is he free to tell them to keep the money from the remaining part of the contract and go his own way?
That would be a matter for the kangaroo courts, and at this point they are kangaroo courts.
Alex Jones was the proof-of-concept of a Lefty judge denying the accused a jury trial and forbidding them enter a plea of innocent and deeming them guilty. The jury trial was strictly to decide how much he owed, and the judge dictated that to the jury as well.
They did the same thing in the FOX/Dominion trial, which is why FOX simply settled.
Jones is going to win on appeal, but it will take years.
FOX is playing along to discredit Carlson.
FOX never was conservative. Rupert was in it for the money, but now the Great Reset is more important to the genocidal billionaire globalist pedophiles.