Sign up for The Brief, our daily newsletter that keeps readers up to speed on the most essential Texas news.

InfoWars host and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones has filed for bankruptcy in a Texas court after being ordered by multiple courts to pay almost $1.5 billion in total damages to the families of Sandy Hook shooting victims.

The Texas-based media personality with an influential reach spent years falsely calling the 2012 school shooting that killed 20 elementary school students and six adults in Connecticut a hoax. His websites and social media received about 1.4 million daily average visits before major platforms like YouTube and Facebook removed his content in August 2018, according to the New York Times. His false claims about the shooting prompted many of his listeners to harass the families of shooting victims.

Filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the Southern District of Texas on Friday, Jones listed his assets to be between $1 million and $10 million. His debts, which he said to be mostly business-related, are estimated to be between $1 billion and $10 billion and they are listed as owed to between 50 and 99 creditors.

The filing comes just over a week after a Texas judge in Austin ordered Jones to pay the full $49 million that a jury awarded to the parents of a 6-year-old child killed in the tragedy. This figure also includes around $45 million in punitive damages, despite Texas having a law that could have limited the maximum award to $750,000. Jones’ lawyer...

Read Full Story: https://news.google.com/__i/rss/rd/articles/CBMiPmh0dHBzOi8vd3d3LnRleGFzdHJpY...