Editorial: Ruling against Alex Jones should serve as a warning to other professional liars

There are few examples of behavior more malicious than Alex Jones’ grotesque lies about the mass murder of small children at Sandy Hook Elementary School more than a decade ago — lies that were, by any common-sense definition, willful.

Yet a Texas judge’s ruling this month specifying those lies were “willful and malicious” in the legal sense of the term is an important victory for the families suing Jones, because it means he won’t be able to hide behind bankruptcy laws to avoid a historic civil judgment against him of more than $1 billion.

It should also serve as a useful warning to other heartless circus barkers who peddle conspiracy theories for profit that they can be not only sued for their lies, but be forced to actually pay.

Jones, founder of the right-wing conspiracy site InfoWars, spent years tormenting the families of the 20 children and six adults who died in the 2012 Connecticut mass shooting by publicly claiming it was all staged by the government as a pretext for passing gun-control laws.

He claimed the dead children and their parents were actors, allowing him to monetize the families’ unimaginable grief — not to mention one of the worst national traumas in U.S. history — by raising his profile and increasing sales of dietary supplements from his site. In doing so, he spurred his gullible, hate-filled followers to harass and threaten the survivors to the point that some had to relocate.

Some of the families fought back by filing defamation suits against Jones in Connecticut and Texas, where InfoWars is based. Verdicts against him now total some $1.4 billion. Yet it was unclear until this month that he would actually have to pay any of that, because he filed for bankruptcy for both his company and himself after the litigation was underway.

Chapter 11 bankruptcy can generally be used to discharge even debts faced as a result of lawsuits — unless the judgments are found by a court to be the result of “willful and malicious” action by the defendant. Texas bankruptcy judge Christopher Lopez ruled on Oct. 19 that one of the judgments against Jones, accounting for about $1.1 billion of the total he faces, meets that criteria.

Jones claims to be effectively penniless because of the years of litigation, but coming from this professional liar, that claim means exactly nothing. This month’s ruling should help loosen up whatever assets he and his foul website still have. While it remains unlikely the families will ever get anything approaching $1.1 billion, the fact that Jones will likely lose everything and spend the rest of his life in debt to them is some version of justice.

Of even more value could be the deterrent effect Jones’ continuing troubles are likely to have on other professional conspiracy theorists — some of whom serve in Congress. It’s a reminder that the right to free speech doesn’t include the right to malign innocent people for politics or profit.