Judge Rejects Sale of Infowars to The Onion

[applegrove]

Judge Rejects Sale of Infowars to The Onion

The Onion’s bid for the conspiracy website was supported by the families of victims of the Sandy Hook shooting and a nonprofit focused on ending gun violence.

By Benjamin Mullin and Elizabeth Williamson
Published Dec. 10, 2024

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/10/business/media/the-onion-infowars-alex-jones.html

"SNIP..............

A judge late Tuesday night said he would not approve the sale of Infowars, the website founded by the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, to the Chicago-based satirical publication The Onion, prolonging a messy tug of war between two high-profile suitors.

The ruling, by Judge Christopher M. Lopez in federal bankruptcy court in Houston, poses a roadblock for The Onion’s plan to take possession of the Infowars site and its associated assets after it won an auction last month. The Onion’s bid was backed by the families of the victims of the Sandy Hook shooting, who in 2022 won a $1.4 billion defamation lawsuit against Mr. Jones.

Mr. Jones spent years claiming that the 2012 school shooting was a hoax and that victims’ family members were actors complicit in the plot. The Onion has said that it wants to turn Infowars into a satirical site mocking the kind of conspiracy theories that Mr. Jones spreads.

Judge Lopez’s ruling put the fate of Infowars in limbo. He instructed a court-appointed trustee, Christopher Murray, to come up with an alternative resolution, though it was not immediately clear what approach Mr. Murray would take. He did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

..............SNIP"

[LeftInTX]

1. Darn

[Think. Again.]

2. I wonder what excuse the judge made up to block the sale.

That excuse alone probably sounds like something straight out of The Onion.

[applegrove]

3. The winning Onion bid included promise of $ from what the

Sandy Hook parents would be owed by infowars sale. The next bid in magnitude would have won had the Onion bid not included the Sandy Hook families' promise. Plus they were secret ballots. Judge said:


"SNIP...........

Judge Lopez said that the bankruptcy auction failed to maximize the amount of money that the sale of Infowars should provide to Mr. Jones’s creditors, including the Sandy Hook families, in part because the bids were submitted in secret.

...........SNIP"

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/10/business/media/the-onion-infowars-alex-jones.html

[dsc]

4. A significant portion of the winning bid

came from some Sandy's Hook victims giving up rights to their portion of the judgement. The losing bid was all cash.

[meadowlander]

5. I think there was another bid that was technically higher

but the Connecticut families promised the Texas families that they would forfeit part of their claim on the proceeds which meant that the Onion's bid gave the Texas families more and that let the bankruptcy trustee accept it as the "best" bid.

Assuming the judge is saying that's faulty reasoning and the trustee should have accepted the highest numerical bid, even though he had broad discretion to decide which bid he thought was best.

[Think. Again.]

6. Seems to me...

...the trustee's decision, with their "broad discretion", would supercede whatever the judge wanted as far as the "best" bid goes.

You can't tell a trustee it's up to them to decide and then refuse their desicion.