(14 Jun 2024)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Houston, Texas – 14 June 2024
1. Right to left pan of exteriors of Courthouse in downtown Houston
2. Alex Jones leaving the courthouse carrying a box
3. SOUNDBITE (English) Alex Jones, Infowars Host:
“I went into bankruptcy because I was out of money, and there were lies in the corporate media that had hundreds of billions of dollars. All the New York Times, Washington Post, and CNN reports, you heard the last two years that Jones is going to go to jail. He’s got hundreds of millions of dollars hidden that have been put into this court. And none of that was true. None of that was true. And then, when I sat there and tried to pay them more than I’ve ever made in my life, that wasn’t good enough either for the political groups that are behind this. This is about taking me off the air, and that is now been recognized and understood. And the judge specifically said I’m not taking Alex Jones off the air today. That’s what this he said. That is not what this is about.”
4. Mid exterior of the courthouse
5. Mid of Alex Jones at a crosswalk during a court break
7. SOUNDBITE (English) Alex Jones, Infowars Host:
“They get all these claims that I’m some billionaire or something. So people could tell a jury that they would believe it or that I ever made money off these people. It’s it’s it’s not real. I barely ever covered Sandy Hook. I have been completely sick of it for years. The internet questioned it years before I was sued. I said I believed it happened. I think the families have been used by political groups. I wish them well, and everything I’ve said in court has come out to be true over and over and over again. And I want to try to move forward and maximize the amount of money we can make at Infowars to then have a wind down take care of our employees, the 44 people who we just saved their jobs for a while, and maximize stuff for the creditors. Because I don’t care about money. I care about being on the air.”
8. Various of Alex Jones leaving the courthouse to the parking lot
STORYLINE:
Alex Jones has pushed many conspiracy theories over the last three decades, including that the U.S. government was behind or failed to stop the Oklahoma City bombing and the 9/11 attacks.
As the outlandish nature of his false claims grew, so did his media empire, with annual revenues of up to $80 million, and a fanbase that listens to him on more than 100 radio stations across the United States as well as through his Infowars website and social media.
“I would say that he’s one of the more extreme actors operating in this overall environment of disinformation,” said Nathan Walter, an associate professor at the Department of Communication Studies at Northwestern University.
But the future of Jones’ Infowars media platform is now uncertain as he owes $1.5 billion for repeatedly lying on his Infowars programs by saying that the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting that killed 20 first graders and six teachers was a hoax. On Friday, a federal judge ordered the liquidation of Jones’ personal assets but dismissed his company’s separate bankruptcy case.
It wasn’t immediately clear what would happen to Free Speech Systems, Infowars’ parent company that Jones built into a multimillion-dollar moneymaker over the past 25 years.
The bombastic Jones said on his Infowars show earlier this month that he’s been “an honorable, straightforward man.”
Born in 1974, Jones grew up in Dallas. His father was a dentist and his mother was a homemaker. As a teenager, his family moved to Austin.
AP Video by Lekan Oyekanmi
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