Alex Jones will still likely have to pay victims' families in his Sandy Hook defamation cases despite Infowars filing for bankruptcy, lawyer says

• InfoWars, the far-right conspiracy website owned by Alex Jones, filed for bankruptcy Sunday.
• But that likely won't shield Jones from paying out in his Sandy Hook defamation lawsuits, a bankruptcy lawyer told Insider.

Alex Jones, the far-right conspiracy theorist and owner of InfoWars, will likely still have to pay victims' families in his Sandy Hook defamation cases despite his companies filing for bankruptcy, a bankruptcy lawyer told Insider.

InfoWars filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the Texas Southern District Court on Sunday, according to court filings seen by Insider. Jones' other business entities including Prison Planet TV and IW Health also filed for protection Sunday.

Under a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing, Jones would be able to continue to own and run his companies while proposing a reorganization to be voted on by his creditors.

Jones is currently embroiled in multiple defamation lawsuits in both Texas and Connecticut filed by family members of victims of the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting.

The mass shooting at an elementary school left 26 people dead — including 20 first-graders. The families accused Jones of defaming them by repeatedly spreading the baseless conspiracy theory that they were actors staging a "giant hoax" and that the killings never occurred.

Filing for bankruptcy puts an immediate stay on all civil proceedings, but Jones will likely still have to pay families involved in the cases, Stephen Starr, a Manhattan-based bankruptcy owner and Member of Starr and Starr PLC told Insider.

"He's not going to get off the hook," Starr said.

Starr explained that 30 days from InfoWars' bankruptcy filing, the creditors will meet to review their proposal. Following that meeting, any creditor can file a lawsuit to the bankruptcy court calling on the judge to not discharge certain debts.

This means that families who are owed by Jones from one of the defamation suits will be able to request that he should still have to pay those debts because he performed "willful injury" to the plaintiffs in the defamation cases, Starr said.

"He might be hoping that people would drop the ball," Starr said. If the families do not file suit within the 60-day window, they lose the opportunity to collect their money.

The judge will then rule whether they believe Jones should still have to pay debts to the families.

Jones has been found guilty in at least four defamation cases brought against him. In all the cases, judges ruled Jones lost the suits by default after he refused to cooperate and follow court instructions. Last month, Jones offered 13 plaintiffs a settlement of $120,000 each but the settlement was rejected by all of the families.