Alex Jones’ Infowars sees sales surge since Sandy Hook defamation trial
Infowars has seen it sales soar in the weeks since its founder, Alex Jones, has appeared in court after he was hit with a defamation lawsuit filed by the parents of children who were killed in the Sandy Hook mass shooting over a decade ago.
Attorneys for Infowars’ parent company, Free Speech Systems LLC, is on pace to record $800,000 in sales just this week alone, according to filings in US Bankruptcy Court in Houston which were cited by The Wall Street Journal.
Jones, who told his millions of listeners that Sandy Hook was a “hoax,” was ordered by a jury to pay $49 million in damages to the parents of Jesse Lewis, the six-year-old boy who was among 20 students and six teachers massacred by a gunman in Newtown, Conn. in December 2012.
Last month, Free Speech Systems filed for bankruptcy for the second time in an effort to withstand the financial burdens resulting from several lawsuits related to Sandy Hook.
Earlier this year, the company sought Chapter 11 protections in an effort to induce a settlement with the plaintiffs.
But recent filings show that Infowars has reaped a windfall in recent weeks.
The conspiratorial website could generate as much as $450,000 per day thanks to back-ordered inventory as well as newly introduced products on its web site, according to court papers cited by the Journal.
The filing stated that Infowars sold $962,000 worth of items in the week which ended on July 29 and almost $899,000 for the week ending Aug. 5. The company says that the bulk of the sales are of nutritional supplements offered on the web site.
At the time the company filed for bankruptcy, it said it was pulling in around $595,000 in weekly sales.
Free Speech Systems credits the boost in sales to “a number of reasons, including the receipt of new inventory.”
Lawyers for the company are asking the court to allow it to use extra cash on hand to cover costs related to fulfilling and shipping orders that were placed through the Infowars web site.
