On Thursday, Jews for Jamaal—a coalition of Jewish constituents in NY-16 and supported by local progressive nonprofit Jews for Racial and Economic Justice— released a statement condemning Jones’s endorsement of Latimer and fiercely criticized Latimer’s prominently right-wing-backed campaign.

“As a diverse coalition of New York Jews, we reject continued use of Republican money to interfere with Democratic Party primaries with the aim of unseating a popular progressive Black Democrat,” the statement reads in part.

Also on Thursday, both New York’s Working Families Party and the Congressional Progressive Caucus PAC rescinded their endorsements of Jones. The Working Families Party, which revoked financial support for Jones’s campaign, issued a statement saying Jones’s endorsement of Latimer made clear he “strayed from the values and principles that made us proud to support him in 2020.”

“Over the course of his campaign, Mondaire has strayed from the values and principles that made us proud to support him in 2020,” NYWFP co-directors Jasmine Gripper and Ana María Archila said in a statement to Gothamist. “His decision to back George Latimer, who uses racist dog whistles, rejects core parts of [President] Biden’s economic agenda, and shares donors with Mondaire’s own MAGA extremist opponent, runs counter to our values as a party.”

Jones, a former Bowman ally, endorsed Latimer on Tuesday, citing “Jewish residents in my district who feel anxiety, fear, and anger due to Representative Bowman’s words and actions in particular and an overall climate in this country.”

Bowman—a vocal critic of Israel’s deadly war on Gaza and Biden’s continued arms shipments to the country—has decried Latimer as a “Republican sock puppet” with his campaign’s significant support from MAGA conservatives, AIPAC, and pro-Israel opportunists hungry for the incumbent progressive’s ouster. Now Jones’s endorsement of Latimer threaten his own race against aggressively pro-Israel Republican incumbent Representative Mike Lawler, who represents a Biden district that Jones could have recaptured in November.

* This piece originally misstated that Latimer’s recent campaign video was not filmed in his district.