An embattled low-income housing development north of Houston is suing Alex Jones for defamation after the Austin-based conspiracy theorist and a former Republican gubernatorial candidate called the property a "giant fraud" that harbors drug cartels.
The owners of the Colony Ridge housing development filed suit in Liberty County seeking damages of more than $10 million from Jones, Pete Chambers, and Free Speech Systems — the company behind Infowars.
The lawsuit stems from comments Jones and Chambers made on Jones’ former website Infowars. They described the neighborhood, which has drawn criticism from conservatives and federal scrutiny over alleged consumer protection violations, as a hotbed for cartel activity.
Calling it the "sanctuary city of Colony Ridge," on his show Infowars in February, Jones and Chambers made a series of vitriolic and racially charged attacks on the residents while lamenting, "'a mortgage scam' on 'poor people, immigrants, everybody,' and as part of a scheme to subjugate 'illegal aliens' to a 'permanent underclass' and 'slavery.'"
John Harris, one of the owners of the development group, said Jones continues to use Colony Ridge as a "political football."
"We don't want our customers to be subjected to that, and we were finally fed up enough to stand up and fight back," Harris told the Houston Chronicle this week.
The defamation lawsuit comes as Jones continues fighting $1.4 billion in defamation judgments tied to the Sandy Hook lawsuits that forced Infowars' parent company into bankruptcy.
Jones was sued by the parents of children killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting for falsely claiming the massacre was staged. He lost the lawsuits in 2021 and later declared bankruptcy. He has yet to pay the families and continues contesting the sale of Infowars to satirical news outlet The Onion, a move backed by the families.
Most recently he successfully delayed the licensing of the website to The Onion that was set to take place in a district court in Travis County late last month, filing a new federal suit. Jones' case was thrown out earlier this week. It heads back to district court in Travis County next week.
The complaint states that Jones eventually took down the comments after posting them on the social media platform X, but the post had already been viewed at least 650,000 times. The statements were still viewable on other social media sites.
"As of May 2026, the video has been viewed on Banned Video over 600,000 times," the lawsuit alleges. "At no point have Defendants offered any correction, clarification, or retraction of their lies about Colony Ridge."
The lawsuit comes weeks after the Trump administration and Colony Ridge agreed to a $68 million settlement following a lawsuit filed by the Biden administration in December 2023. The Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division alleged that Colony Ridge used predatory loan practices and language barriers to lure potential homeowners into risky loan agreements.
The state of Texas filed its own lawsuit in 2024 and alleged that the developers used "deceptive trade practices, fraud in real estate transactions, and other violations of Texas and federal law."
The settlement agreement was reached after Biden left office. U.S. District Judge Alfred Bennett questioned why the $68 million settlement did not include relief for people who were allegedly defrauded by the company. He also balked at the provisions in the agreement mandating that Colony Ridge's owners provide $20 million for law enforcement support, including possible immigration enforcement.
Bennett declined to sign off on the agreement, leading Colony Ridge and the federal government to oversee its provisions without federal oversight.
Prior to those lawsuits, Colony Ridge and its developers were targets of Republican immigration hawks who also said the neighborhood was a hotbed of crime where neighborhoods were under the control of cartels. Abbott said the Texas Department of Public Safety described some areas of the development as "no-go" zones they wouldn't patrol. That allegation was later debunked by officials in the department.
"I really thought at that point that (the allegations) were debunked and we were done," Harris said in an interview. "Then the lawsuits came, and then we finally got that settled. We thought we were just moving forward with doing what we do, which is provide land for our customers to buy."