For both sets of families, the concern about Jones allegedly looting the company on his way out the door remains very real. Lawyers for the families made clear during the hearing that they were ultimately looking to preserve the value of the company to create an equitable distribution of Jones’ assets to his many, many creditors, and, of course, prevent him from carrying out what they allege is the latest fraudulent scheme he’s using to keep money hidden.
In the hearing, Jones’ assets were ordered dissolved. Though he will be allowed to keep his house, other personal assets, like his gun collection, could also be up for auction. But since the court rejected a bankruptcy plan for Free Speech Systems, the families can now try to collect the judgments they won in state court. The Connecticut plaintiffs had asked the judge to pave the way for an “orderly wind down” of Jones’ business affairs, as several lawyers put it, while the Texas families favored a plan to keep the company operational for now, with their lawyers arguing that they could better pursue claims for their clients that way.
Besides hawking his dad’s business, in the leadup to the hearing, Jones also milked every bit of content and attention from Infowars’ possible imminent nonexistence that he could. He sat down for laudatory interviews with both Tucker Carlson and Russell Brand that aired on Infowars and loudly ruminated on what he called “the twilight” of the network and “the countdown to the end of this place.”
Jones’ last week of broadcasts was a greatest-hits of weird characters from across the conspiracy-verse. Besides Brand and Carlson, Mikki Willis, the filmmaker behind the viral faux-documentary Plandemic, also showed up with friends to promote a new project, as did Stew Peters, an antisemitic far-right broadcaster who has recently been named the communications director of an armed national militia. Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes also hosted a segment where he ranted about Black Lives Matter.
On Friday morning, Jones posted a video of himself driving down a Texas highway towards the courthouse on X, declaring that “the Democratic party and the Deep State” were trying to take control of his assets and social media accounts.
“This is real tyranny,” he declared, adding that if Trump is reelected “he’s going to put them all in prison.”
Jones also claimed on-air last week that an Infowars shutdown would only make him more powerful. “You make it bigger by shutting it down, dumbos,” he declared. After the verdict, in an “emergency broadcast” over the weekend, Jones called the hearing “absolutely epic” and denounced allegations that he was “stealing money” as “fake.”
The verdicts against Jones, Mattei told WIRED last week, were “a cathartic moment of validation. And Friday if the judge rules that the company needs to be liquidated will be another moment where they feel like they’ve done everything they could do to protect others. They didn’t lay down.”
But that is, of course, not what happened. “It’s just Biblical,” Jones exalted over the weekend, speaking to one of his frequently-replaced junior hosts. “It’s almost like God is really just being entertained by all this and is just wanting to see the fight continue.”
While the families have clearly fought hard, Friday’s split ruling is, instead, a signal that their fight is, for now, not even close to over. And as Jones and Infowars keep covering their own unlikely survival, they’re still hawking both their in-house store and Dr. Jones’ Naturals.
“We’re selling it for twelve dollars and change,” Jones said at one point during the “emergency broadcast,” extolling the virtues of a certain supplement. He paused for a moment. “My dad is.”